If Hip Hop has Saved Your Life

Black Lives Matter

Jun 15

Written By Joy Ng

If hip hop has saved your life at any point
If hip hop helped you find your identity
If hip hop gave you a voice
If hip hop activated your agency
If hip hop is your language for storytelling
If hip hop is how you practice authenticity
If hip hop is how you were politicized
If hip hop is where you thrive
If hip hop brings fulfillment
If you love hip hop
If hip hop has saved your life
then you need to be vocal for Black lives.

Hip hop has many entryways into our lives
as do we, into hip hop
The roots of hip hop are Black
and these cannot be divorced

America disdains Blackness
and crutches of whiteness depend
on the violent annihilation of Blackness
all the while monetizing
commodifying
Black music, Black culture
all the while policing
lynching, erasing
Black bodies

Black history is an aching grief
a viscous centuries-old relentless grief
a new murder victim everyday grief
a heavily consumed doom scrolling grief
a no justice no peace where’s the closure grief
To what ends must we demand, cry, and beg
for America to stop killing Black people
grief

And Black history is also Resistance
paving the way
and carving lanes
in struggle
in songs, in dance, in sit-ins
in marches, in protests
in feeding community
in affordable housing
in radical theory
in rap, in poetry
growing Roses from Concrete
and on the football field

So if you love hip hop,
and you missed the memo,
then you weren’t listening.
It’s bigger than hip hop.

For Asian American hip hop artists and creators, it is ALWAYS our own responsibility to research and learn about the history and roots of hip hop, from the generations of practitioners who came before us and from the communities we come from. No matter how you slice it, Asian American hip hop is built upon this history. Built upon the struggle for Black liberation. This is the language of hip hop! If we truly believe that hip hop is a space that allows us to be authentic, to be free, to be heard, to thrive… then we need to take in all the complicated, painful, dark, political histories that birthed hip hop. Asian Americans have made strides within the genre, and we cannot pick and choose when to participate. We would not be here as artists, creators, or as Asian Americans without Black music, Black culture, Black thinkers, and Black movements for civil rights.

The pathways to building and defining Asian American identity is a journey within itself, yes, AND there is room— we must make room— to address anti-blackness in the ways we have been conditioned by institution, by media, by prejudice, and by our families too.

So if you identify as an Asian American hip hop artist, and you haven’t spoken out at all about the Black Lives Matter movement, the murders, the call for justice… please know there is never a wrong time to start. We are not all political organizers but if you believe in amplifying stories through hip hop, then right now is the time to decenter yourself, and amplify Black voices.

SUPPORT. LEARN. FOLLOW

Black Lives Matter | https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ | @Blklivesmatter

ACLU | https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters

Antiracism Center | @AntiracismCtr

Colorlines | @Colorlines

7 orgs that support Black Trans people | VICE article

Stream to Donate – 24/7 Hip Hop | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKo8OrBdLz8

(LOCAL/ BAY AREA)

Hip Hop For Change | https://www.hiphopforchange.org/ | @hiphop4change

Anti Police-Terror Project | https://www.antipoliceterrorproject.org/ | @antipoliceterrorproject

415 DAY | Keep up with news, demands & actions via IG @415day

Coalition on Homelessness | http://www.cohsf.org/ | @coalitiononhomelessness