By: Krystal Temple

Verse One:

I see no changes. Wake up in the morning and I ask myself,

“Is life worth living? Should I blast myself?”

I’m tired of bein’ poor and even worse I’m black.

My stomach hurts, so I’m lookin’ for a purse to snatch.

Cops give a damn about a negro? Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he’s a hero.

Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares? One less hungry mouth on the welfare.

First ship ’em dope and let ’em deal to brothers.

Give ’em guns, step back, and watch ’em kill each other.

“It’s time to fight back”, that’s what Huey said.

2 shots in the dark now Huey’s dead.
-Tupac Shakur (1971-1996)

Verse Two:

I wanted to start this with some fancy line that lives up to ‘the preceding rap lyrics’ – but I couldn’t. My grandmother doesn’t like rap. In fact she absolutely despises it.
 “I’m going to cut off MTV and VH1 and BET! I can’t believe they show such foolishness on TV!”
 I’m sure her opinion is a popular one. If I asked you to describe rap, what words would you use? It’s a popular misconception that all rappers do is talk about money, sex and drugs. However, even if this were true, wouldn’t you delve deeper into the topic and analyze the reasons why?

As I was utilizing dictionary.com, I clicked on rap music: a style of popular music, developed by disc jockeys and urban blacks in the late 1970s, in which an insistent, recurring beat pattern provides the background and counterpoint for rapid, slangy, and often boastful rhyming pattern glibly intoned by a vocalist or vocalists. (I apologize for this side note, but the definition of glibly is ‘readily fluent, often thoughtlessly, superficially, or insincerely so.’ I wonder why this adjective was chosen. Aside from other problems I have with this definition, why should one conclude that rap is done in a ‘boastful’ and ‘thoughtless’ manner? The generalization seems almost detrimental to the word’s reputation.) After I looked up rap, I looked up slang which was defined as: very informal usage in vocabulary and idiom that is characteristically more metaphorical, playful, elliptical, vivid, and ephemeral than ordinary language. I don’t know about you, but I think the definition of those two words (glibly and slang) just contradicted each other. How can something be thoughtless and metaphorical? I don’t think it’s thoughtless, I think it’s brilliance – incapable of being measured. It’s an innate brilliance that a chosen few posses. I think I’ve made my point… but hey, that’s what happens when you try to define indefinable words… Anyway, that’s the story of how I looked up rap and ended up on elliptical. “Pretty accurate, huh?”

If I were to define the concept of rap by comparing it another form of art, I would compare it to Virginia Wolf’s stream of consciousness. When you hear a person speak slang, do you think of how intelligent they are? ‘Obviously, not’. When someone speaks slang, we all make an assumption that the person is uneducated, or doesn’t know any better. Is this true? If a person chooses to switch between two different “language codes”, is it wrong? Are teenagers who speak slang communicating in a dialect, or are they simply a group of ignorant people consistently making grammatical errors (according to the ‘standard English language’, of course).

Rap music breaks convention and this is what makes people scared. What happens when a minority group actually creates a form of art? What happens when this art form happens to be beautiful because it encompasses the pain and sweat brought upon its’ creators by oppression? What happens when people listen? What happens when the minorities influence popular culture?

Tupac Shakur was not only a rap artist, but he’s a person with a story. He is credited with being one of the very first hip-hop legends along with Notorious B.I.G. He was a Black man that grew up in poverty and in his raps, he often told the story of a person who had been oppressed by society. The above Tupac verse comes from a song called “Changes” from his album “Greatest Hits” released in 1998, after his death. When some people hear this song, they only hear the violence, the drugs, and the curses instead of the ‘ugly picture of reality’ it paints. I hope I helped to place this paintbrush on the canvas…The person in “Changes” is advocating for justice. He ponders upon his existence, and is tired of living in a society where his racial group has no power. One of the most influential lines in this song, is “Cops give a damn about a negro? Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he’s a hero.” This line addresses many social issues that are relatable today – and therefore it’s quite ironic that Tupac was rapping about this before 1998.

