Real Hip Hop

Your America is different then my America! The phrasing of this statement leads me to sucking down these cough drops like candy, because I’m screaming it out from the last row of seats in my Public Policy class. I feel like an alien when I’m trying to articulate my opinion. The America they know isn't the one I know, and my words are not resonating with anyone but the liberal hip hop infused white dude and the young Latina girl who is looking at me from the front row, not speaking a word but encouraging me to find the right words. I’m getting frustrated because no one seems to be feeling me, not even the teacher. He just wants me to shut up so he can keep teaching the class about how the inner city schools are failing. He is blaming it on poverty, student will, and class sizes, but I’m trying to tell him that it’s deeper than that. I’m screaming out: “We were raped of our history,” as I reach into the front pocket of my book bag searching for another Ricola. The fact that I just took it back to slavery made the white dude draped in G-Unit attire two rows in front of me turn his head back toward the teacher, because that topic is too much for him. It’s just me and the Latina girl now, she is still turned around encouraging me with her piercing brown eyes to keep fighting the good fight and trying to make them understand. So I yell out “How can you expect a kid with no culture to thrive in this nation that tells them to do it all by himself ?”  No one answers me and a dark silence rises in the room. I slouch back in my desk which makes the loudest screech and rest my heavy heart. Five minutes ago I hated them for not understand my struggle, or even trying to empathize with it, but at this moment it’s starting to make sense. I close my eyes and look within myself as my lone Latina ally turns back around to the teacher who couldn't be more happy that I have exhausted myself. When I look within I’m told that this is what makes us so strong, and that this struggle to find my place in the land of hierarchical systems will only make me stronger. I start smiling and open my eyes to a room full of students that moved on to the origins of the welfare system and I start to laugh out loud, because it’s funny how fast the world moves while you’re protesting the way it rotates. I decide that I’m going to find my place in this America. I decide that I’m going to find my God,and that if I have to do it alone I will.  James Arthur Baldwin once wrote that “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”  I’m ready to face my past, but this time Im doing it for me. Nasir Jones has also chosen to face that history head on. The new album which is Untitled features a track titled America, in this song Nas explores the history of this nation when it comes to relations with his race. I appreciate the effort and passion that he puts into his music. This song makes me think about things that I have never once thought about, and if that’s not what good music is all about, I don’t know what is. Check out this verse and go and buy the new album I promise if you are looking for real Hip- Hop you wont be disappointed with this one.

Free your mind and the rest will follow, Big Bob

Assassinations, diplomatic relations
Killed indigenous peoples, built a new nation
Involuntary labor, took a knife, split a woman's navel
Took her premature baby, let her man see you rape her
If I could travel to the 1700's
I'd push a wheelbarrow full of dynamite through your covenant
Love to sit on the Senate and tell the whole government
Y'all don't treat women fair, she read about herself in the bible
Believing she the reason sinners here
You played her, with an apron, like, "bring me my dinner dear"
She the nigger here, ain't we in the free world?
Death penalty in Texas, kill young boys and girls
Barbarity, I'm in the double-R casually
Buggin', how I made it out the hood dazzles me
How far are we really from third world savagery?
When the empire fall imagine how crazy that'll be

America, pay attention
Wake up, this is not what you think it is
America, pay attention
This is not what you think it is