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Homeland and Hip Hop
Mumia Abu‐Jamal
,
Immortal Technique
Popularity · Low
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🇬🇧 English · Original
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Homeland and Hip-Hop.
To think about the origins of Hip-Hop,
In this culture,
And also about Homeland Security,
Is to see that there are, at the very least,
Two worlds in America.
One of the well to do, and another of the struggling.
For if ever there was the absense of Homeland Security,
It is seen in the gritty roots of Hip-Hop.
For the Music arises from a generaion that feels, with some justice,
That they have been betrayed by those who came before them.
That they are, at best, tolerated in schools,
Feared on the streets,
And almost, inevitably, destined for the hell-holes of prison.
They grew up hungry, hated, and unloved.
And THIS is the psychic fuel that generates the anger that seems endemic in much of the music and poetry.
One senses
Very little hope above the personal goals of wealth,
The climb above the pit of poverty.
In the broader society,
The opposite is true,
For here,
More than any place on earth,
Wealth is more wide spread and so bountiful.
What passes for the middle class in America,
Could pass for the upper class in most of the rest of the world.
They're very opulent and relative wealth makes the insecure.
And homeland security is a governmental phrase that is as oxymoronic, as crazy as, say,
Military intelligence,
Or the U.S Department of Justice.
They're just words that have very little relationship
To reality.
And do you feel safer now?
Do you think you will anytime soon?
Do you think duck tape and Kleenex and color codes
Will make you safer?
From Death row: this is Mumia Abu Jamal.