The Sword. Metallica. Rammstein. I started listening to these groups in my late 20s. And it is a good thing, for everyone, that I didn’t start listening to this music any earlier. I grew up in the “Hood”. Hip Hop and Rap was the order of the day. If you are not familiar with Hood living, it can be summed up in one word, Conformity. Us Black and Semi Black folks, living amongst other Black Folks, are not usually allowed to be individuals. You will literally get beat up for trying to be yourself or anything other than the “Hood Approved” ideal. So for survival, I sought to have my card stamped “Hood Approved”. I succeeded. I embraced the culture; I put down the books, picked up the Gangsta Rap, and threw away my belt. Belts are ok, but they must be worn around the shoulders in case it is needed for a fight. With no belt, I started rockin an epic sag. I let my hair grow and put on the air of a general douche bag. My heart was never in it. I liked the music, but sometimes it made me cringe. The content, in many cases, was abominable. But I maintained. I kept up the act for years. I played out my prescribed role but it wasn’t me. So I became crazy.
You can only suppress your true nature for so long. As I got older and more self destructive, I became desperate for the real me. I apologized to myself and asked me to return. “I am sorry Bro, I love you man. Come back, I am ready to be me!” That process of becoming myself continues to this day. I was lucky. The real me wasn’t dead, he was hanging out in my subconscious eating taffy apples and making love to female versions of himself. When I found him, he was reluctant to return. He was resting, leaning against a gas lamp pole in an old village. The sky was dark, nary a star to be seen. He wore a bowler hat. He was studying the spaces between the cobble stones in the road when I asked him to come back. He didn’t look up. I said please. His eyes met mine. His face was serious. Suddenly, he was grinning, wildly! He removed his hat, revealing a rapidly receding hairline. The last time I saw him he was nothing but hair, but now his age was showing. He bowed to me, respectfully, and before he ducked into the narrow alley he said, see you soon, Brother. With that he was gone, simultaneously he was back. I saw him leave through his eyes.
It took years to subdue me and it is taking years to bring me back, fully. So what does Hip Hop and Rap have to do with all of this? Well the real me is not a big fan of Hip Hop or Rap. He likes Metal, and Jazz, and Classical, and pretty much everything except Rap, oh, and Country. He does not seem to like Country. But Metal, man, he loves it! Metal goes into my ears and radiates out of my spine like a million black polished finger nails. Metal energizes like espresso administered intravenously! It gets me going. When I listen to The Sword, I start marching. I feel like a conqueror. Global conquest becomes a feasible goal when Rammstein is playing. Hip Hop saved the world. It saved the world from me. My fake hood identity saved the world from this little Mulatto. Had I been listening to Metallica instead of NWA, I would probably be the President of Earth. I am not trying to call rap weak, definitely not that. I know how hard rappers work at coming off tough so I would not want to insult them by calling them weak. I mean no disrespect. But this is the difference, between hood tough, and real tough. Rap music is superficial. It is gregarious, it is vain. Rappers are sugar and spice who don’t want to seem nice. Metal is different. It is hard. Once you break through the designer clothed exterior of a rapper, you find confused, soft, flesh. Anyone who advocates taking advantage of the weak, or hurting women, or selling poison to other human beings, he is seriously confused. I don’t respect rappers who do this. I want to smack myself for listening to that garbage for so many years!
Metal is solid. It is a tank. It is coming through, and you are not going to stop it. Metal does not look for targets to strike, it looks towards its goal. If something gets between it, and the goal, that something becomes a target, and it will be destroyed. I listened to rap for 20 years, I have been listening to metal for 5. If those times were reversed, there is no doubt in my mind that I would have built an Army and conquered a continent by now. Now I am over 30. I have a family, and I have many obligations. I may have missed the warrior boat. Instead of investing in a personal military, I am investing in my retirement. So maybe it is a good thing that I was phony for so long. Good for the existing world powers.
I see abundance. There is more than enough for everyone on this planet and I have a mind to liberate these oppressed peoples from their overlords. But for now it looks like the tyrants have lucked out. You were saved by Gangsta Rap. So evil men of the world, pick up your iPods, select a rap track, and thank your lucky stars that The Worst Man Ever Born didn’t listen to Metal when he was growing up.
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