Hiphop Alive: The Ground, Path and Fruition of the Four Elements. Chapter Two pt. 1

Chapter Two pt. 1

Chapter Two: What Is Hiphop. The Importance of Fragmented Views

Hiphop has always been a very pure thing to me. No matter how sullied by wack emcees, biters, crabs, toys or the media it seemed to be, for me it has always been an unstoppable machine of creating joy, togetherness and fun.

I got into Hiphop in the early 80's when Hiphop first turned the world upside down with its new dances, rebellious graffiti art, wild style of dress, soulful samples and brazen emcees. I couldn't bboy to save my life. When I was 8 my mom took my sister and I to breakdancing lessons. Real Breakin 1 stuff. My six step was more like a three step and I eventually ended up watching from the sidelines. Too young to buy albums and living in Prince Georges County a suburb outside of Washington DC, I had little access to Hiphop outside of my friends and the radio. The first rhyme I remember and can still kick to this day was Newcleus's Jam-On-It. Cozmo D's verse in particular was my joint:

"(Said Superman had come to town to see who he could rock) 

(He blew away every crew he faced until he reached our block) 

(His speakers were three stories high with woofers made of steel) 

(And when we boys sit outside, he said "I boom for real") 

He said, "I'm faster than a speedin' bullet when I'm on the set 

I don't need no fans to cool my amps, I just use my super breath 

I could fly three times around the world without missin' a beat 

I socialize with X-ray eyes, and ladies think it's sweet 

(And then he turned his power on and the ground began to move) 

(And all the buildings for miles around were swayin' to the groove) 

(And just when he had fooled the crowd and swore he won the fight) 

We rocked his butt with a 12 inch cut called Disco Kryptonite 

Well, Superman looked up at me, he said, "You rock so naturally" 

I said now that you've learned the deal, let me tell you why I'm so for real 

I'm Cozmo D from outer space, I came to rock the human race 

I do it right, cause I can't do it wrong 

That's why the whole world is singin' this song 

This dude just took out Superman! Ever since I was hooked on rhymes and began to listen more intently to lyrics. Hiphop artists became my heroes, Salt N Pepa, Slick Rick, Doug E Fresh (who I venerate because of his "dice roll" beatbox), BDP, X Clan, Whodini, UTFO, The Fat Boys, Roxanne, Dana Dane, 3rd Bass, A Tribe Called Quest, NWA, De La Soul, Rob Base and DJ Easy Rock, LL Cool J....I could go on for days. In the mid 80's Video Music Jukebox (a video music service that let you call in and request the video you wanted to see) was my teacher as was a radio show hosted by a DJ named Big Brother Conan that could only be heard if you tuned the radio juuuuuust right. I also fell in love with djing, in particular scratching which first became a fascination after hearing cutting by DJ Richie Rich on 3rd Bass's first album, The Cactus Album. I began to emulate the scratching in my head and then using my teeth would figure out how moving the record forward or backwards made a particular sound. Another good tool for scratch practice was a pencil. During class I would practice moving the pencil back and forth on the edge of my desk until it sounded like I was a pro. Nobody's records were safe. I remember practicing scratching my friend Hashim's Led Zeppelin Kashmere and Run DMC's Its Tricky records until they were barely playable. In 1991 I got my first turntables (Technics B200's that weren't made for scratching at all). I used wax paper for slip mats and a rubber band, pennies and nickels to weigh down the shell head) from a kid named Trader James who would barter his junk for yours. After buying a 2 Channel mixer for $6.00 from my friend Boosie and asking my handy Uncle Mitch to solder some wires for me, I had my first set up. I practiced djing everyday transferring the scratches in my head to the turntable. For records I would steal my Dad's jazz albums and use my lunch money to catch the subway to P Street Records in DC to buy the latest hits. I practiced for hours everyday for years until I got the basics of mixing and cutting records. Around this time I also started writing rhymes and freestyling. Listening to instrumentals over and over again helped me to find that I had something to say. When I first started rhyming it was others lyrics. Soon I learned that what was more important was to learn style, or how and where to place words. In 1996 I bought my first piece of production equipment, an ASR-10 and started making beats. I never wanted to be famous or an entertainer, what was more important was the sampling of sound and finding the unheard to play it for others. My goal was curation and preservation of music that had been forgotten about. It was what my favorite producers did; find rare music, sample and play it. I used to love reading the liner notes of albums where the artist would tell you who they sampled. Paying homage to the musical ancestors doesn't happen as much anymore. Over the years, collecting records and sampling became (and still is) an obsession for me and I can find no greater tribute to my elders than reintroducing their music to the world. These are just my formative Hiphop experiences and since the mid nineties, I've continued to experiment with writing, freestyling, djing and producing in ways that I feel honor and advance Hiphop culture. 

I flew home from Amsterdam on August 1st, 2000 still processing the profundity of the Ayahuasca experience. I couldn't clearly capture everything that happened but a few unshakable truisms stayed with me. 

