The organ moans a mournful tune, muted so as not to compete with the preacher just now taking his place at the podium. Behind the preacher, the diamond-encrusted handles of a metal casket gleam amidst the greens, reds and purples of flower arrangements and wreaths, “We’ll Always Miss You,” “Rest In Peace” and “Our Bad” among the many messages.
Somewhere outside, a church bell tolls its own sad beat.
The preacher, chewing on a toothpick, removes his fedora to wipe his brow all the way up into his long-since receded hairline. He flicks the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other, then clears his throat.
“Dearly beloved,” he begins, “we are gathered here today to honor and remember our loved one, now on the way to the sweet forever, senselessly cut down after only thirty short, short years of a many-times blessed and yet equally cursed life.”
“Preach!” pipes out one mourner.
“Talk about it!” chimes another.
The preacher clears his throat. Before he can speak, another voice, this one harder, deeper, more melodic, and not afraid like the others, barks from the rear of the room: “Fuck is all this shit?!”
A small commotion breaks out in the back. The preacher cranes his neck to get a better look at the source of such disrespect --and can’t believe his eyes. One by one, then by twos and threes, the mourners look behind them to see what’s what. And what they see makes some of them cry out. A couple of the women --and one man-- faint.
A group of about fifteen men and women of varying sizes, shapes and colors storm down the aisle and up to the podium. One of them, a big, dark-skinned, heavy-set young man with a lazy eye and an asthmatic’s wheeze, holds his hand out to the preacher, and motions toward the microphone. “Come up off that shit, Preach...”
The preacher, still in shock, nods his head, moves out of the way of the small army now posted up in front of the casket. Another young man, just as heavy as the first, but shorter, and wearing a plate-sized diamond medallion designed to look like the Puerto Rican flag, politely nudges the preacher out of the way.
The first heavy-set young man grabs the mic, taps the head with his palm a couple of times then passes it to a bald, bare-chested young man with “Thug Life” tattooed across his torso.
The tattooed man brings the mic up to his mouth, gripping it like he’s holding on to life itself. He stares out at the audience of mourners, making sure to look each one of them directly in the face: “Don’t believe the hype. Reports of Hip-Hop’s death have been greatly exaggerated.”
Still with us? We knew you would be. And that ain’t cockiness; it’s confidence in our fellow heads. We figured that headline above would get your attention. The first time we read where some rapper or other made such a “declaration” (in an all-out campaign of self-importance, more than likely), we damn near tossed our collective cookies.
Man, oh, man, are the haters hootin’ and hollerin’, hyped on all the hoopla. Dancing in the streets (to Britney, Justin and Cristina, no less). Celebrating a world without rap. What more confirmation or coroner’s report do they need? If rappers are saying hip-hop is dead…
Well, we say ain’t much worse than an ungrateful child, especially one who’s too blind, too high or just too stupid to recognize his place at the dinner table. Especially after having gotten nice and plump at said dinner table, year in, year out.
Lucky for us, and for you too, not everybody got the BlackBerry kite regarding funeral services and where to send flowers.
After all, “they” might’ve chirped, why bother? Hip-hop is soooo over right now.
But in all fairness to those medical examiners out there who’ve taken it upon themselves to either endorse or give serious thought to hip-hop’s so-called demise, we will concede that until very recently, vital signs had been at a low not seen since the drought of ’85, when the wackness reached a toxicity that almost wiped us out. (Ask your grandparents: if not for timely injections from Run-DMC, Dougie Fresh and Slick Rick, you might all have grown up nodding your heads to the Rappin’ Duke).
Let’s face it, with all due respect, Lil’ Jon’s aural fuck-fests are like office-party quickies: you know you shouldn’t, but what the hell, they're fun, nobody gets hurt, and they don’t mean shit anyways. 50 and Company’s odes to the good life are but the latest in a very, very, very long line of hymns dedicated to good ol’ fashioned sex, money and murder, despite how bangin’ they may be. Buttery, crisp Ritz crackers, fresh out the box, but crackers, nonetheless.
Sometimes you want a full meal, dig me?
These forensic pathologists, usually pretty sharp of eye and ear, are not wrong in believing that hip-hop had gotten sorta/kinda stale lately. More like it was on life-support and not actually living. But we offer caution to said MEs, if only because we know all too well the dangers of declaring anything officially dead just because we can’t feel the pulse. Somebody bought all those Chingy records, even if it wasn’t us.
Still, there’s something to be said for the glory days, when we didn’t have to qualify hip-hop music with culture because they were one and the same. When hip-hop gear meant any item of clothing we could find (at secret stash-spots, of course) to match our kicks, before it became way too easy to stroll into the mall for a Hip-Hop Starter-Kit, enabling anyone with a couple hunnid to infiltrate right on in.
But we digress.
For now, we ask that you put your fears to rest. Fall back and let the Chicken Littles do their dance. Like us, you know the epic history of this thing called Rap, from before its Bronx beginnings to its Bayou bounce. You know that no Hip-Hop Police, no Grammy Award, no radio pay-for-play lockdown and no amount of MTV pasteurization process will ever cancel its ticket (any of you really surprised by M-2’s beats-and-rhyme heavy line-up?).
Hip-hop dead? Not hardly. So say we, so says the world. So when the trend-jumpers (read: dick-riders), so-called rappers included, claim to hear that bell ringing a sad song, tell them don’t ask for whom it tolls; more than likely, it’s the alarm on their 15-minute clocks of fame, lettin’ them know to get that ass off the stage.
**originally published (minus modifications and updated info) in america magazine, a year and change ago...**
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