Whole Life Times: Heart-Centered Hip-Hop

May 2005

Heart-Centered Hip-Hop

Local activists use conscious hip-hop to educate, uplift and inspire

by Eliza Thomas

Hip-hop celebrates its 30th birthday this year. Born on the streets of the Bronx, rooted in the rich soil of Pan-African folk tradition and fueled by a spirit of disenfranchised youth rebellion, hip-hop has risen to define a generation of men and women from Long Beach to Cape Town. But tune into your average, corporate-owned, mainstream rap station, and you won’t hear a movement gracefully embracing its adulthood. On Power 106 (LA’s number one radio station for the past three years), it’s all bitches, blunts and bling, all the time. Violent, materialistic, misogynistic and filled with gangsta posturing, mainstream rap music has become at best mindless and at worst hateful.

Unfortunately, the multi-million dollar commercial rap industry wields tremendous power. In addition to having the ear of hundreds of thousands of fans worldwide, hip-hop is arguably the most high profile representation of African American culture in the global marketplace. In this bitter turn, profit-driven, corporate fat cats manufacture black culture in the boardroom and sell it back to the masses.

It’s what LA hip-hop activist, radio host and producer Fidel Rodriguez would call “the new colonialism,” a battle in which the coveted territories are young peoples’ hearts, minds and dollars. “I wouldn’t have a problem with sex and materialism hip-hop, if there was a balance,” says Fidel. “If kids had a chance to hear lyrics from artists who make positive and inspiring work, if more views were represented. But the industry is not having that. The producers are dictating to the artists what to say, like talk about your bitches and your ho’s, talk about your ice or it’s not going to get played.”

In an effort to restore that balance, Rodriguez hosts divine forces radio (dfr), a consciousness-raising blend of positive hip-hop music, politics, history, indigenous spirituality and community-building airing Friday nights on KPFK’s 90.7FM from 10 pm to 1 am (divineforces.org). Rodriguez also shares his message on the streets, as a volunteer peer mentor with local youth outreach organizations (including Aqeela Sherrill’s Community Self-Determination Institute).

Activists like Rodriguez are at the forefront of the grassroots movement to return hip-hop to its rightful inheritors. “Some of these kids think hip-hop music started with Tupac,” laughs Sebastien “Dome” El-kouby, co-founder of the Foundation for the Study of Hip-Hop Consciousness, an LA-based nonprofit working with at-risk youth (thefoundationonline.net). “We’re talking to single mothers, high school dropouts, gang members. The educational system has failed these kids. They’re so empowered when we put hip-hop in a historical context. They learn they are part of a rich cultural legacy that began with young people just like them, who—through their genius, through their creativity and drive—started this culture that revolutionized the world. We draw parallels to ancient cultures, from break dancing to Brazilian capoeira, graffiti to hieroglyphics, rapping to the oral tradition that has been passed down through all cultures. Our media does not portray black teenagers in the best light. We can let these young people know that they are a part of something bigger than what they see on BET.”

“Music can change the way people think,” agrees Fidel. “You hear a hook on the radio, and you might think of it as just entertainment, but go into the inner cities and you run into kids mimicking this stuff. Little girls talking about getting screwed, little boys looking up to rappers who brag about getting shot seven times... Most of these kids’ parents aren’t at home to tell them to turn off the radio, they’re working for a living, trying to survive...These kids are in the trenches. Death here, death there, funeral here... talk about a war in Iraq, we got a war right here, and nobody cares about the kids here that are dying.”

Welcome to the Hip-Hop Classroom

Born into poverty, and having experienced all the hard knocks that word implies, Fidel Rodriguez has an intimate understanding of hip-hop’s power to uplift and inspire (“[The music of] Ice Cube changed my life,” he admits). But he concedes that when trying to decolonize the mind, you’ve got to work slowly. “It’s about planting a seed. The ones who are searching for some type of truth, the ones really listening, they connect. But on the mass level it’s really difficult. It’s like taking somebody through baby steps. You grow up your whole life with someone telling you that this [behavior] is white, and then all of a sudden someone’s telling you that it’s black. But overall, you just be truthful with them.”

A graduate of USC with degrees in both Chicano/Latino Studies and African American Studies, Rodriguez approaches his radio show like a classroom. “We have a word of the week, and when you hear it, you can call in and win Panche Be-packs (selected books, named for a Mayan phrase that means “to seek the root of the truth”). I’ll be interviewing a spiritual leader like Miguel Ruiz and trying to make connections for kids, give them what I know they’re not getting in school, what I didn’t get. Miguel Ruiz will talk about The Four Agreements and then my DJ will play something based off that.”

It may be disconcerting to imagine a radio show that intertwines Don Miguel Ruiz’s four agreements with hip-hop beats, but this is the unique and essential service dfr provides. With its successful seven year run at KPFK (in which dfr increased listenership by an unheard of 275 percent and became the number one radio show in its timeslot), Rodriguez wants to take his act to a commercial station with a wider audience. “I’m calling the [proposed] show Balance,” he says. “I’m hopeful. What we’re doing, what the leaders of the movement are doing, it’s causing the universe to evolve. I already see positive stuff squeaking through [on commercial playlists]. This energy is going to manifest to a point where people in the corporate structures are going to have to react.”

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