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Sunday, 17 August 2008

Does hip hop music alienate? by PraShawn Jackson

I red few years ago an article that hip hop music alienate the youth from the society. I think this can not be true, because hip hop community is a society. It can be true that people can lose the sense of reality, when they are in touch with an art and they are living for that art and willing to do anything to keep that art authentic and preserve it from the vultures who are willing to destroy it and abuse it for their own wealth.

So far as the alienation consider, when it comes to the hip hop music no one can alienate me from this culture. I am an one man movement and although my budget is not large I still can contribute to the hip hop culture in other ways than buying albums daily. I think my mother thinks that hip hop is another name for having sex. She wonder why I call my blog hiphopfanatic.com. I feel quite alienated from the society there are no people who I can relate to. Only I can relate to are the rappers, because they are born into the dirt just like me. If you know hunger you will feel the struggle. And born into a racist society people judge you by the background and racial ethnicity can cost you lots of hair and health. I have been chasing a dream having a job and live like the working class people. This is not even possible, when the cocky white kids at your work call me a Ni**er in my face and gossip about me behind my back, gossiping is a habit that every society got to deal with, but throwing racial terms at your dome can hurt my soul. The bosses are looking for someone to do the dirty job. I am really a humble kid, that is my nature. I can not seems to take all the racial terms all the way long from the cocky Caucasians.

I feel like I'd rather be alienated than being a modern house slave for this society who thinks that I only deserve the minimum wage. In my case I know some people who gets alienated in the hip hop culture, since they have no friends. These kinds of people always needs someone around them to show them the way. I never had that kind of cousin or brothers to show me the way. That way I feel that I failed comparing the mediocre standers the majority set. I made lots of mistakes like skipping classes and even passing my math exams drunk. I never knew how to choose the right friends, if they were hip hop fans I was willing to hang out with them. Some kids I knew they only were after the money and their older cousin or brother were cooking for them and they ran studios from houses. I feel like these studio rappers were the alienated ones, they never come out hanging and getting drunk in public with the regular kids like us. They truly got the house slave mentality and they never felt how much stressful it gets and how it feels one of your friends throw him self front of the train. These studio gangstas only know happy times. They do not know what it is like to grow up with no family around you.

And then you have these upper class brothers talking black supremacy, while their label owner is white. They never talked to a kid from the ghetto and they do not have the spine to set up their own labels to make a start of their career. Once this reminds me of the song of Gravediggaz song '12 Jewels'. It said the "old man from Sudan didn't knew the basic principles of the economy". Being your own boss that is the major economical achievement is about. Working for the white man and calling your self black activists and pumping your fist is just lack of awareness and political consciousness. In this modern society rappers are almost doomed to sell their soul to the labels, when a rappers is hungry he will be easily convinced by the A&R's and other record label people. I think the true potential of a socially, economically and politically aware artists does not where the money is running, but where the hearts of the hip hop fans are running. That is preserving of the hip hop culture as an authentic culture and reminding the fans what the true purpose of the hip hop culture is about, which is peace, love and unity. With these three keywords there is no alienation possible for the hip hop fans not even the majority alienates them.

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