Listen..

Tried to split it up a bit:


Listen especially to the way in which Malcolm X's speech adheres so well to the concise rhythm of a “rap” beat.


This speech was perhaps a decade or so before James Brown uttered over a funk rhythm, the words "I can dig rappin, and I can dig scrappin," (The Payback, 1974) when 'rapping' was just a word for the act of stating outright, and with finesse, an injustice that you suffered by the hand of a particular antagonist while verbally affirming your strength and (potentiality for) independence and even superiority.


'Rappin' was important, even then, because all that those men were allowed was their voice, and their music (if that.) They were outnumbered, stigmatized at large, and any tradition or heritage that they could keep to was bastardized into oblivion by hundreds of years of slavery, separation from family, prejudice and not least of all distortion of nomenclature (besides the word 'nigger,' or Smith, or Cook).


Rap is constituted from a rich heritage/lineage of music, known (chronologically) as blues, jazz, swing, soul, reggae and funk; musical styles which not only have made the most vital contributions to every single genre of pop music that modern people enjoy to this day as a form of entertainment (pop music, being so highly adopted and favored for its neutralized stance, imitates and replaces the true meaning of its constituents, by giving the privileged majority a facet through which to feel free while excusing the notion that one should be compelled to actually attend to the issues that divide them from reality, thus consequently oppressing themselves, too, in turn i.e. simulacra/the opposite of the original meaning of music, thus becoming part and parcel: the revolutionary and the pacifier, respectively,) but that express the most genuine propensity of the soul to break free, because for so long it was the only forum of expression granted to them by the dominant white community, which may explain why their contributions were so concentrated, so maverick.


I’m sure that their intellectual contributions to society were plagiarized and neglected, simply because they couldn’t perform them in the same way that one can perform music, or because they were considered too consequential to the elite to be credited to a black man. But don’t ever forget Black Wall Street of Tulsa, OK.


Re-enter rap, which is a microcosm of all 'black music' in itself, because it was defined in its formative years by its limitations, as was every version of black music: barely any black youth in Brooklyn in the 80s and 90s had access to a musical instrument, and if they did, they wouldn't know what to do with it.


No one could teach them how to play an instrument, let alone how to deal with police, because their fathers had disappeared into the 70s and 80s drug culture/drug war era. Their fathers were seduced by the United State’s Government campaign to re-enslave blacks by instigating, criminalizing and incarcerating them by the most simple means possible, and then utilizing them as a free labor force.


So, the black youth of the late 80s and early 90s needed a backup track for their speech. They turned to record players, playing the old funk and jazz recordings, the beats that their long lost dads used to listen to. Throwing it back and creating something new at the same time.


That's why we have NWA and Tribe. But this is Killer Mike:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKh5p8_XFFc

/r/hiphopheads Thread Parent