Speaker 1: Yo yo, check check you're listening waiting our reparations the
Speaker 1: production of I hear rating microphone check, want to want
Speaker 1: to where's my snare? We go into the next episode.
Speaker 1: Now I gotta go and just give you our special flow. Oh,
Speaker 1: better each vitamins and vegetables, because we're about to go
Speaker 1: and make you shrivel like a decimal. Oh it's the
Speaker 1: dope knife sitting with the Lingua franca. We got a
Speaker 1: bunch of dope styles and we gotta thank you for
Speaker 1: tuning into you know, we gotta give it every time
Speaker 1: that were wrapping the Dishan is just so exquisite. It's
Speaker 1: sitting on your dinner plate. Never ever been afraid, never
Speaker 1: sitting with them, whadcast because they've been a flake, has
Speaker 1: been a fake, sitting right there when we break them.
Speaker 1: We're about to just grab that fucking rocking. We shake up,
Speaker 1: grabbing that rocking and we shake up. We're about to
Speaker 1: do it like we were coming out of Jamaica. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get the corn like us. And you see real
Speaker 1: if you want to get in this ship, you know,
Speaker 1: but we Sitiou is doing it imperious. Then we got
Speaker 1: to stop. Pio Let me were us station. Everybody know.
Speaker 1: We up in the studio waiting no preparations, linka franca
Speaker 1: dope knife, and we're about to break up in the
Speaker 1: a M and lace my boots. Add enough sleep, figure,
Speaker 1: it's too late to snooze. I came to move self made.
Speaker 1: I paid my dudes. Love to win, not as much
Speaker 1: as I hate to lose. Dudes laps. I could be
Speaker 1: the unadmission to defeat them. When you on top, they
Speaker 1: want the position that you be in. Don't worry about
Speaker 1: the past, because that's in the different season. They say
Speaker 1: we are the best. If you listen to him speaking,
Speaker 1: that be the quest. I mean to be the best.
Speaker 1: The day I see the bench, that's the day I
Speaker 1: see a rap hey hey, waiting a reparation, talking about
Speaker 1: how the rap music is political. When you got these
Speaker 1: cities fold, when you got these prisons full, when it's
Speaker 1: looking pitiful all over the city's fool. Everybody knows you
Speaker 1: gotta get in. It's been a rimes, but not alright.
Speaker 1: This is dope night. We are waiting on parations, all right.
Speaker 1: So we have a lot to cover today. So we're
Speaker 1: just going to get into it. And this week we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about the question what is political hip hop?
Speaker 1: Doubles Does hip hop have to have overtly political statements
Speaker 1: in the sense that we would think about it right
Speaker 1: left Republican Democrat arguing up for a particular political party
Speaker 1: or political leaning in order for it to be considered
Speaker 1: political hip hop. And that is a question, because if
Speaker 1: that's not the case, then there's lots of hip hop
Speaker 1: that's out there that has existed that you could put
Speaker 1: under the banner of having a sort of political leaning
Speaker 1: or giving you some sort of political insight. And I mean,
Speaker 1: what I would argue is that, like when you look
Speaker 1: at the history of where hip hop came from and
Speaker 1: like what forces or lack of force that kind of
Speaker 1: gave its space to exist. You know, we talk about
Speaker 1: the decline or like the withdrawal of the civil rights
Speaker 1: movements and the black power movements during the nineteen um seventies.
Speaker 1: It kind of created the civic vacuum in inner cities
Speaker 1: that like had to be filled by something, and there's
Speaker 1: all this this unrest because you know, unemployment rates going up,
Speaker 1: affordable housing vanishing programs cut, all sorts of welfare programs
Speaker 1: cut under Reagan and Nixon, there was this need for
Speaker 1: people to reclaim their space in a way much like
Speaker 1: people were taking the streets previously with like protests, um
Speaker 1: civil disobedience of other kinds. People were kind of organizing
Speaker 1: themselves around this new form of civil disobedience is like
Speaker 1: claiming their blocked back by having these block parties, by
Speaker 1: having these dance battles, by taking to the streets, and
Speaker 1: like stealing power from the power grids to you know,
Speaker 1: power their they're like sound machines that they were building
Speaker 1: at home, like poor economic and social conditions that you're
Speaker 1: into being a positive exactly, Yeah, which I would say
Speaker 1: is inherently political, whether or not you know, I'm down
Speaker 1: street the basketball court. It's like specifically like a political statement.
Speaker 1: What the act of organizing in that way is always
Speaker 1: political to me. Gee, It's almost as if hip hop's
Speaker 1: birth was a reaction to funk up right wing policy.
