Hip Hop: An under-utilized weapon. A chapter from "Directions in Understanding" by Akintunde Amenosis
Hip Hop`s Founding Fathers: Herc, Bam, Flash, Furious 5 
Today its Music, its relationships to the NTRW, harmony and our unification, the powers of rythem, and the under-utilized cultural weapon of Hip Hop, and its fathers R & B and Jazz. How does music relate to the NTRW? As usual with me, we gonna start way back, at the start. When the NTRW designed and created mammilian life [mammals], a key feature of the design was the heartbeat. The heartbeat is the basis of all music, and all rythem, and its rate of beating was set by the NTRW. The human heartbeat averages 70 beats per minute, and a ballad today is about 70 bpm. The "bump-bump" of our heartbeat is the rythem we all live too, it is the FUNDAMENTAL rythem of life. The first musical instrument known to man was a drum, and a drum imitates what? A heartbeat. It probably started out hitting two sticks together, and as we advanced in creating water-carrying devices [gourds, skins, and pottery] it continued with beating a stick agaisnt a gourd, and then the formal drum was invented. Since dance was invented by the Twa, and u need a rythem to dance to, the Twa must have invented the drum also, at least they had drums/music/dance earlier than anyone else. So we have the earliest music, which was man imitating the heartbeat rythem given to him by the NTRW. Many different types of drums were then invented, and from the relativly simple heartbeat rythem we invented vastly more complicated rythems all the way up to today. Along the way we made many important discoveries concerning music, most importantly the fact that music can alter your perceptions/mental state, can make you move involuntarily [head bopping, foot tapping, dance], can cause u to enter a trance state, can assist the Ancestors in communicating with u, among other things. We incorporated music and its many powers into our religious structures and yall know the results of that! Once we had invented the musical scale, with its 7 notes [7 Elemental Gods][7 African powers][7 souls of Man], we noticed that certain combinations of these notes resulted in HARMONY.....and we began to incorporate harmony, or peaceful living, or UNITY, into our culture, and these became embodied in the Goddess Maat. Maat can be expressed musically, is expressed musically. This connection between harmony and Deity is continued to this day, from "gospel" music to "conscious" hip hop. It was said by our Ancestors that PTAH created reality thru 50 vibratory units, or "words of power"......the 50 "words" also have musical expressions, as the 50 "words" are in fact sounds. Ask a musician where his songs come from, he will answer "from within", which is physically the heartbeat [rythem] and spiritually the words of power [notes, chords]. A scientist does not create good music because it must be "felt". These 50 units, which i have NOT been able to identify totally on my keyboard, when "intuited' by a good musician, creates melodies/songs which have the power to effect the human physiology greatly. Think about James Brown for a minute. He pulls those funky songs from the depths of his soul and it is irresistable to us Blacks, you are "forced" by his music to move your body....JB can make u wanna dance, cry, screw, fight, and pray. That is called.............POWER! Having established the connections of music and heartbeat, music and NTRW, and the start of music/dance and our culture, lets examine one form of music and determine wether it is in fact an under-utilized weapon, capable of transforming the human physiology and culture. Lets look at hip hop. First, the basic history of hip hop.....it was invented in 1975 in the bronx river projects by dj Kool Herc. Why did he invent it? Before Kool Herc started it, NYC was undergoing a financial crisis, so the money for music departments in ny was cut to the bone, no instruments were available anymore. we had nothing to lay music with. At the same time, a new type of niteclub, the discoteche, was becoming popular, and the disc jockey [dj] was the discoteche`s only "musician". As we Black kids had no instruments, and this "new" type musician didnt have them either, we began to identify with the "dj'. We replaced drums, trumpets, saxophones, ect, with records containing thier sounds...this is where Herc comes in. Herc, being from the carribean, brought the carib style "sound system" [portable dj] to NY`s underground Black "disco`s" [usually in the community room of your projects]. Herc had moderate success, then he began to play a record from jamaica called "apache". Apache is a 15 minute record with 10 of those minutes being strictly percussion. When Herc played this record, when the percussion "break" came, the ppl went crazy........and the "breakbeat" was born. There were 2 dancer back then called the "nigga twins', who did a strange dance to this breakbeat called apache, where they spun around on the floor. Herc labelled this dance "breakin", and the dancers that did it "breakboys", which became "bronxboy" to the rest of the city, then shortened to "b-boy". Thus the rythem [breaks like apache], and the dance [b-boy, or breakdancer] was established, all that remained was the vocals. Herc became famous in the bronx behind