Fight the Power

a zero win on the death of Shnead O'Connor. Why am I bringing up Shonad O'Connor on a podcast called hood Politics mainly because Chuck d from Public Enemy posted this lovely tribute to her about a moment in time and following her, you had iced tea, you had questlove of the roots. All these rappers posting about Shnado O'Connor, which should, if you pay attention, be like, huh, here's

a crossover. I didn't expect the girl, the ball headed girl from Ireland that was doing all the visuals standing up in protests against the pope and all of the child molestation charges in the Catholic Church in Ireland. You know, Nah,

thing compares, Nah compares to you. I sound just like her, right, one would ask why will all these old school rappers be posting these tributes to Sinead O'Connor, Well, if you look at Chuck D's post, there's this moment where she's performing at what turned out to have been the Grammys, and on the side of her head is this painted circle with a bullseye on it, just right on the

side of her head. And the bullseye, though, has a silhouette of a man in what we know as the bee boy stance, which is basically his arms folded right and he's got his kind of a cowboy hat on because he's a bee boy. This is like real eighties

hip hop type thing. And that logo for anybody, or that symbol for anybody who loves hip hop would know that's the public enemy logo as in nine to one one is a joke, as in fight the power, as in shut him down, as in welcome to the Terror Dome, one of the most politically charged resistance driven I mean, you think killer Mike, don't play, y'all, you need to do your homework if I out who public Enemy is. Chuck

D in Flavor Flave. Y'all know Flavor flav differently, But there was a reason why she he had that logo painted on the side of her head. So by the time this historical iconic photo was taken, rap was a multimillion dollar industry. Wasn't always, but at this point it absolutely was. Rap's been around for gosh, probably almost twenty years at this time. Full industry in this photo is people you may or may not know, but I can run it down for you. It's a black and white photo.

You got right in the front young man that you may know of from a reality show called Flavor of Love, but we know him as Flavor Flav as one of the members of a group called Public Enemy. You have his arm around a woman known as Salt who was a member of Salt and Peppa. So right behind is Pep and DJ Spinderella. You got behind them. You got will Smith, who we knew of as the Fresh Prince. You got Jazzy Jeff. You got in the way far back Chuck d. You could see the flat tops of

Kid and Play. You could see Slick Rick the ruler, and the photo gets blurried towards the back. But there's two other people in the picture that I might even be too young to be able to just spot by face. I would have to do some research for it. I think it's Tetsosnic Daddy O and Anyway. I might be wrong,

but I think it's them. But the point of this picture was in nineteen eighty eight, the Grammys were going to for the first time give their first ever Rap Award, and three of the five categories decided to boycott the show. And you know, of the people that were nominated, this is going back to Cali by. Are the songs that were nominated? Artists going back to Cali by ll cool

J Right, parents just don't understand. From Fresh Prince, DJJZ, Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Salt and Peppers, Push It jj Fads, Supersonic, at Cool mo d Wild Wild West, they were nominated for the Grammys. The only problem was the Grammys didn't recognize rap or hip hop as legitimate music. What do I mean by that? We're saying this is a wildly popular genre of music. Right came out of a culture that they have been fighting for recognition for

since nineteen eighty four. The Grammys had never acknowledged rap as a legitimate music and now that they will finally doing what they said was they wanted Will Smith to write like this cute little rap about the Grammys and then present the next award, But the Rap Award wasn't even going to be on TV. They weren't even gonna telecast it. It was gonna be one of the pre things. And we're saying, these are multi these are platinum selling artists with the fast in the fastest growing genre of music,

and you're not even gonna put it on TV. And what Will Smith was quoted to say was, dang man, you go to school for twelve years and then denied the right to walk across the stage with your diploma. And what did hip hop do? They said, who give a fuck about a Grammy anyway? Protest that none of them came and check this out. In solidarity for this protest, Sinead O'Connor painted Public Enemies logo on her head. She

a real one, you find it. She cut from the same cloth, right, It's the same energy, and that's why she resonated with all these ogs. You ever wondered why people that are in the punk somehow start loving underground hip hop, it's you're cut from the same cloth. Because it's always been about a protest, and I think it's important to not only acknowledge this moment just because she passed away, but because this year is hip hop's fiftieth

