|
Hate The Game: (A Personal Blurb from Speech)
I was looking at our SPLASH album art, and it dawned on me that Za' and I, black men, living in America, in a hiphop group are smiling!
According to the hiphop music genre we've made a paramount mistake. Hiphop magazines, hiphop heads, even women will avoid our album because they’ll “judge a book by its cover".
Think about it, when is the last time you've seen a hiphop artist SMILE on the cover of their album?
I think the unwritten ban on smiles comes from the concept that to smile means we are happy with our oppression. We are "house niggers" / Step n Fetch it's, trying hard to please the master. To smile is an admission of surrender in a genre that bases it's existence on resistance, determination despite all odds and confidence!
Rappers who call themselves pimps, hustlers or gangsta's have refined their brand to where we all know they also have softer side. I mean we all know T.I. or Snoop Dogg love their kids.
We hope our brand has evolved enough in your minds to understand that Za & I smiling doesn't mean passiveness. Instead it means we have realized, we are our own master! (Outside of God) We determine our own fate! We don't look hard… we are hard. It's like the richest men in the world don't have to look rich, they just are. We resist the traps, we fight the lies that enslave! We are deliberate.
Sticman from Dead Prez said it well, “Stand up for justice and work for liberation in the best way you know how. Inner peace and health are not a cop out or escape route away from political activism. And political activsm is not superior to personal development and healthy living. They are not enemies nor opposites.
They are connected to each other and everything else that our lives consist of.
So stop with the pit one against the other “bs” already. That's ridiculous.”
AD is HipHop: resistant, determined despite the odds and confident enough to show our teeth. To look hard all the time is an unjust weight on our peoples back, a noose around the neck of the hiphop fan and artist! Like our new song, "Weight" says, "Don't you put your weight on my back no no - get your junk off my back!"
Smile Y’all!
| |
