Contributed by NINO* on 2/15/08

Nowadays all we seem to notice is how corrupt everyone and everything else is. If someone makes a mistake, it’s given more press and recognition compared to when they do something right. If someone appears to be morally better or stronger than us, we are quick to condemn and draw our own analogies about ‘what they’re really up to.’ Of course, those with the greatest power, the most influence and control over the mass population, are coincidentally the most corrupt. It’s hard to comprehend that people with such low levels of compassion for humanity and justice reach such high status and power. But is everyone corrupt before they get there, or do they become so after?

For example, there’s this whole idea of a ‘police personality’ or a ‘canteen culture’, suggesting that joining the police force may alter your own personality and isolate you from the rest of society. This theory supposes that it is the environment and attitudes within the police force that forces these changes. The person is not of this mindset beforehand. Who really knows though? Individual differences mean we can never really draw any kind of psychoanalysis on human behaviour. We can only suggest and suppose in order to improve our personalities and lifestyles in the hope that we ourselves can become ‘better people’. But, back to the police, it’s possible that the statistics, which don’t really represent the majority and ‘dark figures’ of crime rates, could cause a fairly open minded, level headed person to become discriminative against a certain group after joining the police force. Indeed, it seems apparent that a person who in their life beforehand, having communicated with different members of the community, could then use these experiences and connections, ignoring all positive ones, once in the police force- to discriminate and stereotype further. Perhaps making them worse than an officer who had been less active and concerned beforehand. This all suggests that if you put an innocent person among corrupt people – the corruption then gets worse.

So does virtue itself breed corruption? Could something that was created as an alternative to the political unjust and corruption which left many fighting and hustling on the street; be so virtuous by roots that it has now evolved into a much greater corruption? To simplify, could hip hop be the source of its own corrupt forefront?

Indeed this all seems to be the core of the point Lupe Fiasco is attempting to make with his early retirement. A young, unsoiled soul who is being saluted as the saviour of hip hop today. In time, perhaps his responsibilities, expectations, ego and beliefs could all become so vast and twisted that he would end up being thrust out of the scene like a burning drum through a window. So he’s decided to stop while he’s ahead, and still knows what it is he’s doing, and why he’s doing it. While he’s in touch with his virtue and steering clear of corruption.

Looking at one of the world’s best known ‘righteous’ icons – Muhammad Ali, an upsetting level of undeniable corruption is thrust in our faces. Ali, a real, talented and strong individual. Fighting, representing, teaching and learning with the vigour of a true hero. It is those around him who got where they are purely due to his success; that led a massacre of corruption. One which involved more distinguished characters and money than the fight Ali himself led. The name Don King speaks for itself. There was also the mass corruption surrounding Elijah Muhammad with the Nation Of Islam. But on top of that, look at the hoards of people, who still today are siphoning money off his name, without doing any work themselves; because he is too kind, too virtuous, to copyright it and punish or stop these fools in some way.

If I look at my local government funding schemes. Some people can’t resist to take more than their fair share. The temptation not to teach and guide the youth they had agreed to help, is overthrown by the temptation to take the DJ decks they have bought with funding money. And disappear. So any sincerity is completely defied by the common Western obsession with greed.

The idea of Entropy seems to fit in pretty well here. It basically states that disorder in the universe in continuously increasing. And disorder is more likely that order. For example, if you have load of Montana spray cans, they’re more likely to fall down and become scattered, rolling randomly across the ground; than they are to arrange themselves in a perfect pyramid. Because it takes less energy to create a disordered system than an ordered one. It seems to be a common misconception that virtue requires order and corruption is just the result of disorder. That’s hardly true. Some of the worlds biggest corruptions are planned, practised and have tons of causes and reasons, which those behind the planning work from. Usually the top at the list of these reasons is personal gain.

Many of the biggest problems we face in our own communities are the result of the clever organisation of the rich trying to get richer. The ‘people’s’ government, looking after nobody but numero uno. The result of this corruption is everywhere.
In Germany, the five million on the dole have had their benefits cut. In Britain, we face the longest working hours in Europe, yet our poverty and homelessness rates are ever-increasing. In the US, which is the richest society in history, 90% of the population have seen no improvement in the living standards in the past 30 years and half are worst off. The poverty ridden streets of South Bronx are not in the past. The only difference is that now these individuals have a good way, and cause to get out of it. Looking at the African roots of hip hop also, reggae and Rastafarianism all came as a response to political corruption. And in Jamaica, politics and music have always been closely linked. At the same time, it seems that clearly organised corruption breeds stronger virtue in individuals who have blatantly, had enough…..Cue hip hop.

Robert Moses, the most powerful urban builder of all time pretty much planned the biggest downfall of the Bronx. When building the Cross-Bronx Expressway, 60,000 Bronx residents were literally, bulldozed out of the way. In the Manhattan ghettos, the urban renewal policy forced poor African-American, Puerto Rican and Jewish families to move to East Brooklyn and the South Bronx. Places where public housing was on the increase, but job prospects were meagre. This displacement of the poor was only a solution for the rich and ordered. Environmental psychology suggests the ‘tower-in-a-park’ model of so called urban development made the already poverty ridden communities thrive with crime. The government seems so keen to tell us, “look what I have done for you.” Nah mate, look what you have done to us. In some neighbourhoods the youth unemployment rates were as high as 80%. That’s a hell of a lot of kids needing to hustle. Looking for fast, easy ways to get money. Virtue, righteousness and morals were never even put on the weighing scales when it came to pure survival. But the dealers and original outlaws created their own means of corruption. Those who managed to work their ways up as far as money went, only wanted more. So they were willing to deceive there own. And the corrupted messed up their own communities further. Then hip hop came along, and suddenly inner city gangs became crews. Some guns were replaced by sneakers and boom boxes. For the first time in a long time, it truly was; survival of the fittest.