anniversary and why I'm bringing it up for hood. Politics is politics and protests has always been a part of hip hop. You may know it as just like wrap and streetwear, but it's always been a protest. It's always been about fighting the power. Happy fiftieth anniversary, let's talk about it politics, y'all. Man, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome. This show might be really educational for y'all, or this might just

be kind of a break. I know the news cycle has been crazy, but we're gonna get to that, you know, especially how it must absolutely feel horrible to be getting your ass kicked just slacing the polls by a dude who faced it over seventy years in prison and will probably be out on bail while y'all on the campaign trail and got impeached twice and you're finna lose to

this nigga. That's gotta feel awful. Anyway, we'll get to that, but I want to back up and just kind of like give y'all a little education as to like what's what's really going on as we celebrate hip hop's fiftieth anniversary. Back to Sinead O'Connor, I told y'all a long time ago, back on the Bastards pod that, like when we was doing the race drafts, like I'm telling you, y'all should have Iris should have stayed black. Y'all should have just

gone been black with us. It's listen anyway, Snat O'Connor man rest in peace to the g and a lot of people like read her wrong because he looked at it with her ball head. They thought she was like, you know, skinhead, like she fighting the power. Homie down

for the calls. The way I want to set up this thing is as I want to situate your minds and brains into what I mean by like, hip hop has always been political, okay, But the only way for you to understand that is, first of all, I need to situate hip hop in the broader history of black music and the tradition of black music, and that black music,

at least in America, is inseparable from geopolitics. I'm going to lay out the idea of the commercialization and how commodified and even the complex relationship hip hop has with capitalism, and then I want to teach you how to like see it happening. Now, do that makes sense? Okay, Well I asked a question again as if you can answer me,

I'm going to assume it makes sense. Yo. So look, so, since we can't get any clearance for any songs except for my own songs, I'm gonna go ahead throw to get a little Spotify playlist to hear some like Harlem Renaissance stuff, some like you know, Negro spirituals, some soul music, just so you can hear what we trying to say, all right, And I think Matt's kind of doing his best to I haven't heard this completed thing yet because

I'm recording myself right now. I think Matt's kind of doing his best to try to create some sound from this.

But that's more of an origin story pod. This is about jumping into the stream as far as African American music, and the best place to start is Negro spiritual. Now, if you don't know what a Negro spiritual is, it's gospel before we knew it as gospel. Obviously, at some point, for whatever reason, a lot of African American slaves latched onto the Christian faith. Now, don't let nobody tell you that we were only Christian because the white man gave it to us, Because you don't even get out of

the Book of Acts. So really, after Jesus died, and if you follow in the Bible story, after Jesus died and resurrected, I'm just quoting the book. Okay. The next book after that is this Book of Acts, and it's supposed to be about how the church or the Gospel, if you will, is spread across the world. And before you even get to Paul, Paul's the dude that writes pretty much the rest of the New Testament because he takes the Gospel to Asia Minor, right, which is you know,

Turkey and just cesarea Greece, right, all that stuff. Before you even go there, you have this guy Philip who meets an Ethiopian eunuch. He, according to the Bible, worked for the king and queen of Ethiopia. This and in the story, he's reading one of the Jewish scrolls, the Book of Isaiah, about the promise coming Messiah, and Philip is like, yo, you want to know what that's about. He's like, yeah, I want to know what that's about. Apparently, and on the side of this road he gets baptized.

And according to this, the Gospel goes to Ethiopia, goes to Africa first. But this isn't even the first inflection point. You got to go all the way back to King Solomon, even where we get these ideas of Rastafarianism and Holly Selassie, and so the Queen of Sheba meets King Solomon and is totally impressed by his empire. So the point I'm trying to make is the Jewish Judeo Christian, not the way these white people talk, because I don't want you

to get triggered by these words. But the faith, the Christian faith was African four hundred years before it was European right, So don't let nobody tell you not a white man gentrified it like they always do, right, but out the box. Look, don't let them tell you. You know what I'm saying now. Granted, this African version I'm talking about is East African, while most slaves were West African. The point I'm trying to make is, don't let nobody

