Lets be clear, for every one story of music inspiring I can give you thousand other tales of music not inspiring anything, not to mention artists blowing their heads off with a sawed-off shotguns or artists having sex with teenagers, or drugged out junkeys. It’s always nice to talk about just the positive side, as if there is no other side to the equation. It’s that level of bias that really bothers me. Patrick nothing makes me happier to know that something inspired you to keep giving all you got.

I don’t doubt that music filled in the vacuum of black liberation theology because black culture was subjugated for so long. Hip hop is the blues of the 20th/21st century. At the same time, hip hop is rife with contradiction and hypocrisy today. At the time hip hop was our panther movement. That does not exist today.

To be honest this is about the youth, this is not about me. Your second to last paragraph is an assumption. Show me a the evidence.

As someone who grew up fairly bullied and very much an alien in an all white neighborhood it was these same Golden age hip hop groups that probably saved me from suicide and helped me realized not only is there nothing wrong with me but there are others who think just like I do.

But again, this is not my argument. My argument is this: if you live anywhere in america and you choose not to listen to the music you love anymore you will only be left with the music of the mainstream. When you walk in the store and there is music playing, when cars drive by and there’s music playing, when you are on hold on the phone and music plays, when someone has a radio or in a commercial. It’s everywhere.

So unless you are moving your address to a bubble on an island on another planet… you better retain control of the music you like, to give balance to the music you will not be able to avoid (which will probably be empty pop by people like Fergie, Britney and Fall Out Boy).

And you ask if artistry can trump feeding someone? Artistry HAS fed MILLIONS. How many countless relief organizations operate and thrive thanks to artistry. Trust me, they wouldnt be as succesful if they relied on people donating to their essays or academic arguments. There are people with absolutely no education or skill… but feed THEMSELVES via artistry. Music programs in schools saves kids(statistically true). Music MOVES PEOPLE. And it has moved me. And I can’t even sing.

I probably spent as much as you did on music… it was worth every penny.

I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel very uncomfortable. You should visit Gambia and ask the people there if they would have liked for people to spend more of their money helping them or spending money on Tupac, Garth Brooks, or going to a club to listen to music. A lot of your validation for music is emotional. This is my point exactly. Music moves people to such levels of emotion, that we will validate it, irrespective of the grave situation that surrounds us.

Anything, regardless of whether it is music, or some other cultural practice that occupies our time to the point where we feel more comforted by sound over the life of a human being is problematic. What has started out as something casual is now an obsession.

Try this experiment. Try not listening, purchasing music for 6 months. That same money that you would have used for music/music related activities (clubs, itunes, mp3s, bars, etc), use that money for helping someone less fortunate. At the end of the 6 months, if you can tell me that you rather go back to occupying your time and energy towards music, then you know it’s an obsession. If artistry can trump feeding someone, then we have our priorities mixed. Most of us don’t have the disposable income to server both, so something has to be sacrificed.

You don’t have to do the experiment, but trust me, it changes you.

- Malik

Thank you for this commentary/discussionj. I thought your write up was insightful, and passionate, however I have to disagree on your subtle argument that the money you have used these past 15 years on music has been a wasteful habit.

Music not only inspires but also inhabits. It lives within us, making a home that resides in our character, in our hearts and minds. It creates bookmarks within our lives. I remember how I felt when I saw Poetic Justic, and hearing Janet Jackson sing, “where are you now”. I was only 16 years old when that came out. I didn’t know much about love back then, but that song helped me to understand it better.

As you know, I’m a poet, and there are some songs that I have listened to that have inspired me to write some things, that I would never been able to write. Inspiration is key. Music is art. To be inspired by other art, is the essence of humanity. The simple fact that we started drawing on caves 50,000 years ago, attests to our human need to want to express the world around us in beautiful ways.

Like all forces of nature, spirit, self, you have good and bad. I have Earth Wind and Fire to move to , very uplifting songs like September, “My thoughts are with you
Holding hands with your heart to see you
Only blue talk and love,
Remember how we knew was love here to stay”.

And then, there are today’s songs that you move to ignorantly like The Dream’s “I Luv Your Girl”, where he says stuff like, “She run her fingers through her hair, he tryin ta call her over there but she like, (F**k! That n*gg*!), She drop it down to the floor, I’m like shorty you should go, but she like (F**k! That n*gg*!)” A far cry from Earth Wind and Fire. A vast departure from loving each other.

I remember listening to Public Enemy, and learning about the Enslaved African Trade through their music, “Gettin’ me bruised on a cruise
What I got to lose, lost all contact
Got me layin’ on my back
Rollin’ in my own leftover
When I roll over, I roll over in somebody else’s
90 F–kin’ days on a slave ship
Count ‘em fallin’ off 2, 3, 4 hun’ed at a time”.
I do not exaggerate when I say I love that song. It’s really difficult to think of something recent that I have learned something from, Sorry Jay Z, sorry Kanye. Yes, they are very entertaining, but that it where it stops. Today’s music is just lacking. The number 1 reason I usually only listen to old school.

Sure, by all means, we have choices to what we choose to get inspired by, but the true cost of music, is not money, but rather losing a great way of communicating our past, reshaping our future thereby reaching our highest potential. Let’s inspire the masses to Love and Learn. We can achieve great heights if we followed that simple approach. I know I am a different person from the music I have allowed to infiltrate my being.

Hopefully my daughter will let music wash over her as well, keeping only those good thoughts and feelings, ideas and words that will inspire creativity, allowing her to expand on them and improve on them. I hope these and other songs cause her not to ride the “soundwave” of conformity, but to create waves of new thinking and analytic argument. Also, if she chooses to write songs, may they allow others to do the same.

A. Udjate