Our ministry
targets the Hip Hop Culture with the Gospel of Jesus Christ through
various mediums (i.e., outreach concerts, discipleship materials, tracts,
etc). Here's a break down of Hip Hop Culture, from its history, to
the history of the rap group The Cross Movement, to Holy Culture, and even
Hip Hop & R&R explained, just for you!
A
JOURNEY THROUGH HIP HOP CULTURE
By Rasool
Berry, supporter of CMM
(Performed at The Cross Movement's Holy Culture Release Concert.)
We will take a journey through time … starting from the beginning and ending in the future … a journey through a culture called
Hip Hop. Our journey begins just 2 hours north of Philadelphia, but 3 decades ago … in the streets of
The Bronx, New York. There, in NYC, the economic center of the world, while the wealthiest make deals over the table … an underground culture is emerging among those who weren’t invited to the table …
We are inner-city youth, surrounded by grim project housing, and burnt-out buildings, and we are developing our own alternatives to the violence & drug culture we know too well.
To escape the difficulty of everyday life, we turn our attention to relief.
It is the early ‘70’s bellbottoms and hip huggers, platform shoes and cornrows are in … for the first time. Soul, and disco are hot and at the center of the party is the one who keeps us rockin’ from one jam to the next … creatively blending the break beats of one song to that of another … this man makes his own unique sound …
the disk jockey runs the show … the movie,
"Wild Style," comes out and everyone wants to buys old-school records and
the DJ’s turntables become the backbone of Hip
Hop Culture.
Our journey continues, past the deejay’s turntables to the dance floor, where another flavor is added to the mix! The hardwood floors of the disco provide a perfect surface to defy gravity in the same way this culture has to defy the odds to survive. Our response to the violent gang culture in our streets is the formation of crews … groups who battled not with knives and guns but with style and skill. The disco can not contain our creativity and passion. And soon,
the corners of Time Square & Wall Street join the corners of
The Bronx and uptown as the stages for crews competing for props and profit.
Word spreads on the street that people are getting paid to perform, so we venture to new territory, and cardboard boxes cut out as floors become our platform. Impressive moves, called head spins, the windmill, suicides and acrobatic flips & flares astound the world. We’re called the b-boys &
b-girls. They even make a movie about us called, Breakin’," which spun off our heads and into the hearts of many in the world.
The 2nd element of Hip-hop culture … breakin!
Breakers turned cardboard into a work of art, but the depressing picture of poverty offers us less hope. We arrive now to
abandoned buildings -symbolic of the abandonment of the wider society- they became an ideal canvas for us.
We desire to improve our environment in our own way. We develop a bold new style of writing to match our musical creativity. And so hip-hop leaves its’ own tag on the urban landscape. Tagging began as just simple signatures. But competition drives the art to phase 2 and burners, as we call them, revolutionize the use of krylon cans of spray paint and magic markers and use them to draw incredible murals.
The competitive drive to be seen grows & some get carried away by vandalizing peoples’ property. So graffitti gets a bad rap. Still when done right, tags were colorful powerful & appreciated. The movie beat street gives us pride as it displays the skills of graffers. In the movie, ramone writes “if art is a crime may god forgive me.” The murals become the model of future attempts to beautify the community. Many a barber shop and row home will soon boast them on their walls.
Graffers, they finally understood, became a better option than just grime … the 3rd element: graffin’!
Graffin was only one form of expression, and we crave to be heard. We have something to say and like everything else, we have our own unique way of saying it … in the same tradition of the west african griots, ancient and accomplished storytellers, our vocalists know that what you say only matters as much as how well you say it …
We use our sharp wit, clever humor, and creative storytelling to write rhymes. We don’t sing, but we give it our own flava. The skillful emcee, begins to feed an inner-city appetite for power. It has power to cure or to kill, to hurt or heal.
The emcee serves up rhymes with the skill of a seasoned chef, and feeds an entire generation. From the bronx to brazil, from philly to finland. The emcee becomes our urban pharmacist, but what did we take? A healthy prescription or a hazardous poison?
