The Voice of The Streets

In June of 2012 rapper Ice-T directed and produced
this documentary that featured numerous rap legends. 

The credits are rolling and I'm sittin here bobbin my head to Rakim's classic "Microphone Fiend." Of all the songs that could lace the credits of a documentary about rap music, this one is perfect. The beat has that smooth guitar riff and the bass line is bangin at the same time, but what's most recognizable is Rakim's rhythmic and melodic, yet powerful and bodacious flow. The beat is a classic, but his voice is iconic. The film is Ice-T's recent Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap.

As I watched and listened to the film, I couldn't help but be re-captivated by these guys that I once heralded as my heroes. I listened to the beats that I grew up hearing and recited the lyrics I was raised up repeating. I watched them talk of their favorite rap acts and rap lines and recite freestyles and old songs.  They talked about everything surrounding hip hop culture, but mainly the...Art of Rap...rhyming, writing lyrics, structuring songs, rhyme schemes, subject matter, artistic influences, and everything else that has to do with the skill that it takes to pick up a pen and a pad write some words down and then stand in front of mic and try to impress the crowd.  It's nothing I never heard before...not for real, but some of the details reminded me how gifted rappers actually are.

These guys are ghetto poets. Homegrown in the grimiest conditions, forged in the fires of life's harshest cruelties, and then having their artistic skin thickened and fortified by the fiercest competitors; all fighting for the same stage with limited limelight. Don't get it twisted, rappers are artists. Some of them so brilliant, you and I simpletons have a hard time understanding them. And most people are just too stuck up to believe that despite the fact their clothes are baggy and they talk with a slang that they have something meaningful and powerful to say.

It's sad and significant, but from Primo to Jay-Z, they all seem to agree the key to hip hop is understanding the language. And if you don't understand the language you're gonna be frustrated and lost. It's kinda like standing in the chinese restaurant and swearing that they're talking about you. Most people don't like it, simply because they don't understand what the emcee is saying. Sad but true. You're lost. Your loss. Hip-hoppers gain, because what hip-hoppers hear is...a voice.

And that's the theme that kept jumping out at me throughout the film. Rappers work hard to develop their voice. What separates them from the cacophony of competitive noise around them? What do they bring that is fresh and authentic? What do they do that no one else has done? What do they have to say that has not already been said? Is anybody listening? Is this thing on?

That's where rap gets real because before "The Message," "White Lines," "Fight the Power," "Straight Outta Compton," and so many others, no one was listening to us. They tried to exploit us and confine us to the cages of concrete housing projects and silence us with the sanctions of institutional oppressive systems. But rap music started rebelliously blasting on the airwaves, and before long the world could see how much beauty was being locked away in those concrete cages. The world could feel the pathos of the beat. Then the world began to hear the powerful poetry and the ethos of the urban streets and ghettos.

That's why I love rappers. They represent some of the best of what Cornel West (in his book Democracy Matters) calls the tragiocomic--the ability to take something terrible and make something beautiful with it. They took the harsh reality and depravity of the ghetto and made music with it. They made Something from Nothing and that something beautiful is (at least in part) The Art of Rap.