Hip Hop Don’t Stop!!!0
Posted In Features
It’s a hot Saturday, everyone throughout the building of 1520 Sedgwick Ave of the South Bronx are hanging around in the basketball courts wondering what their next move for the night will be. That is until DJ Kool Herc decides to power up his turntables and monstrous speakers through the nearest street light. He’s done with the connection now it is time for the bass bumping unfamiliar sounds of hip-hop. Now he calls out for the b-boys and the b-girls to hit the dance floor, dead smack in the middle of the basketball courts. Everyone is enjoying themselves until he starts blurting a few orders for the crowd, they freeze and realize a few of his words are rhyming with one another and at the same time giving them the urge or in other words “hyping them up.” Unfamiliar to the new sound and technique on the microphone, however quite receptive, the people saw the birth of a new genre of music arise before their eyes, “Hip-Hop.” A bright future for it was foreseen by its variety of its patrons and fans, but never was the collapse and change of its substance seen to come about.
The b-boys and the b-girls are on the floor battling one another for the respect of the spectators on looking. In addition to them being able to express whatever “beef” they may have had with their opponent, so rather than turning to violence to grill up that “beef” they chose break dancing. A part of the hip hop culture that proved to be effective amongst the youth of the time in the 70’s as gang violence subsequently decreased throughout the streets of New York City. We got the dance moves to back us up, but now we need a new meaning, we need an avenue for our thoughts, bring in the words is what the hip-hoppers had in mind.
DJs had their hype man come to the front stage and promote them, telling the crowd who they are and what neighborhood they represent. But then those artists such as Mellie Mel of The Furious Five crafted his position into taking his own stand point and expressing the everyday pressures he faced, going from being a bit of a hype man for Grandmaster Flash he now became one of the voices behind the hit “The Message.” An ode to the citizens of the ghettos not only in New York City, but across the nation. Where the majority could relate, especially with his opening verse “broken glass everywhere, people pissing on the stairs, showing they just don’t care, can’t take the smell, can’t take the noise, got no money to move out guess I got no choice.” A single that had hip hop fans across the board being able to relate since they were all more than likely going through the same experiences Grandmaster Flash and the Furious expressed in their message.
The voice and message of the community grew even larger when duos such as Public Enemy entered the front stage with their militant approach on songs such as “fight the power”, lead single to the soundtrack of the Spike Lee joint of “Do the Right Thing.” They made it clear to the fans that they knew the struggle and understood the struggle, especially when it came to the racial tensions arising in the late 80’s in New York City, the focal point of Lee’s film. Mellie Mel and the Furious Five put the message on the street, now Public Enemy placed the gun in the fans’ hands to act on the struggle they faced and to make a difference.
But now the question arises of “where the message and the activism once seen in hip hop have gone? How did we manage to go from expressing the situations of our urban communities to Souljah Boy turning his swag on and a female artist trying to portray a Barbie doll (Nikki Minaj)? Where is the substance in that? It just seems hip-hop losing sight of its original movement towards being a culture, and is now simply turning into a business sucked into the pop industry. We once upon a time did it all for fun, but seems we all now do it for money. Yes artists have always been known to rock the nice gold medallions and five finger rings, but never have they used their ends and style dictate their rhymes as they do today, that was seen with a key player of style and flashing, Slick Rick. Known for wearing his numerous gold chains and rings, but however with his skills he made stories entitled “Mona Lisa”, “Behind Bars”, “The Show” featuring Doug E. Fresh and his most notable “Children’s Story.” And in none do you hear about how much his chain costs or who has the bigger chain. However in every song of current artists like Plies or Gucci Mane, their chain more than likely becomes the center of their raps. And these same individuals are not only the top selling hip hop artists in current times, but also the most idolized. Is this really what we want our kids to listen to, is this where hip-hop has come to and is going? I would hate to say it, but it seems so. Maybe there is hope when hearing Jay Electronica, Mos Def or Talib Kweli spit 16 bars of pure knowledge and not garbage, but until their words of wisdom raid the airwaves as they should and once upon a time have, hip-hop is doomed.
By: Kelvin Augustin
