CD Review: Sellassie - "I'm Tryin' To Make A Livin' Not A Killin'"

I have to say, there’s a special place in my heart for combining politics and music. It’s not only admirable, but essential. Political movements need youth enthusiasm to succeed, and youth need music to inspire them. Also, I don’t think most people understand how hard political music is to write. Any songwriter can tell you that it’s not very hard to write about your recent breakup, but writing about the conflict in the middle east, or the war on drugs, or even war in general? That’s tough. I’ve certainly never been able to do it. So right from the start, Sellassie gets mad respect from me for doing the most important and impossible work in music; revolutionary hip hop.

Sellassie’s album, I’m Tryin’ to Make a Livin’ Not a Killin’, is an intense and inspirational ride through a motivated musician’s mind. The messages that permeate the most throughout are: San Francisco kicks ass, there’s no excuses to be violent, Sellassie is not a sell-out and never will be, and Grandaddy and Kush are the herb of choice. All of this is delivered from a place of proud positivity, something very refreshing to see/hear in hip hop.

Sellassie’s rhyming style is totally unique. He mixes phrases and rhymes that seem to go on forever, squeezing in complex thoughts and sentences into rhythms that seem too smooth to encapsulate the full meaning and force of his words, yet somehow, you get exactly where he’s coming from. Some of his lines carry the weight of reality but with a positive spin. A great example is from “Mad Young Generation Here Eternally To Take Over” where he says, “When I die there’s no sequel, no equal to my black people…so put down the guns let’s have some fun.” While other lines are just straight-up, raise-your-hands-in-the-air, chant-worthy, like his track, “F.R.I.S.C.O.”

He’s even got something for the vegans. “Is it even meat?” investigates the roots of crime, spread from global warming, to the drug war, to genetically modified meat. Sure, it might be a lot to swallow in one song, but you have to give Sellassie credit for going where very few hip-hop artists do, away from the reality of the ghetto and straight into the causes of the ghetto. The effect is very powerful, without being over-the-top or conspiratory.

I saw Sellassie at Club 6 on Oct. 16th, an event that was organized to empower the audience politically. In the back there was voter registration, and speakers included SF Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, Julian Davis, Yes on H, No on 6 and 9, and League of Young Voters. (So in case you guys were wondering if Sellassie actually walks the walk, wonder no longer.) Sellassie’s presence on stage was just like you’d picture it: positive, energetic, and sincerely grateful to be performing, despite the somewhat small crowd he was performing for. Since then, the world has changed. Barak Obama has been elected to office thanks to millions of voters getting out to the polls who never voted before. Some of those voters might have registered that night at Sellassie’s show or at shows like it across the country. So I guess we get to thank Sellassie who, despite being denied the right to vote (he’s a felon, according to one of his songs) has helped inspire others to utilize the freedom that he’s been denied. What more important work could music do?