IT'S BIGGER THAN HIP HOP
In the late sixties, a bunch of children from rival gangs met at Hoe Avenue to broker a peace treaty, and later this became the platform where hip hop was birthed.
When the gangs got together, violence was not condoned. When they had disputes, they traded beatdowns for rap battles and b-boying competitions. This just shows the role unity had to play in order for the creation of hip hop to occur.
We have to peep the past and reflect so that we can remind ourselves what favored us and what has always hindered our progress as humans. This is the only way we can learn from our experiences and change to create a better future for our offsprings. But returning to our topic, these days we live in a world that propagates a message of individualism, capitalism, and disunity. Hip hop is not exempted from this propagation and this is reflected in rap lyrics that praise capitalism, greed, and individualism.
Due to this, the rappers of today and the industry movers and shakers have become selfish and greedy. This in turn has stagnated the growth of Hip hop. Nowadays, rarely will you find hip hop artists uniting and succeeding together in the industry without petty issues arising due to pride and ego, thus hindering their progress.
Here today I have a story to tell. The story begins when a couple of rappers from distant parts meet through a common party. The rappers at first are strangers to each other but when they are linked, the common party motivates them to engage frequently. Due to the respect that they all had for the common individual and the passion they all had for their art, they took the advice and went ahead to stay in contact with each other.
As time went by the rappers came to trust each other, and hip hop became the major factor that bonded them. They went ahead to collaborate on numerous projects, released songs, bought beats from each other, promoted and marketed each other's brands, and as the months passed you wouldn't think that at one point in time, these rappers were merely strangers to each other.
In barely a year, you would think of them as brothers or the best of friends with common goals. Although it's hard enough for artists who grew up together to trust each other, these rappers were an exception. Even though they were so different and from distant lands, they remained truthful, loyal, and trusted each other. When they were in a project together they all fulfilled their duties on time. When they had to chip in ideas, money, or their full attention in anything they were working on, they did it with a sense of importance and urgency.
The most inspiring fact in the story was that through their entire stick together they never had a quarrel or argument. They had too much respect for each other to ever let disagreements divide them. They all took time to listen to each other's views and were not quick to judge each other. Everyone in the group was looked at by the others as an integral entity and no opinion was taken for granted.
Unfortunately, just recently one of them died and the saddest part is that not even one of the other rappers was present at his funeral.
If I decided to end the story on that note, it would be one of the common sad human stories of hypocrisy and disloyalty. But until you hear the factors that led to the rappers not showing up to the funeral, many would be quick to judge. What I didn't state at the beginning of this story is that the rappers in the story were strangers to each other, and from distant parts of the world. They had only met on the internet. They had never met face to face and had never been to each other's countries. They didn't know each other's families, friends, or even the simplest things like each other's full names. They even found out one of them had passed through a Facebook post that the deceased friend from his hometown, had posted on his timeline. The little time they had all been in contact wasn't enough to know each other well, considering when they communicated it was all about hip-hop, projects, motivating each other plus completing the numerous projects they did together.
The other factor that contributed to the absence of the rappers at the funeral was that all the rappers I have spoken about were up-and-coming rappers who hadn't made it yet in their industries. Despite the years of experience and skill they had, they were not successful enough. Financially they were stable as per sustaining themselves and funding their projects, but this meant they had to engage in other activities too. Adding to that, when you consider the amount of money one needs to have to be able to travel to a foreign country where you don't know anyone, where the only person you knew was deceased, and whose family you don't know, you start to get the reality of the situation at hand.
With all that said we can't ignore appreciating the faith, trust, and passion the rappers displayed to be able to complete all the projects they completed being strangers to each other from distant parts of the earth.
The last project they did was a dope All-African cypher.
Rip L7(ELSIRVEN SATIVA) SA.TILL WE MEET AGAIN
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