I used to produce and write lyrics during AP Physics.
I boxed my writer’s block while sitting in them
double block periods.
In high school I tried to keep my head up when
I was down in my spirits,
It was hard to explain myself to people that
couldn’t hear what I’m feeling.
I used the company of rap to make a safe space for self,
you know a place I could face all of the weight that I felt.
I couldn’t see it all fit but it’s like way back when
I found this passion rapping in my classes
I was hacking shit then
You know hack like:
1. Using knowledge to gain access to a system
Or hack like:
2. Finding clever ways to manage or cope
I would hack like:
3. Innovating solutions to my problems
Hip-hop really helped me do all of that and then more.
The Grandmasters made news with they street-bloomed knowledge.
Little did they know what those moves would do for us following.
Adding turntables to mixers when it wasn’t so common.
Scratching records, making break beats loop that was nonsense.
Or nah cuz since they did it you can see the aftermath,
Like they knew some calculations that nobody else had.
Flipping hardware and streetwear,
knowledge in they gift of gab,
They started something major off a black cultural hack.
It’s like there’s a true science to this hip-hop shit.
Mathematics, engineering, linguistics and politics.
I remember when I first heard about Chomskyanism,
I hadn’t known about Noam but peeped his lyrical dome.
It’s funny thinking how these rappers got a gift with they words
But so few of them could study all the factors at work.
My man Chomsky said we all posses a universal grammar,
In grammar school they said my s/language wasn’t proper to practice.
Bet I changed the game in college
making hip hop my major;
Reading Freire
had me feeling like a knowledge creator.
I realized that school really
wouldn’t be so whack
If we learned when we were young
that we just gotta hack
like that.
This story is part of Empire Taste 001: The Friends & Family Issue.