Legislation won't necessarily start a riot. But the right song can make someone pick up a chair.
From Saul Williams
Hip-hop is still cool at a party. But to me, hip-hop has never been strictly a party; it is also there to elevate consciousness.
I'm very excited about the resurgence of vinyl which seems to parallel a growing interest in live performance.
I remember back in the day when Chuck D called hip-hop the 'black people's CNN.' Well now, hip-hop is more like Fox News. It's biased, and highly suspect.
We cannot continually barricade ourselves under some falsified idea of race, because our idea of blackness and race is simply reactionary. Africans didn't walk around Africa being black and proud, they walked around proud.
I was always making up rhymes. But I never thought that poetry would become my life.
If we're gonna progress as a people we are going to realise that, as one of my favourite poets says, the other is a lie. There are no other people. Race is a social construct.
The only reason I've been so critical of hip-hop is because I've always been aware of the effect that it has, and the reflection that it gives of the African-American community.
Hip-hop is too young to put a definition on it.
We all have different relationships with music. But the music is always there.
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