The Spring Cleaning of Hip Hop

If you haven’t completely lost yourself in this season’s long-running primary competition, you may have noticed the race for the presidency isn’t the only tumultuous event this season. For many, it has been a violent and stormy spring. From the cyclone in Myanmar, to the earthquake in China to the recent tornadoes which have left a wide path of destruction, spring has sprung with a vengeance.

But in its wake, it’s also blessed us with warm (sometimes hot) temperatures, new hues of green and the flowering of its sweetest and most fragrant fruits. This time of year always inspires me to perform one sacred ritual – spring cleaning. Well, maybe it’s not so sacred. But it does offer me a good feeling of starting over. And who doesn’t need a fresh start from time to time? An opportunity to evaluate, reorganize, to throw out what’s old and unusable, to keep the good and add some new.

Spring cleaning isn’t always a job for one. Major projects like house painting could always use more than a single pair of hands. When I look at our current state of cultural affairs, specifically as it relates to hip hop, we need to roll up our sleeves and steam clean our beloved hip hop culture.

I don’t think I am alone in my view. Many would argue hip hop needs a good spring cleaning, the kind of cleaning that requires a community – a community of emcees, DJs, record companies, music moguls, music video directors, video vixens and hip hop heads.

I have to admit I’ve never thought of myself as an “Old School Hip Hop Head”, but at a recent old school hip hop concert, a friend granted me with the title. I guess he was a bit shocked that I knew every song and could spit out a good number of the lyrics. For me, old school hip hop is the true heart and soul of the art. It’s when emcees rhymed about something that mattered and worked together to warn us about the dangers of self destruction. It was more than booty shaking, rims and bragging about buying cars kids in the ghetto can’t afford.

For me, seeing Chuck D and Professor Griff of Public Enemy perform at the Ghostbar in Dallas has been the highlight of my spring. (They performed after the screening of the new documentary film "Public Enemy: Welcome to the Terrordome" at the AFI Dallas Film Festival.) PE is one of my all-time favorite rap groups. Back in the day, they fired me up with their brand of black pride, intellect and determination to fight the power. While Chuck D and Professor Griff were in Dallas moving the crowd and rhyming on things that mattered, Flavor Flav was in Canada shooting a TV show that I can almost guarantee will have much less substance than the group’s lyrics and won’t measure up to the social or political importance of Public Enemy.

Flav, a central part of the positive, progressive movement that is Public Enemy, is now a star of the reality TV craze which has been lucrative for networks. Now, I’m not knocking Flav for making a buck. (Yeah, boyeeee!) But most of today’s hip hop is like much of reality TV - produced to make a quick buck, usually lacking substance and seems to show and glorify the worst in us.

As an Old School Hip Hop Head (I am keeping the title), I am ready to help with the spring cleaning of hip hop. In that spirit, Shaken World Screenworks, in collaboration with Culture Lab, LLC, has produced a video which focuses on hip hop. The video features, It Might Blow Up, But It Won’t Go Pop!, an engaging panel discussion examining the history, art and commercialization of hip hop and its effect on culture. The event includes interactive, installation art by Fahamu Pecou and Torkwase Dyson.

It Might Blow Up, But It Won’t Go Pop! is the creation of artist Fahamu Pecou and Dr. Renee Alexander Craft, a professor of communication studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

To check out the video and hear what others have to say about hip hop, click on the following link. And consider whether you want to help with the spring cleaning! http://www.shakenworld.com/video_reels.html