Music is central to liberation. Especially for Africans. It is us. Our ancestors invented the first music before the northern migration and interbreeding with European Neanderthals. It’s as natural to us as thought itself.

Our ancestors noticed the patterns in the biophony of the nature around them at night, mimicked the sounds, the repetition...and eventually transmitted messages of history, culture, romance, etc., as record keeping—or manifestos and war cries.

In terms of enslavement, those African slaves used music to help call upon deities and ancestors to vanquish the devil.

Then came the Anglicization and Christianization of many of those African peoples.

The pattern of percussion at night transmitted messages to runaways...

The gospel songs taught to them and written by them were cryptic messages of navigation, to lead them to their liberation...

After seeing that chattel was not the only slavery they were under, the false hope of gospel turned to the despair of the blues.

The black folks in New Orleans got a hold of some European gizmos...saxophones, flutes, trumpets, pianos, trombones, clarinets, and breathed life into them with the blues and West African improvisation.

Jazz was born.

The freedom of jazz...the lawlessness...spread like wildfire.

Rhythm and Blues became the blanket term for black dominance. The world was moved by the messages of pain transmitted from black music.

The world was intimidated by messages of liberation in black music.

Because you don’t throw around words like liberation.

Liberation requires upheaval.

As drugs continued to be pumped into African American neighborhood, experimental sounds grew more and more. It was clear before, in jazz, (ie, Lee Morgan, Tyner, Coltrane, Thelonius), but now you hear it in funk.

In these same drug infested black communities, disco records and soul records got in the hands of disc jockeys. They noticed the “break” in the record was the time party goers really liked to groove. So they kept looping those breaks.

Now some Bronx b-boys start to get down to that sound, and the MC is doing his thing narrating the scene with style and soul. Outside of that party some kids tag the building with graffiti.

This was what would be called hip hop.

It had four elements:

DJ’ing
B-boying
MC’ing
Tagging (graffiti)

It didn’t take long before the black kids that took up the MC’ing element learned they could report their experiences in the ghettos on the mic.

Enter: Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five...

Fast forward and you have groups called Niggaz Wit Attitude...

This is what becomes feared.

Angry black men, reporting their every day experiences to mainstream audiences, and letting them know that they’re pissed about it.

Along came more skillful and poetic rappers who could, both on and off a beat, transmit messages of revolution and knowledge of self. Consortiums like Native Tongue linked black poets with a message of Black unity.

They were, of course, more direct and militant poets—Paris, Pac, Public Enemy, etc. Character assassination worked to neutralize some, money and fame others, and the instigation of fratricide, others.

Now the tactics of the devil are more double-handed. To those with more than two eyes though, it’s not that complicated.

Reward the MC who transmits the message either of indifference or self destruction.

Dim the light of the MC transmits the message of liberation.

Instead of tryin to keep us from the music, they bolster the messengers of black dysfunction. Much more efficient tactic. I’m almost impressed in a cynical way.

They only want to keep you dancing, keep you fucking. They want to keep your eye on the shiny object.

............................................................................................................ ...........................now you tell me if it’s still “just music”, motherfuckers.