Good afternoon to you all!

"The only place you’ll see Dr. King’s "I have a dream" speech is at Hip Hop." Krs One.

To Approach Hip Hop, I will not do it in the usual way, I will do it under the metaphorical, spiritual and psychological point of view.

What makes you a hip hop scholar?

Some subjects you can study objectively, but! Cultural Knowledge is never objective. You can’t look at a culture and say, "I know what it is". And that’s what’s happening with hip hop culture, people who are NOT culture, are teaching YOU culture.

So, what makes you a Hip Hop scholar? Not to say "I read 10 books", "I was at the concert", "I rap in the studio". NO! You are the culture yourself. First feel it.

Now that I am the culture, there is no external knowledge that I have to seek, because I am the culture, I am the wisdom. When I raise my arm, that’s Hip Hop, if I walk somewhere and stay for a while, that’s where Hip Hop was, every step, action you generate is Hip Hop, you’re writing the story.

There comes a Sunday morning: "I’m Hip Hop this Sunday!". It comes on Monday and I’m no longer Hip Hop, What are you now?: " I am employed by Mr Charlie "I work at company x"... What do you mean by I? You just said "I’m Hip Hop" and it comes on Monday and that same me is now something different?.

The second part of being a hip hop scholar is being hip hop all the time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you’re hip hop. And that’s hard to do, it’s hard. I enjoy it, but I’m privileged to enjoy it because it wasn’t so much fun at first.

In the early days, before you got where I am, you could say "I AM HIP HOP!" And the cops would say, "No, you’re not". So, ALL THE TIME, I am Hip Hop all the time. A lot of people have been imprisoned for this attitude. Many have been beaten, injured, wrongfully accused by the legal system just because they said, "I’m going to be Hip Hop now, I know that no one else here is, but I’m going to be Hip Hop right now!"... What a tough decision... and anyone who does that is a true hip hop scholar. Anyone who can claim that there was a time when hip hop wasn’t popular and was still rapping hard, before it was popular.

THAT’s a hip hop scholar, not just an artiste, a dancer... And it’s all very well that there’s art, dancing, but scholarship is more than fame, talent, skill. It’s about how you think, it’s about what your approach is to yourself. Do YOU even have the courage to be YOU? That’s what hip hop is all about, you gotta have the courage to be hip hop.

Mr. Charlie looks out for his work, you don’t have that job because you were shooting till 4:00 in the morning and you go to work at 8:30. Now you’re there and you have what Mr. Charlie wants. Will you stand up at that moment and say, "I’m Hip Hop! That’s why I’m incomplete." Or you’ll say, "All right, Mr Charlie, I’ll have the report before lunch, don’t worry..."

In the next post I will continue with this, thanks for the attention.

First post on the topic.

Photography: @redrum_shooting (Instagram) 

Model: Angelica.  

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