this, but he had a problem.....Herc mixed two copies of 1 record to extend the "break", but he couldnt keep it on beat, in rythem......so another dj solved this with an electronic invention called a "cue". This dj was Grandmaster Flash. Flash was able to extend "breaks" indefinitly, and keep it on beat......and....Flash had 4 bros with him that adopted the carib art of "toasting", where one would say rhymes on top of the record playing. The bro that invented the basic hiphop rhymes was named Keith "Cowboy". Cowboy, now deceased, invented "to the beat yall", "yes yes yall", "hip hop u dont stop" [where the music gets its name] and "throw ya hands in the air, wave em like ya jus dont care". Cowboy named the music, and Flash spread it thruout nyc, via one cassette tape. Flash recorded his show on tape, and i swear, EVERY kid in nyc had a copy, and the next day, EVERY kid was either a dj, or a rapper [MC had not been invented yet]. Whites, and Blacks south of Jersey had no clue about hiphop at all. At this same time, Dj Hollywood was spinning in a Bronx niteclub [signalling the move from parks to clubs], and rhyming while he played records. Hollywood`s style became the "party" style of rapping [Kurtis Blow, Fresh Prince], while Cowboy and the Furious Four repped a more "hardcore, street" style [P.E., KRS-One, Run-Dmc] that featured "battles". Flash and the 5 used to offer 1000 dollars to whoever could "take them out", a enormous sum of money back then. This is where i come in. I got a "flash tape" in 1977, and the next day, i was "rapper J". This next part is significant......my parents, and everybody elses parents, absolutely HATED hiphop! Black parents in nyc HATED it, did not encourage it at all, and gave us ABSOLUTELY NO DIRECTION. This decision eventually led to this weapon being under-utilized. Since our parents ignored hiphop, and did not direct us in it, we stumbled about blindly for acceptance, and was wide open to be exploited. At this point, say 1978/79, hiphop is the ONLY music being played parties thruout ny, and a sister named Silvia Robinson noticed it all........and formed sugar hill records, and released "rappers delight". Rappers delight aint the first rap record, Fatback band released "king tim 3" first [Fatback saw Dj Hollywood perform, and tried to bite], but "delight went triple platinum, and introduced rap to the nation. This entry of record companies into rap changed everything. The old artists like Flash began to do shows in downtown Manhatten, where whites finally saw them. In order to gain greater acceptance, Flash began dressing in costumes and leathers [see "the message" and "planet rock" videos] and homeboys felt a lil betrayed, and hiphop as an art form was dying........and then RUN-DMC came out. RUN-DMC released "its like that" which was a hit, but nuthin special. On the b side however, was "sucker emcees", a true, real, hiphop record. In addition, Run dressed the same as all homies dressed, so we were again represented.....and hip hop became the global phenomenom that its is today. The 5% theology that the hip hop world in NY shared was not repped by RunDmc, but by other artists such as Public Enemy, Rakim, and KRS One, and they dominated rap after Run, as we relearned the spiritual powers inherent in hiphop. Unfortunately, this was when a LA group called NWA [niggas wit attitudes] came out, and the spiritualism was replaced by gangstarism, and control of the music`s content moved from artist to record co. NWA far outsold everyone else and our underutilized weapon was re-aimed directly at us. You cant get more negative than a gangsta rap record, except with a artist like marilyn manson, and negativity was DEMANDED by the record co, and the conscious rapper relegated to the shadows. But a very strange thing happened.........white kids, kids around the world, began imitating these Black rappers, admiring these young Blacks, and falling in love wit our culture......to the extreme fear of the ruling whites Hip hop was a REVERSAL of the centuries old concept of "love white, hate Black".In fact, american psychiatry was in GREAT DANGER because these supposedly "useless, stealin, niggas that are hated by all" were being loved and imitated. If these Blacks used it properly, hip hop had proven itself capable of transforming white attitudes from "hating niggas" to wanting to be Black, admiring Black, and imitating Black......in other words, is Eminem pyschologically capable of being a klansman like his dad? NO! This is POWER........ So here we are today, with a system [hiphop] that is PROVEN capable of erasing the old "niggas invent nothing useful" concept, PROVEN capable of uniting millions under its banner, PROVEN to be an awesome psychological weapon, and where does our Black leadership stand on using hip hop? They stand apart from it, never embracing it, never using its powers, instead letting the jews [who own the major labels] twist it into a destructive force.......all that power.........wasted. Next time i hear "why cant we unify", im gonna wonder why we dont use such an obvious unifying force........i really wish our parents had used some foresight concerning hiphop, instead of letting us get jacked. Dont let our children get jacked too. Yours in Revolution......Akintunde Amenosis [Born Understanding] Htp!
