Touch this illa fifth dynamite

The past few years I've moved away from pop-punk and indie music towards hip-hop. Not rap, studio gangster bullshit. Actual artistic production from African American (also known as "black people"), such as the work of Mos Def, Talib Kweli, The Roots, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Dialted Peoples, Kanye West, MF Doom... and even more artists I don't know or can't remember. These artists could all be classified as "conscious hip hop", a label indicating that they are not in the music business to make a buck like their MTV contemporaries but rather to pass on a message, a revolution for their people. Black people. I don't buy into calling people "African American" unless they actually are; otherwise you must call me an Irish-Jewish-Russian American.

These artists are like a modern day Rolling Stones or Who, Ramones or Dead Kennedys. The artists I mentioned above are creating for the uplift of their race! They exist as a reaction to the sell-out, minstrel show act of the studio gangster. "You've got to applaud niggers that raise the bar", Talib Kweli says, and that is what appeals to me. On the broadest level, these artists are pushing their brothers and sisters to reach for the top, to accomplish everything they are capable of. That's what I like, that's what gets me fired up. Pushing oneself to achieve. Coming from a black person's perspective the message is even more potent. Black people still suffer from prejudice as does any race that is not the majority. "Civil liberties is free but just for some... trust your family, trust nobody at all, see your brothers getting struck down" says Blackthought of the Roots. The struggle isn't entirely physical as it was 100 or even 40 years ago. Now black people must fight to catch up to the white's educational complex. I like that these black artists encourage their fellows to learn, to achieve, to accomplish something beyond owning a few square blocks in the ghetto. "Hip hop will simply amaze you, craze you, pay you, do whatever you say do, but black, it can't save you" rhymes Mos Def. Being black isn't an excuse anymore - it is time for black people to take their own intellectually, to come into their own as a people, to move past the dominant white people's perception of the "rapper".