Last week, rapper Lupe Fiasco
announced on Twitter that after his next album, slated to be released on
September 25, he would retire from music. He said this as a reaction to a
threat on Twitter by fellow Chicago rapper Chief Keef. A few weeks earlier, Lupe
had this to say in an interview by a Baltimore radio station: “Chief Keef scares me. Not him, specifically but
just the culture that he represents, specifically in Chicago…the murder rate in Chicago is sky-rocketing and when you see who’s doing
it and perpetrating it they all look like Chief Keef”. Chief Keef responded by calling
Fiasco a series of derogatory names and claiming he would smack him when he saw
him. Lupe then responded with a series of tweets noting his discouragement
saying “But my heart is broken and I see no comfort
further along this path only more pain. I cannot participate any longer in this
… My first true love was literature so I will return to that … Lupe Fiasco ends
here”.
I can understand
Lupe’s frustration. Lup has always made music that was counter-cultural and
made the listener think (God forbid music making us have to think…) and as a
result, his music has never been widely popular as far as the mainstream is
concerned. While having every excuse for being a product of the culture and
environment he was raised in, Lupe chose another route. Lupe Fiasco, like Keef,
grew up on Chicago’s westside, which was replete with gangs and violence. Lupe
could have chosen, like many other rappers, to make harder music, taking the “I’m
rapping about where I’m from” route. However,
he made a conscious decision to stay above the fray because as he put it six
years ago, “This isn’t cool. There’s nothing cool about how I grew up. There’s
nothing cool about the projects”. Nonetheless, many rappers like Chief Keef
decide to glorify these lives of gang violence and savagery, in large part due
to the money-hungry record labels that could care less about how many youth are
killed each year in Chicago as long as they get their cut.
Lupe’s voice is
more needed in hip hop now than ever. Labels and radio stations are more hit-driven
than ever before and hip hop needs a balance; it always has. While NWA was
pushing their gangsta revolution, there was the Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff
talking about the teenage trials of the day. When Snoop and Dre were taking us
to Deathrow, Public Enemy was calling us to “fight the power”. There has always
been balance in hip hop, but that balance seems to be fading in today’s music.
Lupe Fiasco provides that balance by accepting a calling higher than making
hits and stacking dollars. His calling is education. He wants the listener to
think about what they’re listening to and about the things they value most.
As Lupe put it, in some respects hip hop is as
good as it’s ever been. It’s more technically flawless; the beats and
production are better; the lyrics are as clever and witty as ever, but it lacks
one essential component: substance. The substance in the music is perhaps at
its worst since the inception of the art form. It is replete with aggression,
sexuality, and materialism, which are the three main components of the downfall
of a nation or society. The young black community is on pace for genocide and
hip hop is providing the soundtrack. So even though I know he will never see
this, I hope Lupe continues to fight the good fight. Be not discouraged by
ignorance and opposition, but be encouraged by those young minds that you have touched. His voice provides the
prophetic balance that calls hip hop to be better and more responsible. He lets
us know that we do not have to be products of our environments but that we can
transcend our environments and rise above our circumstances and make a
difference in this world. So it is our responsibility to be more cautious about
what message we support with our money and attention. The violence and the
killing HAS to stop, and hip hop MUST cease to be the soundtrack to the
genocide of its own people. Let us rise above like Lupe and be voices crying
out in the wilderness of mainstream media.
Shalom
PEACE be unto you
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