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Rap is something you do
Hip-hop is something you live
—KRS-ONE, “Get Yourself Up”, Hot 12”

Rap and hip-hop is over twenty-years old. It is legal and able to go the clubs and groove with the old folks. No longer the ingénue with the chip on her shoulder, rap is now the old lady in the club with a tumbler of gin and tonic and too much jewelry. When Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “White Lines” comes on, she stands up with both hands in the air (tumbler in one) and hollers, “That’s my song!” This is rap, the birth mother of hip-hop. Rap has nurtured me and grown with me –the sibling I never had.

I won’t start this story with “…when I was kid”, but when I was a kid, I was introduced to rap in the 6th grade. I remember taking trips to Lake Tahoe with cousins, my mother, aunties and uncles. The cousins packed six deep into an orange Gremlin or green Pinto (unbelted and sitting in the back). To pass away the hours to Tahoe, we would try to remember every line to the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” Inevitably flubbing Master Gee’s part, I would be glared at and reduced to popping my fingers and mumbling the sound of the words –like in church when I didn’t know the hymn. Back on the block, my cousins, school friends and I would play our records on our portable record players, and make up dance steps to rap songs like “It’s Nasty (Genius of Love)” (Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five), “The Breaks” (Kurtis Blow), “Wordy Rappinghood” (The Tom-Tom Club) and “Numbers” (Kraftwerk). As a third generation San Franciscan, I was lucky enough to be exposed to all rap and all kinds of musicians that were brave enough to dabble in rap and rap beats and breaks. Everything from German electronica, New York rap, New Wave, punk and disco filled our household. Then the movie Breakin’ happened. I was hooked.

Read the full essay at I’ve Known Rivers Project…!

“…Changing the vision and image of one of hip-hop’s most prolific voices was like changing the voice of urban America. KRS-ONE’s politics sadly became defined and marketed by the recording industry and by the new hip-hop audience. He was even paired with such groups as alternative rockers R.E.M.!

“The relevance of his music was buried under multiple layers of bad marketing and pandering to a widening hip-hop audience. Unfortunately, themes of such songs as ‘Black Cop,’ ‘My Philosophy,’ ‘Love’s Gonna Get You,’ were replaced by bright and shiny raps of danceable tunes with blatantly ripped off, radio-friendly songs – a lá P. Diddy—like ‘Step Into a World,’ biting one of the lamest rap songs in history: Blondie’s ‘Rapture.’ As a self-described ‘teacher,’ the lessons were still the same, except they were now being taught in the well-scrubbed, hallowed halls of ivy-covered private schools, instead of over-crowded, urban American classrooms…” (page 50)

Word: Rap, Politics and Feminism is available through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com and iUniverse.com.

“One woman had jumped up and saved her name from being dragged through the mud by a doctor, a Kangol kid and an “educated” rapper. Not to be outdone, a completely different group of men responded to her response with –as usual—another woman. Rather than doing the dirty work themselves, the original producers of ‘Roxanne, Roxanne’, Howie-Tee and Full Force, found another woman to go against Roxanne-Shante. By appropriating her name and re-defining the glaringly feminist ‘Roxanne’s Reply’ with a squeaky, baby voiced, nasally imitation who was lyrically talent-less compared to Roxanne-Shante’s biting styles, the ‘Real’ Roxanne was introduced. The new and improved Roxanne no longer reflected the round-the-way rawness of Roxanne-Shante. She was now clad in head to toe Fendi, overwhelmed in ringlets and manicured in acrylic nails and door knocker earrings. Rather than focusing on taking rap to the “next level” and into a viable art form, the rap world spent untold months whittling the Roxannes down the n-th degree until the public got tired of all of them…” (page 24)
Word: Rap, Politics and Feminism is available through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com and iUniverse.com.

“There was always something new in the band’s sound. It was that blend of live instruments, samples and heart-felt lyrics brimming with images of humid, down-home days and warm summer nights. When you listened closely, the music massaged you, while the lyrics wrapped knowledge within honeysuckle-scented nights and soul drenched pews…” (page 41)

Word: Rap, Politics and Feminism is available through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com and iUniverse.com.