1.) "Hiphop" did not exist like I thought it did, 2.) the divine/spirit/nature/essence etc. was not only not separate from Hiphop but was an intimate and important player in understanding and practicing Hiphop, 3.) that I needed to know the divine in order to truly know Hiphop. 4.) because I see Hiphop as a tool of self understanding, that Hiphop is an effective tool of a means of realizing  the divine.

The first week after Amsterdam I thought heavily about how to live these truths and my mind flashed back to what I learned in my recent Philosophy class. There are various paths to the divine, all divine paths have steps, levels of development that progressively introduce you to the source of ones personal suffering (usually thought to be the self/ego), how to transcend the self in order to see self in other/self as other, this leads to treating others with kindness and not as separate beings and eventually introduces you to the nature of all things as fundamentally being you, others and all things. The experience of seeing oneself as all things, in all things will ever berate throughout ones family, community, nation and world eventually leading to mass enlightenment. These "laws" if you can call them that, are familiar to most of the worlds religious traditions. Also familiar to most of the worlds traditions are the practices of meditation, prayer and contemplation, each of which serve a different purpose and introduce a particular perspective of the divine. Whatever path I chose should have those components: levels, progressive stages, ego transcendence, cultivating compassion, introduction to ones nature, sharing with and waking up beings to their nature.

Buddhism always rang true to me. My sophomore year in high school I read a story about a Buddhist monk who when trapped in the mountains of the Himalayas conducted a practice that allowed him to generate heat to keep him warm. He brought to mind the image of a fire and imagined it inside his belly. I tried repeating this practice to no avail. In 1991 I was taught how to meditate by my Judo Instructor, Steve Seaquist.  We would meditate after every Judo class and then I would go home and practice by myself in my room. I'd describe those early experiences as letting my mind blank out. The instructions I was given were to sit zazen (Zen Buddhist) style, hands folded in my lap, thumbs touching and then to let my mind focus on the faintest sound in my surroundings. When my mind wandered I was to bring my attention back to the sound. I did this 3-4 times a week for four years until I went to college and started partying. It wasn't until taking the class in Amsterdam that I remembered how inviting and interesting Buddhism was. I began searching for a Buddhist center to practice meditation the first week of August, 2000. The first place I found, a Kadampa Buddhist center was closed and I went to the second listing that came up on the internet, the Shambhala Buddhist Meditation Center. 

Ken Wilber, an American philosopher and whose book The Integral Ken Wilber I read in Amsterdam had a profound impact on me. Ken's claim to fame was being able to synthesize various systems of development; physical, mental, cognitive, emotional, moral, spiritual (more than 100 in all) into a map or a way to not only show how they were all connected (and important) but how to traverse them in a way that would produce the most growth possible. I wanted to grow, badly. In my mind I've always envisioned myself as more than the meek, fearful and misguided person that I thought myself to be. In my mind I was a good and decent man. Stories of mystics who were able to perform magical feats of levitation, meditate endlessly and achieve peace beyond words were intriguing but what was more intriguing is that they were usually normal people who one day committed themselves to finding out the truth about themselves and the world and found it. I wanted to be like them. Ken seemed like an American mystic. He meditated four hours a day, worked out, did yoga and had a seemingly endless intellect. I kept thinking about one thing he said in his book, The Integral Ken Wilber. He described himself as a "practicing Buddhist" meaning that he didn't proclaim Buddhism as his only path but felt it was the path that spoke the most to him. He felt that Buddhism unlike other traditions, had done the most to clearly describe the condition of human suffering and the way out. Buddhism provided the best map of the human mind and had the best track record of providing experiential evidence through repeating the practice of meditation for 2500 years. 

What I was looking to do was to not only become an ardent spiritual practitioner, but also to find ways to use methods that didn't involve me having to deny the existence of the divine in my  everyday life. I wanted to find the sacred in the secular; not as an intellectual exploit but because it was my experience. Understanding Hiphop from a "spiritual" perspective caused a great deal of inner conflict. What is Hiphop now, versus what I used to think it was? What were its origins? What do the elements of Hiphop have to do with spirituality? Is Hiphop a religion? Can it be used as a tool of growth? What are Hiphoppers seeking? 

Without question when most people hear the word Hiphop they think music. And why shouldn't they? Historically Hiphop has garnered attention due to its provocative lyrics over recognizable repetitive beats. Even if you asked the truest of Hiphop heads about what Hiphop is or isn't, they'd talk your ear off about their favorite albums and rappers, not about Futura 2000, The Rock Steady Crew or DJ Q-Bert. Hiphop is largely created by artists and embraced by fans as a form of entertainment and it has been since its inception. To the purist this is a bad thing, but the reality is that it has been this way since the days of Cold Crush Brothers and Afrika Bambaataa. Hiphop as a form of musical entertainment serves many masters: for many it was and is a way out of poverty and and the false hopes of an unreachable American dream; It's a multibillion dollar industry that makes record executives exponentially more money than the artists that work for it; its a way for cultural voyeurists and exhibitionists to get their rocks off; its a way to display talent and receive validation. It's all about the ego baby. TV, radio and the internet all reinforce the message that Hiphop is a form of music, devoid of other elements or any psychological or spiritual depth.