Mr. Lif
Emergency Rations
25 June 2002
Definitive Jux
The political commentary starts with the album cover depicting planes dropping bombs on peoples' homes, followed by the same planes dropping Emergency Rations on the burning heads and homes of those people. While some of the beats on this album may bring you back to 1992, the lyrical content confirms that this is a 2002 release as Mr. Lif expands on the post-9/11 war on terrorism led by the U.$. government. The whole album puts forth a positive message, while condemning the united $tates and its capitalist system.
The theme of the album, given in the intro and interludes throughout, is that Mr. Lif is missing, presumably due to the political content of his work. In the first track Brotha PC and fellow Boston all-star Akrobatik drop a little history of repression by the U.$. government, including the railroading of Mumia and the murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo. All of these are examples of imperialist tactics prior to 9/11. While the government is taking on more fascist tendencies these days, it is important to look back and see that this really isn’t anything new and that this is how bourgeois democracy functions when it is threatened. Lif references this in the song Get Wise, "Using evil axis/ to access/ to all become fascists/ using our greatest fears to lash us."
The intro goes on to talk about whole groups of people who are "missing." For example, “We’ve got the U$ dropping rations off to people that are missing, cuz we’ve already killed them all.” They go on to discuss people in this country who are “missing” because they are too mentally and physically tired trying to survive to participate politically and make their voices heard. This hints at one issue where MIM is careful to distinguish itself from many declared anti-imperialists. We in fact recognize that people within imperialist countries generally benefit from the system materially, and as a group will not rise up against it. We do distinguish the oppressed nations within this country from the white amerikan nation however. And in fact the national consciousness of the Black Nation, for example, still often tends to oppose the U.$. government. We caution would-be revolutionaries to distinguish between those who are just dissatisfied with their lives, and those who are truly going to rebel against imperialism(see MIM Theory 10). In the last track, "Phantom" (a look into Mr. Lif’s upcoming full-length I, Phantom), he gives shout outs to a range of people who “can’t get ahead” including single mothers, hard-workers, students and the generally depressed and disillusioned. While it is true that even the materially wealthy are alienated by the capitalist mode of production, if we are to build a successful revolutionary movement we must be more scientific in defining who are our friends and who are our enemies.
Home of the Brave is the first single that came off this EP. With a reference to Chuck D. and later on KRS-ONE, Mr. Lif follows in the footsteps of these conscious rappers. This track is the best example of this consciousness as it starts out talking about police brutality and the injustice system. Then it gets into a nice summary of the post-911 situation, “The country’s headed for recession/ reminiscent of the Great Depression./ Are lives worth the world of power?/ easy question./ Planes hit the towers and the Pentagon/ hittin’ those the government wasn’t dependent on./ It’s easy to control the scared/ so they keep us in fear./ We’re afraid of a middle eastern demon named Bin Laden this year.” He goes on to talk about the anthrax scare as a distraction to a war against an enemy we created(the Taliban) that killed thousands of innocent people in Afghanistan where the U$ has been trying to build an oil pipeline for years. Later he says, “Here’s what the history books won’t show/ you’re a dead man for fucking with amerikan dough.”
Other topics he hits on this album include gender roles, drugs and our relationship to the natural world. In "Pull Out Your Cut," Lif reminisces about some of his favorite rappers from back in the day while stressing that hip hop means more than what is currently being produced by commercial rap. He also talks about our inability to communicate due to the fact that “societal pressures can be imprisonin’.” He goes on to criticize gender boundaries, “How many wimmin you know with eating disorders?/ How much makeup on the faces of our prepubescent daughters?/ Dudes are acting macho and they don’t know why/ A famous unwritten law is that boys should never cry.”
This enhanced CD also features videos of live performances in New York City of Home of the Brave and a track from the Coast II Coast Compilation, "Because They Made it that Way." In the latter song he talks about our culture where money rules and how Blacks are set up to engage in self-destructive behavior. He closes by saying, “Its time to revolt and restart/ And live our lives from the heart/ And bring this music back to the art, rip it apart.”
While making this call to action, Lif admits to not having the answers to the problems and only hopes to open peoples’ minds to question the world we live in. While this is a great first step, things aren’t going to change unless we continue to answer the question of ‘What is to be done?’ as thousands of revolutionaries have done before us. This is a question MIM is not afraid to address, so join us to help make a real change.