Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash
The first time I heard a rapper brag
I wasn’t much bigger than my school bag
Twelve and I had just lost my dad
A kid trying to forget about the sad
A child amazed by beats from the West
And videos filled with cars and breasts
But I soon learned there was more to rap
Than driving around rhyming in a Cadillac
What was it all about?
It was beats, flows and rhymes, the holy trinity
It was Big, Jay and Nas, igniting NYC
It was Cube, Dre and Pac, poets of Cali
It was Nikes on my feet, kicks elite
It was homies in the streets, cypher complete
It was stress, on which we pressed delete
It was dope music, and we pressed repeat
We got high off the weed and the killer tracks
Then we’d go hunting for a quick snack
Way before Mac Miller rocked a snap back
Before Drake got up his wheelchair
Before that, we already cared
It was listening in silence to One Mic in an old Toyota
And rapping furiously with the homies over Who Shot Ya?
It was arguing about the meaning of a rhyme
And finding five different explanations for a line
Hip hop was everywhere around us
From our basements to the bus
We bumped it after work and before school
In a snowstorm or around the summer pool
It was the product of Afro-American struggle
Still it helped us fight our own battles
It was a bunch of white boys in a black crowd
Bouncing, rapping, yelling: music was never too loud
It was live shows and us reciting every lyric of a song
While the whole goddamned building sang along
It was Hova pointing at us at his Montreal show
While we rapped our heart out up in third row
Hip hop was a hell of a ride
Truth be told: it never really left our side
So when you tell me rap ain’t really music I agree
I know it’s always been way more than that to me
Hip hop was a place we’d all go and hang out
A place where we channeled our anger and our doubts
For me hip hop was the proof poets could be cool
Without it, I’d still think writing poems would make me look like a fool
You might say hip hop is empty and shallow
But truth is it’s an ocean, and you ain’t been far below
You haven’t witnessed the powerful union between beat and flow
The lessons and gems hidden in slang and street code
Rap is an art, and yeah, some suck at it big time
But the masters of it managed to enlighten my mind
It made me realize real music is something even your soul feels
And when I bump the classics, I still get the chills
For all these reasons, it’s with hip hop I first fell in love
But for us, it did something greater than all of the above
Hip hop brought together a bunch of true brothers
And just for that, I’ll be thankful forever