Listen to "Haiti on Our Minds" by Mumia Abu-Jamal on Prison Radio
Mistah Rapsey is my name..
staying underground is the experience..
I’ve been traveling since my youth searching for experiences of truth. An old soul back again to discover what I left uncovered. I love to love and live to laugh. Enrolled in a school called Knowledge of Self. Paying attention is my drug. Learning to live Life like music and flow with the rhythm, careful not to miss a beat. A renaissance man, Life is my art project. An habitual nomad, I roam to evolve. Music and cannabis are my constant companions. Interested in people, i’m always searching for my tribe. The beauty of the wilderness is the closest i’ve come to experiencing Truth.
music, graffiti, vinyl, treeplanting, & mixtapes..
Love is an Action. Love is the Answer. Love is the Movement.
“My daughter goes over to the barred door that leads to the visiting room. She pulls and she pushes. She yanks and she hits and she kicks the bars until she fall on the floor, a heap of exhaustion. I go over and pick her up. I hold her and rock her and kiss her. These is a look of resignation on her face that i can’t stand. We spend the rest of the visit talking and playing quietly on the floor. When the guard says the visit is over, i cling to her for dear life. She holds her head high, and her back straight as she walks out of the prison. She waves goodbye to me, her face clouded and worried, looking like a little adult. I go back to my cage and cry until I vomit. I decide that is’s time to leave.”
-Assata Shakur
Jedi Mind Tricks // Shadow Business
A great example of conscience songwriting from a rapper who is a walking self contradiction.
“Fourteen hour shifts, seven days a week
Two shitty meals a day, very little sleep
Human life only worth three cents an hour
All human rights lost, no sense of power..”
This anonymous letter landed in my inbox about a minute ago:
Hello,
After more than 20 years, I’ve finally decided to tell the world what I witnessed in 1991, which I believe was one of the biggest turning point in popular music, and ultimately American society. I have struggled for a long time weighing the pros and cons of making this story public as I was reluctant to implicate the individuals who were present that day. So I’ve simply decided to leave out names and all the details that may risk my personal well being and that of those who were, like me, dragged into something they weren’t ready for.
Between the late 80’s and early 90’s, I was what you may call a “decision maker” with one of the more established company in the music industry. I came from Europe in the early 80’s and quickly established myself in the business. The industry was different back then. Since technology and media weren’t accessible to people like they are today, the industry had more control over the public and had the means to influence them anyway it wanted. This may explain why in early 1991, I was invited to attend a closed door meeting with a small group of music business insiders to discuss rap music’s new direction. Little did I know that we would be asked to participate in one of the most unethical and destructive business practice I’ve ever seen.
I recommend reading this whole letter over at HipHopIsRead and then checking out the discussion going on. Here is one comment i liked.
Big Chief said, “Conditions in the hood weren’t created by rap music, maybe to some degree it exploits, but I tend to be of the mind that they’re modern day story tellers. Do the conditions go away if gangster rap does? I don’t think that rap music makes any do anything. I’m not of that mind. Niggaz were listening to Smokey Robinson killings niggaz back in the day. I’m tired of this shit. Stop blaming music for behavior. I think that is at the heart of this. So what if some rich ass cracker clowns are profiting off of black music, that’s how it has always been. Do you people really believe that without “gangster” rap that prison rates would be lower? The key words in this entire letter are PRIVATE PRISONS! They’re ran for profit. The outrage about this article should be articulated in that, in the Prison Industrial Complex, something that sales justice, something that has been looting the black community of its men and women. NOT the fact that gangster rappers may have been being exploited. Someone was exploiting them like most commercial musicians are exploited. I am not one to run from a conspiracy or completely deny it I just won’t denigrate or sell short the young story tellers who were making this music before this so-called meeting. Who were victims of a poor environment BEFORE Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Gangster rap is important to rap and hip-hop music and it still is and always will be until the conditions of our neighborhoods change. I’m sick and tired of this hip-hop elitism. It’s all beautiful and it’s all necessary. “