tell you that they gave it to us. Now, we gave it to them anyway, and they did what they always do, Columbus in and gentrified anyway. That being said, slaves were given these versions of the Bible, which they made the mistake because at first they gave us the whole Bible. And when they gave us the whole Bible, we read the book of Exodus and saw Moses and was able to look at these children of Israel being slaved and looking as if, now, if you're reading the book,

you're gonna be like, damn. It seemed like this God and the central figure in this story is always on the side of the oppressed and not the oppressor. I don't know why these people giving this to us, because it sounded to me like they finna get judged according to their own book, right, that's what we saw, right, So we latched onto the Moses theory. We latched onto the Promised Land. So that's why a lot of liber racial theology, why black churches we don't be won't be

talking about Paul Like y'all we talked about Moses. We talk about a deliverer God, Jesus is our savior. He's our deliverer. You understand I'm saying we fit to get out of this bondage cause blood gang banging. Now that being said, we used a lot of our chants because that's the way we already we already because again we're Africans, we already sang collectively and had a lot of call and response in our music right in the way that we sang. Now, what Negro spirituals in some cases became

were codes. There were codes for the underground railroad. There were codes for when we were going to leave, when we was gonna get off this thing. They were codes for when the master was coming. They were codes. So because they didn't want slaves to talk, but we could sing, and if we coded it in language, they understood that sounded like we just singing worship songs, whereas we was really commune de cating to each other. Do you see what I'm saying? Our music has always been a protest.

It's always been political. Y'all got them category. Our music always been political because our music has always been about our experience. So Negro spirituals in a lot of in a lot of situations were codes for when we was gonna leave this goddamn plantation. You're following me, so I'm gonna situate you in that river. We were always talking about our experience, and our experience, unfortunately in America, was never for us to just freely flourish and have joy

for ourselves. It was always tied to what we was going through. Because the next thing I'm gonna talk to you about is the blues. Now, why the blues became what it was was these these spots called jupe joints, now the juke joints. You have to remember when we was making our music, every musician came from playing the church, right, But everybody don't want no church music. Sometimes we want to bump a grind. Yeahdam what I'm saying. Then you

got people like Maul Rainey. You feel me that you know? Uh, I'm gonna fast forward to like Ray Charles. Like people didn't like what Ray Charles was doing because he was he was singing these songs that sounded gospel, but he was singing them in the club because we all came from singing gospel music, right. So anyway, so the blues was played inside of these these little clubs we had. Now, after a while, after you started getting good at these clubs,

you started playing what was called the Chitlin circuit. Now, the Chitlin circuit is only exists because segregation. We weren't allowed into these white venues. So we was like, okay, I guess it is what it is. You could be a star. You could be a star among what's called the chittling. Sir, you wasn't making a lot of money, but you could be a star among those things. If you were gonna play this, y'all don't notice. If you was gonna play these integrated clubs, they weren't really integrated.

If Lena Horn, people like Lena Horn, they you know, these these these iconic black artists. You'd have to come into the to the club via the kitchen or the or the back door, and the room that you were performing to there was a rope in the middle of the room that had the side with white people on the side with black people, because you know, we wasn't posted to mix, so you we could we could sing

to y'all, but we can't dance among you. So obviously that cleared that colored our experience, and obviously if you were willing to play for these clubs, guess what that did. That made it divide among black artists where it's like, why you're gonna shuck and ji for the white people. Then there was these things called minstrel shows, which is where we got the idea of black face, or where

the culture gets this idea of black face. You know what black face is, it's white people pay their face with these dark black things and pretending to be black people. They would try to sing our songs, they would try to dance like us, but they would put on these shows that were absurd. Right, You have characters like step and Fetch. You know that we felt like these were black people taking on these offensive personas for their money.

