The Hip Hop Community is Vital

Human life, at the level of the individual, is like a vacuum. Solitary people have immense limits on their self-expression and ability to make a difference in the lives of others. It is only when one is expressed at the level of a community does the self truly manifest itself and shine onto the world.

Hip hop is a part of life; for some hip hop is life. The same is true of the solitary hip hop head as it is for any other human being. One hiphoppa may have immense talent and creative potential, but this potential will go largely unrealized at the level of the individual. It is only in the context of a like-minded community that one’s ideas can fully be actualized in the material world. Without the community that creates it, hip hop has no real power. Without the listener, even the dopest rhymes in the world will fall on deaf ears. A lone MC cannot form a cypher or move a crowd. Without those who take the time to watch, the illest b-boy is just some guy doing back-flips in his basement. Hip hop can and will survive without community, but it will only be able to do that – survive. If hip hop is to achieve the potential it has to actually be at the source of transformations in the world, then the cohesiveness of the hip hop community is absolutely vital.

Choice

I don’t have to do anything. I don’t even have to breathe. It’s all only a necessity inside of a prior choice or commitment. I choose to be alive, so I breathe, I eat, I drink – I do all that because I made a choice to live as opposed to killing myself.

And then I give reasons to my choices. I work because I choose to have money. I speak because I choose to be heard. I create art because I choose to directly impact the lives of others in the most powerful way I possibly can.

Everything is a choice, and then there is circumstance. Circumstances are only as they are because I have not yet chosen to transform them.

Who I am, what I do, and how I live are all matters of my choosing. Anything that stands in the way of my choosing is only there because I have not yet chosen to address it.