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Today its Music, its relationships to the NTRW, harmony and our unification, the powers of rythem, and the under-utilized cultural weapon of Hip Hop, and its fathers R & B and Jazz. How does music relate to the NTRW? As usual with me, we gonna start way back, at the start. When the NTRW designed and created mammilian life [mammals], a key feature of the design was the heartbeat. The heartbeat is the basis of all music, and all rythem, and its rate of beating was set by the NTRW. The human heartbeat averages 70 beats per minute, and a ballad today is about 70 bpm. The "bump-bump" of our heartbeat is the rythem we all live too, it is the FUNDAMENTAL rythem of life. The first musical instrument known to man was a drum, and a drum imitates what? A heartbeat. It probably started out hitting two sticks together, and as we advanced in creating water-carrying devices [gourds, skins, and pottery] it continued with beating a stick agaisnt a gourd, and then the formal drum was invented. Since dance was invented by the Twa, and u need a rythem to dance to, the Twa must have invented the drum also, at least they had drums/music/dance earlier than anyone else. So we have the earliest music, which was man imitating the heartbeat rythem given to him by the NTRW. Many different types of drums were then invented, and from the relativly simple heartbeat rythem we invented vastly more complicated rythems all the way up to today. Along the way we made many important discoveries concerning music, most importantly the fact that music can alter your perceptions/mental state, can make you move involuntarily [head bopping, foot tapping, dance], can cause u to enter a trance state, can assist the Ancestors in communicating with u, among other things. We incorporated music and its many powers into our religious structures and yall know the results of that! Once we had invented the musical scale, with its 7 notes [7 Elemental Gods][7 African powers][7 souls of Man], we noticed that certain combinations of these notes resulted in HARMONY.....and we began to incorporate harmony, or peaceful living, or UNITY, into our culture, and these became embodied in the Goddess Maat. Maat can be expressed musically, is expressed musically. This connection between harmony and Deity is continued to this day, from "gospel" music to "conscious" hip hop. It was said by our Ancestors that PTAH created reality thru 50 vibratory units, or "words of power"......the 50 "words" also have musical expressions, as the 50 "words" are in fact sounds. Ask a musician where his songs come from, he will answer "from within", which is physically the heartbeat [rythem] and spiritually the words of power [notes, chords]. A scientist does not create good music because it must be "felt". These 50 units, which i have NOT been able to identify totally on my keyboard, when "intuited' by a good musician, creates melodies/songs which have the power to effect the human physiology greatly. Think about James Brown for a minute. He pulls those funky songs from the depths of his soul and it is irresistable to us Blacks, you are "forced" by his music to move your body....JB can make u wanna dance, cry, screw, fight, and pray. That is called.............POWER! Having established the connections of music and heartbeat, music and NTRW, and the start of music/dance and our culture, lets examine one form of music and determine wether it is in fact an under-utilized weapon, capable of transforming the human physiology and culture. Lets look at hip hop. First, the basic history of hip hop.....it was invented in 1975 in the bronx river projects by dj Kool Herc. Why did he invent it? Before Kool Herc started it, NYC was undergoing a financial crisis, so the money for music departments in ny was cut to the bone, no instruments were available anymore. we had nothing to lay music with. At the same time, a new type of niteclub, the discoteche, was becoming popular, and the disc jockey [dj] was the discoteche`s only "musician". As we Black kids had no instruments, and this "new" type musician didnt have them either, we began to identify with the "dj'. We replaced drums, trumpets, saxophones, ect, with records containing thier sounds...this is where Herc comes in. Herc, being from the carribean, brought the carib style "sound system" [portable dj] to NY`s underground Black "disco`s" [usually in the community room of your projects]. Herc had moderate success, then he began to play a record from jamaica called "apache". Apache is a 15 minute record with 10 of those minutes being strictly percussion. When Herc played this record, when the percussion "break" came, the ppl went crazy........and the "breakbeat" was born. There were 2 dancer back then called the "nigga twins', who did a strange dance to this breakbeat called apache, where they spun around on the floor. Herc labelled this dance "breakin", and the dancers that did it "breakboys", which became "bronxboy" to the rest of the city, then shortened to "b-boy". Thus the rythem [breaks like apache], and the dance [b-boy, or breakdancer] was established, all that remained was the vocals. Herc became famous in the bronx behind this, but he had a problem.....Herc mixed two copies of 1 record to extend the "break", but he couldnt keep it on beat, in rythem......so another dj solved this with an electronic invention called a "cue". This dj was Grandmaster