America the Beautiful

America the beautiful was popping at its seams. Suppressed in the 50’s, pubescent throughout the 60’s, she was becoming more estrogenically aggressive within the feminism movements and more testosterone prone at war with other countries. In all of America’s newfound freedom she learned the hard way that nothing in life is free, not even freedom (A Song for Assata) Common and that the promiscuousness throughout the late 60’s and early 70’s would cost her dearly. The 70’s delivered the first glimpse of Hip-Hop with the likes of The Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron, lovers of wisdom.

As a direct result of the abundance of drugs and free love, America the Beautiful paid dearly. America was heavy with child and by the end of that era…children born to happy parents are generally happy kids, born to angry parents...and so it goes. Most first-born children will agree to have been the test pilots of the family…the younger siblings seem to get away with murder, even when the murder is technically suicide.

The legal system and the war on drugs created an unbalanced way in which blacks were treated. Its policies for and against non-violent crimes and people of color flashed across news screens as well as window screens as the children of Hip-Hop watched in horror. Some used the energy of what they saw in a positive way (Rapper’s Delight) sugar hill gang, some internalized the anger (Ghost) Tupac, more reflected what they witnessed in the literary sense (She’s Alive) Andre 2000, 3000 and likely 4000, and still more created their own semblance of reality and gave it back to America the way they received it. Hard. Violent. Unrelenting. (You’re Nobody Til Somebody Kills You) Biggie Smalls.

Hip-Hop lives that anger daily. The ghetto is the ghetto is the ghetto, no matter the race, age or gender (a la Eminem). Young people learned to fend for themselves using language in a separate but equal manner. Their art imitating their lives.

Mentally.
Physically.
Financially.
Sexually.

Everyone has a story to tell.

Little girls are sugar and spice and everything nice but hell hath no fury like a woman scorn. What’s the in between? Feminism is a word made up centuries after black women called it life.

Lots of families hope for, in the birth order, boy(s) and then girl(s) so as to have an extra layer of protection for daughters. These daughters, however, grew up through families that were broken and unprotected, badgering and harsh, breaking down muscle after muscle day after day only to have them repaired and healed and broken, yet again. Adversity gives a woman strength (to Zion) Lauren Hill or it kills (anything written by Lil Kim). Only the strong survive. And the entire world is witnessing her screams.

Messages are hard and heavy from Hip-Hop artists like K.O (www.myspace.com/kashthaovadose). Messages that burst from hearts that have been broken and are an unwavering core of coal pressured through wind and water and force and failure and confusion and knowledge and pain and learning and disappointment and growth and time into a rare black diamond solid and somewhat rough and rigid and cold and fresh and raw and uncut. In turn lyrics are biting and flesh-eating and in your face and uncomfortable and unrelenting and sticky and hurtful and valid and bold and harsh and grimy and compelling and hungry and acidic and beautiful and hard and reflective of their life in their neighborhood.

Their lives have been pressured through politics, policies and the police. They’ve come out of the womb of the country, swinging bats and throwing bottles, fighting the powers that be, from birth. Some fight fairly and consciously playing by the rules, some fight dirty and underhandedly breaking all the rules, but make no mistake they are all fighting for their right to speak and be heard, refusing to live in the cave:

“My mother’s first born, feeling like I’m worthless, attitude f*^ked up cause I don’t know my purpose. F*^k every body is what I must be on, by myself hoping God don’t judge me wrong. I had to adapt to my circumstances growing up in the ‘hood ain’t no perfect chances. You say it ain’t right. I say it ain’t life and you can’t judge me cause, we don’t live the same life. Every day I hope I make it rich cause I don’t know how much longer I can take this sh!t.” (Kash Tha Ovadose)

Unfortunately, the mainstream Rap Artists (i.e. Three Six Mafia, Nelly), have become the norm when in fact they are the very stereotypical ignoramuses that Rap music sought to exonerate. The intermingling of the good and the bad is quite incestuous. It’s a strange cycle of sorts. When the children of Hip-Hop watched the American Dream in her selfishness, they became sullen and secretive with the open-door policy for “others” entering the Hip-Hop Nation. This music is held close to hearts remembering the shadowed stories told by parents, grand and great grand, of the coming together of musicians and the loss of control over the foundations of Rock & Roll, a la Chuck Berry and Little Richard and Jazz, a la Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.

Strange Fruit, indeed.

No, it was decided that this rap thing would take a decidedly different route, if not financially then certainly physically. And so the slow simmering began and when the grasp was held firmly it over-flowed and the hot liquid has burned the world.
The treatment of some blacks in this country is likened to the children that America the Beautiful tried to keep in the attic, the sheep of the family that has become the elephant in the room.

True Hip-Hop artists are not dismayed by the media portrayal of young men of color or by the destruction of hip-hop; he is decisive in his sowing. He has not fallen prey to all that glitters in the rap game. He isn’t caught up in the misogynistic hold of the general rap-seeking population. On the contrary, he seeks to untangle the nonsensical stronghold, apparently knotted in the belly of the Beast. He has seen in his own mind’s eye the fall of the fools that play like puppets being led by Gippetto, a puppet master. He is an urban griot, speaking to the center of the struggle he is meant to reap. Given the gift to express the collective frustration of today’s young man using a mindset not equipped to follow fake-storytelling imposters. A true Hip-Hop artist is a philosopher explaining his answer to “why” in his particular form. The Allegory of the Cave mentality is reflected in today’s media with rap videos, the evening news and the daily newspapers. White America seems to fear what it is that they do not understand.

America swallowed its honesty, its assurance of 40 acres and a mule and its so-called civil rights equality. Therefore, its promises of success have failed horribly. America fed its black youth empty promises and broken unreachable dreams.
The Hip-Hop Nation as the child in utero created an upset stomach and America isn’t feeling so well any more. Rap music, in all of its infinite possibilities to produce change in the black community, is simply at the moment, the result of an aggravated spewing nation. Rap music is simply the contents of an upset stomach.

The promise of a great education within the free public school systems, the endless possibilities of the milk-and-the-honey-and-2.4 kids-living-within-the-grassy-plains-of-the-white-picket-fence-American-dream didn’t agree with their tummies; the lies were too much to swallow and have become indigestible. Hip-Hop is the child in utero. Rap music is simply the result of America’s vomit.

“At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round…he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows…” (Plato) America in her infinite wisdom is seeing only the shadows, turn your heads toward the sun and behold not the shadows but the truth of this people.

Stop feeding the nation garbage and they will stop spewing the violence.