Why whirlwind? Genealogy of a phrase…
On the 1999 single "Mumia 911," later a part of The Unbound Project, Vol. I, M1 from dead prez spits the following:
Look for me in the whirlwind, dare to struggle, dare to win
Initially, I assumed that dpz were uniting the overt Maoism of the latter phrase with the thought of the late Tupac Shakur, whose radical political orientation has only been partially subsumed by media constructions of East vs. West rap wars. On "Me and My Girlfriend," he writes:
Lost in the whirlwind, 96 Bonnie and Clyde,
me and my girlfriend doin 85 when we ride,
trapped in this world of sin, born as a ghetto child,
raised in the whirlwind — look for me.
But a cursory google might dissuade us from thinking that the reference is to Tupac, since the exact phrase "Look for me in the whirlwind" appears originally in Marcus Garvey’s 1925 letter from an Atlanta prison, in the following spectacular paragraph:
If I die in Atlanta my work shall then only begin, but I shall live, in the physical or spiritual to see the day of Africa’s glory. When I am dead wrap the mantle of the Red, Black and Green around me, for in the new life I shall rise with God’s grace and blessing to lead the millions up the heights of triumph with the colors that you well know. Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God’s grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life.
Excellent stuff, and surely a more clear point of reference in the dead prez lyric above, but does this remove Tupac from our genealogy? Quite the contrary, since Tupac was raised by Black Panther Afeni Shakur (close comrade of Assata), who alongside her first husband Lumumba Shakur was arrested and charged with plotting to bomb department stores in 1970. She was ultimately acquitted of fabricated charges, and Tupac was born one month after her release in May 1971. Appearing in the same year was Look for Me in the Whirlwind: The Collective Autobiography of the New York 21, by Afeni Shakur et al.
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Comment by Retro Jordans Shoes — May 15, 2012 @ 2:14 am