Flash. Flash was able to extend "breaks" indefinitly, and keep it on beat......and....Flash had 4 bros with him that adopted the carib art of "toasting", where one would say rhymes on top of the record playing. The bro that invented the basic hiphop rhymes was named Keith "Cowboy". Cowboy, now deceased, invented "to the beat yall", "yes yes yall", "hip hop u dont stop" [where the music gets its name] and "throw ya hands in the air, wave em like ya jus dont care". Cowboy named the music, and Flash spread it thruout nyc, via one cassette tape. Flash recorded his show on tape, and i swear, EVERY kid in nyc had a copy, and the next day, EVERY kid was either a dj, or a rapper [MC had not been invented yet]. Whites, and Blacks south of Jersey had no clue about hiphop at all. At this same time, Dj Hollywood was spinning in a Bronx niteclub [signalling the move from parks to clubs], and rhyming while he played records. Hollywood`s style became the "party" style of rapping [Kurtis Blow, Fresh Prince], while Cowboy and the Furious Four repped a more "hardcore, street" style [P.E., KRS-One, Run-Dmc] that featured "battles". Flash and the 5 used to offer 1000 dollars to whoever could "take them out", a enormous sum of money back then. This is where i come in. I got a "flash tape" in 1977, and the next day, i was "rapper J". This next part is significant......my parents, and everybody elses parents, absolutely HATED hiphop! Black parents in nyc HATED it, did not encourage it at all, and gave us ABSOLUTELY NO DIRECTION. This decision eventually led to this weapon being under-utilized. Since our parents ignored hiphop, and did not direct us in it, we stumbled about blindly for acceptance, and was wide open to be exploited. At this point, say 1978/79, hiphop is the ONLY music being played parties thruout ny, and a sister named Silvia Robinson noticed it all........and formed sugar hill records, and released "rappers delight". Rappers delight aint the first rap record, Fatback band released "king tim 3" first [Fatback saw Dj Hollywood perform, and tried to bite], but "delight went triple platinum, and introduced rap to the nation. This entry of record companies into rap changed everything. The old artists like Flash began to do shows in downtown Manhatten, where whites finally saw them. In order to gain greater acceptance, Flash began dressing in costumes and leathers [see "the message" and "planet rock" videos] and homeboys felt a lil betrayed, and hiphop as an art form was dying........and then RUN-DMC came out. RUN-DMC released "its like that" which was a hit, but nuthin special. On the b side however, was "sucker emcees", a true, real, hiphop record. In addition, Run dressed the same as all homies dressed, so we were again represented.....and hip hop became the global phenomenom that its is today. The 5% theology that the hip hop world in NY shared was not repped by RunDmc, but by other artists such as Public Enemy, Rakim, and KRS One, and they dominated rap after Run, as we relearned the spiritual powers inherent in hiphop. Unfortunately, this was when a LA group called NWA [niggas wit attitudes] came out, and the spiritualism was replaced by gangstarism, and control of the music`s content moved from artist to record co. NWA far outsold everyone else and our underutilized weapon was re-aimed directly at us. You cant get more negative than a gangsta rap record, except with a artist like marilyn manson, and negativity was DEMANDED by the record co, and the conscious rapper relegated to the shadows. But a very strange thing happened.........white kids, kids around the world, began imitating these Black rappers, admiring these young Blacks, and falling in love wit our culture......to the extreme fear of the ruling whites Hip hop was a REVERSAL of the centuries old concept of "love white, hate Black".In fact, american psychiatry was in GREAT DANGER because these supposedly "useless, stealin, niggas that are hated by all" were being loved and imitated. If these Blacks used it properly, hip hop had proven itself capable of transforming white attitudes from "hating niggas" to wanting to be Black, admiring Black, and imitating Black......in other words, is Eminem pyschologically capable of being a klansman like his dad? NO! This is POWER........ So here we are today, with a system [hiphop] that is PROVEN capable of erasing the old "niggas invent nothing useful" concept, PROVEN capable of uniting millions under its banner, PROVEN to be an awesome psychological weapon, and where does our Black leadership stand on using hip hop? They stand apart from it, never embracing it, never using its powers, instead letting the jews [who own the major labels] twist it into a destructive force.......all that power.........wasted. Next time i hear "why cant we unify", im gonna wonder why we dont use such an obvious unifying force........i really wish our parents had used some foresight concerning hiphop, instead of letting us get jacked. Dont let our children get jacked too. Yours in Revolution......Akintunde Amenosis [Born Understanding] Htp!
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
posted by Born Understanding at 6:00 PM
1 Comments:
Sen Yao, Rakim deserves his own post, as u said, but i already did 3 posts on Hiphop, and I got a million other subjects...gimme about a month fo Rakim, who i consider a tie for greatest emcee, along wit Krs One
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