The upbeat positivity, spiritualism and social commentary from Arrested Development pretty quickly cast them as hip-hop’s outsiders. A first single titled “Tennessee” didn’t stand to help things along any.
But “Tennessee” became Arrested Development’s signature song from their debut album “3 Years, 5 Months, and 2 Days in the Life of…” and endeared them to the African-American community in a way that all the primarily white mainstream critics who largely panned the album could never understand. One wrote that “too often the beats shambled and the raps meandered,” but we’ve embraced Arrested Development’s spoken word style since it was revived in our culture during the Harlem Renaissance. Another added that the album was “not quite as revolutionary as it first seemed,” but that was untrue as well. It was revolutionary to me as the first piece of music in my lifetime that specifically confronted an enslaved past that still visibly haunts a great deal of the country today.
“Tennessee” actually takes more of the form of a prayer than a standard song. Lead singer Speech writes so much grief and longing into the lines, starting with the real-life deaths of his grandmother and brother within just weeks of each other. Lost without the guidance of those closest to him, he turns to God for some comfort in the only family he has left – the ghosts of enslaved ancestors in the deep South.
Soul singer Dionne Farris guests on the track and appears in the video, alongside the slew of members in Arrested Development, and some locals who were just curious about what was happening & ended up cast. The group traveled to Georgia for the shoot, and settled on a house that looked a lot like Speech’s grandmother’s. When they further scouted the scene, artifacts they discovered there like authentic shackles and the back house for the property’s enslaved workers – both of which they included in the video – confirmed that they were in the right place for “Tennessee.” Turns out, Arrested Development, and “Tennessee” in particular, wasn’t just in the right place at the right time for the video. They cleared a path for Southern rappers with songs and struggles specific to their geography to tell their stories, too.
𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗦 𝗧𝗢 𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘:
“Walk the roads my forefathers walked
Climbed the trees my forefathers hung from
Ask those trees for all their wisdom
They tell me my ears are so young”