hiphop discourse

[Terrance]

Thanks Phil, 

We could also say that Hip-Hop/Rap music is rooted in Black
Oral Tradition and that the rapper is a postmodern African
Griot, a story teller, a cultural historian. So keeping it
real is not simply a matter of guns, death, pimps, crack,
and hoes, but an expectation, a  seriousness (the word rap
is a sexual term) with which one stands up to testify, to
speak the truth, to come wit it, to bring it on, real,
constant, quick, stay in time with the beat. And the beat is
real and the beat is fast. Mixing memory with desire, fact
and fiction, reality and fantasy, but Truth, Real, rap is a
response to the wasteland, the joblessness, homelessness,
land of poverty, disempowerment, the unworking class. It's
the middle finger to America's economic terrorism against
minority poor, it's a scream in the face of the power
apparatus that is desperate to eradicate it. It's a cry for
freedom, for justice. Doug, remember that city kids were so
moved and inspired by folk music and protest music in the
60s, today, Rap/Hip-Hop is not Only expressive of inner city
cultural phenomena, it is, at the same time,  a resistance
to "White American" racism, cultural dominance, a resisting
discourse. 

You know they don't care
I can't take the smell, I can't take the noise...
Don't push me cause I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head

		--Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, "The Message"

In GR, Smells and Noises are associated with primal anxiety
and the idea that those in power either don't give a damn or
worse are out to get you is a very real one in rap/hip-hop.
I guess M&D has the most to say about contemporary Music. 

Tryin to flee the trap of this nation
Seein penitentiary's the plan to plant the new plantation...
The chain remain the same...

		--Naughty By Nature, "Chains Remain"