Speaker 1: Weird Yeah, yeah, from the gym. So, I mean I
Speaker 1: want to go ahead and say that, like we could
Speaker 1: very easily start in Africa. We can start in the Caribbean,
Speaker 1: and we can talk about the way that the ds
Speaker 1: Bora and like black folks come around the globe influence
Speaker 1: hip hop and like in a way that predates what
Speaker 1: are common understanding is. In terms of the genesis of
Speaker 1: hip hop. A lot of people think of New York
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, and I definitely think it's worth
Speaker 1: getting into and we will absolutely get into that in
Speaker 1: the future episode. But to start out where people might,
Speaker 1: you know, base their common understanding of the birth of
Speaker 1: hip hop, I wanted to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, particularly the way that like hip hop
Speaker 1: was born into this power vacuum that was left by
Speaker 1: the civil rights and black power movements. UM. Previously, people
Speaker 1: had been gathering in the streets to agitate full civil rights,
Speaker 1: to agitate for voting rights, agitate for equal education, for
Speaker 1: adgocate for jobs, all of these things, and um, as
Speaker 1: those moments began to recede, something needed to feel its play,
Speaker 1: Something needed to take over that same sort of space,
Speaker 1: both physically in the streets of these cities and also
Speaker 1: in the imagination of the young folks that were maybe
Speaker 1: too young to take part of those movements but saw
Speaker 1: mass organization perhaps is like a way for them to
Speaker 1: take control of their the conditions of their lives, and
Speaker 1: so rather than marching, you know and picketing in the
Speaker 1: streets for equal rights and things like that, people started
Speaker 1: to organize themselves around hip hop, and so hip hop
Speaker 1: in the sense became like the new Civics. It was
Speaker 1: inherently political for folks to take to the street for
Speaker 1: these block parties in the ways that previous generations has
Speaker 1: taken to the streets and the struggle for civil rights,
Speaker 1: um literally like stealing power off of the grid to
Speaker 1: power their you know, home built sund systems. So they
Speaker 1: were deejaying on in the middle of the street. Like
Speaker 1: it was a new kind of community organizing in a
Speaker 1: certain sense. And I think acknowledging that, uh, those roots
Speaker 1: the way that like the tides of the civil rights
Speaker 1: and black hard move was receded and the new tides
Speaker 1: of the hip hop hip hop culture kind of hit
Speaker 1: the shores of New York and eventually, you know, America
Speaker 1: is like where political hip hop in its political faces
Speaker 1: like has its genesis. Do you think from a cultural
Speaker 1: standpoint that some of those skills and organizing we're just
Speaker 1: kind of naturally picked up. I mean I think yeah,
Speaker 1: like the black radical tradition I think was in was
Speaker 1: alive in this to a certain extent, even if he
Speaker 1: wasn't telling people could consciously aware of the stuff that
Speaker 1: they learned from their aunties and their fucking cousins and
Speaker 1: their uncles and their pastors in terms of like these
Speaker 1: orc these oratory styles and these ways of dealing of
Speaker 1: like you know, using verbal um illusion and rhyme and
Speaker 1: the circumlocutions as a way to like argue for your
Speaker 1: place in the world. Those things have been long standing,
Speaker 1: and like the black rattical tradition, the black like oral tradition,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, I think they were alive in hip
Speaker 1: hop in this time too, well, like in in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three in the Bronx, like DJ cool Hirk through
Speaker 1: what many believe to be the first ever official hip
Speaker 1: hop party, where they're like utilizing all the things that
Speaker 1: you were saying, um. And you know, ever since then,
Speaker 1: you know, you do, some fast forwarding hip hops will
Speaker 1: come like a global phenomenon and now dominates the charts.
Speaker 1: It is the music, yeah, it's pretty much default music,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And so you know, nineteen seventies, people
Speaker 1: are trying to find a new way to organize their communities,
Speaker 1: and like argue for their self worth and then find
Speaker 1: a place for themselves in the world that is increasingly
Speaker 1: against them. Um So the nineteen eighties in area at
Speaker 1: like the beginning of the Reagan era, so like to
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, into the nineteen seventies, the federal government
Speaker 1: have been giving out hundreds of millions of dollars to
Speaker 1: cities to urban Renewal acts to provide alliance downtowns. By
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteen seventies, federal funding for these
Speaker 1: programs begin to dry up, leaving many social services and
Speaker 1: programs in these cities fucking belly up. They were vital
Speaker 1: at one point to the redevelopment of inner city neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: but then they were scrambling to find new funding or
Speaker 1: substantially cutting back services. So many government programs saw almost
Speaker 1: their entire budget taken away under the Reagan administration, forcing
Speaker 1: many agencies to shut down. So where they were once
Speaker 1: providing services like job skills training for unemployed city youth,
Speaker 1: our college loans for struggling working class, film is care
Speaker 1: assistants for single parent homes, they're funding all just got
Speaker 1: fucking yanked, all fucking yank and leave and just left folks.
Speaker 1: Fuck fuck folks, Broyly fucked man didn't that didn't like
Speaker 1: So that like cut back on like after school program
Speaker 1: music programs where they get their art and culture from.
Speaker 1: Now exactly what I mean, Well, that's the whole spirit
Speaker 1: of the ship is like, if you ain't gonna give
Speaker 1: it to us, then we're gonna take it. You're to
Speaker 1: take it on our own. So it's like if if
Speaker 1: kids can't if kids can't take piano lessons or take
Speaker 1: guitar lessons or violin lessons, then they're gonna learn how
Speaker 1: to make their own music on turntable scratching and sampling
Speaker 1: and cutting and things like that. So, I mean eighties
Speaker 1: fucking poverty. Raid for minorities grew every single year in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, and many cities faced record levels of crimes.
Speaker 1: Gangs began to flourish. I mean this, and this also
Speaker 1: was a way of re organizing our community as the
Speaker 1: new civics in the sense of like what who are
Speaker 1: your affiliations and how are you getting by? Who can
Speaker 1: you rely upon? So gangs taking providence and taking over neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: um New York. They were like, there's so many Burrows
Speaker 1: played with youth gangs, including the South Bronx where Africa
Speaker 1: Otta was actually the gang leader of the Black Space
Speaker 1: Gang and the Bronx River Projects, and he decided to
Speaker 1: use his leadership for something positive after taking a trip
Speaker 1: to Africa. So by some port, we gotta talked about
Speaker 1: Africa at some point it's podcast, Yeah for sure, sure, Um,
Speaker 1: you know I want to talk about Africa with my
Speaker 1: African ask um just for some context for the people
Speaker 1: who don't speak rap Africa. Bambada's DJ and producer and
Speaker 1: like I guess you could say, community organizer, the head
Speaker 1: of the Zoo Nation. He's very much considered one of
Speaker 1: the key early influencers of hip hop, and in recent
Speaker 1: years there's been allegations level that's a whole another episode
Speaker 1: right now, we're just talking history, my bad gone. But Um,
Speaker 1: instead of having rival gangs battled each other through violence,
Speaker 1: like actually sucking each other up, uh, he organized parties
Speaker 1: where rival gangs battled each other through b boying, deejaying
Speaker 1: and him sing yeah that it was like on some
Speaker 1: real West Side story type when reject all the way,
Speaker 1: beat it, Oh my god, beat it. Yeah. The aesthetics
Speaker 1: that they're trying to capture and that yeah, um yeah,
Speaker 1: And so that's kind of how hip hop was born,
Speaker 1: a truncated version of its history. Trust me, we're going
Speaker 1: to get into a lot more specific of like years
Speaker 1: of specific people, of specific subgenres, specific policy issues that
Speaker 1: were really prevalent at these times in upcoming up set
Speaker 1: of the podcast. You know, hip hop had always had
Speaker 1: like a since its inception as far as the rap
Speaker 1: element of hip hop. You know, we've got to be
Speaker 1: clear because it feels so weird having to retell this.
Speaker 1: But you know, I do imagine that there's probably like
Speaker 1: a whole like swath of people who may or may
Speaker 1: not know stuff like this. But okay, so hip hop
Speaker 1: is comprised generally four different I guess we have to
Speaker 1: I mean, hey, you never know, some people don't know this.