One way I can relate this line to today, is with the widely controversial case of Trayvon Martin. The outcome of the case had the Black community angered because George Zimmerman was not punished for shooting a young black male. This is essentially what Tupac is discussing in “Changes”. According to Tupac, society’s justice system is failing miserably and the Black community is unprotected by the very same people that are employed to protect us. This line also brings up another controversial topic: the use of the word “nigga”. This issue has been repeatedly brought up and debated over by the Black community and society as a whole. People often believe that the word “nigga” is a term of degradation, and Blacks who use the word are ignorant. I definitely do not believe that you can call every Black person who uses the word ignorant. The word has transformed itself over the years, and whether or not this is acceptable is definitely debatable. However, it would be false to say that Tupac was an ignorant individual, because of his use of the word “nigga”. In this context, he uses it as a term of endearment, to address his fellow “brothers” in the Black community. I do believe that when one uses the word “nigga” he has to be aware of its’ context. The word carries both negative and positive connotations. I think it’s unfair for people to generalize the users of this word as ignorant. This generalization has also helped to discredit the validity of hip-hop as an art form, because of the heavy usage of the word in rap lyrics. When examining the usage of the word, I think it’s important for people to study the hip-hop culture and understand the people who use it.

Rap music is the voice of the minority, and it needs to be heard. I think that when examining rap music, one has to understand that every form of art has two sides of the spectrum. Therefore, I am not going to propose to you that every rap song addresses social issues. There are rap songs that are created for pure enjoyment, just as there are songs of every other genre that are created for pure enjoyment. Some rap songs do glorify money, cars, clothing and materialistic images – but aren’t these the very images of popular culture? Aren’t these the images that all children and teenagers watch on television? I think that the glorification of materialistic images by rap artists, illustrates something even broader than an ignorant group of boasting minorities. I believe this is a direct reflection of popular culture. I think rap artists may glorify these images because minorities as a whole have been oppressed, and kept excluded from “popular culture”. Therefore these ‘materialistic’ videos are displaying our (Blacks/ minorities) newfound role/ contribution in popular culture.

Verse Three:

When people speak out against an oppressive force, they are often shunned and discredited, which is the case for rap music. This year at City College, there was a huge controversy over the Guillermo Morales/ Assata Shakur center. Ironically, Assata Shakur is Tupac Shakur’s step aunt. She is a Black activist, who was a member of the Black Panther Party. She was accused and convicted of several false crimes, and escaped. Therefore she is the subject of a man-hunt. The Guillermo Morales/ Assata Shakur was shut down, after controversy about the center’s name. The center was a place on City College’s campus, where students advocated for rights, and fought against various social issues such as tuition hikes.

It’s quite ironic how the United States government, and institutions work in unison to maintain power and silence the voice of the minority. It is important to notice and identify this problem, when examining art created by minority/oppressed groups.  Notorious B.I.G and Tupac were two of the greatest hip-hop legends of all time, who addressed important social issues and openly spoke out against U.S government and oppressive structures.

Ironically they were both shot and killed. . .

(Outro)
“It’s time to fight back”, that’s what Huey said.

2 shots in the dark now Huey’s dead.
-Tupac Shakur (1971-1996)

(I was proud of my revisions lol && I see people posting absence notes? lol so I’m posting my revisions, in case anyone is bored enough to read them)

By: Krystal Temple (Revision of Avenue I)

