Conflict Diamonds: New News to Mainstream Media is Source for Long-time Hip-Hop Activism

Ed Zwick’s new film Blood Diamonds, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, opens in theaters nationwide today. The movie has been accompanied by what will prove to be a short-lived public interest in the conflict diamond trade in West and Central Africa. Jewelers are nervous that the timing of the film will interfere with holiday shopping. (For his part, Zwick is adamant that the timing of the film has nothing to do with running interference for the industry: “Our release of the film at this time of year has everything to do with the number of people who go to movies over the holidays and nothing at all to do with the diamond industry’s sales.”) News outlets are acting as if they’ve never heard of the controversy before this week – or maybe they’re not acting. (See stories from Amnesty International and the United Nations).

But hip-hop fans are no strangers to the economic exploitation of the continent by Westerners and the internal violence that has resulted. Most famously, Kanye West made a video portraying the issue for the song “Diamonds from Sierra Leone,” from his 2005 album Late Registration. In 2004, Talib Kweli released Beautiful Struggle, the first cut of which (“Going Hard”) also addressed the issue:

You already lost the fight if you don't know the cost of life
These kids is forced to fight a war they can’t outrun
Ain’t got no shoes but got a gun
Now where the fuck he pulled that out from?
People ask me how we wearing diamonds
When there’s little kids in Sierra Leone
Losing arms for crying while they mining
Probably an orphan who’s momma died of AIDS
He built a coffin working often but he never paid
Forever slaving in the world that’s forever cold
Becoming the man of the house at 11 years old

Most recently (and relevant to today’s release of Blood Diamonds), New York rapper Nas has a song entitled “Shine” on the film’s soundtrack, where he says, in part:

They dug me out the soil in the mines of the Motherland
Now I’m misplaced, one hand to another hand
Illegal smugglin’, people strugglin’
Wish they could just throw me back in the mud again
Yeah, guess that’s how we got here
Slave trade then the diamond trade
Every child’s afraid
When his mother and father get sprayed
Forced in the army, young killer brigade
Gets a new name and then he give his nose glue
‘Til his mind can’t take what he’s goin’ through
Lookin’ in that dirt for that ice so blue
Then the Royal Family, the ice goes to
And this thing has to change, feelin’ half-ashamed
As I rap with my platinum chain
When you shop for a gift from me
You think about the misery?
The same way we made apartheid history
We can do the same thing to the conflict ice
But everybody wanna shine, right?

The hip-hop connection with diamonds is rooted heavily in the past ten years’ obsession with “bling” that replaced the early rappers’ obsession with gold. Perhaps the most forceful and well-known socially conscious hip-hop group, Public Enemy, spend most of their career arguing for African Americans to stop wearing gold (and replace those chains with leather medallions with the red, black and green outline of Africa on them). Here are some of the lyrics that Chuck D, the group’s leader, spit over the 1980s and 1990s:

I don’t wear gold, but I clock ducats
And I have the money overflowing out of buckets
(“M.P.E.,” 1987)

Yo Griff, get the green black and read and
Gold down countdown to Armageddon
(“Don’t Believe the Hype,” 1988)

Ain’t no different
Than in South Africa
Over here they’ll go after ya to steal your soul
Like over there they stole our gold
(“Who Stole the Soul,” 1990)

Divided and sold
For liquor and the gold
(“Can’t Truss It,” 1991)

So while this film may be a wake-up for the mainstream media, hip-hop fans have been in tune to what’s happening in Africa for decades.

But not all hip-hop icons are on board with the current consciousness-raising about conflict diamonds. Most have been silent, and one, Russell Simmons, has publicly refuted that conflict diamonds are much of a problem. Charmian Gooch, director and co-founder of Global Witness, in a chat with Washington Post readers this week, accused Simmons of getting “swept up by the diamond industry bandwagon and . . . effectively becom[ing] a sell out to them.” Simmons co-owns the Simmons Jewelry Company with his ex-wife and founded the Diamond Empowerment Fund to put money back into education and skill development in South Africa and Botswana.

While mainstream media seems rarely interested in maintaining continual focus on issues of race and economic struggle in the U.S. and abroad, the work of hip-hop artists - whose attendance to race cosnciousness has long challenged the conscience of those in power - will hopefully be a place we can continue to look to when the media hype of this current conflict is long gone.

Additional Reading:
Variety Review
Allhiphop.com
Rebel to America blog
PBS Newshour lesson