Speaker 1: So like, of those of those four elements of hip hop,
Speaker 1: and even that number four is debatable, But of those
Speaker 1: four elements, you've got break dancing, you've got graffiti, you've
Speaker 1: got deejaying, then you've got the m C. Now, when
Speaker 1: I was coming up, I learned that, you know, there
Speaker 1: was there was like a debatable element of is BeBox
Speaker 1: and the element or his knowledge of self and element exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, so I would just go ahead and tack
Speaker 1: both of those on. And they say that there's the
Speaker 1: six of them that would just be me personally. But generally,
Speaker 1: you know, the the m seeing and the rapping is
Speaker 1: just one aspect of hip hop yea. And in that aspect,
Speaker 1: since that aspect, you know, came to dominate the art,
Speaker 1: the culture, and you know, it was the the most
Speaker 1: visible part of the culture that people saw that could
Speaker 1: be commodified. Um MC has always been dropping lines of
Speaker 1: the socially conscious rhymes or socially conscious bars and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, but it really wasn't two is the message
Speaker 1: by um Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. It was
Speaker 1: the first like really successful socially conscious or you know,
Speaker 1: socially messaged hip hop song. Don't care, I can't take
Speaker 1: you can't take the noise, got no money to move on?
Speaker 1: I guess I got no choice threats in that kind
Speaker 1: of open everybody's eyes really as to what potential hip
Speaker 1: hop could have with like having direct messaging up until that,
Speaker 1: you know, prominently, you know, when you think of hip
Speaker 1: hop at that time, when people think of hip hop,
Speaker 1: when it first started. You know, you might think of
Speaker 1: like the Sugar Hill Gang, you know, like hip hop
Speaker 1: hip hip to the hip hip hop and you dump
Speaker 1: shot the rhythm and in Curtis Blow you know all that,
Speaker 1: you know, all that party stuff, you know, like one
Speaker 1: thing and there's and that definitely was the case, and
Speaker 1: that never stopped obviously, but once the message came out
Speaker 1: had started like oh you can do that, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can do that, you know like broken glass everywhere, like
Speaker 1: I think there's even there's like a legendary artist. Carreras
Speaker 1: One once said he was talking about Melli Mell like
Speaker 1: lyrics in the song. He was like he lives somewhere,
Speaker 1: and where he lived he described, and what was where
Speaker 1: I lived? And that was the connection. So it was
Speaker 1: like something that was so visceral where he was describing,
Speaker 1: you know that urban decay, young black city, you know,
Speaker 1: urban paranoia. He was describing that, and it like influenced
Speaker 1: MCS for just the rest of the the time. And I
Speaker 1: think it speaks to like how pivotal is for a
Speaker 1: marginalized populist to like season narrative for themselves and start
Speaker 1: telling their own story because like so many people want
Speaker 1: to tell people tell us like what our lives are,
Speaker 1: like how we got here, what we deserve, and so
Speaker 1: for us to like factually report all the conditions we're experiencing,
Speaker 1: like it has such residence and are had such residents
Speaker 1: at this time and still does a lot of hip
Speaker 1: hop listeners. But like yo, I feel that, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I live where you live, Like I I know what
Speaker 1: you know, like I've been there and and but not
Speaker 1: just on a person to personal levels, Like that's the
Speaker 1: political power of hip hop of like telling our own
Speaker 1: story in a world where people want to tell our
Speaker 1: story for us. And it's like if we're looking at
Speaker 1: politics in terms of like wielding power, that is like
Speaker 1: a pretty powerful act. I think that's like something that
Speaker 1: is even kind of like inherent in hip hop music
Speaker 1: is like being able to put forth like a message
Speaker 1: that people can potentially identify, you know with like on
Speaker 1: a personal level. And you know, some people can like
Speaker 1: wield that to a political end, I think, and some
Speaker 1: people cannot choose not to, but it's like just as
Speaker 1: a tool to get those messages out. I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, when people do decide to use hip hop
Speaker 1: to like get out political messages, I feel like because
Speaker 1: of the power of hip hop and makes it just
Speaker 1: that much more potent to get like a message out totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. I mean, like the the rhythmicity
Speaker 1: of it. I made the word up, but I needed
Speaker 1: to should call and response, you know, the cadences, like
Speaker 1: the upfrontness of the language. All these things like are
Speaker 1: like they make for a powerful oratory. They make for
Speaker 1: powerful oratory, so like you know, and powerful orators orators. Indeed,
Speaker 1: so it's older heads. We tend to have a lot
Speaker 1: of nostalgia about the hip hop that was. We go
Speaker 1: back and we talk about the message in nine two,
Speaker 1: we talk about the birthplace of hip hop and like
Speaker 1: its reaction as like a movement against depression in this
Speaker 1: like Reagan era where everything fucking sucks, right, And I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's really typical among um, the older generation
Speaker 1: of hip hop came up with it, you know, more
Speaker 1: so than the folks say, you can't imagine a world
Speaker 1: without it. Um. And a lot of my research as
Speaker 1: a like a hip hop scholar and educationist and educationist,
Speaker 1: you see times where like these people who want to
Speaker 1: use hip hop in the classroom will bring in older
Speaker 1: hip hop or like progressive hip hop to the kids.
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, I'm gonna use this to teach, and
Speaker 1: the kids don't give a fuck because it's not really
Speaker 1: reflecting the trends of music right now. And so, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that kind of thinking, this nostalgizing of the
Speaker 1: music is just like really typical of of of a
Speaker 1: certain age of listener. We think of the place where
Speaker 1: hip hop started off as defining essentially what hip hop
Speaker 1: is in in in blindness, with blindness towards what it
Speaker 1: has the potential to become, which is not you know,
Speaker 1: not aligned with a movement of resistance and the progressive,
Speaker 1: in a progressive what you can resist without being if
Speaker 1: you can burn it all down without having a vision
Speaker 1: for what you wanted to be exact. Yeah, Well, why
Speaker 1: do you associate hip hop and politics? Well, I mean
Speaker 1: because for me, like if if you know, hip hop
Speaker 1: gets a lot of credit a lot of times for
Speaker 1: being blunt and honest and open and like a true
Speaker 1: um manifestation of people's like actual thoughts. If politics affect
Speaker 1: us in our everyday life all the time, then it
Speaker 1: just makes sense to me that it doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: type of rap song that you're listening to. I take
Speaker 1: hip hop. I take politics, politics and hip hop as
Speaker 1: pretty much being anything that gives you insight into what
Speaker 1: somebody really thinks and what the artists or the rapper
Speaker 1: really thinks, because at the end of the day, that's
Speaker 1: that's politics. I hate to do this, but to quote
Speaker 1: Marco Rubio, Yeah, so Margot Rubio um in a crowded
Speaker 1: bar on Capitol Hill at the inaugural BuzzFeed Bruise event,
Speaker 1: told a crowd that in some ways, rappers are like reporters.
