The music that connects deep was never about an industry. The industry has turned arts into business.

I think also the uncomfortable rise of access journalism within the space of music more broadly and hip hop more specifically is a real barrier to getting a critical look at music and the artists behind it. We just get PR

🎯Great and necessary conversation! 🔥 It’s hard to ignore how the very art form that was beginning to give us cultural power became weaponized against us. Our forefathers may not have fully understood the significance of what they were creating. Artists like KRS-One, Public Enemy, Poor Righteous Teachers, and Dead Prez were using Hip Hop to promote critical thinking, political awareness, and activism. The culture was becoming a vehicle for consciousness, and somewhere along the way, the narrative shifted. Money became the bait, and we took it. As commercial interests gained greater influence, the message began to change. The very culture that once challenged systems of power increasingly became a vehicle for promoting the things that harm our own communities. Now, here we are, wrestling with the consequences of a genre that too often profits from the very struggles it once had the potential to help us overcome.

Keep screaming, Rap. Some of us can hear you.