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Hip Hop. Out!

Dear Hip Hop, I’ll love you ’til I die

To taste the grace of your embrace, I will try

My mission is to utilize my skills on the mic

To rid you of the losers, abusers and stereotypes

— Dan-e-o, “Dear Hip Hop”

So, how to escape the hood and its poverty?

Well, you can try to get out through sports — what middle-class white kid doesn’t want to escape mediocrity in a suburban cul de sac (i.e., dead end) to become a hockey star, and what impoverished black kid doesn’t want to play for the NBA? Not much of a chance any kid is going to the NBA or the NHL. You can dream though.

You can try to get out through education. But if you struggle with learning disabilities (especially undiagnosed), or aren’t academically inclined, or aren’t adequately supported by various resources available to people with higher incomes, chances are against you.

There’s another way kids think they can get out of the projects — making it big in music. It’s not easy; not many kids get signed to record labels, but you can dream. You can dream of doing just what hip-hop artists like Dan-e-o do, utilize skills on the mic to deal with the abuses and stereotypes.

Or you can just try to deal with the pain of poverty. That might be either by getting high or helping others to get high and hoping that you don’t die doing either. If you aren’t athletically or academically inclined, the latter two options are where you might land. Hoping to make it out through fame or some version of fortune — both defined by street cred. Because, let’s face it, nobody wants to be stuck making minimum wage.

But rapping it out isn’t the same as gangsta rapping it out.

Silent Souljahs and Point Blank were rap groups from Regent Park. Not even gangsta rap groups, and a far cry from gangs. TnT? They were a little different in terms of what they rapped.

There are significant differences in the music scene with respect to rap and hip hop. Those types of music aren’t the same. Rap is an actual genre of music, while hip hop is a subculture that is formed of the trivium of rap, dance, and art. Gangsta rap is a subgenre of rap that promotes crime, mis­ogyny, murder and, ironically, racism.

Gangsta rap is seen by many as synonymous with hip hop — all of this music gets thrown into one big category that ignores the many nuances. The fact is, hip hop is a genuine art form born out of poetry and celebrating stories through numerous plays on language. At its best, it does what any art should — it invites us to wonder, to play, to think about meaning in layers and labyrinths. And because it is strongly affiliated with breakdancing and graffiti art (not to be confused with graffiti vandalism and community tagging), it does what visual art and dance do. It invites us to look at our culture. And to find beauty even where there is tragedy.

Amidst the mundane and profane. Find the sublime.

Remember that the creation of art is what makes us human. And most art comes out of a struggle. Art comes out of a desire to be free. That could take the form of cave dwellers facing unknown beasts, Mozart playing games with the aristocrats, or Picasso questioning realists. Pretty much any place you find art, you find struggle lifted up by imagination. Hip hop was born of people’s desire to defy the odds that were stacked against them by their race and poverty.