True Stories: Hip Hop in 2016 world still shines a light and offers solutions

The dumbed down nar­ciss­ist­ic ver­sion of real­ity, con­tinu­ally fed to us by a cor­por­ate Media and polit­ic­al élite which move as one, is overwhelming.

These mech­an­isms of power, and the dir­ec­tion they move in, simply reflect the agenda of an empire.

The mod­ern day emphas­is on mater­i­al­ism, per­petu­at­ing class divi­sion, and attempt­ing to jus­ti­fy illeg­al war, rep­res­ents the empire’s final attempt to seize the remainder of cap­it­al from those that have it, both abroad in the form of illeg­al war in the hunt for resources, and domest­ic­ally in the form of austerity.

The MSM’s false, nar­row, and deceit­ful explan­a­tion for ⁹⁄₁₁, provided the mil­it­ary indus­tri­al com­plex and those work­ing for it, with a jus­ti­fic­a­tion to keep man­u­fac­tur­ing and selling weapons, itself big busi­ness, and to then use those weapons to seize the land and resources of oth­er nations.

The eco­nom­ic crash of 2008, caused by fin­an­cial crim­in­als, became the excuse to enforce upon the people class war­fare in the form of aus­ter­ity. With false reas­ons for illeg­al war firmly drilled into enough people’s minds, the empire has con­vinced people to sign up for eco­nom­ic slavery at home through aus­ter­ity, cut­ting edu­ca­tion, wel­fare, health pro­vi­sion, while attack­ing civil rights and liberties.

The empire so to speak, is the sys­tem of cap­it­al­ism, first built from free human cap­it­al dur­ing slavery, imple­men­ted through colo­ni­al­ism.  The so-called demo­cra­cies of the of the west, developed in the United States, Bri­tain and Europe, could not have flour­ished without the wealth accu­mu­lated through theft, slavery, and forced labor.

This empire has not yet been defeated.  While it’s clear that its power is dimin­ish­ing, as it dimin­ishes, in a bid to keep power, the viol­ent means used to keep con­trol stead­ily worsen.  Oth­er world powers are emer­ging, without the same imper­i­al ambi­tions as the empire, and the empire knows it.

This is the world we live in in 2016. The hall­marks of neo­lib­er­al­ism, war, poverty, eco­nom­ic ser­vitude, and the abuse of state power wherever it mani­fests are com­mon prob­lems that are affect­ing all of human kind to vari­ous degrees regard­less of col­our, gender, and faith.

It is in everyone’s interest to shape and seek out a bet­ter world for the future.

I believe that Hip Hop, and the art­form of poetry and lyr­i­cism, in their finest moments, become the most unri­valled and raw expres­sions of free­dom and the human spir­it. You can feel Hip Hop like you can feel your heart­beat. Hip Hop can speak to you and for you.  Hip Hop is our life force, It lives and breathes and tells ourstory and the stor­ies which are shunned.  It tells the true stories.

True Stor­ies: Ques­tion the impact of the MSM on society

One of the most effect­ive ways of cri­tiquing soci­ety, and of offer­ing a vis­ion of the world as it might be, or could be is Hip Hop.

Music­ally, people might sug­gest the ori­gins are to be found in New York. The wider tra­di­tions how­ever, of res­ist­ance, story-telling, and of learn­ing from and remain­ing loy­al to our ancest­ors, have roots in Africa which have branched out all over the world influ­en­cing and devel­op­ing a uni­ver­sally loved artform.

In 2016, the vis­ion of the world offered by the 1%, is sup­por­ted by a MSM con­trolled by the same cor­por­a­tions the 1% rep­res­ent. They push an agenda of mater­i­al­ism, racism, miso­gyny, war, and sug­gest that greed and money is equal to the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness and spir­itu­al fulfilment.

Not every­one is buy­ing it though. The nar­rat­ive has and is being chal­lenged-and not from where you might think.  Recently, some of the most respec­ted names in UK Hip Hop joined forces with a group of young people to help cul­tiv­ate a new gen­er­a­tion of lyr­i­cists focused on ques­tion­ing the MSM and its impact on society.

True Stor­ies, is a pro­ject and cre­ation of Amy True, who is ori­gin­ally from Craw­ley and is one of the UK’s most loved Hip Hop artists known as both a soul­ful sing­er and for her hard hit­ting lyr­ics which pull no punches and who encour­age oth­ers to Ques­tion Author­ity.  The pro­ject recently gave a group of young people the chance to be ment­ored, write lyr­ics, and per­form, along­side some of their favour­ite rap­pers includ­ing Amy her­self, Logic, and also Chester P.

“From a young age I have seen how main­stream media has swayed our way of think­ing, most of the time to some­thing neg­at­ive mak­ing us feel insec­ure, scared, and push­ing us towards an agenda of a few, who do not have human­it­ies best interest at heart.

