Real Power

When we begin to confront that who we have been in the world has been little more than an ongoing response to a past that we have not yet completed,

When we are courageous enough to create our lives not based on anything except for what we say we stand for,

Then our words have the power to manifest in reality - simply because they are our words - and we become true creators.

And that is our real power in this world.

Who You Are

You think you know who you are.

You do not.

Who you think you are
is actually the identity you have constructed;
the person you have chosen to become in life.

You think you are your values,
your beliefs and your conceptualizations -
you are not.

You think you are your past,
your experiences, your successes and failures -
you are not.

Who you are
is the voice inside you that screams for glory
that has become so shrouded
that you can no longer hear it.

Who you are is greatness;
everything else that you think about yourself
is merely what gets in the way
of you being who you are truly capable of being
in this world.

Blue Collar Worker

The Blue Collar Worker isn’t about socioeconomic class struggles. It’s a mind-state of the type of grind that nobody sees and yet everybody knows about. It’s not just about rockin’ the mic on stage or spittin’ in the booth; it’s also about trekking around the city with a full backpack and a mission to accomplish. It’s about dragging your ass out of bed when you’d rather sleep-in and taking steps even though your feet hurt. It’s about working that job that you’d rather not work so you can pay for studio time and get your tracks mixed. It’s embodying the type of courage that nobody rewards you for and doing the damn thang instead of complaining about what needs to be done.

The Blue Collar isn’t a status symbol. It’s a representation of everything it takes to achieve one’s goals and materialize one’s dreams. It symbolizes a level of earnestness and integrity that the vast majority of people lack in their lives. It’s a commitment to honouring one’s word and not settling for excuses. It’s the acknowledgment that obstacles are merely limitations that have not yet been overcome.

This is what I mean I say, “I’m on a different kind of grind when I pop the Blue Collar…”

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.