Speaker 1: Do you like gang wars, racial tension? And they were
Speaker 1: reporting on that, you know, Margot fucking Ruby, don't give
Speaker 1: me that face. Yeah, yeah, So the reporting on the
Speaker 1: material conditions, the live realities of folks that are like
Speaker 1: living on the ground, which are inevitably shaped by political forces.
Speaker 1: And so I think that to create, to like speak,
Speaker 1: a narrative that is born from that place is inherently
Speaker 1: a political act because like, there's so many other people
Speaker 1: who want to tell us how we're living. There's so
Speaker 1: many other people who want to tell us what our
Speaker 1: lives are like and um conjecture about how we got
Speaker 1: this way. But when we actually speak up for ourselves
Speaker 1: and be like, yo, this is what act is actually happening,
Speaker 1: Like that is a political act to sort of like steal,
Speaker 1: like rest the narrative back from people that want to
Speaker 1: to paint a picture that does not serve art needs
Speaker 1: or interests. I somewhat agree, but I somewhat think that
Speaker 1: that's a generous assessment. A lot of things we have
Speaker 1: to be honest in like saying that, like a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff, I don't think cats are thinking about
Speaker 1: it that deep, and I don't think it's meant to
Speaker 1: be taken like that deep, Like it's an inherently political
Speaker 1: thing just because I exist there, just because I exist
Speaker 1: in this space. I mean, at least at least not
Speaker 1: if that's not your intention at all, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So I have an aversion to that. But
Speaker 1: you bring it in, people bring into it. But but
Speaker 1: you you bringing up the Marco Rubio quote though, just
Speaker 1: kind of opens up like do you think that Marco
Speaker 1: Rubio cares about yeah, or hip hop or hip hop culture? No? No, no, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean this is like pretty much what I was
Speaker 1: saying last week with the Donald Trump ship, Like it
Speaker 1: makes me feel some kind of way that thirty years
Speaker 1: ago there was a teenager who was listening to all
Speaker 1: the even the dope stuff that I would consider. There
Speaker 1: was a teenager somewhere who was listening to Wu tang
Speaker 1: in In n w a in in in Tupac and
Speaker 1: Public Enemy and all that ship, and he grew up
Speaker 1: to be Marco fucking Rubio. I mean, I will say that, like,
Speaker 1: as someone that studies a pop there is a tendency
Speaker 1: for folks who want to like progressive e its like
Speaker 1: a lot of it's um talking about like the egalitarian
Speaker 1: nature of a cipher where anybody could step in and
Speaker 1: have their turn, and like it's very democratic, and it's
Speaker 1: very like flattened hierarchy, and like it's very participatory and
Speaker 1: all this stuff, and like the way that you know,
Speaker 1: like I've been talking about, like it's this way for
Speaker 1: us to see the narrative and speak our own truths
Speaker 1: rather than have Fox News to tell report I'm happening
Speaker 1: in our communities. Yeah for sure. But I mean it's
Speaker 1: just like, even especially now, I like to be very
Speaker 1: very careful with just lumping everything in together, you know,
Speaker 1: with everything going on now, I think people have a
Speaker 1: tendency to think that being black in of itself is
Speaker 1: a progressive political stance. I mean, you gotta understand black
Speaker 1: people historically vote for Democrats because the Republican party platform
Speaker 1: has more or less been Yeah, we know slavery is bad,
Speaker 1: but so it's just I think it's important that people
Speaker 1: know that racism being a factor is a huge unifying
Speaker 1: force amongst black people. Without it, without like naked open
Speaker 1: racism in the American right, I think you would have
Speaker 1: a lot more Black people that would be comfortably conservative
Speaker 1: or comfortably Republican or comfortably right leaning, and it would
Speaker 1: be reflected in the music. I mean, Ship, the current
Speaker 1: rap caricature is value money above everything else, hate gays,
Speaker 1: treat women like Ship, love guns, and advocate the killing
Speaker 1: of black men. If those aren't right wing Republican values,
Speaker 1: it is things like, Yeah, I think it's really important
Speaker 1: when you're bringing up that it is very complex, that
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily it's not necessarily stories of revolution and
Speaker 1: like coming together. I mean, there's plenty of that, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about some examples of that perhaps later on,
Speaker 1: but it is also it's complex because they are pretty
Speaker 1: much like right wing talking points. There's there's like emerging
Speaker 1: to a degree. Yeah, obviously nobody wants every pop star
Speaker 1: to be trying to like save the world or anything
Speaker 1: like that. But it's just one of those things where
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, you get a bit older and
Speaker 1: you start thinking about it and how it affects people.
Speaker 1: Like I remember when Drake was first coming out, he
Speaker 1: had a track I forget what the name of the
Speaker 1: track is, but it had like a line in it
Speaker 1: that was like, all I care about his money in
Speaker 1: the city that I'm from. It's so even now, it's
Speaker 1: like I just got it stuck him. I don't even
Speaker 1: know the name of the songs. I do care about
Speaker 1: his money, even the city then I'm from. And it's like, damn,
Speaker 1: that's dope. But then you just like think about it deeper.
Speaker 1: You're like, damn, man, maybe should care about more about that.
Speaker 1: There was there was like a twelve year old in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine just repeating that over and over again.
