Back to the music: The Good Ol’ days

 

  There are few things on this earth more powerful than the engine of music. There is a profound truth to the biblical verse, Proverbs 18:21: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” If you doubt this imagine a crowd of angry people, the air around them thick with a palpable furry, then some yells “Get EM’” and the crowd explodes into action, an angry mob. In that instance mere words were able to activate the charge of human emotion in the very air. In a crowd when everyone is of one mind in their displeasure it takes only one person to voice what everyone is thinking and that is the power of music. Music exists naturally in nature, with the chirping of birds and crickets, the sway of the trees in the wind, and the collective sounds of life. When you combine the natural sounds of life in this world and human emotion you get music as we know it and a gauge for the collective thoughts of mankind

  It’s a powerful tool of persuasion only lately popular black music seems to express a singular thought, self-destruction. Don’t get me wrong I love hip hop. I hate when rap music is dismissed when it’s truly poetry in motion. Anyone who believes rap cannot be poetry because it is crude knows nothing of art. There is nothing that says poetry cannot be crude. If we recall our English lessons we’ll remember that Shakespeare was the smut peddler of his day. Because he chronicled the plight of the common man his art was shunned in polite society. So when rap promotes, greed, unapologetic self-indulgence and wanton violence it tells the true tale of modern man. Yet this is not a full indication of the human experience or more specifically the black experience.

I miss the days when black music was not a monolith of rap and R&B featuring more rappers. I even miss the days when all rappers didn't talk about the same things. I know there are rappers out there with more to discuss than thug life. I yearn for the thought provoking lyrics on yesteryear. I miss emotionally honest music instead of people claiming to Care about no one and nothing but money. We all like money and sex but for goodness sake can today's artist challenge themselves to dig a wee bit deeper. So in a few years it'll technically be in the 20's again. I say we take it back to dowop and go from there.