Since it’s Friday and you have two days over the week, why not double you up? This is why Wize Intelligent, of the former group Poor Righteous Teachers is my second favorite EMCEE. Wize is responding to an article on Jay-Z, growing up in hip hop, and making it found. Checkout the original if you get a chance too.
Who The Hell Am I? Has Jay-Z Outgrown Hip-Hop?
By Wize Intelligent
This is a very well written, informative, and at the same time, inquisitive article. It reached its goal in provoking the thoughts of its reader, while at the same time inducing the reader with the opinion of the author. The less-observant reader will no doubt be persuaded to think that Hip Hop does not want to see the end result of the struggle (represented by Jay-Z, to the writer), and desires more so to continue in an infinite cycle of purposeless “ballin”, “hustlin”, and “coming-up!”
However, this is where this journalist and I disagree. Its not that Hip Hop does not want to see anyone fulfill their “dreams,” its actually the fact that Hip Hop in its origin, at its root, deeply imbedded in its subconscious lies the precepts of its “original doctrine” which is “ACTIVISM.” Hip Hop, like the BPP, CIBI, OAAU, etc., began as a “movement” to empower poor ghetto youth in America and eventually the world, with the result being defined here as the “upward mobility” of the “masses” and not the “individual” alone.
So the writer is correct when he says that “What Jay-Z has become is a dream materialized.” But, the “dream” of Hip Hop was to see the “community” in a better place and not just one “nigga.” What Jay-Z has achieved is nothing more than the “American-Dream”, defined here as “the accumulation of personal wealth solely for the upward mobilization of the individual.” This “Amerikkkan Dream” has been achieved by many of “niggas” before Hip Hop was born. (more…)