Speaker 1: I know, you could talk to a bunch of people
Speaker 1: who could argue that that's a completely justified worldview and
Speaker 1: way of looking at the world. I wouldn't consider that
Speaker 1: to be a progressive, all right. If it's a justified worldview,
Speaker 1: then what justifies him? Because there are always factors at
Speaker 1: play systemically that have shaped like why why should you
Speaker 1: just give a shit about just the city where you're
Speaker 1: from and getting money? Like what is what it's given
Speaker 1: rise to like that need and that those motivations because
Speaker 1: it's never just like you get born singing, you never
Speaker 1: get born singing. I all can't about as money as
Speaker 1: it's anywhere I'm from, Like you don't like no baby
Speaker 1: comes out the womb crying that. It's it's based on
Speaker 1: the factors that have shaped their life and they're you know,
Speaker 1: often politically motivated policy Germany. I mean, yeah, has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the intention behind a song. I will
Speaker 1: give you that, like we gotta like really like we
Speaker 1: got we can't like pay rose color. I just we
Speaker 1: can't like rosify gloss over everything and be like every
Speaker 1: all hip hop is political. Yeah, I probably think that
Speaker 1: intent matters more than most people of like ILK, But
Speaker 1: it's just like I don't know, you you things that
Speaker 1: are like coincidental and stuff like that, Okay, cool, like
Speaker 1: give them credit where credits? Do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: But to like ascribe a bunch of high concept you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Ideas to something when that's like
Speaker 1: just completely not the intention I think does a disservice
Speaker 1: to people who do do it and to the general
Speaker 1: argument if you're of the if you're of the mindset
Speaker 1: of like yeo, that sort of thing is lacking, then
Speaker 1: it doesn't help that at all either, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. It doesn't help that if somebody does a
Speaker 1: video where there are people marching but the song is
Speaker 1: not about that at all, Like it'll get covered in
Speaker 1: every publication. It is like, oh, such and such, just
Speaker 1: drop the new political video. Didn't you see the people
Speaker 1: were marching and yeah exactly. It's like like like I
Speaker 1: don't the whole concept of like faking the funk and
Speaker 1: like being on some fake like like being on some
Speaker 1: fake ship isn't just relegated to like street life and
Speaker 1: like oh, you said you did this, but you didn't
Speaker 1: really be that. But I don't understand why that doesn't
Speaker 1: apply to even aspects of politics that we're talking. I'm
Speaker 1: interested in the aspect of people faking activism, yeah you know,
Speaker 1: or or like uh, using activism as part of the
Speaker 1: overall like rap gimmick or rap hustle. Well, I fear
Speaker 1: that like artists don't know what real activism looks like.
Speaker 1: It's like co signing, like let's think to back to
Speaker 1: like Beyonce and jay Z, like pledging solidarity of the
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter movement, which has a pretty it's hard
Speaker 1: leftist platform if you really get down into like the
Speaker 1: planks in that platform, and um, I think they espouse
Speaker 1: values that would be contrary to the way that the
Speaker 1: Carters have built their economic empire, you know, like I
Speaker 1: don't think Black Lives Matter is for the proliferation of
Speaker 1: black billionaires, and so like there's co signing movements in
Speaker 1: a way that I guess it's helpful and drawing attention
Speaker 1: to them so that more people look into what those
Speaker 1: folks are doing on the ground to make the world better,
Speaker 1: but without any sort of true material contribution or or
Speaker 1: ideological contribution to the work that they are doing, and
Speaker 1: in fact working counter to those values in every other
Speaker 1: aspect of her life except coming out and saying like
Speaker 1: Trayvon Martin hadn't have been killed or like you know,
Speaker 1: and then that's and that's it. We're going going by
Speaker 1: the thing with like values if today in this day
Speaker 1: and age, where the thing that's countercultural, I don't want
Speaker 1: to say just straight up being a socialist. You know,
Speaker 1: people are starting to be at that point where they're
Speaker 1: starting to re examine whether or not this like capitalist
Speaker 1: experiment or like this die hard extreme capitalist like capitalism. Yes,
Speaker 1: put it in my veins. I need it. Like people
Speaker 1: are starting to reassess whether or not that's the way
Speaker 1: to go, especially now, I've fun since COVID, White, Black, purple, whatever.
Speaker 1: I have seen more socialist niggas pop out of the
Speaker 1: woodwork since COVID than at any point in my life.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that that's where hip hop needs
Speaker 1: to be. It doesn't really seem like that's where hip
Speaker 1: hop is, you know what I'm saying anywhere close Even
Speaker 1: the best examples of it is that something that well,
Speaker 1: I think there's there's movement building, like getting people to
Speaker 1: take in the streets, take action, organize their communities. And
Speaker 1: then there's consciousness raising, which is a very important precursor
Speaker 1: to movement build. You can't build a movement if you're
Speaker 1: not aware of the circumstances you're currently in, right, And
Speaker 1: so songs like jay z Survival or or Vic Mensa's
Speaker 1: sixteen Shots like they might not talk about the world
Speaker 1: that we won. But at least they're raising people's awareness
Speaker 1: of the world that we have and generating the needed
Speaker 1: in righteous indignation about that world in order to like
Speaker 1: do something. Now, the problem comes into me when people
Speaker 1: think that that indignation, the fact that they're mad and
Speaker 1: their woke about it is enough, and it's not enough.
Speaker 1: And so it's like, okay, like I will accept if
Speaker 1: hip hop isn't like, you know, taking in the streets
Speaker 1: with like artillery shells strapped to their and like seizing
Speaker 1: you know, courtrooms and like straight up like all that ship.
Speaker 1: I'm cool if we're not there in the music, But um,
Speaker 1: I also want to be wary of music that makes
Speaker 1: a buck on sort of co opting revolutionary, like it's
Speaker 1: a costume whatever. And it's just like, you don't really
Speaker 1: mean that, I mean, I don't even to me, it
Speaker 1: doesn't even seem like cats are even getting in on
Speaker 1: that racket. You know, that's true. Something else you want
Speaker 1: that would be that would be a better problem than
Speaker 1: than what we have, you know what I'm saying. If
Speaker 1: people were trying to take advantage of or make a
Speaker 1: gimmick out of activism and that we're like the trend.
Speaker 1: I think that would be better than what it is.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I'm not even necessarily judging anybody's music,
Speaker 1: just more so of an attitude. I think that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of rappers who look at a j
Speaker 1: z in aspire to be that. And if culturally what
Speaker 1: is anti establishment is like, yo, fuck the billionaires. If
Speaker 1: hip hop is populated by a bunch of motherfucker's they
Speaker 1: want to be billionaires, then is it anti establishments? Little?
Speaker 1: I think that ultimately it's important to apply critical lens
Speaker 1: to all hip hop, regardless of the intention of the artists,
Speaker 1: because of the way it reports on black life. It
Speaker 1: can tell us interesting things about the way the policy
Speaker 1: is failing or point towards a future that could be different.
