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.

Taking Ground

Every time I take new ground
everything that ever stood in my way,
everything that ever stood within me,
against me,
stands before me.

Watching as the populace runs
frantically to find comfort,
to feel like they belong,
like they’re doing the right thing,
bending over sideways and
talking backwards
to do anything and everything
that might make them feel
safe.

Because they say that world
is a dangerous place
and you better duck and run
if you look the wrong way
at the wrong person
at the wrong time…

The mind is the battleground;
the world is a reflection.

Thaw of the Dawn

It seems like it's the first time that I’ve let myself live
without being angry about all the space
between who I am and
the person I want to be.

A river doesn’t question why it flows;
it just goes where it must according to
nature’s laws.

I am a force of nature
and I am not a river.

We are not the summation of our actions,
our exhibited behaviours,
our feelings or even our thoughts;
we are the choices behind the actions
and the choosers behind the choices.

God knows I am capable of being more
than the person I have thus far told myself
and others that I am,
and I know that God bears no grudge
against me for not yet being
who He sees me to be.

Absolute Being

In this clearing of absolute being,
razor-blades cut through all the nonsense
that I’ve created
and piled upon this life.

Here I see every single burden I have
and own the fact that I have chosen them,
that I am responsible for my reality.

I have inherited all of the elements of humanity,
damned some of them while valuing others,
and in doing so have condemned myself.

There are no boundaries
but those that I’ve created in my mind;
there are no real barriers
but those that I am not courageous enough
to face.

I am the unstoppable force
that moves mountains;
I am the only obstacle
on my path.

Only Now

Only now,
after I’ve smashed every possible notion
of that ideal relationship’s existence,
after I’ve crushed the childish ideals of
somehow and someway things being OK
in the land of someday,
can I see you as you truly are
and accept myself as I truly am.

You,
the old, gnarled plant that has wrapped your
withered, decaying vines around the
youthful vigour of my soul
and attempted time and time again
to suck the vivacity out of my pores,

You,
for whom I exerted my entire being
in my futile attempts to view you in a positive light,
only to finally be unable to ignore
the sordid person you have become
beneath the veil of helplessness that you project,

You have been the greatest source of my apprehensions
in the recent years of my life.

Only now
that I’ve cut away your toxic grip
from around my heart
do I fully feel the freedom
to be a man in this world.

Only now,
for the first time,
there is no room
for neither guilt nor remorse
in my mind.

Now I am truly free.

Purple Awakening

I awake
on the right side of the wrong bed
in Sunnybrook Hospital.

Everything is turquoise and purple tinted,
in my mind, in my mind.

Awaken to a purple world
where bright colours are shunned,
where bright colours beam across the globe,
where everything is paradox and
riddles that have no answers.

My purple hand squeezes my purple pen
as I write my thoughts,
as I stamp my feelings on
a turquoise page.

All the other colours wait patiently
in a cell with purple bars.