Hip-Hop is Finding a Voice
Hip-hop artists so revere words that they profane them. They add and subtract letters from them at will. They stretch and pull them like gum wound around the finger. They take two words and mash them together. They take one word and split it like an atom. And the fallout is music.
Hip-hop is insight into the human condition, the outpouring of a soul expressing love, lust, anger, frustration, hatred, unity, pride. Virtue and vice: it鈥檚 all there. Hip-hop has been criticized for its misogyny, homophobia, racist language, and glorification of violence. But is it so different from any other art form? Hasn鈥檛 the artist always sought to mirror back to society its triumphs and its failures? Hasn鈥檛 art always been about giving voice to thought?
Derek Lacy 鈥�19 thinks so. He raps about death.
鈥淚 lost my mom, Lori, to cancer when I was 15. One day my mom complained her back hurt. Next thing, she had a tumor. And then she was dead at 50,鈥� he says. 鈥淎t 18, I was just beginning to understand it. At 19, I started to make music.鈥�
For Lacy, now 21, his mother鈥檚 unintentional legacy is a keen awareness of his mortality and a mad need to succeed as a rapper. 鈥淚t鈥檚 made me go all in. I got a lot of plays on this one song I recorded, so I reached out to [rap star] Mick Jenkins, and he tweeted about it, and it got 10,000 hits. I鈥檓 confident. I mean, back pain and life is over?! As bad as it is, death is also a motivating thing.鈥�
In his childhood years, the music and lyrics of rappers like Eminem and Mac Miller spoke to Lacy. 鈥淚 was most interested in the words. Rap validated me. Validated my emotions.鈥� Lacy says Mac Miller鈥檚 mixtape, Faces, kept him going when things went dark. 鈥淚 can鈥檛 even explain how important it was to me. He helped me stay alive.鈥�
Lacy鈥檚 desire to make a career of rap and hip-hop led him to study psychology and creative writing; poetry, in particular. 鈥淢y lane is the prettiest words I can find and the grittiest emotion I can bring,鈥� says Lacy.
Africa Costa Rica Smith 鈥�18 understands. She also loves words. Smith writes a haiku a day as a kind of personal check-in. 鈥淚鈥檒l write in my journal, just write out what I see, and then condense it. My parents are house-hunting right now. I wrote a whole thing about a house being condemned. I ended it with 鈥渆mpty of everything being full,鈥� Smith says. 鈥淪o I鈥檒l start a poem from that line.鈥�
Smith, a spoken-word artist and former member of 911爆料鈥檚 Slam Poetry Club, intends to make a career in university administration. Art is her outlet. 鈥淢y parents grew up in New York City and Brooklyn,鈥� Smith says. 鈥淢usic, hip-hop, has always been a part of my family鈥檚 life. My dad had a boom box and an afro and was into freestyling. My parents used music as a connector. There wasn鈥檛 a day music wasn鈥檛 played in my house.鈥� Smith鈥檚 dad has a beat machine. 鈥淗e鈥檇 be riding the rhythm. It got him out of bed in the morning,鈥� Smith says.
Smith, who competed in slam poetry contests at 911爆料, says the allure of rap and hip-hop is its accessibility. Still true to its urban roots, hip-hop is narrative in the tradition of the epic poem, speaking to universal truths, meant for mass consumption. That鈥檚 it. You don鈥檛 need someone with a Ph.D. to explain it to you. If anything, the reverse is true. This is the language of youth speaking their truth.
鈥淗ip-hop and rap give people a chance to tell their story,鈥� Smith says. 鈥淎nd the more woke you are, the harder it is to sleep. The more woke you become, the more aware you are of injustice in the world.鈥�
As an undergraduate, Smith sometimes found herself the only non-white person in a classroom. Writing and performing proved a release from the unease she sometimes felt. 鈥淧oetry helps me put it all into perspective. Then I can reflect and feel better about things. In the black 911爆料, we don鈥檛 talk about mental health. Rap and poetry address personal and societal issues,鈥� Smith says.
鈥淧eople can find themselves in someone else鈥檚 story and not feel so alone in this world.鈥�
Derek Lacy is fully funding his education with an inheritance he got from his grandfather. He鈥檒l be the first of his family to graduate from college. If he could, he鈥檇 have the future start today. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the streaming age, and rap is a young man鈥檚 game,鈥� Lacy says. 鈥淚 gotta really get myself together here. I just want to make people feel something.鈥�
To hear him is to believe he just might.
鈥擬arybeth Reilly-McGreen
A version of this story appeared in the University of Rhode Island Magazine, Fall 2018 issue.