When I read the title “Crack is Responsible for Hip-Hop”, I did a double take. Then a triple-take, if I can call it that. Then I just sat and stared at the title for a while before I started to read. And then, after reading, I closed the book and just thought for a while. Is Ahmir Thompson right? Did hip-hop culture spawn from drug use and drug pushing? It’s all about the street cred. If there were no drugs, then there wouldn’t be street cred as we know it today. What fascinated me was that Thompson was so very blatant when it came to discussing the use of crack. The way he puts it, he is saying that everyone knew it was there. And it was generally accepted. Or at least people averted their eyes so the music could burst forward.

To me, this was an uncomfortable article. It addressed things that people in my life usually sweep underneath the carpet. He even addressed how he sees repression, depression, and Republicans as causes for the hip-hop revolution. As the society falls, “Black music” rises up. It’s just how the system works. Through white politics and law and repression, “Black music” rises and teaches us to not be brainwashed, in a way.

And finally we get to an article addressing “Hip-Hop Nation”. The words summing up this class and the words that people live by. It is its own democracy and it seems that most people have to be born into it to make it authentic, though the nation is expanding to include more culture, race, and gender. It’s gritty and political and speaks what need to be spoken. It started as parties and then it swelled to become “a defining force of a generation” (Toure, pg. 338). And, as it seems, there is no stopping it now.