That's our art being commercialized. It's been going on for a long time, right anyway, So now you take these characters like the you know, the eye line buys like them fools, and in some ways, somebody like a Takashi six ' nine. Unfortunately, what like vanilla ice came to symbolize to where it's like these fools are playing dress up, you know what I'm saying, like and it's almost like you're making fun of us. That's kind of what it

comes off as. You know, it feels like, you know, a menstrual show, and then when you get black artists participating in it, it feels even worse. Move forward to the Harlem Renaissance. Now this is the birth of jazz. Now this is really interesting to me because this is almost like you can make a direct correlation between jazz and hip hop. Jazz happened in Harlem. I'm gonna, I'm gonna,

I'm gonna situate us in the Harlem Renaissance. Right, So in Harlem again, we're still talking about the segregated world that we were in. I know that's up north. You under see what I'm saying, But don't let you a little like history not that clean. You know, the Cotton Club was a black club. Harlem used to be all black because even though you may not have had Jim Crow laws, you had Jim Crow practices. Don't act like the North wasn't racist. It was absolutely racist. So anyway

up there, what was happening. The Burroughs weren't necessarily connected necessarily right then a train was built, right, and a train that connected uptown to midtown, a train that connected us to the boroughs. So now families were able to work in the city and kind of go back home. So now that we're able to work in the city and you could go back uptown, now we got a little more money. Right now, some of us have some liquid some liquid capital. And these people that have now

liquid capital, they need entertainment. So we started having our own club, our own dance things, our own our own stuff. That wasn't so southern. I remember, like the Southern that's that's the blues, that's them juke joints. They hot and sweaty up here. You know what I'm saying. You got the Nicholas Brothers, you got, you got you know, cab Calawas. You know what I'm saying, It don't mean the thing if it ain't got that swang right, and philosophy came

out of that. Poets Blanston, Hughes and him. You got poetry, music, art, philosophy all was coming out of this moment that happened because in a lot of ways, we took a situation that we had no control and we made it beautiful and we made it ourselves. And guess what happened. Powers that be looked in there and was like, damn, that looked fun. Can we do it? And we was like, well no, because you haven't gone through what we're gone through.

And you know what they created? Swing dancing, Oh yeah, yeah, your little sockops, your little swing, your little swing dancing stuff. That is just the white version of jazz. That is a commercialized, clean version where the economics of it all took what we made and commodified it and then didn't let us be a part of til much later. I mean,

we could do the same with rock and roll. Y'all have to remember rock and roll was black Fats Domino, you know what I'm saying, and all of yr Elvis songs, Like I don't know if y'all saw that WEIRDO Elvis movie, It was very weird. But the lesson you should pull from that is that Elvis was copying black music. He was a white dude doing black music, and it just our stuff. Has been commodified and gentrified the whole time. Now,

it's also complicated because some of us were us. As in the culture where passive participants, some of us were active participants. And can you blame poor people when they're dangled real money right and a real job? Like sometimes you can't. It ain't gonna always be about you know, you're fisted up, But the fisted up person has continued throughout the history of black music, whether it's your Nina Simon's Other World. You have to remember Ray Charles was

the first person to own his masters. I'm gonna say that again. Ray Charles was the first person to own his masters. Nobody else owned their masters. Gon google what that means in the music industry. Songs like say It Loud, I'm Black, and I'm Proud, these are protests, they and they only exist because of the politics of the time. Right now, you can put on Marvin Gaye's What's going On,

which was about the Vietnam War in the sixties. You could play it now and be like, damn, I feel like he wrote this mug today Because even within the industry, even within these successful careers, our participation has always been tied to our power. There's a group called the Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron, y'all remember a long time ago when I first started the show, I did an episode called white He's on the Moon, and I read the lyrics of white He's on the Moon Gil Scott

Heron in the Last Poets. What he's saying in that was like, y'all got money to build these rockets. Meanwhile we're starving in the streets. We just got civil rights, y'all done killed all of our leaders. But you know what, though, White He's on the Moon, y' you feeling me? And one of the biggest songs that Gil Scott has has is the revolution will not be televised, and that was happening during the time of the Black Panthers. So Nina Simone,

so all these artists, they're what we choose. It whyatt always resonates and why it stands to test the time is because it was not a product of an industry. The industry was made around what was authentic, but it was always side to politics. It was always side of think. Now let's get to hip hop right after this break? All right, we're back. This is so interesting to me because y'all remember Cracktoberfest and the Iran concert scandal, cocaine

