Midnight Skylark
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6/29/2007 4:48:53 PM
Is Hiphop the New Harlem Renaissance? (Part 2 of 3)
Most people taking a quick note of its title might think the 455-page The Hiphop Driven Life is little more than a survey of famous names, cutting edge fashions, and rap music. They would be mistaken.
This astonishing tome is nothing less than a powerful strategic guide to Hiphop as both practical and spiritual life-enhancing methodology. The subtitle, "A Genius Liberation Handbook," comes off as a bit over-the-top until flipping the book open to the table of contents and viewing chapters on such subjects as: whole brain thought and divine purpose integrated with others on Hiphop as a force of cultural philosophy in action. Also included are sections of memoir that lucidly illustrate the authors' own discovery of Hiphop's empowering qualities.
"It's about tapping into what it means to be human and what it means to add something to the greater good of the world," said Olorunto, speaking with Vilma Butler on her Conversations and More Youtube program. "Hiphop is a lifestyle that allows people to live more according to their divine gifts and talents." Likewise, The Hiphop Driven Life is a book that its authors believe can help people do the same.
Olorunto and Powell's shared conceptualization of Hiphop comes at a time when the cultural movement has been forced to take a public bullet for every ill plaguing African America from family-destroying drug abuse and gang violence to unplanned teenage pregnancies and the disproportionate imprisonment of black men and women. The excessive focus on the more extreme negative elements in commercial rap music and videos make it easy to shift blame or responsibility from sociopolitical conditions and place it on rap culture.
While rap may very well have made its contributions to African America's most troubling challenges, the mistake is in the assumption that hardcore rap is all there is to Hiphop rather than recognizing it as one variable within Hiphop's overall cultural domain. In fact, there has always been within rap itself a psychospiritual element that stressed self determination, raising one's political and social consciousness, and recognition of individual as well as collective divine potential. So what happened to it?
This did––the more videos that popped up with hard male bodies flashing diamonds and gold next to super-sized female asses vibrating erotic thunder, the more the consciousness-raising elements within rap got kicked to the curb. The rap industry and popular media, whether by agreement or not, both indulged in a field day of sensationalism that it largely created, sustained, and perpetuated. Tragically, the commercialization of black youths' sexuality developed alongside the commercialization of black youths' deaths. As loudly as the sirens screamed in our neighborhoods, some apparently cared much more about the sound cash registers made following the blare of those sirens.
From the mid 1990s on into the new century, media hype and the lure of big bucks caused a loss of perspective and balance that maimed one soul and neighborhood after another. In their writings and in their music, Nightjohn is among those cultural visionaries emerging to help restore what was loss. With that in mind, The Hiphop Driven Life provides a tool for a meaningful assessment of current cultural conditions and a source of effective methods for achieving personal liberation under any conditions––popular or not.
(Continues with part 3 of 3)
by Midnigth Skylark Aberjhani
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