Speaker 1: And so like uh to to sort of lay this
Speaker 1: framework of politics on hip hop, regardless of where the
Speaker 1: artist is coming from themselves, is an important exercise and
Speaker 1: sort of like for me, a motivation behind like why
Speaker 1: are we doing this? Why are we talking about this
Speaker 1: at all? I can disdrop the microphone and walk out
Speaker 1: right now, except the fact I believe that we have
Speaker 1: to like do this exercise as a means of like
Speaker 1: figuring out Okay, what like what next? What has gone
Speaker 1: wrong and what's next for us? I agree. And then
Speaker 1: there's a lot of hip hop out there. I mean,
Speaker 1: like you know we said earlier, like dead Press you're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about like Saul Williams, or you know, even
Speaker 1: like run DMC and Curtis Blow had some hits that
Speaker 1: were likely. There's definitely songs out there that have a
Speaker 1: politically motivated message. And now to what degree it counts
Speaker 1: us politically hip hop? I think we'd somewhat different on
Speaker 1: because you think it has to have like I am
Speaker 1: arguing for reparations, its me. I'm like, if you're commenting
Speaker 1: on you know, just like statistics that of like the
Speaker 1: ways folks are affected by policy and not necessarily tilling
Speaker 1: people what to do about it, that's still valuable. I agree.
Speaker 1: I agree. Now, if if I had described what I
Speaker 1: thought in that way, that's not what I meant. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I would say that it's like
Speaker 1: I feel that I can tell when somebody is faking,
Speaker 1: when somebody's being real about politics but they're not trying
Speaker 1: to be political. It comes across more than just expressing
Speaker 1: how they feel about a particular topic. You know, what
Speaker 1: I'm saying when somebody is trying to pander, that's when
Speaker 1: it sounds like YadA YadA YadA, and kids don't do drugs,
Speaker 1: YadA YadA YadA, police beat black people. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean. It's like, Okay, yeah, that's that's a that's
Speaker 1: a that's an observation. Yes, like I hear you, might
Speaker 1: I hear you, my dude. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You gotta be coming with it a bit more correct
Speaker 1: and deeper than that at the no matter what style
Speaker 1: of rapping you do. Like you know what I was
Speaker 1: talking with my friend this morning, it's talking about the
Speaker 1: exact thing, right, if I were listening to like some
Speaker 1: booty Shaken like club song that the intent, in the
Speaker 1: purpose of the song is nothing other than like get
Speaker 1: off the ground, shake your ass, blah blah. In somewhere
Speaker 1: within that song, the rapper drops a line gives a
Speaker 1: little insight into like a stripper being a single mother
Speaker 1: and overcoming that. And that's a somewhat political expert you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. That's like, that's an express of
Speaker 1: how you feel, completely in context with the song that
Speaker 1: you're making. That gives me some insight to how you
Speaker 1: might feel about a political issue like single mothers, who
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, or whatever whatever you want
Speaker 1: to whatever whatever you wanta describe to it. But it's like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that the song is a political song.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean you were trying to do anything other
Speaker 1: than make people shake. But it's like insight into how
Speaker 1: you really feel about some real ship. This degrees to
Speaker 1: which songs that aren't necessary political and intent that do
Speaker 1: transmit political messages if it's really yeah, I don't like
Speaker 1: getting into that conversation of what's real hip hop and
Speaker 1: what's not real hip hop, But if the ship's real, yeah,
Speaker 1: you will naturally get that. So I looked up on
Speaker 1: Wikipedia politically hip hop. I wanted to get the third opinion,
Speaker 1: and I'm really interested in some of the well, some
Speaker 1: of what they've said. There's a couple of artists they
Speaker 1: say are iCal, and I want to get your take.
Speaker 1: So they said, examples of conscients and politically hip hop
Speaker 1: throughout the decades include much of Logic's discography. Wait wait
Speaker 1: wait wait, wait, wait say that again. Much of Logic's discography,
Speaker 1: Um much they want to say, like much of child
Speaker 1: at Quality is discography, much of Luke Fiasco's discography, UM,
Speaker 1: much of Commons discography, UM, much of Kendrick from Mars discography,
Speaker 1: much of J Cole's discography. UM. So I'm just thinking
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting list, Okay, logic and J Cole
Speaker 1: being on there. Yeah, I mean it's not I just
Speaker 1: don't really consider them to be political rappers like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's definitely rappers on that list that are
Speaker 1: straight up politically you know, oriented rappers, But it seems
Speaker 1: like that list is just rappers that don't only rap
Speaker 1: about dumb ship, which in itself is you know, a
Speaker 1: reflection of where the bars. So I guess it just
Speaker 1: comes down to who made this Wikipedia, like, like, really,
Speaker 1: what are you listening to? And really what are the
Speaker 1: what are the qualifying factors? I don't know, maybe we'll
Speaker 1: take a deep dime on that later. By the nineties
Speaker 1: and Democrats were dragged so far to the right by
Speaker 1: the proceeding conservative administrations that it was pretty much open
Speaker 1: season on fucking black people. We had the killing of
Speaker 1: Natasha Harlans and Los Angeles and beating of Rodney King.
Speaker 1: The subsequent LA riots much interestingly iced Tea so little
Speaker 1: album Home Invasion was originally slated from November, but was
Speaker 1: delayed because of the LA riots. In the presidential election.
Speaker 1: There was the infamous Crime Bill of ninety four. He
Speaker 1: had three strikes laws getting passed in twenty four states
Speaker 1: in that same year. So all this architect to ramp
Speaker 1: up and all over black communities, and with it came
Speaker 1: anthems that continue to document community conditions and pushed back
Speaker 1: against the state. I want to say one last thing
Speaker 1: on the progressive zing hip hop. So I was talking.
Speaker 1: I was reading this BT blog post issued after the
Speaker 1: two and sixty election, and um, it was quick to
Speaker 1: cite artists from the eighties and early odds, you know,
Speaker 1: who were shining a light on racial inequality and calling
Speaker 1: the government out. But it referenced not a single song
Speaker 1: produced during the Obama presidency that did the same thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, sure, it talks of loosely progressive song songwriters,
Speaker 1: you know, talk about like Butterfly Chit's coloring book and
Speaker 1: saying like, look, you know, we we are more progressive
Speaker 1: than the nation. You know, the nation has failed us
Speaker 1: in electing Donald Trump. Hip hop is ahead of the curve,
Speaker 1: and I think to point to works like this that
Speaker 1: are like, um, from a leftist perspective, they might be
Speaker 1: like consciousness raising or engaging and necessary, so steam building
Speaker 1: within these communities to these works. But like what exactly
Speaker 1: are they saying we do about it? Like who what?
