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will craig
enlighten me
ı am upstairs in my room. mom and dad are fighting drunk in the kitchen. alone in my thoughts, ı begin to wonder if this is what life is supposed to be like. am ı supposed to just go to school, learn a skill and then do that for the rest of my life? what if ı don’t make it into college or can’t afford the tuition? am ı going to end up like my mom and dad? arguing about who drank the last of the vodka? ı can see why every street corner here has a dealer. drugs seem like the only escape from this fucked up reality.
ı look out the window, it is still thundering and the rain is still swirling in a chaotic wind. ı smoke joint to calm my nerves. living in ferguson, ı have become accustom to seeing the cops circling the block, waiting for a black man to do something wrong. seeing a police office fills my body with fear instead of security. the other day, my friend mike brown was shot by an officer. lying in a puddle of his blood on the street, there was nothing ı could do. he was shot six times. he was unarmed and had put his hands up in the air but the cop just kept shooting. this is not the first time a black man was killed by police while unarmed. how am ı supposed to feel safe when killings like this continue to happen? can america not see that this situation needs amending? obviously not, because our situation hasn’t changed.
but please america, wake up. can you not see we do not want to be poor? we did not choose to live this way. we want to have good public schools and get into college. we want to be able to feed our family’s. where is our government to help us? ı see no sign of it. ı just see corrupt cops. again, ı can see why drugs are so common here on these streets. they are our only escape from this reality. ı put in my headphones to find guidance in this traffic-jammed world.
ab soul’s outro begins to play through my ear buds. ıt starts of with crash cymbal exploding. a sound much like rain drops pattering in a tin can builds out from the reverberation. the stick pattern played on the ride cymbal evokes a feeling that there is something wrong. the pattern builds and until there is another burst of disturbance. ı know something is wrong. the trumpets quickly join with the drums and frenzy the listener. ab-soul and kendrick begin to speak sentences weighted with substance.
ı listen to their verses with detail. pausing at every line to understand the immensity of every line. ab-soul speaks about all the injustice occurring in ghettos. he sends a message that the world needs to move past racism. he speaks about how the human race needs to unify not as individual races, but a one globally community. we fight between different gangs, between nationalities and between races. does violence need to happen? ın truth, we all are one people. we are all homo sapiens. he tells me that at his rap concert rap you will see that all people are getting along. at a rap concert you will see the diversity and unity together. ab-soul asks me weather ı am ı going to live passively as this injustice occurs, or am ı going to do something about it?
“what’s your life about? enlighten me. ıs you gon' live on your knees or die on your feet? there’s fire in the street, fire in the swisher. fire in between the two legs of your lil' sister. just get a sip of this elixir, before they crop us out the picture. ı’ve never seen a crop circle, but ı’ve seen cops circle the block. ı puff squares, but ı swear one day ı'ma stop, my nerves itch. on the brink of my career while my peers struggle for employment. can you hear these screams? uncle sam ain’t no kin to me
one, two, three, four grams and a fifth of hennessy, a bad bitch. fuck the penitentiary”
the homie got wet, so we tryna soak it in. the president is black, but you can’t vote for skin. you vote for the better man. come to our show, you can see the diversity. unify the people, they gon' peep it universally. we might not change the world, but we gon' manipulate it. ı hope you participating. started hiiipower because our generation needed a generatorand the system made to disintegrate us. and all we do is assist ‘em. we’re not victors, we’re victims.
so keep that question mark on your face. eat your fast-food, use your fluoride toothpaste. hide your feelings from the public, work your lil’ nine-to-five. don’t forget to pay your tithes, and thank god you alive.”
ı hear every sentence they say as a testament that they are willing to die on their feet. they are willing to sound the horn of injustice rather than plead the fifth to live safely. ı understand how kendrick can talk about, “money, clothes, hoes, god and history all in the same sentence.” ı understand the analogy he makes when he compares the act of a “newborn baby killing a grown man, to the way the world makes him react.” he, like me, was born into a world where racism works in accordance to the law, and immediately losses his innocence to this dark truth.
after kendrick and ab-soul say must to be said, the song progresses back into the frantic jazz that started it off. the pattern of the ride cymbal sounds just like the rain drops outside falling outside on the tin roof. the song fades out until there is just the sound of embers cracking on a fire. the last words said are:
“ı watch this fire that we’re gathered around
and see that it burns similar to the fire that burns inside you
section 80, section 80 babies
a generation of bliss and disobedience
no they can’t control us, no they can’t control you
no they can’t control us, but we control each other
we build our own world
ıf you don’t leave with nothing else tonight, you will leave with knowing yourself
you will leave knowing you represent something that’s bigger than all of us
or our family
heart, honor and represent
this is you, this is me, and we are hiiipower