What We Refuse to Let Go Of; Intellectual Stimulation is Nice, but Too Much of a Love Affair with it Can Lead to Your Demise

Among the many videos connecting hip-hop to demonology there is one that stands out to me that suggests that since Nas calls himself God's Son, and Jay-Z, by calling himself Hova, asserts that he is God, that one should not be surprised that they hooked up. According to this individual, it is part of a master plan for Nas to destroy hip-hop at the same age that Christ was when he died, then resurrect it, or give birth to it again, through the Hip-Hop Is Dead album. It makes a lot of sense; his assertion that, because hip-hop started in New York, that it should die in New York, and that no artist from anywhere other than New York could make such a statement and be taken seriously.

It makes a lot of sense; Hip-Hop Is Dead is considered one of Nas' best albums in a while; the media ran with the story and Nas' provided a lukewarm explanation for what he was doing while the South defended their position suggesting that hip-hop never died, but that New York artists just were not producing hip-hop, because they no longer had any heart. According to this individual the media firestorm that ensued was just a distraction from the spiritual ritual that was taking place right before our eyes. While I can appreciate the theory I had to wonder why the speaker felt the need to dismiss Southern hip-hop while presenting his theory. See the way that I see it; when you talk about spiritual things, you do not digress towards showing your preferences, appreciation, or nuances concerning your own thoughts about the thing if the thing you are talking about is not of God to begin with. That weakens your position; it is like you are stating that, contrary to popular belief, the birth of hip-hop in New York was not the result of dumb luck, as is often suggested, but planned and calculated, but then you have opinions about hip-hop coming from one region as opposed to another. This is a big part of the reason why I do not subscribe to the videos quite like I have eight months ago because for the most part, a lot of the analysis that is done is not being presented from individuals that are spiritually centered, but individuals that have their own issues with the way that the media has crucified what we like to call real hip-hop, and put rap music on a pedestal.

If New York is on the inside track of hip-hop, and the artists in the South do not know what they are doing or are just tools of the media's plan to dumb down hip-hop, you would think that New York would have its own anti-heroes. Consider the song "Country Cousins" by Talib Kweli, where Talib raps with UGK and asserts that not only does every New Yorker have family in the Carolinas, but we are all speaking the same language with a different dialect but can understand each other because we have the same struggle. I don't know about you, but for the most part, Southern artists seem to be very hungry and want to prove their lyrical talents, despite how ridiculous most New Yorkers feel that they are coming across. The problem is not the South, but cases where Southern artists have sold out to making songs about certain dances in which they allow themselves to be marginalized and exploited as the latest disco craze in hip-hop. The problem is groups like D4L, that aren't even trying to rap.

At the same time Ron Browz does the same thing, and he is in New York. This is the guy that not that long ago produced Ether for Nas; arguably the best dis track ever. See we need to let go of the oversimplification and territorial nature of pitting New York against everyone else and see this thing for what it is. At the same time, not every artist has sold their soul to the Illuminati, and there are plenty of artists with music videos that do not have any pyramids, representations of Baphomet, or hand gestures. The media will never promote these artists, and like the idiots we are, we refuse to listen to them because we have been deceived into thinking that the mainstream "sounds better" and that the artists are "more talented". This is the same end game that fashion designers used on us back in the nineties when artists were being paid to sell out and promote fashion couture and the rest of us felt like we needed to have the latest Versace, Prada, or Christian Dior. People were walking around spending hundreds of dollars for Ralph Lauren; we didn't learn anything then and we haven't learned anything now. If you think it through, and if you know anything about marketing at all whatsoever, you would have seen through that tactic but these aren't things that we know about as community, and our self-esteem is so low, that even if we do know about it we give into the peer pressure to look better than everyone else. It is very simple, if you want to be trendy, go for the startup that probably will not be around in ten years, if you want quality, find someone that has been in business for like 200 years. Record companies are smart enough to approach talented artists with this strategy and agenda, but talent is relative, and for every Jay-Z there are 30 other artists in the wings that are equally talented that will never see the light of day because they refuse to sell out. Even so called conscious artists in hip-hop promote ideology that is more in line with New Age theologies and the New World Order that fly in the face of the Christianity that you state you believe in, and so called Christian artists, use samples from secular artists that could never possibly stand for anything good because of where your soul is taken when you hear that sample; it is not going anywhere else just because someone wants to use that sample to uplift Christ. A lot of their heroes are not other Christian artists, but secular artists they want to emulate so they can have the same success; this thing is a lot deeper than anyone is willing to admit to.

