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My Relationship with Hip Hop
I had the pleasure of attending this year's Center for American Progress' Campus Progress national conference in DC and was struck by what was said during a particular session on Hip Hop. As the front of the room filled with other conference participants, I could hear the buzz of individual conversations about the diversity in the room. The panel included Jeff Johnson (moderator), artist M-1, Billy Wimsatt and Angela Woodson. I've admired these Progressive leaders for years and waited with anticipation for the session ahead.
Jeff Johnson began the session by asking something I'd struggled with for years - what exactly is hip hop? And, more important, why should everyone in America care for its potential as a political too? The response from the panel will stick with me for years to come: hip hop is a creative form of expressing personal and community interaction with struggle and oppression. It is not lime-light but instead hip hop is a tool to surface emotions and engage the mind in poetic realization.
Impressed, I had to take a few minutes to sit back to meditate on that. In the half-hour that followed, I grew to learn more about the history of hip hop and that its birthplace is among those crying in our society. Sadly, popular media only shows us the millionaires who claim to "love" hip hop but are far removed from the communities it seeks to expose to mainstream America. I wonder why? During the discussion, only a few people said they could genuinely identify with the heart in most hip hop songs or knew anyone that didn't engage in hip hop music as a commodity.
One panelist made the quaint observation that during the day many Americans lead a life that disregards struggling communities, yet at night places of entertainment merely flirt with the impact of such melodic genius, without paying attention t o the serious matters in the music - not the commercial money, sex, drugs, and violence - I mean the poverty, marginalization, and struggle of the lives not on your mainstream TV. Upon realizing that my own relationship with hip hop was very narrow and commercialized, I thought to write this to help others come to the truth about their relationship with hip hop.
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Hip Hop for Me
A few terrible ex-boyfriends introduced me to “true” hip hop. Before then, I only knew what my father nostalgically listened to (the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, etc.) but I had never found its presence in my generation. I felt that it was too long ago, that it would take too much catching up. I wanted to be there then, not here now on a hip hop archeological dig of sorts. Then I found Aesop Rock, Immortal Technique, Saul Williams, MIA, Black Star and other artists who were currently carrying what torch was left after Cash Money Millionaires and the like took over our airwaves and Music Television. It was bittersweet; I was excited that hip hop wasn’t only a relic of the past but I was pissed off that no one had ever tried to teach me this lesson before. As a poet, I also connected with it on that plane. In Dallas, we have a decent local hip hop scene
(check out Neva Dug Disco) and I attended a park festival last year that included B Boys and Girls, poets, MCs, and graffiti artists. There is hope, yet even here in the Diiiiirrrrrty South.