Bastard Child
by j.charles @ textproductions
“Hip hop is what you would call a bastard child of a lot of different forms of music…” -d.j. jazzy jay from the Zulu nation.
Excuse me, America and some of Europe, but I have something I need to say. Something I think you need to hear. Incidentally, I do believe that it is something that may infuriate you. Challenge your theories and allow you to act the collective, Shakespearian, fool.
Curious, aren’t ya you intuitive mother fucker? Well, what I have to say is this: I, Justin Charles of textproductions do hereby submit to you proof. Rock hard throbbing proof that hip hop is not only an American culture, but that it has been sustaining itself, lying in wait for just the proper occasion. Beat boys…beat girls…backpack kids and social climbers, I present to you my collective of teenage research.
America upon its inception was a business, basically a simplified version of its current status. The Virginia trading company created Jamestown as a colony solely for the purpose of making money. Wall Street, playing somewhat less of a role in American society, still existed. Seriously. At any rate, they made a government, got pissed and banded together with other colonies, such as the one that landed on Plymouth Rock. Or vice versa, depending on your school of thought. Tea parties, pillage and boycott punctuated the early American voice, seamlessly combining the sentiments of an entire culture into one simple message, we demand better.
The declaration of independence narrowly avoided complete perfection at or around this time. The ratification of it, in its entire form, required that a clause condemning slavery be removed. It had been that close, and we pissed it away for another hundred years.
Hip hop was there. Hip hop was a voice in Thomas Jefferson’s head that allowed him to realize, as a supremely educated leader of a nation that had not yet created its existence, that equality, a voice for, and the protection thereof were the key fundamentals of an idyllic society. Hip hop was there, in one form or another, when the British were coming. Hip hop was there when Custer got fucked up by some Indians at the little big horn, creating a hatred of white guys well earned. Hip hop, my good man, danced around Abraham Lincoln’s hat while the north invaded the south; and Truman brung the wrath of our beloved country’s intelligence upon Hiroshima and its neighbor, Nagasaki.
Time and space seem to intersect and coincide at one place in time. The hook is pure and simple; understand and interpret the gravity.
Hip hop was there. Hip hop had a hand in creating jazz, bluegrass, country, rock, synthesizers, midi and funk. Hip hop, my friends, had come this far. The seed had cycled successfully. America was slowly realizing its voice, as a people, would never survive unless it was exorcised.
Government made laws to govern society, and society simply denied them, told them their opinion and eventually got them removed. A single simple word became worse, in the eyes of the f.c.c. than a picture worth a thousand more words. Regulations began to squeeze the chub America had for free speech into a flaccid whitefish. Government, it thought, had finally gotten its grip on the balls of America. Problem with that is, as my previous text affirms, America simply isn’t a big fan of any mishandling of the junk. So we did what we could to fight back.
Howard Stern, the king of all media, ran to satellite radio along with a handful of artists and entertainers ballsy enough to be a free speech martyr. In its wake, clear channel communications launched a free speech radio station in each of its markets. Free F.M. is its title. Deejays from radio’s living legacy and a dumb ass were brought in to seemingly excise the rights allowed to us by my man Thomas Jefferson. The term “big radio”, if it existed at the time, would’ve been idyllic for just an organization.
So, what’s the sinker, Tex? It’s as simple as this; look at how many people listen to hip hop now. Do you live next to a busy street? I live next to interstate eighty. And even though cars go by at eighty miles an hour, you can still hear the license plate frame rattling on the trunk from the subwoofers. The bass rattling the trunk, the treble emanating out of the slightly ajar window. That shit waint countree. Suburbia listens to hip hop. M.t.v. plays hip hop. Radio stations dedicated to commercial hip hop are as common as mariachi stations and a.m. radio.
Baby Phat, G-Unit, Roca-Wear and Bushi have multi billion dollar profit margins because your daughter wants to be who she is, and who she is influenced by what she see’s every day.
When public enemy’s fear of a black planet came out there was no parental advisory label. It just beeped every second and a half. Beep…beep. Beeeeeeeeeeep. Beep. Now it’s ohkay to say shit and bitch on television. And, if it’s late enough, you can say whatever you want to. As long as it has a parental advisory label.
So? If you don’t fucking fight what people tell you is right, then you get nowhere. If you do fight it, you get nowhere quicker. But you fought. And the path to victory is on the backs of the defeated. Unless you use your voice then you don’t deserve it. Disagree? Good. Fuck you. I don’t like you guys anyway. My voice gets so loud that sometimes I lose it, but I’ve never lost it. After all, I have to make up for all of you who don’t use yours.
Hip hop was there, in the back of my head, telling me that what I was being told was wrong. I listened and voiced my opinion. My mom broke my c.d.s in front of me. Cant blame her, but I still listened to rap. We lived around the block from a record store. She caught me again and I lost my c.d. player. But I kept listening to it. I hated her country music. I hated her fucking eighties, chest hair and hairspray bands. I hadn’t yet learned to appreciate classic rock, and I wasn’t anywhere near understanding myself, my goals or aspirations. And I lived in the suburbs. But I identified with a music that had no place save for the streets and ghettos; a far cry from downtown suburbs, ca. Music without a place with appeal to all, it seems, on a long enough time span.
I knew nothing about America but what I heard in those songs. Songs about real life, about drugs and guns and violence. I got into cars because of rap, started wearing Timberland at thirteen, and got into my first fight. I smoked my first j to a hip hop track. I forget which one. Hip hop showed me a life that I was in no way a part of. It created its own language, structure, and boundaries. Hip hop went into the past and brought back beats from artists I didn’t even know existed, caused me to read books more and write much more. Taught me how to think.
Hip hop, my good friend, is there waiting for you to do it. a whole nother place in time. An alternate group of progressive people, naturally drawn to a progressive movement. Hip hop, my good friends, is here to stay. For the better. And for the masses. It’s simply about being your thing while you do it. It’s being what you think you should be, seeing what you should see, and living to the best of your ability. It’s the only thing America’s got left to make Thomas Jefferson proud. Why? Sorry about it, but America cant agree on a damn thing from war to birth control. And yet mainstream hip hop accounts for thirty to forty percent of all music purchases in America. Imagine the numbers worldwide. Hip hop is, if you don’t mind (and especially if you do) where I’d likes to be. Inside this corner of the universe we watch out for each other. More than just a business venture, slightly less than a city-state. That’s fucking hip hop. And hip hop is…