A Blues for Hip Hop (For Gil Scott-Heron)

Author’s Note: I wrote this piece some years ago… It seemed appropriate to repost in memory of a truly awesome poet who left this life plane and is on to another. R.I.P. Gil Scott-Heron…you paved the way…prayerfully hip hop will get “back”.

A Blues for Hip Hop

Some days I get so pissed.

It’s political mostly.

It’s a definitive thirsting

It’s a reason

A season

A lifetime

For everything.

Booty shaking

Head nodding

To stupid songs

I hate it

I hate it how hip hop

Of late makes me feel

Like I’m a perpetual fukc buddy

Like I’m some bitch in a skirt

For some bitch in a pink shirt

I hate how these corny ass dudes

Treat we women so rude

It makes me madder when I see

These fukcing spinning rims

Really dude?

There are such poets in music

That get ignored

Where lyrical content lives

Labels go hard for

That other dude

Ren and Ten

The hip hop dalmations

Is who they choose

And we and YOOOOOUUU get sucked into it.

Head nodding

Booty shaking

Rocking to a dope beat

with penny candy lyrics

From a sucker

With

A synthesizer.

I hate it.

How ’Read A Book’

Gets protested

But ’Buy You A Drank’

Gets no static

Even when 12 year olds sang it.

And then we wonder why our

Girls

Go topless

senseless

for a rapper

counting

fake paper

in videos

spending

every last dime

they make on fake

gators

calling out fake haters

when the real

play makers

count

real money

from those videos

spending

every last dime

they make

on real things

like

politics

and gun

lobbies

to make it

easy

for yo’

dumb

ass to pop a cap

in some other dumb ass

with that tech 9

50 keeps

Bragging bout.

No clout

Ya’all niggas

Got no clout

No doubt

I’m blacking out

I know it

But who the fukc listens to poets?

The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron are lost

From our psyche

Our memories serve

Only

To those

Who

Last fukced us

On record

Made us better

By an R and B

Singer

Hooking

Us on a hook

And an icy chain

Making it

Mutha

Fukcin

Rain

In the club

With some apple

Bottom

Jeans

And those fukcing

boots with the fur

Taking over the dance floor

I hate it

That

They think

We think

They think

We can’t be

Don’t want

Mo’ betta.

-e-

Gil Scott-Heron – exclusive video