My earliest recollection of Hip-Hop is “The Message” from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. There was something hypnotizing about the beat and the chorus ingrained itself in your mind, but it was Melle Mel’s last first that really drew me to the song. Yeah, I was like four-years-old, but the authority in which he spit his rhyme really made me listen. I didn’t understand 99% of what he was talking about, but the way he was saying it, made me believe it to be powerful. Nearly thirty years later it is still my favorite verse, you know, it’s the one that starts, “A child is born with no state of mind/Blind/To the ways of mankind…”
I’ll give you a few seconds to finish the rhyme…
Hip-Hop was born as a movement; a counter-culture from the minds of frustrated youth otherwise sentenced to life in America’s ghettos. It was creativity enmeshed with escaping the aftermath of heroin’s (and then crack) stranglehold on their communities, shady politicians, dwindling opportunities and a pocket full of hope the 70’s provided with advances in sports and entertainment. It became the soundtrack to the streets and rightfully so, being that it was birthed in the streets of the South Bronx and at its best, provided commentary for what life was like at the time.
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