why does hip hop matter?
forget about the bullshit about hip hop and its tremendous "potential to “instill political consciousness and initiate social activism"” among the young and the not so. this almost crippling blab that hip hop is not just some form of music but rather this capital t truth telling truths.
please.
hip hop matters because of this very earnest looking boy i was sitting behind in a bus this morning. and what it does to this young man unafraid, raring to take on the world.
the boy had his official neighborhood gear on: a throwback 1997 basketball jersey (#34 charles oakley) over a white triple x henley. low sagging denims, needless to say. and a crisp, he-can-hardly-afford custom fitted new york yankee baseball cap.
yes, hip hop is about fashion, too. and a whole lot of other things. but first and foremost, it is about that someone who decides to go retro, and takes up - horror of horrors - the almost forgotten passion of taking a pen and scribbling down anything truthful to oneself.
the boy, who finally disembarked at the stop by a car wash near fordham university, was writing, furiously at times, pentametric lines, it seemed to me and, with melodramatic flourish, crossing out those he deemed out of flow with his rhythms.
hip hop matters because at the very least it is a vibrant, living form of innovative music, never xenophobic to influences far and wide.
but at its best, hip hop matters because it goads people to become the best writers that they can ever be, telling possibly all their truths in a language all their own but universally understood.
and for as long as there are people honest enough to write down their own truths, the world could only be fine. it has got to be. for as the french nobel laureate albert camus grandly claimed, the purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.
and that'’s what’'s up.