being flooded into our streets. You guys remember us talking about that these were huge, huge, huge geopolitical, cultural, ginormous moments, but they were the goulagh that brought us the culture of hip hop as we know it. And follow me when I say this, but before I get into that, I need to take y'all back to the Warriors movie. Warriors, come out and play. Now. What happened in that flick

is based on actual things that happened. Hip hop, if you don't know, started in the Bronx, And in the Bronx around this time that this movie takes place, is there was this ginormous city wide blackout because the city was just absolutely bankrupt. It was like a shithole. Let's not lie. It was miserable to live in the Bronx. Part of what made it so miserable was the rent got so bad, The buildings were so dilapidated, the money

was so drained, right because of Nixon, Because because of y'all. Listen, do you remember when I did the Economics one, The economics thing about about the changing of like world revolutions and stuff like that. When Nixon tried to stop inflation, but he did it wrong. You got to go back and do this. What that did was it bankrupt the Bronx. And once the Bronx got bankrupt, if you owned a building, a tenement of housing project, it would be better for you as the owner. This is where you get the

term slum lords. You just didn't fix the building because the rent was paid by Section eight. And if the city stopped paying Section eight, rather than fix the building, you just destroyed it and you just collected on the insurance. So you had where you get the term rubble kings. It's because there was abandoned buildings that destroyed, dilapidated, broke down, just piles of rubble everywhere in the Bronx. We created

beauty somehow, how you create beauty? Oh clack clacks started painting murals, repping your territories and inside of that rubble. During that time, you got to remember the schools are terrible. Ain't no money, ain't no jobs. And if you as a kid, you could either a start selling some drugs. But sometimes you need other outlets. And part of our other outlets, part of our protests, these black and brown kids,

these black and Puerto Rican kids inside the Bronx. Part of they protest was they would just throw parties, basement parties, park jams. What you would do is you would plug you climb a light pole, plug your sound system into the outside light pole, and you would just throw parties and people would hang outside of their buildings. You'd listen to the music, listen to the DJs, and what would the DJs play? They would spend their records? What records

would they spend the records that their parents had. And then one day somebody thought of the Merriagro round? What is that? Well, because you trying to dance and the people that were trying to dance, it would be the beginning of the song to do do and then the song would start. Somebody decided, if I got two of those same song and I kept restarting it to where Luke he used to call it the Merry Go Round, you would create the break. Y'all, y'all follow him here.

They discovered you could loop tracks by just playing with their parents' funk records. Now downtown was disco. Disco was full of cocaine. That's where the rich white folks were we wouldn't welcome down there, right, that's where the industry was. That's not where we were. We was up in the Boroughs. So when the Burroughs they discovered this is how you

make loose, and they would throw these parties. There was a man named Cool Hurt, DJ Cool Hurt, and what DJs would have is a guy on the mic just kind of calling the shots like and all the DJ would do or and that guy that was calling the shots was the MC, the master of ceremonies, and all he would do is shout out the DJ, yo this brand Maath cast giving you live with DJ cool Hurt,

bring it up. So that's why all of your original rap groups were DJ and a rapper, Eric being Rock him, DJ, Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Pence because Eric b was first. Because the DJ ruled the world and the MC was there. You know what I'm saying, just to keep the party live. But you have to remember that happened because of geopolitics.

Now this is nineteen seventy three. Then you get groups like you get Cowboy, you get groups like the Cold Crush Brothers, you know what I'm saying, Get you get the Furious Five, You get all these get you get this massive boom that just started in the bronx of these parties that kids are going to and everybody's no matter what's happening in the world, we're able to find joy. Then somebody from Manhattan comes and sees, man, there's a lot of money to be made out here, Like, we

don't hear none of this stuff on the radio. How do we get this on the radio? You can't put a party on the radio, Like that's too much. Nah, we already got DJs. We can't do that. But the dude talking and the songs that they're producing, oh we can. We can put that on the radio. Well, you need

to sign a group. And in nineteen seventy nine, Grand Master Kaz and a group called the Cold Crush Brothers had these bodyguards, right, and these bodyguards found out about this audition for this rap group that this record label was going to start. But you had to go auditions, so you had to go be able to show your raps. So one of those brothers asked Grand Master Kaz to write him a rap, and he was like, all right,

I guess I'll write you a rap. And then the dude wrote the rap performed it for this person and they were able to form a group. And do you

want to know what that rap sounded like? What that rap was that Grand Master Kaz wrote, I said, a hip hop a hippie to the hippie to hip hop, the dov don't stop to rock it to the bang dang boogie up chump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogey b he wrote, Rappers delight and those guys that were just bodyguards with sugar Hill Gang, who the rest of the industry believes were the first rap group. Guys that was six years later because the industry economics

always steps in. But then you got people like Russell Simmons right, who's from the culture part of the culture right. And then you got dudes like Rick Ruman, right, Eastie boys there was from Long Island. There was these like rich Jewish kids who were in the punk music. And like I said, punk music has always resonated with hip hop because we got each other. They all kind of connected together. Now, remember h Russell Simmons had a little brother who was came to be known as Reverend Run.

So now you got run DMC right and run DMC out in Queens, right and Hollis Queens. There was another young man who was super talented rough Ruggin and Roy. His name was ll cool J. Right, so now we have a chance to start a label, right, but it's a label put together by us. But listen, run DMC started making money. They had an idea of like, yo, whyon't we do this crossover? They was listening to this Aerosmith song.

the crack attack ooh boy. Right. So, now as you're listening to stuff like check yourself for you wreck yourself, right, you're listening to you know, self destruction. You're listening to We're all in the same gang. Once it came west, right now, once it came west, guess what happened? Fuck the police. Gangster rap happened? Now, why the gangster rap happened? Because of the crack attack? Like it's all listen, gangs

it because of listen. It's always tied to politics. We were always telling a story that had to do with what we were going through. Now at the same time, you have your more polished radio versions, right because the industry is always looking for ways to make their money, and who can blame them? Now, I haven't even gotten into the women in hip hop history right that matter of fact, the first rap group that was on SNL was with I think it was Shante I forget homegirl name. But

there's a Louder than a Riot. On NPR, they have a show about a series on women in hip hop. It's so interesting, right because now it's the time that I'm like a little infinite toddler. I'm hearing stuff like, you know, go see the Vapors with Biz Marquee. I'm hearing stuff like the JJ fads, the rock Sanne Chante's you know what I'm saying, like, so I'm hearing that stuff kind of in the background as I'm discovering what it means to be from La and all this stuff

I'm looking. I'm going down to Venice Beach seeing these guys spinning on their head. You under see what I'm saying. Because of movies like Breaking and Breaking Too, now you have a burgeoning business happening because you can make full length movies that are based around the concept of hip hop. You following me, this is the industry happening. And during all of this time, you have people that still come from the tradition of the music that it came from.

So you have people like Public Enemy, whose movement was always about destroying the system. Chuck D was all Chuck D and welcome to the Terra Dome. And nine to one one is a joke in Yo town, get up and get what he's talking about in nine to one one is a joke. Is that like they don't come

to the hood. We've always been talking about our political situation and even us talking about being flashy and flassing when you start getting into the South, and it was just about like, you know, Big Coop de veils and Rowland lolos and tipping on Fox fos. We have to understand this was also protest that we are able to

make joy from the situations that we're in. I haven't mentioned so far because this is just be too long a of a of a thing, but that what you guys call street art, what is what we knew as graffiti and vandalism, which came from again us being like, fuck the system, we don't have no art programs, right, We're gonna we're gonna beautify our own hoods. And then you started putting them on T shirts, right, But that

came from it. And it's not to say that if you're wearing a grap a graffiti T shirt or any sort of streetwear that you're somehow selling out. No, it's an evolution of the stock. And then at some point, because what made more money what you can commodify was the rapper. You can't commodify the DJ, right, So that's

when the rapper became the forefront. But the basic four elements of hip hop, and some would argue five sound like, ohhad is you have breakdancing, DJing with records, m seeing, rapping, and graffiti, right, And then some would say The fifth one is the philosophies, because again, hip hop's always been political, So now I don't know if he was able to follow that, but I was trying to make a case that, like politics has always been about the story of hip hop.

And then obviously, now this is a global phenomenon. It's it has reigned supreme in almost every element of culture around the world. It's it's so amazing what it's been able to become in fifty years. But now I want to talk about some of the questions we still have to answer because ultimately hip hop is still pretty young. Because fifty years for a musical genre, especially compared to something that started in the thirties like jazz. You know

what I'm saying, it's still pretty young. Pretty young genre means that we don't we have very few elders who are able to age well and reach levels of like Bono. And the only one I could think that reach the level of like Bono is Jay Z. It's Hove, where he's gotten to this area of transcendence that I don't think anybody in hip hop has ever like, there's no other we have one. We have one Bono, It's Hove.

And then we don't have no Arnold Schwarzenegger's or Ronald Reagan's who like, meaning these artists who became politicians at that level. The closest we have is Killer Mike. And I'm gonna say me, but really Killer Mike, right, the closest we have Again, protest has always been a part of politics, has always been a part of hip hop. Is for somebody to move into politics the way that Killer Mike has. So we got two examples. And the question has always been since hip hop's in its what

role does white people money play? Are we here to destroy the system, to create our own system, or to take over the system that's already there? But that's not just the question in hip hop? What are we here for? Are we here for Drake to party? Are we here for the dirks? Are we here to just talk about our experiences where there is a lot of murder and hoes and bitches? Are we here for that because we just turn it up we party in? Are we here for the j Coles of the world to where we're

trying to be better? We're trying to treat our women better, Like sometimes you don't want to be on that revolutionary shit. Sometimes you just want to drink in pop Molly's. But then there's this question that are we being responsible because the who's footing the bill for all this incredibly derogatory destructive content in music. It's not so much that you know, we making it, because sometimes we are ratchet, but why is that on the radio all the time? Who paying

that bill? It's hard to not think that, like there might be some sort of conspiracy going on here that yes, you like pumping our you know, veins with this really destructive stuff. On the other hand, you have us like really explaining our stories. The question about it is always like, is the answer to white racist capitalism? Black capitalism? And there is a quote from jay Z where he was like, man,

y'all talk about capitalism like it's a bad thing. Yeah, I from JAYZ was drug deal like this, I'll make money. How he was like, we can't have freedom if we don't control our dollars. I don't understand what the problem is. And then some critiques on that is like, well, no, you're the problem is capitalism itself. Right. You have people like I Mortal Technique who's like, no, it destroy it all, burn it all down, Like I don't know now does he disagree with jay Z Well, I don't know a

mortal technique to know him well enough. I just know his answer. Burn the whole thing down. You have people like Killer Mike that's like, no, you invest in your own you do you support black businesses, you only buy black you put your money in black banks, And you tell these politicians that I'm only voting for you if you do shit for my community. This is transactional. I'n fuck about who you are. Are you doing this for black people? I don't care about nobody listen. Are you

gonna raise our community? Then yes, I'm damn If you're not gonna raise our community, I don't want to hear shit. You got to say, I'm gonna vote you out. I will sit down with anybody that's gonna advance the black community. That's Killer Mike's answer is that it's and what I'm arguing is that's I mean, they're both a tradition of hip hop because you can't separate them from politics. We used to make bars about Donald Trump. Then why Z

and Nipsey had a song called Fuck Donald Trump? Because it's always been about politics, It's always been about fighting the power. The question still remains, do you fight the power from within or without? How can we continue to fight if we keep talking about our women the way we talk about it? Do you stop talking about the streets you only do the positive shit? I don't know. All I know is I'm just happy hip hop is

here because it changed my life. Hood politics, y'all. You know, I don't know why I ain't thought of this before, but you know you could use promo code Hood for fifteen percent off on terraform colbrew dot com. Like I forgot I own that company and this is my pod, y'all, go ahead and bunch it. Promo cold Hood if you in the cold Brew, get you some cold Brew, Gonna get you some coffee. Yeah, Like, I can't believe I ain't think of this still right.

smarter than you. If you understand city living, you understand politics, We'll see you next week.