Contibuted by Saron Dier on 9/27/07

Welp. You guys won. You got what you wanted. You squished us. Are you happy? I’m sure you’ll throw a party when we’re gone. Everybody will go home, say “it was fun while it lasted” and move on. We’ll become workaday stiffs, our lives becoming as plain and flavorless as the gray and blue walls in my office cubicle. We’ll reminisce on the glory days. Sift through old pictures.

Hip hop is finished.

With this last attack on hip hop, it seems that what took so long to build has finally been wiped away, like a Jenga tower in an earthquake. Imus, Oprah, Def Jam, record sales, and ourselves did it. Little Brother broke up. Fiddy “Interscope” Cent dismantled G-Unit. When’s the last time you even seen a b-boy? Or a rap cipher that didn’t end up in a 106 & Park-style, 30-second-a-round battle. I thought my unshakable faith in what hip hop represented was forever. But as I grow I find this out… nothing is forever. Sometimes it’s best to just cut your losses and move on.

At least the funeral will be hype though! I can see it now… Nas finally reaches out to Pete Rock, and gives us those unreleased joints they have. Primo and Royce form a “What If” Gangstarr, and they finally let MOP release an album. Dre releases Detox for a last hurrah. Timbaland directs his efforts into pop, and elevates Justin “Dick in a Box” Timberlake to damn near Deity status. Everybody makes up and puts everything behind them. We all agree that all the beef was in fact for the money, and agree not fuck up anyone on site if they see them in the future. They just nod, and remember that they were young and silly, and ask how each other’s kids are. Cause in the grand scheme, kids are really important. That’s good foreshadowing.

Let hip hop go….

Let’s face it. America hates hip hop now. It’s fascination with gritty urban culture has fizzled. The minstrel show that it has become just isn’t bringing in the dough. The “fad” has ended, just like every other culture America has swallowed up and spit out in efforts to maximize the bottom line. Hey, it’s business right? Rap will be used to sell less and less products. The channels that used to play it go south too, eventually branching off into a “hip hop/r&b” hybrid that often finds T-Pain matched up with D4L. This too will quickly nosedive.

The powers that be decided that hip hop should wipe itself out. Pretty easy, as hip hop became so interdependent with the almighty dollar. Just squelch that pipeline of moolah. Stop spending the money. It’ll be done in two months.

No one talks about hip hop for years. People smash every 808 machine, MPC, delete every FruityLoops program that so oversaturated our ears with pure D bullshit. It never existed – Whatever it will take to wipe the gross aftertaste of this out of our collective mouths (no homo). People even curtail the phrase “no homo” after saying something that could be mildly interpreted as homo (although I think that the “no homo” phrase can lead to some funny exchanges… lol).

After ten, twenty years, after we have forgotten about Imus, and Oprah, and the “stop snitchin” movement, someone has a passing thought. Wow, wasn’t hip hop great? It’s how my wife and I met. It’s what made our barbecues fun. It made me think first person about being a gun. (“They just sell me, use me, do whatever the fuck they want” - thanks Nasir) I used to love hip hop.

Then it happens.

A young child in some park in New Detroit finds an old iPod. The name on it scratched out. Faintly reads ‘Dilla’. This strange, glowing 400-gig iPod has lush music. Bright videos. Vivid images. Breakdancing. Graffitti. Djing. Beatboxing. Rock Steady Crew. Public Enemy. NWA. Eminem. Bone Thugs. But wait a second… This was more than music and art. The blueprint for a whole new civilization was on this device. Amazed by what he sees, he shares it with his closest friend whose grandfather has all these old records. Finding a turntable is damn near impossible, but these lads are determined. Finding old needles and a horn of some sort, they were able fab up a makeshift turntable. James Brown? Don’t know who it is, but damn this is…funky. These rhythms sound as natural as a heartbeat.

They experiment at first, recording and pausing, not being able to imitate this dissonantly harmonic “scratching” sound made by this “DJ Jazzy Jeff” (who??!?!) But as time goes on, they get better…The rhymes reflect what they see, both the positive and negative. The beats, formed from the pulse of the soul, reflect the joyous struggle of those forced to have less. These kids could’ve went the wrong way. Hell, they found the iPod on the way to go steal goodies from the local store. This was powerful enough to make them stop, if not briefly. Out of negative comes positive. From tainted soil grows these roses…

First it starts with just two… beating on the table at school and rapping. Then others join in. Soon others leave the crew and start their own, each with different styles, different formats but all retaining the same spirit. Some start writing graffiti, some start b-boying. They form Hip Hop stronger than it was by learning from the past and making sure that history is as important as the future. They create guidelines, codes and rules that guide this rebellious free-spirited movement. Is it hip hop? Who knows? Could hip hop be reformed just as it was in its “glory days”? Maybe not…. but at this junction, who cares?

All these kids know that this is right now, and they are experiencing true nirvana. Somehow they were able to get power from a streetlight. Ingenuity and passion made those speakers. Paint cans and beat boxes made those drums. Finesse and experience made the rhymes. The ambulance also made a trip - to get the “breakers”… lol. They came from nothing, but something came from them. Something awesome. No fighting, no beef. A beautiful but brief cease-fire in the war zone they now call New Detroit.

The first park jam….

My first attempt at fiction… haha. To be clear, the spirit of hip hop will never die. However, things go in cycles. Things get remade, revised, and revamped. With the impending corporate pullout of hip hop, this is a perfect opportunity to recreate the art form to best suit the people who love it. Although somewhat misshapen, we get hip hop back to recreate from the inside out - not the other way around. Truthfully, things will probably get worse before they get better…but at least someone will have the chance to benefit from the true power of hip hop.

The end?

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