Speaker 1: Like what better future does do are they spelling out
Speaker 1: for us? And so I like, I like I hesitated
Speaker 1: to embrace work that is I think I think it's
Speaker 1: necessary to create a distinction between work that is consciousness
Speaker 1: raising and that is actually progressive and like saying this
Speaker 1: is the better world that we're trying to build because
Speaker 1: I think in articles like that, um, we're saying, oh,
Speaker 1: hip hop is more progressive than the nation. Um, it's
Speaker 1: a feel good story that like we want to embrace.
Speaker 1: We want to believe we're better than the state of
Speaker 1: the country as a whole. But I don't know if
Speaker 1: the facts actually back that up. For me, this conversation
Speaker 1: is mainly directed towards mainstream hip hop because and again,
Speaker 1: the real like I could I could have like the
Speaker 1: attitude of music is music and everyone listen to what
Speaker 1: you want to want to listen to and you know
Speaker 1: it whatever. So yeah, like obviously I listened to the
Speaker 1: ship that I like you know what I'm saying, So
Speaker 1: ship that doesn't appeal to me, That's not what I'm
Speaker 1: like spending you know, my time, like just like listening
Speaker 1: and getting mad because it exists. That's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But as somebody who cares about hip hop, the mainstream
Speaker 1: is the biggest representation of hip hop. And that's the
Speaker 1: other point of like the artists we lift up as
Speaker 1: like yeah, hip hop is so progressive, these are not
Speaker 1: the artists that are gaining the most track chacking streams
Speaker 1: that make the most about money by no metric. Is
Speaker 1: this like what hip hop hip hop is or is
Speaker 1: what hip hop is seeing across the world, And like
Speaker 1: you can either have a problem with it or you
Speaker 1: can be neutral, you know what I'm saying. And this
Speaker 1: isn't a call of a judgment on whatever your you know,
Speaker 1: opinion is of that, but it is the truth when
Speaker 1: when somebody in fucking New Zealand thinks about hip hop,
Speaker 1: they're thinking about the most popular hip hop that America
Speaker 1: has to offer. Now you ask they're not doing the reason.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but like you ask yourself, if you feel
Speaker 1: comfortable with what you can just off the top of
Speaker 1: your head, imagine is the most popular form of hip
Speaker 1: hop or most popular hip hop ship going on right
Speaker 1: now coming out of America, and just imagine that that's
Speaker 1: like somebody's only our first impression of what hip hop is.
Speaker 1: The chances are if that doesn't like bother you and
Speaker 1: you don't care, then, like I don't want to say
Speaker 1: you don't care about hip hop, but like what we're
Speaker 1: talking about right now, you don't care about it, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. That's just that's cool. I fear
Speaker 1: not political hip hop Lovers and the listening sphere seventeen,
Speaker 1: according to SEE, an essay of the number of top
Speaker 1: songs that contain political content jumped to one and four,
Speaker 1: up from one and ten in previous years. About of
Speaker 1: songs that made the off of the tribes, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'd say it comes as no surprise. So we've I
Speaker 1: think we've returned to the kind of nineties level awareness
Speaker 1: and anger about racial injustice and unmasked fascism that folks
Speaker 1: are um starting to return to the roots of hip
Speaker 1: hop in a certain sense. I hope, So, I hope
Speaker 1: so I think, well, I think we'll see I mean,
Speaker 1: in in an era when like Okay, the Kanye stuff
Speaker 1: scares Okay, I'm just I'm gonna I'm gonna keep it
Speaker 1: honest with you, like like I'm not telling anybody what
Speaker 1: to do. But it's just like, what do you mean
Speaker 1: the Kanye stuff, Well, I mean, like the Kanye Trump
Speaker 1: presidency political. Oh, it's political, But I mean that's that's
Speaker 1: that's the that's the ship that I'm talking about. Is like,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's obviously I don't think it's like
Speaker 1: the right side of the I don't think it's the
Speaker 1: right side that hip hop should be on. But the
Speaker 1: mere fact that you know, Donald m his fucking tweeted
Speaker 1: out white powers good people on both sides, that Kanye's
Speaker 1: association with that isn't a just absolute deal breaker, just
Speaker 1: completely I'm banking on in the next like five years
Speaker 1: or so. They're being like a Candice Owen's rapper four,
Speaker 1: I'm looking for the Candice Owens presidency, not looking for it,
Speaker 1: but like my third eye sees it and the burning says, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's fucking weird. The perennial political hip
Speaker 1: hop song of the eighties would have to be Fight
Speaker 1: the Power by Public Enemy, Like it's easier to mold
Speaker 1: onto a variety of issues or like calls to action,
Speaker 1: like might the power can mean so many things, but
Speaker 1: the police is oddly specific. Oh yeah, it's super specific.
Speaker 1: Like fight the power I think is more effective a
Speaker 1: political song or protests song or protest statement because it's
Speaker 1: odd and you can attribute different things to it. You know,
Speaker 1: fight the power the power can be whatever you needed
Speaker 1: to be at any given time. I actually think that,
Speaker 1: you know, fight the power is kind of like our
Speaker 1: version of the civil rights song we Shall Overcome. You
Speaker 1: know that we shall over come. I think fight the
Speaker 1: Power is that for us because it's just this. You
Speaker 1: can apply it to any protests or political event. You know,
Speaker 1: are we protesting big oil? Like are we out in
Speaker 1: the streets against police brutality? We're trying to get people
Speaker 1: to vote to take out an incumbent. Fuck the police,
Speaker 1: Like you said, it seems really specific, but I don't
Speaker 1: think it can just it's about police and police over yeah,
Speaker 1: versus fight the power. You talk about your local school board,
Speaker 1: talk about your little kind of commission, talk about you
Speaker 1: can't be like, yeah, let's go march for the environment.
Speaker 1: Well maybe, I mean maybe if you're a fucking standing
Speaker 1: rock and they're pelting you with water cannons and maybe
Speaker 1: fun the police in that scenario. So N nine Motown
Speaker 1: Records release Fight the Power. It was the single for
Speaker 1: the Spike Lee film Do the Right Thing. It's actually
Speaker 1: made specifically for that movie after a little conversation between
Speaker 1: the man Spike Lee and Chuck d but wanting to
Speaker 1: get them on board for that um. The song went
Speaker 1: on to become one of Public enemies most known songs.