At first the emcee advised us to have a good time … “loddy doddy we like to party, we don’t cause trouble we don’t bother nobody” … but then the 80’s drug culture crashed in and broke up the party …
Afro-centric knowledge broke in as the next answer to our problems… by the early ‘90’s, hip hop was blastin’ in boom boxes in ‘hoods all across the country. Heads all over wore african medallions as we were told to “don’t – don’t- don’t don’t- don’t believe the hype” and “fight the powers that be.” But we were told to fight the wrong powers. The emcees rapped about our need to be positive by knowing ourselves. But the power of our desire to do our own thing overcomes the naïve notion of “positivity” …we were told to diss christ, but without the knowledge that the power of sin is only broken by prince of peace, this solution didn’t work. … because of this trend we were “headed for self-destruction” … everyone went for self … the self that won out was the angry new comer from the west coast… gangsta rap … it’s raw lyrics and profane violence shocked the world and impressed the hood … the justification from our emcees was that “it’s not about a salary it’s all about reality!”
A few riots and many deaths later … the gangsta thing got tired … every body wants to be a gangsta but nobody wants to die
Who wants to wear jherri curls & black sweats in the summer time anyway … so then, mcs told us that what gangstas wanted was good, the gold, the girls, or the guys, and the glory, we just didn’t need all that drama …
So from the late ‘90’s til now, mcs hopped on the “bling-bling” bandwagon. The sawed-off shotguns could go, but the best in money, clothes, jewelry and sex would satisfy … so pistols gave way to platnum and packin’ heat gave way to rockin’ ice … the game now was just to get a piece of the c.r.e.a.m. pie, after all “cash rules everything around me, c.r.e.a.m., get the money, dolla, dolla bill y’all” … so they said. Our young ladies are taught by our emcees that they gotta “use what they got to get what they want” …
And so the emcee, hip-hop’s most powerful influencer, has promoted a culture of greed, lust, and materialism and marketed it around the world … and its selling fast. But just like all fads, this too will end. Already, people are lookin’ for more. People are hungry for truth, and sick of the poisonous lies. Every poison has its antidote, so does hip-hop have a cure. For our demonstration tonight we’ve got some mcs who will show us how it sounds to blend the cure with this 4th element …
In about 1996, a certain group emerged on the scene of hip-hop. They rocked us with their 1st album, which sought counter the current mindsets and philosophies of secular hip-hop music. They challenged the culture with “Heaven’s
Mentality!”
These 4 elements form what we call hip hop culture. Hip-hop, like those of us who identified with it, was initially met with rejection and disapproval from the mainstream. Widely seen as a teenage nuisance, a fad that would soon go away, it was finally accepted as a money-making commodity which has done much to help and hurt hip-hop … but what about the cure …
Hip-hop culture - with all of its creativity and possibility- is a human culture and like every other human culture on the planet falls victim to the tendency to be corrupted by greed, lust, and self-glorification. It falls short of reflecting god’s character, concerns and values. And therefore like every other human culture, hip-hop must be redeemed.
Long before a break-beat ever combined with a phat flow, the darkness of man’s deeds engulfed the globe. Jesus christ shone light in a world of darkness. His solution in anticipation of the chaos to come was not to curse the darkness or take away the light, but to pray that those who knew him would experience the joy of remaining in the world to shine.
His plan, as revealed in john 17, is to call a redeemed people from hip-hop to redeem the culture from the inside out. To love hip-hop enuf to stay in it, but to love christ enuf to represent him in it. To be down but distinct. To be in not of. To be the holy culture.
Editor's Note:
This script was presented live by Rasool
Berry at The Cross Movement's album release concert on April 26, 2003, in
Philadelphia, Pa, where Rasool was the MC. We have adapted his script for publication here
to help potential supporters understand what Hip Hop Culture is. For the script in its
original format, please check out the record label site, where you can
also listen to the RealAudio version.