When Kool Herc, KRS-One and all the other pioneers began making music, they were making hip hop as alternative to the negative aspects of street culture. But they were doing it as a hobby and way out of poverty. To have fun, form a new, exciting more colourful community and perhaps make the beats take them out of scarcity and towards stability. They weren’t trying to be fucking prophets. They weren’t attempting to preach and be all pure and righteous. They just wanted to live. But now, hip hop has hit yet another hurdle in its long lasting existence. No, it isn’t dead. And it won’t stop till there isn’t a single head on the planet understanding and practising it the way it should be. But as far as mainstream media goes, the 50 Cents and Young Jeezy’s of today are basically aiding the government corruption. Plunging their bredrens into further confusion and poverty by setting a hideously worthless example. The money, the glamour and the spread of hip hop bred corruption. But virtue was always around the corner. Self Destruction came as a response to guns at a KRS-one and Public Enemy gig. And then there’s The Temple of hip hop which is about bringing hip hop back to the roots and keeping it positive and strong. It seems idealism comes hand in hand with glory and corruption and the whole idea of an ‘idealistic’ hip hop lifestyle is beyond unrealistic. It’s more about what works for you. What works full stop.

I was chatting to a lass the other day, and she was telling me how she used to look down on prostitutes of even ‘easy’ girls in her home country. Yet, when she moved here she would fuck guys purely so she would have a place to sleep for the night. Interesting how we are so keen to put our own levels of virtue so high above others. If we’re not in another person’s situation, how the hell do we know whether or not what they’re doing is the right thing to do? If you’ve got a few pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that look similar, you have to put more of it together before you can work out where they really fit. You have to look at the full picture. The more I delve deeper into things around me that are so glorified as pure virtue. The more corruption I find within them. Things always seem to change when you’re getting comfortable. But full control is always out of your range when your actions get too functional. Society creates a list of things that are ‘immoral’ and then lives through the harsh and negative results of committing them themselves. Or discussing, analysing and hating on others who do the same.

The common youth mindset is that of cognitive reinforced learning, that the only things which are considered wrong are things you get caught doing. Of course, once that is confirmed after they’ve been caught and punished, they do it because it is wrong. It seems to me that the youngers who are disadvantaged as a result of other people’s corruption; work a lot harder than we get credit for. Through our natural desire for virtue. Age and experience is on a par with youth and ambition. If not lying beneath it. But these youngers are still in a minority.

Bruce Lee (r.i.p.) defined the idea so many of the ‘aged and experienced’ seem to hold, in a speech at the end of Enter The Dragon. Which, interestingly, the American film industry cut out of the final film…

“Today, the young are taught nothing of honour. The sense of lie as epic, of life as big, of life as something for which one learns to fight – this is foolish to them. To them grandeur is irrelevant. The young no longer dream.”

Here we’re also approaching a whole new concept, that of glory. It could be argued that nowadays what we label as virtue, is actually glory. But what the hell is glory? Magnificence? Splendour? Beauty? Perhaps virtue only breeds corruption when we fool ourselves into mistaking our desire for glory, as our desire for virtue. Virtue is about realism, purity, honesty and just general ‘goodness’. A lot of the things we label as unvirtuous don’t actually make you a bad person. Therefore, they probably pass. So we can keep our personalities, our natural human defects, without aiming for unrealistic, tainted glory. Or that’s when jealousy, deception and selfishness will all kick in. And if we follow the sneak that’s kicking, we’ll get to corruption.

This seems to be quite a current issue in the US with elections and such. Favourites Clinton and Obama are both ‘firsts’. First female president, first coloured. Both may be role models in their own rights. But Obama’s readiness to bomb wherever he feels needs be without any real deliberation is hardly a positive point. Not to mention Hilary’s fake-ass emotional front over a job that, in all reality, she only wants to use to benefit herself. It seems obvious, that as ‘firsts’, they’re both aiming for glory as apposed to virtue.

A constant need for people to tell you how mint you are and for your money to remind you how ’successful’ you are; results in you pleasing and fulfilling anybody but yourself. At the end of the day, you will never, ever, please everyone. Why not just please the people you love and respect and work on fulfilling yourself and holding on to some kind of virtue as apposed to wasting your life on corruption and deception just for your few seconds of glory?
But if everyone did that, where’s the control in society? What happens to the governmental order? To classes? To discrimination? The upper class minority would no longer have the upper hand. In other words, the corrupt media, government and global trade organisation bastards would be completely fucked. So they promo the gangster rap, use it to blind and confuse the majority into hating hip hop – only thing that really provides all this. They delete life changing lines, from incredible people, so the rest of the world can’t hear them and learn from them. Malcolm X (r.i.p.) is a perfect example; they magnify his bad points and leave out all the ingenious revelations he made towards the end of his life after he moved away from the hardly orthodox Nation of Islam. Yet another corruption, because the individuals leading it wanted glory, as apposed to virtue through religion.

The only people who have really changed history are those who have changed the way people think about themselves. Hitler as well as Jesus. Stalin as well as Buddha. It’s about giving people the confidence, honesty and security to work towards fulfilling themselves. As apposed to fulfilling societies expectations of them, in a lost search for glory. And if hip hop can’t do that.
Nothing can.

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