In 1999, Yasin Bey then known as Mos Def dropped the seminal album Black On Both Sides.
The first song, Fear Not Of Man still gets me every time I play it.
Its a classic just as powerful now as the first time I heard it two decades ago.
Cheo Hodari Coker (Photo by Michael Buckner/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images)
A meditation on everything Hip-Hop is…and isnt.
Whatevers happening with us.
If we smoked out, hip-hop is going to be smoked out.
If we doin alright, hip-hop is gonna be doin all right.
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We are hip-hop.
So the next time you ask yourself where is hip-hop going, ask yourself where am I going?
Twenty-four years later, as we celebrate hip-hops 50th birthday, the music finds itself at a crossroads.
Where is it going?
Respect is up, sales are down.
Remember the Pet Rock?
All of them had a better odds of surviving than hip-hop.
(Although, strangely enough, Big League Chew is still around).
Anytime you saw rappers on television when I was a kid, it was a punchline.
Hip-hop, in fact, has never been more celebrated.
Former pariahs are now perennially wealthy.
Jay-Zis a billionaire Business…man.
And still the master of the triple entendre whenever he decides to jump on a mic.
Biggie, the only rapper Hov idolized, is an icon.
Hes got a statue with a Gold crown at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge.
A multimillionaire investor, and still making incredible credible records in his 50s.
Hes raps Sinatra he might be getting better as he ages.
The subject of books, documentaries, museums, and even college courses, hell be studied like Mozart.
In fact, Biggie and 2Pac are deities, not unlike Bob Marley or John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk.
Busta Rhymes and LL Cool J still rock big arenas and have highly anticipated records coming down the pipeline.
Hip-hop is no longer an outlier.
On one hand, its easier than ever to find hip-hop movies and documentaries on streaming.
But it goes deeper.
(Dont believe me?
If youre a rap novice, listen to Raekwons Only Built For Cuban Linx.
Confused by the coded conversation in front of Striving For Perfection?
Watch Season 1 ofThe Wire.
Listen to the record again Oh!
Its Stringer Bell and Logan Roy.
Its not revolutionary its obvious.
They cant call rap a fad anymore.
Theres too much money involved now.
The multiracial coalition that got Barack Obama elected twice wouldnt have been possible without the hip-hop generation.
The music that was something created from nothing changed everything.
So the battle was won and all the boxes have been checked, right?
So, we won?
So the next time you ask yourself where hip-hop is going?
Ask yourself Where am I going?
Every sound coming out of my sons room is a syncopated gunshot.
Not just a beat that has stacatto gunshot rhythms actual gunshots.
The rappers names are as interchangeable as the monotonous beats.
Theyre coming from Detroit.
Only nihilism and death.
Rap music is street music.
And its always had a gangster element, on or off mic.
But there was always art to it.
Its the musical difference between a Scorsese flick or security surveillance footage.
You know whats going to happen with hip-hop?
Whatevers happening with us.
The irony is just…palpable.
Times passes everyone, including me.
The victory of this new generation is that they dont need for their rappers to be anything but rappers.
They dont look to them as politicians, thought leaders, or as a generational voice.
We depended on Dead Prez to speak truth to power.
No one else cut through the noise.
Generation Z knows theyre not politicians.
My rap generation rapped about not getting high while selling Escobars coke.
This adderalled generation happily sniffs Columbian powder or sniffs and swallows anything else the Sacklers offer as an alternative.
They dont move and shake.
They stand still as influencers.
Who needs a movement when people can follow on their phones?
Hip-hop is youthful culture, and its up to every generation to define things for themselves.
And one day, as they mature, theyll understand their true power.
I dont feel it in the same way, because these kids arent talking to me.
Thats not their problem its mine.
And thats how its should be.
My son is going to college and hell bring his noise with him.
(Public Enemy stans get the Dad joke I just inserted).
Shes not the first woman contemplating an unfaithful ex.
But now Im old enough to understand and appreciate the nuance of each perspective about the same old thing.
Swing begat bebop begat blues begat funk begat hip-hop, drill and every damn thing else.
When the smoke clears?
Thats where the rhythm is from and returns to.
From Fela to Afrobeat, its all one cycle.
Even slaverys Middle Passage never killed the drum.
Rap is the same way.
Gil Scott Heron for my father, Rakim for me, BabyTron for my son.
The sound has changed.
The nuance of it will be there when hes ready for it.
Thats why hip-hop will never die.
It grows with you if you give it time.
And to the youth?
May hip-hop 25 years from now be at its core what its spirit remains forever young.