To the girl I once knew…
By: Krystal Temple

Nay struggled into her tight blue jeans, as she stood in front of the mirror.
“There!”
I watched her squeeze her swollen coconuts into a small, white, lace push-up bra in anticipation.
“Come on! We’re going to be late! We’re just going to school”
Nay continued to apply her red lipstick and blue mascara. She formed two medium sized emerald green circles above both eyes with a small brush, as she struggled to blink her eyes comfortably with her long, artificial lashes.
“Ughh” I grunted.
Turning over on her unmade bed, I noticed my curvaceous figure in her wardrobe mirror.
“You’re gaining weight missy”
“Um. I guess. Come on, put on some red eye shadow to match that burgundy top you’re wearing!”
“Trust me! I’m good”
I wasn’t a fan of wearing colored eye shadow to school. I mean – we were only in the seventh grade. After removing her headscarf, Nay’s long black and red extensions fell comfortably right above her small buttocks. Moving her head in slow, exaggerated movements she began to curl her hair with a curling wand.
“Can’t you do anything with all that hair you have? If I had your hair, and your body…”
“Ughh. Fine Nay – just curl my bangs for me!”
I was tired of her complaining, and I noticed that I had basically thrown my long thick hair into a sloppy bun once again. Nay grinned, as she removed the beige rubber band from my hair.
“Ouch! Be careful!”
“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Come on, sit here”
She led me to her bathroom, because of it’s bright yellow lights, and large mirrors. It was the perfect location to curl hair. As I sat on the toilet seat, I heard the doorbell ring. It was probably Ki – our other best friend. She didn’t live near, but sometimes her mother would drop her to Nay’s house before school. As Nay plunged her comb through my scalp, I immediately began to regret my decision.
“Geesh! Could you be any rougher?” I complained.
“Comb your hair sometimes” she snapped back.
Grabbing a small portion of my hair, she began to apply heat. As she made her way to the front of my hair, Ki came climbing up the stairs. Her petite frame entered the bathroom doorway.
“You guys still aren’t ready huh?”
“It was definitely Nay. She basically insisted on curling my hair”
“Well – hurry up then”
Nay grabbed a patch of my bang hair in the center of my head, and placed it into the large iron curling iron. Then she placed her hand directly on the front of the iron, and pressed it directly against my forehead. I began to hear a faint hissing noise, as the iron sunk deeper and deeper into my skin. I began frantically moving my arms in defense, but it took a second for the words to escape from my mouth.
“Ouch! Nay… what the – ”
“Oh” Nay laughed. She began hysterically giggling, as she released the steaming iron from my forehead. I was immediately overtaken by a large pounding noise inside of my head.
“Ugh! Make it stop burning!” I cried
Nay fell to floor full in laughter, meanwhile Ki ran to the kitchen and returned with baking powder. Rolling her eyes at Nay, she handed me a damp paper towel with baking soda.
“Here, press it against your head. It will extract the heat from the burn”
“Where’s your antibiotic ointment?” Ki asked.
“In the cabinet right above her big ass head”
As I looked into the bathroom mirror, I noticed a faint brown mark had begun to appear in the center of my forehead. My forehead began to look increasingly large, and I had never noticed this before. In a panic, I frantically began placing my bang hairs in front of the burn.
“No one will see it” Ki assured me, as she rubbed the ointment on my forehead.
“Ki, you sure you don’t want me to curl your hair too?” Nay giggled.
“Don’t play those ratid games with me. Ya bun off the girl hair, and a laugh?” Ki snapped back in her strong Jamaican accent.

This was a typical morning at Nay’s house… gone wrong. I used to visit her house on weekends, weekdays… you name it. You could always find me there. Nay lived down the block from me. I guess you could say she’s my ex best friend. I don’t exactly know what went wrong with her. I mean – she has a mother and a father, and although they’re currently separated, they lived under one rooftop. They always spoiled her (to the best of their abilities). She could always hit up her mom for cash and then turn to her dad for some more. To me, it seemed like the best of both worlds. I say this because I grew up with my grandmother. Because my grandmother already lost two children (my uncle to a violent gunshot, and my mom to cancer) she was definitely emotionally unavailable. I was often emotionally unavailable too; I was always quiet and I stayed to myself. I never quite knew how to defend myself, which is why it was so easy for Nay to get away with constantly betraying me throughout our friendship. Sometimes, I envied the stability of Nay’s home because she was the only one out of the three of us – “the three amigos” that had that family cushion to fall back upon.

