I grew up in the woods of Virginia on on a steady diet of grits, white people, and Viacom. The only ideas about blackness I got were from my home, of course, but then from television, and my wanttobe thug friends at school. Over the years I developed this hatred for hip-hop. An absolute disgust. And it had nothing to do with how the treated the women. It was more about how the men themselves were portrayed. The image of the thug as being hard and gangster. For me it was a prison, the standard by which my white and black friends, girls especially judged me. And since I wasn’t “hard” enough for them, I was considered, for lack of a better word, “soft”. And lets just say it affected me. Unfortunately. Moving on:
Hating hip-hop was also convenient being a church boy, and living in a God-fearing, middle-class house hold. If you haven’t noticed not all black people were created equal. Some have money, and some don’t. Some get their kids into decent school districts, some don’t. Some have money to support their kids dreams, some don’t. The two classes to not mix. I have seen my own family dissolve basically because of class. And it is so wrong. But honestly if I were to go talk to my cuzins right now, one of them would be speaking from a prison cell, the other would be talking about leaving prison. And it would probably be a good conversation, but just as well, it hasn’t happened yet.
The class division in the black division has a lot to do with hip-hop. For instance my parents and their friends say so many ignorant things about hip-hop without understanding it. Without even listening. From a spiritual aspect, they told me it was poision. They actually kept me from radio and television for as long as they could, I was like 12 before I got into my generations culture.
But now I am seeing the light. The [potential] beauty of hip-hop to me is that it is [can be] an BLACK SPACE FOR BLACK PEOPLE TO BE ARTISTICALLY AND ENTRUPRENUTIRALLY CREATIVE. A space for us to define our own astetics, write and live our own history.
If we call each other niggas, at last now we get to work our own fields. Eat the fruits of our own labor. Black people are making advances not just as artists but as businessmen. Diddy, Jay-Z all these cats are making it so that everthing can be done “in house” and potentially beneficial things can be done for the community, because unlike white people, these cats came from our communities. They understand us [hopefully].
I’m just honestly proud to be a part of this generation. Young. Gifted. Black.
