State of Union Address to the Hip-Hop Generation by Supa Nova Slom, The Hip Hop Medicine Man
Part I: “Hip-Hop Is Dying”
Dear Hip-Hop Generation:
This is a call to my fellow hip-hop artists, community, and generation at large: WAKE UP!!! HIP-HOP IS DYING!!!! IT IS A STATE OF EMERGENCY AND WE ARE IN AN URGENT HEALTH CRISIS! HIP-HOP ARTISTS ARE DYING, OUR FAMILIES ARE DYING, AND THE HIP-HOP GENERATION IS THE FIRST GENERATION THAT MAY NOT OUT LIVE THEIR PARENTS!!!
As we mourn the passing of hip-hop icon Guru, I challenge all of his peers and fans to not let his death be in vain. There is no reason that Guru and so many others under 45 should be passing away at the rates they are. Every MC, B-Boy, DJ, Graf Artist, sista in the club, college student, brutha on the corner, G, and hustler is personally suffering from or knows someone battling cancer, arthritis, diabetes, asthma, hypertension, obesity, or one of many other illnesses, most of which are caused or worsened by the foods eat.
Don’t think for one minute your aunties, big mamas, and parents are the only ones battling these sicknesses. The entire African-American and Latino communities lead in all the statistics for all of these crippling diseases and people under 40 are being hit at younger and younger ages. According to the Office of Minority health, about one in four African-American women are overweight or obese and nearly 20% of African-American children ages 6-17 are termed obese. This is means that 20% of our children are at high risk for high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and a slew of other obesity associated diseases.
It is the fast food and over-processed pre-packaged US food culture that has driven us to this place and if we do not act soon we may not be able to turn back. You still think this does not apply to you or perhaps you just need some extra reinforcement. Read the list below of mainstream celebrities who have battled major life threatening health conditions:
MC Breed- Dead at 37- Kidney Failure
J. Dilla- Dead at 32- Cardiac Arrest
Big Pun- Dead at 28- Heart Attack
Nate Dogg- 40- 2 Strokes at 38- Partially Paralyzed
Alonzo Mourning- 40- Kidney Disease: Kidney Transplant at age 33
Missy Elliot-38 High Blood Pressure- Takes Pills Daily
Ghostface killa- 39 Diagnosed at 26 with Type 1 Diabetes
Lil Boosie - diagnosed at age 20 with Diabetes- Takes insulin 3 times a day
Phife Dawg- 39- Type 1 Diabetes and Has Had a Kidney Transplant
Angie Stone- 48-Type 2 Diabetes and High Blood Pressure
Halle Berry- 43- Type 1 Diabetes
This is only a short list of famous people who have disclosed their health status to the public and it clearly shows you don’t have to be old, poor, overweight, or living in the hood to be sick. Beyond being a hip-hop artist, I am a second-generation holistic health advocate. I have traveled on the road with Erykah Badu as her wellness consultant and over the years I have encountered countless celebrities dealing with minor and major ailments. On the personal front I am sick and tired of losing young people and reading outlandish statistics. At this point NOBODY IS EXEMPT. Everyone is vulnerable to these diseases and unless we make some immediate major changes to incorporate healthier eating habits and lifestyle practices we may not live to see 50.
If you are living on the American diet YOU TOO ARE A WALKING TICKING TIME BOMB ready to explode at any moment for the build up of fast food, fried foods, candy, sodas, sugar drinks, chemical additives and I am talking to you in this letter. Most people know McDonalds, Popeyes, Wendy’s, Snickers, Twix, etc. are bad for them but they continue to eat them every single day so I ask everyone at what point are we going to wake up!!!
People’s number one excuse is eating healthy cost too much but yet most of these are the same people that spend hundreds of dollars on Jordans, Coach, Prada, car rims and other material indulgences. When we tell these same people who may buy two or three bottles in the club to go buy a juicer they say it is too expensive or laugh it off. Our priorities are horribly messed up when it comes to spending money and taking care of ourselves. People care more about what they look like from the outside then they do about how their bodies feel on the inside. They are more concerned with being able to participate in the Pass the Courvoisier Blame it on the Alcohol lifestyle than learning to do away with the same sicknesses that force them to take medication daily. They would rather invest in overly expensive shoes than work to prevent diabetes that could one day lead to amputations and no options to wear shoes.
I recently wrote a book called The Remedy: The Five-Week Power Plan to Detox Your System, Combat the Fat, and Rebuild Your Mind and Body. It is the first comprehensive wellness book written with the hip-hop generation in mind and features testimonies by Melyssa Ford, Hype Williams, Tyson Beckford, Erykah Badu, Chuck D., and Jim Jones sharing simple things they do to maintain healthy active lives. I provide the step-by-step plan to remedy your body and work to prevent future sickness thru diet, exercise, and positive thinking. In this Hip-Hop’s State of Emergency series I will share some of these easy to incorporate tips and tools that can change your entire life with small things like drinking water and eating green vegetables. For all of you who think it costs too much money I will provide inexpensive meal plans and easy to make home remedies.