Speaker 1: It was certified gold as a single. It's nominated for
Speaker 1: Best Rap Performance the following year. The film inspired it
Speaker 1: was generally about racial tensions during the hot summertime in
Speaker 1: the New York Borough. Such a notable film that it
Speaker 1: could have its own its own episode in its relation
Speaker 1: to hip hop and politics on itself. But to bring
Speaker 1: attention back to the song and what makes it such
Speaker 1: a potent, polittle cool song, I mean, it's like you're
Speaker 1: confronting the issue of racism bam at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the song right there to open it. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess if you're like a kid now that you
Speaker 1: probably don't know who John Wayne is. But when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I knew who John Wayne was you know,
Speaker 1: I was aware of him, but I wasn't aware that
Speaker 1: John Wayne or Elvis had any sort of like you know,
Speaker 1: racial issues within their like personal lives and ship. I
Speaker 1: just knew them as, Oh, John Wayne's an actor and
Speaker 1: Elvis is a musician, you know. So even just hearing
Speaker 1: that you know, popular song, that made me ask questions.
Speaker 1: And I remember the first time that I heard that,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I don't know if we were
Speaker 1: watching the movie. I think we're watching the music video,
Speaker 1: and I remember asking my dad like I didn't know
Speaker 1: Elvis was racist, but I was like, yeah, Elvis was
Speaker 1: hella racist? None know, but for real, I was aware that,
Speaker 1: I mean, Elvis is a was a musician that has
Speaker 1: a you know, moniker as being king, and I was
Speaker 1: aware of like the reverence that John Wayne had, so
Speaker 1: you know, to see a fucking a strong black dude
Speaker 1: would have fucking be boy cap twisted going. Elvis was
Speaker 1: the hero the most motherfuck him and John Wayne. That's
Speaker 1: just that was crazy and culturally at the time, the
Speaker 1: amount of white pearl clutching that a line like that
Speaker 1: caused the amount of like weight culturally that that has.
Speaker 1: That's like setting the perfect tone for the title of
Speaker 1: the song. The line was actually inspired by a eighties
Speaker 1: song by the artist Blowfly. It was, Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a song called Blowflies rap in the song like a Klansman.
Speaker 1: A Clansmen provoked him by saying motherfuck you and Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 1: And this led Chuck to wonder, like, which sacred Kyle
Speaker 1: he could like pluck when he was like right in
Speaker 1: his lives, was like, I'm the grand Dragon, but a
Speaker 1: clue claim you said, there's no nigger man, motherfuck you
Speaker 1: and Muhammad Ali. Chuck, the lead m C for the group,
Speaker 1: In recent years, has spoken about the song being directly
Speaker 1: inspired by the community and the national effects of the
Speaker 1: Reagan and Bush administrations. Yeah, he was quoted as the saying,
Speaker 1: I believe if he was if he was twenty years
Speaker 1: old and didn't realize that Reagan and Bush was just
Speaker 1: a bad thing for you and also for the rest
Speaker 1: of the country, and he wasn't paying it. He wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna get it anyway. The only thing that's gonna hit
Speaker 1: you was as a catastrophe. But we thought we could
Speaker 1: actually throw some light on a dark situation that has
Speaker 1: already cloaked Black America. So I find the power coming
Speaker 1: from a cultural aspect as a film and the song
Speaker 1: would hit sit St. Louis because damn sure, world news
Speaker 1: ain't going to cover in I feel like rapping? Do
Speaker 1: you feel like rapping? Sure? Let's rap a little bit,
Speaker 1: all right, Mr Joel, can you give us something to
Speaker 1: wrap over? Uh? You know we're waiting a reparations. Hey, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: so you could call me a loser, or you could
Speaker 1: call your wine. That you could call me because you missed,
Speaker 1: because you're heightened from the virus. That you can join
Speaker 1: the pestil right, called the girl that have for forsite
Speaker 1: or called the kid? Would that feel like? Because you
Speaker 1: can stay in there in guy's light. All of us
Speaker 1: left is the lightning and the guys of hyping writers
Speaker 1: intellectual tripe. Keep playing your shifty games and keep winning
Speaker 1: your shifty prizes. Keep losing every election for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life. Or you can win us by demand
Speaker 1: in a decent way to single payer, right to organize
Speaker 1: a labor right the house and clean it. Write this
Speaker 1: spark of fucking Jake. If you're depressed and needed care,
Speaker 1: right to hire education, by taxing the billionaires, you can
Speaker 1: say I'm calling and scold me unto notes, oldingly go
Speaker 1: voting forward, guy that won't support policies colling really hotly everywhere.
Speaker 1: But that's not really that effective. The best is if
Speaker 1: you call me and advocate with the left who the
Speaker 1: foxill of the knife? Riddle me that you motherfucker's know
Speaker 1: where I'm lyrically, Yet I'm lyrically on a level levitating
Speaker 1: you chum something a motherfucking mountain, meditating with monks. Never
Speaker 1: stay in the slump. Way back when eight was enough,
Speaker 1: I was taking your mom's putting measure tape to a rum.
Speaker 1: I keep a busheito blade while I'm breaking a blood.
Speaker 1: Plus I think of my best ship while I'm taking
Speaker 1: a dump. I think you snitched into the fats. And
Speaker 1: why you niggas think you're getting bread? You get dead
Speaker 1: with a dis you wouldn't have said because you try
Speaker 1: to eat up. That's when we hit you to your blood.
Speaker 1: You try to get back up. I fucking kick you
Speaker 1: in the head. It's dope. Knife come in, it's so nice.
Speaker 1: Grab the microphone and niggas know that I don't write,
Speaker 1: but wrote before. Now I gotta go and hit the jaw.
Speaker 1: Motherfucker's though, I take over the world like Cobra put
Speaker 1: you in the cold, Slaw put you up in a sandwich.
Speaker 1: Motherfucker's stepping up and they can't understand it. Our brain
Speaker 1: so big that that ship don't need some band with
Speaker 1: motherfucker's don't win. That were harder than some brandy do
Speaker 1: to dope. My name's Dope, Knife Lingle Francations Waiting on
Speaker 1: Reparations as a production via Heart Radio. Listen to Waiting
Speaker 1: on Reparations on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. H