As a ment­or I believe that sup­port and guid­ance is imper­at­ive to young people, allow­ing them to think for them­selves.  Many people are hurt and are also des­per­ate to achieve some­thing before they truly under­stand them­selves. This can lead to bad decisions and unstable foundations.”

Speak­ing at one of the work­shops which were fun­ded by the Arts Coun­cil, and also at the final per­form­ance at Hack­ney Attic where the young people per­formed their writ­ten pieces to a live audi­ence, it was clear to me that the work­shops have had a real impact.

These young people were already know­ledge­able about the world around them, and already under­stood the rela­tion­ship between much of the nar­rat­ive pushed from the top down by the media and polit­ics, and its influ­ence on the way people think.

By the same notion, they know that inde­pend­ent thought and lyr­i­cism also has the poten­tial to influ­ence people, but pos­it­ively.  That’s why they wanted to work with the likes of Amy True, Logic, and Chester P in the first place.  These artists have used their music and the plat­form they have developed to call out and chal­lenge power to its face.  Fur­ther­more, they have attrac­ted hun­dreds of thou­sands if not more, of views and listen­ers on You­Tube and else­where as a result.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH5hX8fkXCA[/youtube]

It’s telling that dur­ing the work­shops, and also in their per­form­ances the young people wanted to talk about and reflect pretty much every top­ic which they real­ised had been dis­tor­ted or ignored.

The media’s takes on the Lon­don riots, issues around race, war, poverty, aus­ter­ity, edu­ca­tion, and dra­coni­an pro­grams like the government’s ‘Pre­vent’ strategy were all sub­jects tackled and dis­cussed though lyr­i­cism.  When the media reflects not the truth, but a polit­ic­al agenda, the truth can be expec­ted to emerge through art as a cul­tur­al and neces­sary response to the real­ity on the ground.

Beyoncé’s trib­ute to the Black Pan­thers recently, for example, while pos­it­ive, is simple reflect­ing a real­ity cur­rently lived for people in places like Fer­guson.  The inspir­a­tion to pay trib­ute to the Black Pan­thers, them­selves an inev­it­able response to racism, cer­tainly did not come from any cor­por­ate board­rooms.  Rad­ic­al­ism is an idea cur­rently exper­i­en­cing reviv­al and resur­gence in the United States, born dir­ectly of the eco­nom­ic and social con­di­tions exper­i­enced by many.

It is the same with the best of UK Hip Hop.  As power per­sists, and the struc­tures that sup­port it main­tain, more and more art, includ­ing Hip Hop will reflect the cul­tur­al response from com­munit­ies opposed to such power-until such power diminishes.

And it is encour­aging that at least some of the names revered in UK Hip Hop want to pass the torch on to the young­er generation.

The per­form­ances from the young people, through both spoken word and rap cul­min­ated in a ‘True Stor­ies’ EP.  The True Stor­ies pro­ject will con­tin­ue, but I’m pretty sure you’ll be hear­ing from some of the recent gradu­ates again in the near future.  They have a lot they want to say, they know how to say it and why.  They know how to inform and enter­tain, and have been guided by some of the best.  Hip Hop can speak dir­ectly to the heart and stir emo­tions.  Ulti­mately, it is this human reac­tion, a rest­less­ness that spurs people into action, and often causes change in the world by mak­ing people think, and not simply accept things as they are.

Hip Hop will con­tin­ue to play an import­ant role in Lon­don, so long as the polit­ic­al status quo remains, which for the time being shows no signs of let­ting up. It has always delivered truth in the face of nor­m­al­ised viol­ence and polit­ic­al absurdity in the mainstream.

As one of the par­ti­cipants, Justina Efe Taylor expressed in one per­form­ance “The truth is a non-fic­tion­al story wait­ing to be heard”.  Not many people today would disagree.

True Stor­ies Ep is free to down­load on www.amytrue.bandcamp.com

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Richard Sudan

Richard Sudan is a Lon­don based writer, polit­ic­al act­iv­ist, and per­form­ance poet.His writ­ing has been pub­lished by the Inde­pend­ent, the Guard­i­an, the Huff­ing­ton Post and Wash­ing­ton Spec­tat­or, in addi­tion to oth­er news­pa­pers, magazines, and blogs. He has been a guest speak­er at events for dif­fer­ent organ­iz­a­tions ran­ging from the Uni­ver­sity of East Lon­don to the People’s Assembly cov­er­ing vari­ous top­ics. He also appears reg­u­larly in the media, and has fea­tured as a guest on LBC Radio, Col­our­ful Radio and else­where. His opin­ion is that the main­stream media has a duty to chal­lenge power, rather than to serve power. Richard has taught writ­ing poetry for per­form­ance at Brunel Uni­ver­sity, and main­tains the power of the spoken and writ­ten word can massively effect change in today’s world.

Latest posts by Richard Sudan (see all)

• True Stor­ies: Hip Hop in 2016 world still shines a light and offers solu­tions — April 21, 2016