Big Pun passed we didn’t take heed. Nate Dogg had two strokes and not much was said. When we lost J. Dilla finally people started to show some concern and when Phife Dawg exposed his battle with diabetes, people began to realize there is an issue but still no one has effectively challenged our generation on a widespread scale to reclaim our wellness at every level. Today I challenge every one of you to stand up and take charge of your own health.
We have just lost Guru and the entire hip-hop community is in mourning. Let’s take the opportunity to seize the time before we find ourselves back here again with the next artist or family member dying too early and too soon. In the midst of street beefs, egotism, misogyny, disunity, and materialism I call for unity amongst us all on the issue of survival and health. It’s about time we get sick and tired of being sick and tired and DO SOMETHING. In the memory of Guru let’s all get GANGSTARR for our health and wellness.
If you have any questions I invite you to email me at supanovaslominfo@gmail.com. I am here to help you along your journey to saving our lives and becoming wellness warriors. The time is now!
Salute!
Supa Nova Slom
The Hip-Hop Medicine Man
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this article can be found here
[Editor's note: This post is a direct response to Tolu Olorunda's editorial entitled, "Rich Kids in Hip-Hop: Who Let the Gates Open?"]
Editor's note: The views expressed inside this editorial aren't necessarily the views of AllHipHop.com or its employees.
I’m writing this because I’m so sick of limiting beliefs in rap music. I’m sick of the idea that you can’t make a significant contribution to the art form because your dad was a hip-hop pioneer (Diggy Simmons) or that you can’t be real if you’re a half Jewish kid from Canada who was on a teen TV show (Drake).
In his editorial Tolu writes, “The working-class kid in me wants to know why Hip-Hop fans would submit their precious time to the abuse of spoon-fed, pampered, nannied, chauffeur-carried brats who know next to nothing of growing up with no assurance [of] ‘where your meal’s coming from.’”
Well, the upper middle class kid in me wants to know why not? Why not? Where in the hip-hop rulebook does it say that if someone is born into an advantageous situation that their opinion is void? Or to take it further that their contributions are abusive?
I love hip-hop. I’ve dedicated my entire professional career to it. I used to subscribe toVibe magazine when it was oversized. I put up posters on my wall. I laboriously made mixtapes using the radio, scotch tape and cassettes. I went to Hot 97’s SummerJam religiously. I transcribed lyrics into composition notebooks for fun. And I did this all from my privileged, upper middle class home. In my opinion, the gates to the almighty kingdom of hip-hop were never closed to the fortunate.
In fact, I know the gates have always opened wide for a rich kid who wanted to support their favorite artist by purchasing an album, shelling out for concert tickets and dropping some change at the merch stand as well. I guess money gets past the gatekeepers but thought provoking poetry gets turned away.
Hip-hop is not about exclusion. At this point, I’d like to turn it over to one of our forefathers, DJ Kool 
“To me hip-hop says, ‘Come as you are.’ We are a family. It’s about you and me, connecting one to one. That’s why it has universal appeal. It has given people a way to understand their world, whether they are from the suburbs or the city or wherever. I think hip-hop has bridged the culture gap. It brings white kids together with black kids, brown kids with yellow kids. They all have something that they love. It gets past the stereotypes and people hating each other because of those stereotypes.”
Working-class kids, Tolu writes, can teach us about nihilism and fatalism while privileged youngsters don’t have “much to inform about life and hardship, about struggle and pain, about uncertainty and destiny.”
Are. you. kidding. me?
Ever hear the Notorious B.I.G. song “Mo Money Mo Problems”? Anyone who is living knows about life. We ALL know about hardship, struggle, pain, uncertainty and destiny. It’s mighty presumptuous to assume that you know what other people are or aren’t going through internally. Does Tolu know the pressure that comes with having to follow in massive footsteps? People who come from success automatically have a bigger fear of failure because they have more to lose. How about giving the little dudes some credit for putting themselves out there?
Tolu knocks Aubrey “Drake” Graham because he “rolled out the womb into a golden crib,” but does he really know Drake’s story? Is it remotely possible that he had hardships just like everyone else?
Here’s what Drake told me in an interview about how he started rapping.
“Actually the way I really started writing was my father was in jail and there was an inmate there that used to share my dad’s phone time. He had nobody to talk to. He used to spit rhymes to me over the phone I used to listen to him ‘til the phone would cut off. I would listen and I liked it. I liked the whole rap thing so I would start writing and we would start sharing it. Eventually my dad got out and from there I just continued it.”
I offer this, not because I want to prove Drake’s “street cred,” but because I want to challenge the assumptions fans and critics have about artists who don’t come from the most impoverished backgrounds. Just because Aubrey (as the close minded hardcore hip-hop types like to call him) doesn’t constantly rhyme about his father being behind bars that doesn’t mean that it didn’t affect him during his developmental years. It may have shaped his whole perspective on life. It may drive everything he does, every bar that he spits.
