Hip Hop Is...

Hip Hop is attached to the hip of pop culture, attacking the boundaries of anything that can be attacked, attracting kids on street corners from across the country, asking them to begin the next generation, to assemble the new world soliers.
Hip Hop is Afrika Bambaataa, assembling his own soldiers to tear down the walls of gang culture, and making his own. It's the defiance that he lived his life with. It's keeping your head held high while you walk into enemy territory with the message that you won't be intimidated.
Hip Hop is block parties with b-boys and b-girls breaking the laws of physics, DJs making beats and throwing hooks and loops to send these parites into the AM. It's having the powers from all corners of the Bronx come together and dance the night away.
Hip Hop is the Bronx divided to the Bronx united. From Molotov Cocktails to Kool Herc parties. From Skulls, Nomads and Ghettos, to turn tables, song and dance. It's bending the rules until they break, and then building up your own.
Hip Hop is creating your own sound that no one's ever heard before, takeing that sound and your voice and chasing teh dream out of the 'hood. It's crashing the party when nobody would let you in and taking it over, crushing the generic sounds that can't hold a candle to yours, calling out to the masses and climbing your way to the top.
Hip Hop is charismatic in a way that hasn't been witnessed by this generation before. It's crazy insane and insane crazy and holds the attention of the crowd like a car crash in slow motion. It keeps your eyes glued and your feet tapping to beats, rhymes and flows that ingrain your brain so they never leave.
Hip Hop is cruising with your boys through dead nights, in dead eyed towns with the bass pumpin' and the windows down. It's screaming out loud from the bottom of your soul, being wild 'n out to the point that they call crowd control. It's knowing that this is waht you're meant to do, and knowing that there's nothing that will ever take it away from you.
Hip Hop is dedication to teh game and the players. Its recognizing the fakes and dismissing them. Its staying true to yourself and staying true to the art. Its rhyming with your mind, your soul and your heart. You need the essence of those who came before you, and you need to respect the shit that's been done. Then you need to blow past them all, and make them see that you're the one. The one that's meant to change the world.
Hip Hop is dynamically dissecting and destroying the rhymes of others, while staying true to your heart and your style. Its running the show with an unstoppable flow that can't be touched.
Hip Hop is egocentric, conceited, arrought and pompous. It feeds upon the swell of the crowd to swell the heads of those who do the swelling. It has the crowd moving back and forth to the story that they're telling. It does more than hold the interest, it grabs it by the throat and forces it to listen. It shoves the message in your face, but you don't hear it. You feel it. You let it run through you and pump into your extremities, and it tends to be telling you how the world should be if you listened to me, and her, and he, and we be the people to change our destiny. And the artists know this, so they notice the things that make us take notice to their voices, coming via the noises over the airwaves.
Hip Hop sends crazes through the brains of those willing to let it in. Hip Hop is constantly fighting the ones who refuse to understand. Mothers and fathers board up and close out their kids, fearing the "black music" that will send them down the path to their demise. Tipper Gores on every street, trying to keep our artists from making beats by keeping the sounds out of their homes. But little do they know, hip hop is sneaking the albums in with different cases. They have Tupac and Biggie, but with different faces. The kids find their way to get around the rules and walls that try to keep Hip Hop on the ground.
Hip Hop is making something out of nothing. Its going from rags to riches. Its having the power to make the switches in you life to take you to the top and stay there. Its Diddy being the American dream, and Jay-Z making the ladies scream. Its Em scrapping, clawing and dragging himself away from 8 mile, and Nas ending up on top of the dog pile of fake MCs pretending to be something they're not.
Hip Hop is showing the world what you're made of by giving them a taste of what you've been making up in your basement with your brother's equipment. Its putting together your first EP on a stack of blank CDs you got from the downtown department store, then filling up your back pack and hitting the town, going up and down the never ending streets and avenues for so long you start to wear holes in your shoes. You give out the CDs to anyone who'll listen, and even some who tried not to. It's forcing and hustling your way on to someone's radar, because once one person knows, the word of mouth goes so far. It's finally buying your own set of mix tables and leaving your brother's behind. It's the feeling of selling your new, refined EP on the same streets and same avenues to brand new people who want to hear your sound. It's actually getting paid for the thing you love to do, and getting rewarded for the tireless hours and countless products that you moved.
Hip Hop is the underground. It's paying your dues and sleeping on your best friend's kitchen floor when you can't afford your own. It's spending weeks on the road riding in your broken down van with nothing but the clothes on your back and the rhythm in your heart. It's then taking your heart and throwing it out to the people, and making them feel like a part of your life, like they were there for your failures and your successes. You gotta make them connect with you better than the rest did.
Hip Hop is standing up for what you believe in, against the oppressors and the overlords of our society. It's shouting out loud and making your voice heard and screaming that you can't take this anymore! It's picking up where those before you left off and carrying that torch on into the night.
Hip Hop is Tommy Smith and John Carlos letting those fists linger in the air longer tahn the Olympics would care to remember. It's Martin Luther King leading one million men with the sound and echo of his voice. It's Malcom X fighting the power the only way he knew how. It's the people who have always refused to take no for an answer when they know that what they believe in is the way it should be done.
Hip Hop is hilarity. Hip Hop is about the fun. It's about clownin' with your friedns and spitting out rhymes that you all can relate to. It's hanging out in basements with pong tables and good times, with beers, buddies and blunts. It's flowin' to impress the girls who love to hear your words. It's free styling until you're blue in the face and the others are green with envy.
Hip Hop is for the love of the game. It's blasting your favorite MC out of your car's window, with the subs sending the sound waves through the town, driving your neighbors crazy as you drive away. It's ignoring the scoffs and jeers from the jocks and peers who can't understand what you do and why you do it. It's loving yourself and loving what you do so you can move past, break out, and blow up to prove those doubters wrong.
Hip Hop is fuck the police and fight the power, standing up to the man when he wants you to cower. It's fighting for your freedom everyday when you know taht just a few blocks away there's a cop with a quota to fill. It's watching your brothers get piled in jail 'til they start to spill. It's having to watch them fall victim to the system that's supposed to help, but really it's just a cooler hell. It's breaking out of this trend and making a difference. It's about being more than another statistic. It's going ballistic the best way you know how. By busting down the doors and telling it like it is. Letting these people know the injustice that's been going down. It's being outraged, but using that rage and putting it to work to maybe turn a page in our nations history, and to start writing your own chapter in the book.
Hip Hop is not dirty or clean. It's not nice and it's not mean. It's not rude or polite. It's not black and it's not white. It's not evil or pure. It's not uncertain and it's not sure. It's not fast or slow. It's not leaving but it's ready to go. It's not the worst or the best. It's not the East and it's not the West. Hip Hop is it's own identity. It's the unlabeled truth that is the grey area in what we call entertainment. It means the world to some people, while it doesn't even exist to others.
Hip Hop is dead.
Wrong. Hip Hop can never die. Not with people like you and I, who revive it everyday, with the words that we say and the words we believe. Hip Hop lives within us all and will go wherever we take it. So the next time you hear someone tell you that Hip Hop is dead, stop, and say this like you mean it. "I am Hip Hop."