Hip-Hop & The Black Community Held Hostage

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Article written by Melle Mel on the current state of hip hop. Thought it was pretty interesting.

"Hip-Hop & The Black Community Held Hostage"

What in the name of Tupac Shakur & Christopher Wallace is going on around here? Who turned the ghetto into a more ghetto, ghetto? Teenage pregnancy in the ghetto up. Gang violence up. Teenage incarceration rate up. High School dropout rate up. All in the name of Hip-Hop?

Let’s forget for a minute everything we know about Hip-Hop. Let’s forget the four elements of Hip-Hop. Let’s forget that Hip-Hop started in the streets. And, last, but not least, let’s forget that I was there when it started. So, with that thought in mind, let’s try to evaluate, what is Hip-Hop?

Dope has been sold, and people have been killed & exploited in the ghetto since the first ghetto. Nigga’s have been going to jail since slavery days. Young black girls have been getting pregnant since the slave ships. Nigga’s have been killin’ nigga’s since back in Africa. Nobody called it Hip-Hop. They might have called it dumb nigga shit, but who knows.

Now, for some reason, everything negative about ghetto life has been equated as being Hip-Hop. Like negative ghetto shit just started in ’75. Like the first nigga that ever killed a nigga was right after Africa Bambatta play Apache for the first time. Be for real.

I grew up in a ghetto like everybody else. I went through all the ghetto nigga shit like everybody else. Got high & ran through broads like everybody else. Never once, while all of that was happening did anybody say, “Wow, that was some real Hip-Hop shitâ€.

With that thought in mind, we should all agree that the culture of Hip-Hop is a music driven phenomenon, and all of that nigga shit, is just shit that nigga’s have always done. In other words, if you had a gram of cocaine to sell, and you cut it with four parts baking soda, technically it is cocaine. But realistically, you’re selling bullshit, and you know it.

So the point I am trying to make is, you could consider “Gangster Rap†to be Hip-Hop, only because the product is sold on a CD that’s supposed to be music. Realistically, gangster rappers & the media hi-jacked the term “Hip-Hop†for the expressed purpose of holding a race hostage.

Case in point: The main dream & aspiration that a young, black male has today is to make money selling dope. Hip-Hop or dumb nigga shit? Inner cities have become more violent than ever before. Hip-Hop or dumb nigga shit? Since N.W.A., nigga’s have been trying to pass themselves off as gangsters, when the American Black is the only race that does not have gangsters. Hip-Hop or dumb nigga shit?

The wholesale hi-jacking & kidnapping of the term “Hip-Hop†has gone on for so long that he black community has developed Stockholm Syndrome. In other words, nigga’s have come to empathize & sympathize with their captors. It’s all right for nigga’s to sell dope to nigga’s. It’s all right for nigga’s to kill nigga’s. It’s all right for all black women to be considered bitches & ho’s. It’s all right for nigga’s to go to jail. All in the name of Hip-Hop.

BULLSHIT!!!

The media, the press and those worthless, fake ass, wannabe, so-called, non-rappin’, mother fuckin’ gangstas should have been more responsible. The reality is, these mother fuckers set black people back 200 years. No, 300 years. Made all of the money in the world from selling music, and, still to this day, they’re walking around like they sold a bunch of dope to a bunch of nigga’s.

So, in closing, I say to all those who have ruined the good name of Hip-Hop, FUCK YOU VERY MUCH.

-Mele Mel “Xâ€

"Click, click, bang. The gun show is in effect."

www.melemel.net

www.myspace.com/grandmastermellemel

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That's a great article. As is typical it got me onto a weird stream of internet research, via I guess the Bambataa reference I thought of Apache originally by the Shadows and covered countlessly perhaps best known by the Incredible Bongo Band (which I think Bambataa sampled and Carlton Banks of course danced to on Fresh Prince of Belair). The best thing I came across is this video of the Tommy Seebach Band doing it.

[djmelbatoast]

That was beyond Vanilla Fudge even for sheer cheese.

[The Chameleon]

That was beyond Vanilla Fudge even for sheer cheese.

Hey Vanillan Fudge were a great psychedelic band!

That aside, I totally concur with Melle Mel. Glad to hear one of the originators tell it with conviction.

Hip-Hop died in 1995, save a few last gasp here and there.