When Nay was about sixteen she became addicted to pot. I don’t know if one can actually become addicted to pot, because it’s a common defense for weed smokers to claim: “it’s not an addictive drug.” So I guess I’ll rephrase that: Nay became dependent on weed at about the age of sixteen. Luckily, I dogged that bullet until I got older. Then again – I don’t know how lucky that makes me.

Nay was always cooking up some kind of scheme to get money.  There was the time that we were in about the twelfth grade, that she told me that she was going to deposit a fraudulent check into her account to get the money. I was always the more logical type. Although I absolutely despise philosophy (all of that Plato and Socrates bullshit reasoning that talk in circles – trying to come up with answers to things that just cannot be answered), I can always devise my own long logical reason for or against something. When Nay came to me with her plans, I gave her a long speech about why it was absolutely absurd and I informed her that she would surely get caught. Sure enough, she did. She was actually arrested and taken to bookings… you know the whole nine. I remember when she called me sobbing on the precinct phone.
“Krissy?” she sobbed over the phone.
“Nay”
“Yea” (sniff)
“Where are you?”
“You’ll never believe this. I’m at bookings right now. Handcuffed to a damn seat, in the same room with prostitutes and who knows who else” Unfortunately, I did believe her.
“Ughh. The money thing huh?”
“Yea”
“You know, I told you right?”
“Yea” she whispered in between sobs.
She was eventually charged with some kind of money misdemeanor in exchange for community service.

I never quite understood the weird dynamic of our friendship. Besides participating in increasingly mischievous behavior – she always found a way to betray me. There was this one time when she came to my house with my other best friend Ki and filled up my new Juicy Couture velour purse with shirts, jeans and jewelry and left. I was distracted because I had other friends over, so I didn’t notice her until I saw her leaving the house with my belongings. There was also the time that she took my brand new pair of grey and orange-stripped air max 95’s to borrow (still in the box I may add), and then claimed that she lost them.

When I first met her, I admired her because I was so shy and quiet while she was so loud and daring. She knew what to wear to get attention, and she hung out with some of the most popular girls in junior high school. She even managed to always have a “boyfriend” when we were younger. She was cool and even knew how to talk to boys. But somewhere along the way, my definition of cool changed. I don’t think hers ever did.

It must have been two or three years ago, when Nay, Ki and I were driving to McDonalds. I had noticed a rift in our friendship that had slowly begun to get bigger. We had all begun college – although Nay had failed out her first semester and Ki decided to take a semester off for financial reasons. I always understood this intellectual division between us, but disregarded it. We were cool since junior high school and that wasn’t about to change for me. Ki had recently obtained her mom’s old car and we decided to spend the weekend cruising through the city together, like old times. Ki was blasting the newest Drake song, and as the wind whipped through our hair we began to enjoy a night on the town.

“O.M.G, we’re finally getting older”

“I know – and you’re driving now. You finally got your own whip” Nay cried.

Of course, Nay already had the privilege of driving her dad’s car. He would have given it to her, but she was always in the middle of something, so he was hesitant.

“Remember, when we were younger how we used to be jealous of Krystal’s hair?”

The statement kind of came from left field. When we were younger, Ki and I had long hair, and Nay did not. Now that I was older, I cut all of my hair off and began to wear hair extensions similar to Nay.

“Um… no that was just you” Ki sighed.

Nay wasn’t the prettiest or brightest of the bunch. She never really cared about school – she was more interested her social life and physical appearance. Throughout our friendship, she would often make comments about me being tall and awkward, or about my feet being too big, because she was shorter than I with smaller feet. I remember desperately trying to squeeze into shoes that were a size smaller, because of her. When Nay made her jealousy comment to me that night, it kind of marked the start of the decline of our friendship. She simplemindedly laughed it off, and if I was younger I might have done the same. But now that I was older, I thought it explained too much that had happened between us and I couldn’t understand why my friend of so many years felt this way.

