Thursday, October 26, 2006

True Definition of a Warrior!

It's a windy Wednesday in late October, I sit in front of television in Queens, New York, and it hits me all of a sudden. Hip-Hop is officially dead and I'm not even mourning, I'm actually happy to see Hip-Hop die. And for the first time since I realized there was "No Way Out" in 1997, I can't blame Diddy. No, I'm going to have to blame myself and the rest of rap music listeners. We let the terrorist win this battle without even fighting back, all we did was snap our fingers and lean back. For the past few months I've been sticking my head in the sand like an ostrich, I've been ignoring the current state. I fell back to the early nineties and late eighties, and let the terrorist run amok in the rap industry. Instead of asking the so-called "certified gangsters" what they were doing to my music, instead of questioning the integrity of dudes that tattoo butterflies for their family and cover it up later, instead of questioning why Diddy's album is better than Lloyd Banks', we all embraced the past, giving up on the future.

At work a while ago, this young "niglet" argue to me how Lil Wayne is better than Jay-Z, Rakim, Kane, Nas, etc. (how preposterous). A "Blood" in New Jersey tried to tell me that every member of the Diplomats was better than Nas and Jay-Z. Some kid tried to tell me rap is better now than it was in the early nineties (Cuban Linx is better than any album in the past five years). When I challenged their statements, they just let rhymes about thugging, selling drugs, gun busting, gangsterisms and other nonsense the rappers they listen to know nothing about. Not that I respect gangsterism (I listen to G-Unit though), I respect it coming from somebody that put in that work. How does a dude that's been rapping since eleven, twelve have time to become a drug kingpin? How did Cam'ron go from playing basketball with Mase, to being a General in a Blood organization? And if every rapper in Atlanta was in the trap, who was buying the drugs? Whatever happened to just being who you are?
So I say we (all the pure Hip-Hop heads) let Hip-Hop rest in peace and use our creativity to invent something new. The culture is crying for us to reinvent it.

In the words of Talib Kweli -"Nowadays rap artists coming half-hearted /Commercial like pop, or underground like black markets / Where were you the day hip-hop died? / Is it too early to mourn? Is it too late to ride?"

Peace, I mean WAR!

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