Brother Ali interview
As a legally blind, albino Muslim, Minneapolis rapper Brother Ali doesn’t fit neatly into any particular box. But as he tells HUCK, such classifications are irrelevant.
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HUCK: Your touring schedule for the next few months seems pretty full on, can it all get a bit much?
Brother Ali: It’s a lifestyle that you embrace, meeting with the people that supported you, not just making records to sell. And that really is the best way. That’s what it’s about.
Can you tell us a bit about your new album, Us?
It’s my first album that isn’t about me. It’s about the people that I love and care about, their stories and their struggles. I always have this really personal approach to writing music. On The Undisputed Truth, I felt like I reached the height of that. So now what do I do? What’s the new challenge? American society is very fragmented and divided and so I was hoping to tell stories from different kinds of cultures within American life in that same kind of personal way that I told my own stories.
You approach the topic of homophobia on the album. It seems unusual in hip hop?
It’s rare but it does happen. I was writing a song called Tightrope, where it’s about teenagers who have to live a double life. It was actually Ant’s (the album’s producer) idea to write a verse about gay people. One of my musician friends is gay, and I found out that he had bought my album Shadows of the Sun before we knew each other. I had used the word ‘faggot’ in that album and when he heard that, he just stopped listening. I felt like I had to say something about it because before I had said something negative out of ignorance.
As an albino and being a Muslim, has there been too much emphasis on people wanting to know your background?
It’s a tricky situation. When the magazines and writers started to like my music, I felt like they needed to know if I was white. There were time’s when I’d say, ‘I don’t know, flip a coin, what do you think?’ I was trying to make a subtle point like ‘you’re concentrating too much on this’. My parents are white but me being an albino made me an outsider kind a loner. And then from that position as a little kid, I was really praised, accepted and raised by a certain part of the black community, and hip hop was a part of that. All I’ve ever been trying to say about race is we’ve got to really get off this shit about being white and black, and just identify as human beings.
You’re also partially sighted? How has that affected your music?
It’s affected my life because I can’t really see, I can’t drive a car, it’s difficult for me to get around and do things. I’m very clumsy. But it’s made me focus a lot more on music as I don’t base things on what things look like. I think that I have a little bit more reason not to.
You talk about being influenced by the golden era of hip hop. Does that create a challenge for you to be original?
I’m not looking back to it as a person who wasn’t there. There are people who just kind of copy it. But it wasn’t, the Adidas, the sound of the snare drum or the samples. It was the spirit at the time, a very truthful energy and power that made it touch everybody. So in my mind it’s about keeping that spirit alive. It’s unfortunate that people don’t know that’s how hip hop evolved, it’s growing in so many different directions and speaks for other truths now in other walks of life. So I don’t like it when people says ‘hip hop’s dead’ or ‘what do you think about the state of hip hop?’ If you focus on one little section of it, it’s easy to feel bad but if you look at the big picture of the whole thing, it’s doing great, like, it’s never done so well.
Brother Ali's new album Us is out September 22 on Rhymesayers Entertainment.
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