As we became more and more distant, Nay never ceased to surprise me. Shortly after the car incident she broke some shocking news to me over the phone.
“Krys – you should definitely come work at this club I’m workin’ at”
“Huh? Don’t you work at H&M?”
“Yea, but some nights I dance at this club”
“Um… like strip dance”
“Yea. It pays good money. You should definitely try it. You have the body and all… Well you’d prolly have to tone up” she snickered.
“You’re kidding right? Do you see me dancing naked in front of people. Trust me I wouldn’t make ANY money” I laughed it off – but this wasn’t even the worst thing Nay could tell me. After this, she began to tell me more and more things about herself (that I couldn’t even confront in my own mind) that made us more and more estranged.

Our friendship finally came to a ‘sad’ conclusion during my third year of college. She had begun to make up malicious stories about me, and tell a mutual acquaintance. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I never explained to her how I felt – I just kept it inside. I never answered her calls or texts again.

Sometimes I wonder how two people who grew up in the same neighborhood, with the same values could turn out so different. I mean – the first time I went back to church in my teenage years was with her! Her mother was an active member of the Christian church that was about two blocks from our houses. It was actually her that encouraged me to go to the prayer group with her. Until today, everything that transpired between us seems to be a mystery that’s not worth solving.

I resent a lot of my childhood days, and she played a humongous part in them. When I look back on everything that happened when we were younger, I often find myself angered about how heavy of an influence she was to me and how my grandmother was not able to be emotionally available for me. I know it’s not healthy for one to blame anything or anyone for their past actions, but damn it… someone’s got to take part of the blame. My grandmother always said, “Show me your company, and I’ll tell you who you are” – which has left me wondering maybe Nay and I are more alike than I think. Maybe I resent her because she represents parts of me that I don’t like – parts of me that I have grown to become estranged with as well.

Sometimes I wish I never met Nay and then other times I appreciate her friendship because it helped my growth into adulthood. I don’t think I will ever understand our friendship, or why Nay secretly resented me and always intentionally tried to hurt me – but I’m not sure that’s important to me anymore. All I can do is hope for the best in the future… for the both of us.

Sometimes I wonder how my life would have been, had I grown up in some fancy neighborhood. My college roommate grew up in the Hamptons. She’s now studying to be a lawyer. But me- well I grew up on the corner of Avenue I and Flatbush, and I still don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with my life. (See the correlation?) Don’t get wrong, it’s not the worst neighborhood in the world. It’s actually quite residential, and reasonably safe. Even so, the Hamptons sounds much better…

I used to visit Renaa’s house on weekends, weekdays… you name it. You could always find me there. Renaa – or Nay as I called her, lived down the block from me. I guess you could say she’s my ex best friend. I don’t exactly know what went wrong with her. I mean – she has a mother and a father, and although they’re currently separated, they lived under one rooftop. They always spoiled her (to the best of their abilities). She could always hit up her mom for cash, and then turn to her dad for some more. To me, it seemed like the best of both worlds. I say this because I grew up with my grandmother. My mom passed away when I was twelve from cancer. (Well not really – one night she was complaining of pain, and an at home hospice nurse actually overdosed her with morphine. This explanation is rather graphic and much more difficult to explain, and therefore I usually choose the first one). Since then my grandmother took care of me, and my father chose to live his own life, at his mother’s house… where he currently resides.

When Nay was about sixteen she became addicted to pot. I don’t know if one can actually become addicted to pot, because it’s a common defense for weed smokers to say that “it’s not an addictive drug.” So I guess I’ll rephrase that: Nay became dependent on weed at about the age of sixteen. Luckily, I dogged that bullet until I got older. Then again – I don’t know how lucky that makes me.

Nay was always cooking up some kind of scheme to get money.  When we were in about the twelfth grade, she told me that she was going to deposit a fraudulent check into her account to get the money. I was always the more logical type. Although I absolutely despise philosophy, I can always devise up some long logical reason for or against something. I’ve always been good in manipulating the English language – however I’m slightly better at it on paper than in person. When Nay came to me with her plans, I told her that it was absolutely absurd and that she would surely get caught. Sure enough, she did. She was actually arrested, taken to bookings… you know the whole process. She was eventually charged with some kind of money misdemeanor in exchange for community service.

