HIP HOP WHERE ARE YOU

When Common did “I Used To Love Her” all the Hip Hop heads were feeling it. What they did not suspect was that her lovers would continue to mount and change her identity. The same song that defined our elation speaks today as a prophetic undertone of the unfathomable, “WE USED TO LOVE HER.”

Truthfully I still keep my ears open hoping for the next song to take me back to that first moment of awakening. For me it was “Boyz N Da Hood,” by NWA it was not the first song that I had heard or dubbed. But it was the first time I found myself rewinding over and over again to get all the lyrics down. To me that song personified the life that I had grew to accept living on the southeastern tip of L.A., two blocks west of Compton. The hook was simply addicting. Beat was hypnotizing. Eazy E’s voice was brilliantly nonchalant. Just like the streets that I grew up on. Like saying we go through this type of stuff everyday, it’s easy for us simply because we love it.

Humbly I will now admit that the song was the downfall of many of my childhood friends. They really did live that song till the day they died or where locked up. But it was nevertheless real to use growing up. With all of that said, that was then this is now.

Now we contend with tuning our radios into stations that are filled with agendas. They are more concerned with money than music. Driven by numbers that do not reach the people that they intend to represent. Dictating what I want to hear with out any option other than to turn the radio off entirely. But is the radio really the problem or the solution.

When we go out to buy music at the store or internet we tend to find ourselves feeling the same way. We are not satisfied with what options we have been given. The suits that run the conglomerates are the same here as they were on the radio. It is the better of the two evils but there is still no remedy. But is the industry really the problem or the solution.

This is where we get down to the nitty gritty, which is the source? Where is the wrong doer? Is the Hip Hop truly dead?

My analyses, no Hip Hop is not dead, what we failed to realize is what made us love her is what makes us hate her later. She is the same women that taught us how to curse. Who taught us what was cool and not cool. That separated us from the generation before us. Expressed the feelings that we shared inside. What we did not realize was we would lose our grip on her once we introduced her to the addicting lights of the big stage we call Pop.

Now that she is mainstream we find her to be too divaish. She traded in her bamboos for Jacobs. No longer do we tell stories of a hard life, now it’s bling and things. Ebonics was not accepted, now it’s all you hear even from Corporate America. It was the environment that we exposed her to that changed around her. So in a nut shell it was us that changed.

So let me reframe the question “URBAN AMERICA WHERE ARE YOU,” THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES