by Tyson Amir
Hip-hop's rhythms are bathed in the hopes, dreams, and prayers of the enslaved who only wanted deliverance and freedom for the next generation. Hip-hop is the righteous anger that led to Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, and Harriet Tubman. Hip-hop is freedmen donning that Union blue uniform to fight gloriously against their Confederate slave masters. Hip-hop is because we as a people were told by the government that we were 3/5ths of a person, and because a Supreme Court justice claimed that although we were human beings, we possessed no rights that white men are bound to respect. That bass hitting your soul is the heavy fear and sorrow in tearful eyes watching crosses being burned on front lawns or seeing men and women who could've easily been you strung up in nooses and hung from trees. The explosive percussive power in our bars and verses is because we watched the sky in Tulsa, Oklahoma, open up, and rain fire down upon us, killing men, women, and children. It's 1985 in Philadelphia watching the skies spit fire on us again. Our beat knocks so hard because we know what it means to stand on a motel balcony on the 4th day of April or in the Audubon Ballroom in front of your daughters and pregnant wife on the 21st day of February. Hip-hop is because we have 12-year-old boys in parks playing with toy guns who meet cops who also play with guns, only theirs fire real bullets. I can go on, but I'm hoping the point is clear enough by now. Hip-hop is only possible because of the strength, resilience, suffering, pain, power, passion, faith, prayer, survival, and pride of black people.
Hip-hop is not new; it is a proud relative prominently placed on the spectrum of African cultural expression. Just like Negro spirituals, blues, funk, jazz, country, soul, and rock and roll, hip-hop is ours. It was manifested out of our sorrow and sacrifice to speak to our people. We are a people who have struggled like none other, and our songs helped guide us through the night to see the morning. We sang our songs like our ancestors taught us to sow seeds of hope for those who would wear our blessed skin tone in the days to come, wishing the burden cast upon the beautiful black of their shoulders would be lighter.
Whites and outsiders don't know this. Some blacks have been taught to ignore this truth that is etched in the most sacred space of their soul. If you are not of this experience, meaning blackness is not your genetic inheritance, then you are not hip-hop. What you are without honoring and respecting our tradition is an interloper, a trespasser currently in the process of bastardizing a sacred ceremony you were never invited to. This is not your place; this is not your language; this ritual was not meant for you.
Is it possible for someone who is not of the black experience to "practice" hip-hop authentically? The overwhelming majority of the time the answer is no; being of the experience is essential for authenticity, but there are exceptions to this rule. For those who aren't the exception their attempt at hip-hop will always be a perverted sloppy imitation devoid of soul, principle, and purpose. The previous non-exception description applies to the overwhelming majority of the folks not of the black experience currently practicing hip hop.
The people of the black experience vary greatly; their individual cultures are nuanced, but they remain connected due to the soil that birthed them. Who are the people of the black experience? Primarily the term is referring to people of African descent who were forced into the diaspora via the slave trades and now make their home in the Americas or other colonial lands. Even more specifically, the term is a direct by-product of the cultural experience of peoples of African descent in what is now known as the United States of America. In its broadest sense, the term refers to all black people of African descent either in the diaspora or still on the continent. Although we differ greatly in look, sound, language, history, religion, and customs, there still exist major commonalities between our artistic, spiritual, and musical expressions throughout many parts of the continent and the world. This would be the closest group of people to whom one might be able to apply the concept of hip-hop being universal.
When hip-hop is removed from its cultural context, it becomes less potent due to a watering down effect resulting from its dislocation. Outsiders approach it without proper knowledge of what and why it is. Their motives are often ill conceived, mainly to exploit it for their own personal reasons, usually fame and fortune. In their hands, our tradition is dumbed down. As of now, many falsely think hip-hop is about bars, ill moves, or the culture. Or they believe hip-hop can be a hobby or pastime. No, hip-hop isn't about trying to prove you are the illest MC, DJ, dancer, or graffiti writer ever. Hip-hop is not about getting signed or getting on. It's not about "money, cars, clothes, and hoes." It ain't.
Peer into the mirror of your soul and see what black people have created before. Hip-hop, like everything black people have produced for themselves in the land of their oppressors, was a means of survival for a stolen people. Lerone Bennett Jr. in his seminal work Before the Mayflower said this of African arts and culture: "Art, like religion, was a life expression. There were no art museums or opera houses in pre-white man Africa. Art and aesthetic expression were collective experiences in which all the people participated. Art, in short, was not for art's sake, but for life's sake." This is important to understand because this same spirit crossed the Atlantic Ocean with our ancestors and became the cornerstone of all black artistic expression, eventually finding its way into the foundation of hip-hop. Meaning hip-hop is for life's sake, preserving, fighting, and struggling for the lives of black folks in America and the world over.
And now a mixed group of outsiders being led by the greatest thieves in human history, the ones who stole us initially from Africa, wish to steal even more from us. Those in power and their children look upon us and see something that they were incapable of creating on their own. Out of jealousy and envy, they first attempt to demonize it. They call it jungle music or some other phrase to impugn its greatness. Then their envy forces them to adopt another strategy, which is to take what they can't produce on their own. If they can control it, they can silence the people who are the source of it. They grab it and then run back to their homes and clumsily try to reproduce the magic that naturally occurs in the black soul. Once they feel they understand how it works, they began to show it off among themselves and act as if it belongs to them. Then they use their white magic on the originators of this beautiful thing and tell them, "It belongs to everybody." They say it so much that we begin to believe that what our ancestors were willing to die for to leave for us is actually for everybody, including the thieves.
We know it doesn't work the other way. We could not steal something from them and then claim it belongs to everybody. But when it comes to our sacred possessions, they can pillage what they wish. Like a criminal with no remorse, they begin to parade their looted booty in front of those they stole it from. We watch as they awkwardly misuse our treasures. It's like a child with a new toy; they can't contain themselves and use it so much that we see the sacred wisdoms in rhythms of our ancestors everywhere we look, but the faces using them are not our own. I know y'all have seen commercials and shows where they're using our hip-hop, and there are no black faces anywhere. They use our culture to sell products while we use it to save our lives.
They even have the audacity to claim they know what real hip-hop is in their boardrooms or on their radios, televisions, magazines, and websites. How do you know hip-hop when you haven't been through what our people have survived? Without that knowledge and experience flowing through your veins, you cannot know why we sing. But they don't care; instead they self-select young thieves who have done nothing but poorly imitate those who were blessed to receive their inheritance and put them out in front of everybody, producing the oxymoron of white faces doing black music.
This might be some of what our native brothers and sisters feel when they hear absurd statements like Christopher Columbus discovered America, or when they hear white people claim America is their home and that "foreigners" need to go back to wherever they came from. I don't think I'm the only one who sees the irony in the children of slave owners, children of those who fought
to keep blacks segregated, children of the KKK and other white supremacist groups, children of those who went to watch black people lynched from trees, the children of those who used fire hoses and sicced dogs on black bodies, the children of those who witnessed the atrocities heaped upon blacks and did nothing, the children of those who allowed the word nigger to whet their lips regularly and might be on the lips of their offspring now. These very same people now aspire to be hip-hop. They've built an entire nation and culture that has punished black people for being black, but now they want to sing, dance, walk, talk, and act just like us.
Hypothetically speaking if it were possible for outsiders to "practice" hip-hop, what would that look like?
First, they would have to honor, respect, and learn about the people and the culture that produced the art. This has never happened in American or Western society and most likely never will. Without the honor, respect, and true understanding, these outsiders feel they can just take what they want from our cultural experience. They do not value us or our culture when it is in our hands. They only place value on it when it is in their hands.
Second, they would have to study the tradition to be a practitioner of it. That study would have to take place at the hands of a master of the tradition. Like Bennett Jr. pointed out, “Art, in short, was not for art's sake, but for life's sake.” If you understand that, then it is obligatory for you to create from a space of honoring life. Our art is not an economic opportunity. They will never understand this, and this is why their presence will only serve to corrupt what was once pure and good.
Third, they would only be able to practice it upon approval from a master of the tradition.
Fourth, if and when an outsider practices, they would always have to pay homage and honor the people who taught them the art form, and be held accountable for how they use the art form by the community.
Those are basic requirements for anyone who seeks to enter the sacred space of black culture and benefit from the hip-hop we've created for ourselves. If this were to happen, then possibly outsiders could practice the tradition, but two key elements are missing from the present context that make it virtually impossible for this to ever occur. White supremacy and white privilege prevent any real equality between cultures and respect for black people and culture. Without equality and true respect for black people and culture, the taking/appropriation becomes theft, especially when the dominant culture uses their power and privilege to insult the native architects of the traditions in order to elevate their fraudulent claim to their misuse of it.
At times, this commonly results in outsiders who have stolen hip-hop from its rightful owners using hip-hop style, language, and culture to insult black people. The insults are done intentionally and unintentionally, but the effect is the same. Furthermore, these people who profit off of black culture often do nothing to support black people in their fight for freedom, justice, and equality in society, which are key ingredients in the recipe that culminated in producing hip-hop. Folks want to talk, dress, walk, rap, dance, and act like black folks but are invisible when we say Black Lives Matter. All that black culture they stole gets tucked away quickly when we talk about police killing black folks in the streets. All that hip-hop spirit they display vanishes when we talk about how the prison industrial complex keeps locking up black men and women, and how the school-to-prison pipeline harvests more black souls daily to satisfy its hunger.
The theft and looting has been going on so long that some black folks actually believe it is okay that the cultural traditions made by our ancestors and passed down to us are now being carried by those our ancestors created it to protect us from. When outsiders attempt our sacred tradition, it hangs off them like an oversized suit. The garment does not sit right on their bodies and flops around all over their flesh. Still they attempt to wear it, even though it will never fit them correctly. Black folks do themselves a disservice when they accept the constant theft of their culture and acquiesce to say it belongs to all. The fact that something happens constantly doesn't make it right. Just because they have stolen from our culture nonstop and then turned around and said they didn't steal it because it's for everybody, does not make them right. They are thieves looking for "justifications" for their devilish actions. I call it how I see it, and I see that we are a proud black people surrounded by a band of hungry ungrateful thieves who attempt to sustain themselves on sucking the blood and marrow from the soul of our culture.
To illustrate the point more clearly, I'll highlight a few cultural artifacts from other peoples who have either been culturally appropriated or been able to keep it at bay. If a person were attempting to learn a martial art, they would have to learn it within the context of the culture that created it. A martial discipline can be from China, Japan, Indonesia, West Africa, Brazil, or the United States. The art will be learned in a way that preserves the integrity and respect for the founders, history, and culture responsible for its development. Forms are learned in the language of the art. Teachers are oftentimes referred to by titles that originate from the native language of the art. In order to practice, you have to learn from the hands of someone who is a certified teacher of the art, who comes from a clear lineage of learning that goes back to the source of the art.
Divorce martial arts from its historical context and you have the new sports phenomenon of mixed martial arts (MMA). There are those in the MMA world who come from a strong background well-rooted in a historical tradition, and there are others who simply want to learn how to kick, punch, and grapple to become famous and win money. That violates almost every core principle in any traditional system of martial arts. MMA keeps making money, and people drift further and further away from the historical roots and purpose of these fighting systems.
Another example is the gross appropriation of yoga, which has become a fad in Western society over the past few years. There are many people who have no idea that yoga originated from what is known as Hinduism. There are multiple types of yogas, but the one that has gained a monopoly in the west is hatha yoga, or what is translated from Sanskrit as force yoga. Hatha yoga is an old spiritual practice, but it is not even considered a mainstream practice in India, the home of Hinduism and yoga. The most common type of yoga is bhakti yoga, and it has nothing to do with stretching and flexibility. However, all the yogic practices originate from historical spiritual traditions of the Indian people. Westerners have cherry-picked what they've felt is important from an entire tradition, which demonstrates a high level of cultural arrogance. The idea that you can simply mute and then eliminate the historical, social, political, religious, and economic context and the people who produced the cultural artifact that you now covet because you only want the stretching part is highly offensive.
They've eliminated almost 2,500 years of history all to fill small yoga studios with white women in yoga pants for a cardio workout. There is no connection to the deeper spiritual and religious truths that hatha yoga or any of the yogas were created for. They've thrown out everything that they deemed of no value, including the people, and this is why I consider it theft. Are these yoga folks at all concerned about the well-being of people in India, the land that gave them their new fitness revolution? For the most part they don't know and don't care. They simply put on a fresh pair of yoga pants, roll out a fresh new yoga mat, and try to perfect their downward dog, completely oblivious to everything else because their privilege allows them to do so. It is wrong for white society to do this to the Indian people and their sacred traditions, just like it would be wrong for it to be done to any martial art, and it is certainly wrong for white folks and other outsiders to do it to black culture, specifically hip-hop. It's theft!
There are those who will think me crazy for saying all of this. Other will agree, I know my opinion represents a minority (no pun intended), but it has to be said. Some may call me a hypocrite because one of my music partners in the production of my music is white. The homie onBEATS is a white dude for real. There is no denyi
ng that fact. On our latest Tyson onBEATS album Tradition I wrote:
“Just being honest in these sonnets
Some folks be asking how onBEATS responding
because some of these bars are so black
man, it's like they're dipped in onyx
he provides the sonics, I provide the phonics and …”
After recording that verse for the song we were working on, onBEATS wanted to know if folks really asked that question. I told him, yeah, folks often wonder how you feel about me being all black radical on your production. He told me when he was growing up and listening to hip-hop, it was always about black liberation. So when he started producing music, his only point of reference for how the music should be utilized was for the purpose of forwarding the black agenda for black liberation. In his creative heart and mind hip-hop and black liberation were inseparable, and if he was going to create music, it would respect that history and forward that purpose. This is part of the reason why we're a team. He's a John Brown on a beat machine. His example is very different from other white artists and outsiders who loot hip-hop and sell it to white/outsider audiences and have no connection to black people or the black struggle. They bastardize black music for their own personal gain, which is usually fortune and fame in the white world.