I never quite understood the weird dynamic of our friendship. Besides participating in increasingly mischievous behavior – she always found a way to betray me. There was this one time when she came to my house with my other best friend Nikeya (whom I call Ki) filled up my purse with shirts, jeans, and jewelry and then left. I was distracted because I had other friends over, so I didn’t notice her until I saw her leaving the house with my belongings. There was also the time that she took my brand new pair of orange-stripped air max 95’s to borrow (still in the box I may add), and then claimed that she lost them.

When I first met her, I admired her because I was so shy and quiet while she was so loud and daring. She knew what to wear to get attention, and she hung out with some of the popular girls. She even had a boyfriend in the sixth grade. She was cool, and even knew how to talk to boys. But somewhere along the way, my definition of cool changed. I don’t think hers ever did.

It must have been two or three years ago, when Nay, Ki and I were driving to McDonalds. I had noticed a riff in our friendship that had slowly begun to get bigger. Ki had recently obtained her mom’s old car, and we decided to spend the weekend together. Ki was blasting the newest Drake song, and as the wind whipped through our hair we began to enjoy a night on the town.

“Omg, we’re finally getting older”

“I know, and you’re driving now. You finally got your own whip”

Of course, Nay already had the privilege of driving her dad’s car. He would have given it to her, but she was always in the middle of something, so he was hesitant.

“Remember, when we were younger how we used to be jealous of Krystal’s hair?”

The statement kind of came from left field. It was like a group of people playing a football game, when suddenly a random ball was tossed into rotation. When we were younger, Ki and I had long hair, and Nay did not.

“Um… no that was just you”

Nay wasn’t the prettiest or brightest of the bunch. She never really cared about school – she was more interested her social life and physical appearance. At a young age, she would often wear makeup such as colorful eye shadows, extravagant costume jewelry and hair extensions. Ki was always more interested in school than Nay, and although she didn’t get high grades like me – she always did well. I was always placed in the advanced class, so for me that meant that I was usually one of the very few Black girls in my class.  This continued from junior high to high school. I always understood this intellectual division between us, but disregarded it. Throughout our friendship, she would often make comments about me being tall and awkward or my feet being too big, because she was shorter than I, with smaller feet. I remember trying to squeeze into shoes a size smaller, because of her. (And yet, as I got older, I realized that my feet were actually small for my height.) She would often make jokes that got on my nerves – but I ignored them. I remember in the sixth grade, when she curled my hair and pressed the curling iron directly on my forehead, leaving a large box mark on my face for months. (Now, I wonder if this was intentional.) When Nay made her jealousy comment to me that night, it kind of marked the start of the decline of our friendship. She simplemindedly laughed it off, and if I was younger I might have done the same. But now that I was older, I thought it explained too much and I couldn’t understand why my friend of so many years still felt this way.

Our friendship finally came to a ‘sad’ conclusion during my third year of college. She had begun to make up stories about me, and tell a mutual acquaintance. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I never explained to her how I felt – I just kept it inside. I never answered her calls or texts again.

Of recent, Renaa has become a stripper. It’s news that affected me at the time she told me – but now I could actually care less. Sometimes I wonder how two people who grew up in the same neighborhood, with the same values could turn out so different. I mean, the first time I went back to church in my teenage years was with her! Her mother was an active member of the Christian church that was about two blocks from her house. It was actually her that encouraged me to go to the prayer group with her. Until today, everything that transpired between us seems to be a mystery that’s not worth solving.

I resent a lot of my childhood days, and she played a huge part in that. When I look back on everything that happened when we were younger, I often find myself angered about how heavy of an influence she was to me, and how my grandmother was not able to be emotionally available for me. I know it’s not healthy for one to blame anything or anyone for their past actions, but damn it… someone’s got to take part of the blame. Sometimes I wish I grew up anywhere else, with different friends, in an entirely different demographic… like in the Hamptons. Yea – sometimes I wish I grew up in the Hamptons instead of Avenue I….

