Religion in the Hip Hop Nation

As expected, I enjoyed the second half of Toure’s Never Drank the Kool-Aid as much as the selections from the first half of the book. They cover so many ideas and topics, and probably my favorite hip hop personality Ahmir Thompson (?uestlove). Who I have had the opportunity to see play with The Roots many times, but also with his jazz ensemble The Philadelphia Experiment, and as part of Bonnaroo’s super jam with artists John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin on bass and Ben Harper on the guitar. He had some amazing lines and thoughts that I feel we will have to get to in discussion. But as much as I wanted to write on his piece, I was drawn to a different topic.

Over break I have the opportunity to do leisure reading, something that often gets missed when studying political science and history. One of my short reads was The RZA’s(Wu Tang Clan) recent book The Tao of Wu. In the book he merges auto-biography with his own approach to philosophy and religion that factors in Christianity, the Qur’an, various sects of the Nation of Islam like the five percenters and divine mathematics, as well as Taoist philosophy. Additionally, one of my other honors courses at Drury was African American Religion in the United States, so this is a topic of some interest to me.

The early days of hip hop and the orgin “myths” that we have been discussing feature Bambaataa and the Zulu nation. Pictures of Malcolm X and other Black Nationalist leaders who also had ties to the Nation of Islam all were featured in the videos of Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power.” These religious influences seem to play a roll in the development of hip hop, but to what degree? And, was there a reason that De La Soul, Tribe, KRS-ONE, Rakim, and some of the other most influential figures in hip hop all found themselves attached to these influences.

So how does this fit into this week’s reading? Well Toure’s work encounters religion in a number of interviews. The pieces on Lauryn Hill touch on her relationship with “Brother Anthony” as well as in her relationship with Rohan Marley. But, is it perhaps more revealing that religion does not factor into the discussions that Toure’ has with many of the modern leaders of hip hop? Well, with the exception of Kanye who’s worried about dawning a piece of bling that looks too much like a white Jesus. Were the founding fathers of hip hop and the artist of the “golden age” creating more intellectual and impactful work because of their religious mindset? From these modern artists, it seems that if there is a religious undertone it is usually expressly Christian and not of the variety of the Black Nationalism that marked some earlier artists. I may be over generalizing here, but has hip-hop moved from a movement tied to religion to a nihilist art form?

I hope this was intellectually stimulating, however off topic it may be. Thanks in advance for your comments.