Record companies know exactly what they are doing, and have done it well since the early days of Motown; I love Motown, and no disrespect to anyone from Detroit, but the same thing was happening back then as well. We just overlooked the fact because back then lyrics were positive, but it was sugary pop music; artists at Stax and other companies were just as good. We also overlooked it because it was a golden age in music for the African-American community, and was helping to build the reputation of Detroit and cement its musical legacy. As emotional as we are about it, nothing has changed, the formula has not changed, and the tactics of entrepreneurs who are serious about making money has definitely not changed. Detroit was an anti-hero to what happened in New York and Chicago, in fact one of the last cities in the North as an aggregation of Black culture before everything moved down South. You have to think for yourself, you think these companies really care if you find great artists that aren't promoted and marginalized when they know that you are always going to come back around to the artists they say have that "it" factor (no different from Hollywood) that they want to be successful. Nine times out of ten it is the companies themselves that create these distractions in order to drive profits; the best example in hip-hop being the whole East Coast West Coast thing. An artist from the West Coast, that formerly promoted "gangsta rap" and other negativity, found a way to use the same genre that was supposed to be destroying us to uplift and empower us, and was unapologetic about doing so and was not going to change even though that was not the original plan of course they were going to do something about that. How was it that the two of them were such tight-knit friends but then all of the sudden were the worst enemies ever? Music is never just music when there is money involved. Too often we get emotional talking about the state of music when quite honestly, it isn't anything we ever had any control over anyway. How many of us are willing to promote the artists we truly believe in, knowing that there isn't any money in doing so. No one is going to visit your blog talking about the latest conscious artist, and you aren't going to get any advertising revenue in doing so.

It is like continuing to assert that hip-hop died with Tupac Shakur and everyone he spoke out against sold out and did exactly what he said that they would. At the end of the day does any of this really matter; look, you can lose a significant chunk of your life proving that hip-hop is evil, and still go to hell, because you are so intrigued with demonology you refuse to pray and stay home from church. There are so many of these videos that I wonder if individuals aren't just using this as an angle to get you to follow them in cyberspace which would keep you from ever assembling yourself, which isn't a good thing at all.

We need to let go of this whole hip-hop thing; it began in a neutral, amoral place, and as such crafty entrepreneurs were able to shape it and mold it for their own purposes early on in the game. I like a good grassroots effort as well, but when you are talking about how we should approach this from a spiritual position I wonder why are focusing so much on hip-hop. In fact one has to wonder is hip-hop just the last form of music ever, or will someone else come up with something and if they do does that something have to be from New York. I often wonder if New York is not so infatuated with the idea of what started there that they refuse to let it go because they aren't necessarily sure how to move forward. The city always had an existence outside of music, sure there are record companies but New York has over 5,000 skyscrapers and tall buildings I wonder if the record business occupies more than 20 of them.

You could say the same thing about news organizations in New York that you could say about record companies. But the fact of what a few people at the top are forcing everyone else to do for money says nothing about New York. In fact all that says, is whose world this is, at least for now until whichever deity that you believe in comes back for you or you move into that next era, and that everyone else that stands for truth is going to be marginalized and probably is not going to make a lot of money. We have people following pastors now, in mega-churches, that aren't "going hard" and are giving you half-truths and telling you what you want to hear but not what you need to know. Most of these guys have over 100 books in any Barnes and Nobles that you walk into and occupy multiple slots on the New York Times best sellers list. This is a fact of life that is not going to change, and the faces are going to change and the doctrine changes so if you allow yourself to be swept up in what the world says is cool, it is always that which is the "ultimate fail" for your own life. Think for yourself, and forget about what the media, independent or corporately owned, is trying to drive home ...