Verse One:

This song is dedicated to all the happy people
All the happy people who have real nice lives
And who have no idea whats it like to be broke as fuck
I feel like I’m walking a tight rope, without a circus net
I’m popping percocets, I’m a nervous wreck
I deserve respect; but I work a sweat for this worthless check
Bout to burst this tech, at somebody to reverse this debt
Minimum wage got my adrenaline caged
Full of venom and rage
Especially when I’m engaged
And my daughter’s down to her last diaper
–Eminem

Verse Two:

I wanted to start this with some fancy line that lives up to ‘the preceding paragraph’ – but I couldn’t. My grandmother doesn’t like rap. In fact she despises it.
“I’m going to cut off MTV and VH1 and BET! I can’t believe they show such foolishness on TV!”
I’m sure her opinion is a popular one. If I asked you to describe rap, what words would you use? It’s a popular misconception that all rappers do is talk about money, sex and drugs. However, even if this were true, wouldn’t you look deeper into it and wonder why?

As I was utilizing dictionary.com, I clicked on rap music: a style of popular music, developed by disc jockeys and urban blacks in the late 1970s, in which an insistent, recurring beat pattern provides the background and counterpoint for rapid, slangy, and often boastful rhyming pattern glibly intoned by a vocalist or vocalists. (I apologize for this side note, but the definition of glibly is ‘readily fluent, often thoughtlessly, superficially, or insincerely so.’ I wonder why this adjective was chosen. Aside from other problems I have with this definition, why should one conclude that rap is done in a ‘boastful’ and ‘thoughtless’ manner? The generalization seems almost detrimental to the words reputation.) After I looked up rap, I looked up slang which was defined as: very informal usage in vocabulary and idiom that is characteristically more metaphorical, playful, elliptical, vivid, and ephemeral than ordinary language. I don’t know about you, but I think those two words just contradicted each other. How can something be thoughtless and metaphorical? I don’t think it’s thoughtless, I think it’s brilliance that’s incapable of being measured. It’s an innate brilliance that a chosen few posses. I think I’ve made my point… but hey, that’s what happens when you try to define indefinable words… Anyway, that’s the story of how I looked up hip-hop and ended on elliptical. “Pretty accurate, huh?”

If I were to define the concept of rap by comparing it another form of art, I would compare it to Virginia Wolf’s stream of consciousness. When you hear a person speak slang, do you think of how intelligent they are? ‘Obviously, not’. When someone speaks slang, we all make an assumption that the person is uneducated, or doesn’t know any better. Is this true? If a person chooses to switch between two different “language codes”, is it wrong? Are teenagers who speak slang communicating in a dialect, or are they simply a group of ignorant people consistently making grammatical errors (according to the ‘standard language’, of course).

Rap music breaks convention, and this is what makes people scared. What happens when a minority group actually creates a form of art? What happens when this art form happens to be beautiful because it encompasses the pain and sweat brought upon its’ creators by oppression? What happens when people listen? What happens when the minorities influence popular culture?

Eminem is not only a rap artist, but he’s a person with a story. He grew up in poverty and in his raps, he often tells the story of a person who has been oppressed by society. The above Eminem verse comes from a song called “Rockbottom” from his first released album. When some people hear this song, they only hear the violence, the drugs, and the curses instead of the ‘ugly picture of reality’ it paints. I hope I helped to place this paintbrush on the canvas…The person in “Rockbottom” doesn’t have anything of his own. He works endless hours to earn a paycheck that isn’t enough money to support him. All of his life, he has been chasing success- but he never quite gets there. His child is born and he can barely afford diapers. Sometimes, he has to sacrifice his own meals so that his baby can eat. Rap music is the voice of the minority, and it needs to be heard.

Verse Three:

It would be disrespectful of me to the hip-hop community not to mention that Biggie and Tupac were two of the greatest hip-hop legends of all time.

 Ironically they were both shot and killed.

-Krystal Temple