The Message — “I am Hip-Hop”
The Message by Grandmaster Flash was the first Hip-Hop song to demonstrate that social commentary was able to be written in a rap, detailing the harsh realities of living in the ghetto — making it out of the hood and reaching communities across the world.
Today, the mainstream conception of Hip-Hop has come to be entirely defined by the rap industry, which is misleading and incorrect. Hip-Hop is a culture and a lifestyle, composed of Five Elements: Conscious Rap/Spoken Word, DJing, Graffiti Writing, B-Boying/Breakdancing, and Knowledge of Self and Community.
It is better said by HipHopCulture.org:
“Hip-Hop is the constantly evolving spirit and consciousness of urban youth that keeps recreating itself in a never-ending cycle. It is joy, sorrow, pleasure, pain, victory, defeat, anger, happiness, confusion, clarity, humor, intensity, dream, nightmare, life, death and everything else in between. It is the spirit that connects the past to the present and lays a path towards the future. That very spirit is what breathes life into a simple idea and transforms it in to a living cultural movement. Hip-Hop Culture cannot be assimilated, integrated, diluted, watered-down, sold for profit or pimped. It will always exist, in the incarnation or another. What the mainstream promotes as Hip-Hop is only a commercial product misleading you into believing that it represents Hip-Hop in its totality.”
Hip-Hop is not the movement itself, it is the spirit that brings a movement to life.
I compiled all of these voices as a metaphor for the Hip-Hop community itself, which breeds unity across extremely diverse backgrounds. The sources are diverse, but their mindset and message serve as the common thread that weaves the community together.
Because the entire message is composed of the words of others, all sources are listed at the end in order by first appearance. Although quotes from the same person may appear later in the text.
“Like the beat of the drum, Hip-Hop has been an essential and constant rhythm weaving through the narrative of my life”
“I was supposed to go to school, grind from 8–3 to go college where I’d rack up 100k in debt only to graduate to get a job making only 40k grinding 9–5. I was supposed to graduate at 18, graduate at 22, get married at 26 and have kids by 30. One house, two kids, two-car garage, one dog, one cat, one fish, and a hamster. But that’s life for some folks and a lot of folks smile doing it. But for me, I wanted to hustle and build. The problem is, the only hustle we see is in movies, in TV, and in books. They are glorified in such an unfathomable way, the easiest way out is just by following society’s model. I was chasing quotas, not happiness. That’s when I found Hip-Hop.”
“The world of Hip-Hop was so much more honest and real than the rural suburbs we lived in. It was a world where ideas mattered and where people were judged by their skills and their hearts rather than by their skin color. Hip-hop saved me because it spoke to me in a way that other things did not. There are some truths that I can hear more clearly when rhymed over a beat than I ever would in a book, a speech, or even another form of music. Even now that I am a priest and a husband and a father and a guy with a mortgage, there are still days when I find myself filled with thoughts and emotions that can only be let out one way, by putting pen to notebook paper and letting the rhymes fly.”
“Hip-hop’s journey from a house party in The Bronx to global dominance has proven its ultimate power — to inspire, to uplift and most of all, to educate.
Hip-hop at its core is education. If you look at the etymology of hip-hop, you’ll see “hippy”, at its root, means to open one’s eyes and see. It’s a term of enlightenment. Hop means to spring forward into action, becoming enlightened action. Even beyond that, what we’re talking about is the ability to transcend a situation.”
“It was because of the Hip Hop song lyrics like: Don’t be a fool / like those that don’t go to school / Get ahead and accomplish things / You’ll see the wonder and the joy life brings (Slick Rick, 1988) that birthed a desire in me to have that self-dialogue, which led me down a path to set higher goals and then accomplish those goals. Minutes later, as I was sitting on the couch in front of the window, a rival gang sprayed the house with bullets. As I looked up, there were bullets holes in front of me; I did not know how they missed my head.
Hip Hop is the music that gave me quotes to live by, like they were scriptures. This music helped me maneuver out of a destiny that could have pinholed me into becoming another statistic buried six feet under. My life experiences led me to the decision to become an educator in order to empower students”
“Hip hop has transcended beyond just music. It has become a lifestyle and/or a culture for people worldwide. Hip hop is an attitude and hip hop is a language in which a kid from Detroit can relate to a kid in Hong Kong … Now you have kids in Beverly Hills who are sensitive to situations in Compton.”
Sources:
http://globalawarenessthroughhiphopculture.com/Defining_Hip_Hop_Culture.html
http://allhiphop.com/2014/05/09/hip-hop-saved-my-life-my-mother-is-conscious-rap/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc8khxibD4Y
http://livingchurch.org/covenant/2015/07/07/how-hip-hop-saved-my-life/
http://newsone.com/3256028/exclusive-m-k-asante-how-hip-hop-education-are-a-perfect-match/
The expression of Hip-Hop culture has the potential to engage students who otherwise drop out of school. Join the movement to petition President Obama to acknowledge Hip-Hop as a meaningful educational tool: https://www.change.org/p/potus-please-help-us-get-hiphopeducation-in-schools
