Back in the day, it seemed to me that the hungriest headz were the nastiest. Kids that came from the poorest and roughest conditions, came to the mic starving, enough to bite an opponent’s ear off. Previous to ripping MC-Shan and the Juice Crew on “The Bridge is Over,” KRS-1 lived in a homeless shelter. This example in itself is the essence of hip hop’s beginnings. So it’s no secret that our music flourished from the rugged, wretched pits of the blue and grey ghettoes of the DisUnited States of America. A concern we should all share, is whether art is reflecting life in hip hop. Let me put a bug in your ear.

Hip hop was created on the premise of fun, positivity and consciousness. The origins of hip hop are “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang, “Sucker Mc’s” by Run-DMC and “Parkside Killaz” by Schoolly D (amongst others, follow me). This is the seed that hip hop grew from. These three joints represent the nascent party, battle and gangster elements that hip hop is primarily today. The difference is that these songs were not carbon copies, they showed creativity from the next artist, but provided a proportionate understanding of reality from the individual that the community could respect. Music these days perverts this ideal.

For the renaissance to have a chance, this must be the age of the independent label, independent thinker, and of society independent of capitalism especially. We must not be subordinate to huge money hungry investors. These vultures misappropriate hip hop culture, in order to line their own upper crust wallets. Those that contribute are “house niggas,” “Uncle Toms,” “sell you up the river -ass niggas.” This is clearly unacceptable to those who want hip hop to thrive. We must spray raid to these individuals, by acknowledging them, expressing our disapproval respectfully, and then leaving their albums on the shelf. Each and every person must question their abundance, if not their existence because they threaten yours, understand. Don’t let monotonous prankster music program you because overzealous dee-jays are being paid off to play the record until the wax melts into toy-action figures of ruthless slave masters. Get mad, get upset, just don’t let hip hop die…then complain later.

Support the realness. Support www.ohhla.com, support www.okayplayer.com, support www.rapreviews.com, URB magazine and the like (www.freshoutmedia.com, you already know). Here we have a purview of hip hop critiques that are cut from a different cloth. This is the under-estimated “life-line” of hip hop music. They are helping contribute to the divine, almost religious strength of this music. The agency of each of these operations is a puzzle piece to the renaissance of the music, as well as the culture.

Recognize, the rebirth of the music is always in the source least tapped into, possessing the most potential. That which you view with prudence, purity and positivity, may possess a beacon for which progress is tremendous, and certainly inevitable, stop sleepin’.

The underground magazines that people don’t buy, the underground kats that people snore on (like Wordsworth and Ohene) are the truth because they are ill and have not recieved too much exposure. Acknowledge their powerful potential to help start this “Renaissance,” then holla at me.

Thursday questions:

“Ok, “hip hop is dead,” are you going to sit there and let it die, how aren’t you responsible for its death?”

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