A Thought on Hip Hop and The Year End Playlist

 I don't listen to much rap but I know that in America, hip hop is a powerful, powerful machine. I bought my first hip hop album, Stillmatic, when I was 12 or 13, and I knew immediately that something had changed in me because of that album. I've never been rich, I'd even argue that middle-class is somewhat of an exaggeration for my family, but I've always been safe and I've always had opportunities. I couldn't quite put my finger on what that was; I just knew that there was a disconnect between what we're learning in school and what was relevant to so many other children. We would learn about the Civil Rights movement and the abolishment of slavery, and yet, NaS was giving us insight into a 21st century America where your skin color and the neighborhood you lived in still held you back from your dreams. My jaw hit the ground, I started looking shit up and reading on my own.

Nowhere in school did we acknowledge or tackle these issues. I was a lot more aware at 13 than I was at 12 and I never looked back. That's the power of music. Hip hop in particular, because it's an art that gave voice to an oppressed race in America.

It doesn't do it that much anymore because it's been bought, embellished, and mainstreamed into something that's more profitable but much less meaningful. There aren't many Nas', Common's, The Fugees, Erykah Badu's, NWA's, TPacs, Q-Tips, or The Roots that are my age or younger. It's 95 percent crap but you can't even blame the people making the music because they aren't their own bosses. White execs want them to make hits instead of bringing up awkward racial issues.

I was 6 when "Illmatic" came out in 1994, and yet 20 years later, people are still talking about how that album opened their eyes to the perspective of a populace of people who lived in the ghetto and who aren't privileged enough to believe in the American dream. They're talking about it at Harvard where NaS has his own archive and fellowship. That's powerful. If we look at the state of Black America, and all of the cases we've seen in 2014, those stories still strikes a cord.

So as 2014 is wrapping up, and I'm doing my annual playlist, I thought that I would include some songs from J. Cole, Lupe, Kendrick Lamar that meant something. Because hip-hop is so mainstream, a lot of white kids or middle class kids buy it. And children tend to be very self-absorbed, and they think the world revolves around them and their neighborhood and their boyfriends and girlfriends and a lot of really unimportant things. Kids don't watch CNN but rich kids listen to J.Cole because he's cool as hell. So when he makes a song like "Be Free" or when he questions the state of equality and freedom in America, hopefully that plants a seed in some of these teenagers and makes them question, "wait a minute, so... not every kid has food on the table every day? So not everyone is treated equally by police? So not everyone has job opportunities? So not everyone's parents worked one job and could sit at home and help them with homework every day? So red-lining... what's that? How did that cause the creation of the American ghettos, and in turn segregation, and in turn overpopulated prison systems filled with Black and Brown bodies." J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar are cool to kids so they're like "wait a minute" when they say something real. It makes them want to learn about the things they're shielded from.

That's the power of hip hop.


J. Cole "Be Free"

Wu Tang "Ron O'Neal"

Jhene Aiko "The Worst"

Lupe Fiasco/ Guy Sebastian "Battle Scars"

Kendrick Lamar "I"

J. Cole "Apparently"
"And how could I be so selfish, I know I can be so selfish
I could tell by how I treat you with my girl
Damn she so selfless, but she put up with my way
Because she loves me like you do
And though it don't always show I love her just like I love you
And I need to treat you better
Wish you could live forever, so we could spend more time together"

Aloe Black "The Man"

 

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