Why are people are so quick to dismiss others before they actually know where they are coming from?
Tolu likes Nas “for the wisdom sprawled liberally from his lips to our ears.”
So do I. But I don’t think that we should limit your wisdom providers to the people who come from the inner city. To quote Jay-Z, “that sounds stupid to me.” As someone who came from a “privileged upbringing” I felt the Ghostface Killah lyrics that he cited at the beginning of his editorial to my core (“All That I Got Is You”). No, I never had to “survive winters, snotty nosed with no coats” but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t know “cousins and aunts” who were there with “roaches everywhere.” It doesn’t mean I can’t comprehend or appreciate those words.
Likewise, someone who knows “real struggle” might be able to relate to Diggy’s desire to do something on his own, or Drake’s admission that he sometimes makes the wrong decisions or Kanye West’s passion for fighting what he believes in.
I, for one, would rather take my rappers rich and impassioned over poor and complacent any day. Just because someone comes from poverty doesn’t mean that they have more value to give than the guy who appears to be rapping with a silver spoon in his mouth.
I think that it’s this train of thought that gives us rappers like Rick Ross, who’s embarrassed to admit that he held down a respectable job before making it big, and Plies, who hems and haws when asked if he was the valedictorian of his class. We’re scaring off great wordsmiths. We’re encouraging our “stars” to lie to us and in the end we’re only shortchanging ourselves.
I think that we should support, with our dollars, any artist that is living and rapping authentically, regardless of his current financial situation. In turn, we’ll get more artists that will make meaningful and purposeful contributions to our lives. Besides, after one successful album that wise street soldier that you love so much suddenly has way more in common with the rich kid than he does with you.
Instead of questioning, “who let the gates open” why don’t we just celebrate the fact that they are open and that everyone from the projects to the penthouse has an equal chance to make a difference.
—Ghostface Killah, “All That I Got Is You,” Ironman (1996).
The working-class kid in me wants to know why Hip-Hop fans would submit their precious time to the abuse of spoon-fed, pampered, nannied, chauffeur-carried brats who know next to nothing of growing up with no assurance “where your meal’s coming from.”
Yes, the long-awaited editorial has arrived on schedule. Put down your shoes, pal! There’ll be no invective-hurling today. But some frank truths have been piercing my ear for a while now; and I know better than to disobey those voices once they get cranky.
If you’ve made it this far, there’s good chance we share core values. If not, hear me out and prepare your profanity-laced, dimwitted e-mails thereafter.
In the last few months, I’ve had to suppress some impulse to stave off this editorial. I figured over time the better angels within my nature would allay my increasing worries that many Hip-Hop fans are losing the battle to reality, but I find the need even greater now to let out these unflattering observations—and the consequences I think lurk around the corner if we don’t take heed.
When the young son of Rap legend Rev. Run, Diggy Simmons, released his first mixtape last December, howls filled the air. He was celebrated as fresh and uniqueand lyrical, by some AllHipHop commenters I’ve depended on in the past for what Ernest Hemingway calls the “built-in bullsh** detector”—a device he suggested no serious writer lacked. You see it, feel it, and delete it. Each one dressed up their rave reviews in contrast to his older brother, Jo Jo Simmons, and in contradiction to the tacit presuppositions held of anyone with “Run” for a surname.
The mixtape was “an attempt by Diggy to prove himself as more than just the son of Rev. Run,” wrote AllHipHop co-founder and co-CEO Greg Watkins, who filed the story. Diggy’s dad was “pleasantly surprised” to see his son run swift with the flaming torch he lit some three decades back. Around the time last year, I heard Diggy’s lead single, “Point to Prove,” and liked what was coming through the speakers. I wasn’t blown apart or taken aback: I had no expectations. And whoever said rich kids couldn’t flow? Listen to enough Canibus or Talib Kweli, and your pattern should structure quite well.
But if hypocrisy were gold, many Hip-Hop fans could own Vegas tonight. When Jo Jo Simmons first explored the unmapped terrain of Hip-Hop music-making a few years back (on Run’s House), no one with a shred of dignity let him rest at night. Blogs and forums lit up, and Armageddon marked a minute away—all because a rich kid thought he could walk through the executive doors of major record labels and sign on the dotted line because his father and uncle could move mountains with a finger-snap.
I don’t know the extent of Jo Jo’s experiences. Life, in fact, might be more complicated for him than most lacking such access and ability available since birth. But if Jo Jo had no chance, Diggy shouldn’t. No one believed Jo Jo had much to inform about life and hardship, about struggle and pain, about uncertainty and destiny—and they ought not to be hypocrites. But Diggy can spit; Jo Jo can’t!, I can hear some yelping. Well, yes and no. Yes: Diggy handles breath-control better, and can imitate Rakim quite well. But, no: it wasn't the flow that got the Hip-Hop aficionados seething: it was the silver fork hanging from Jo Jo’s lips. It was a firm commitment to ensure Vanilla
Speaking with AllHipHop right after his mixtape dropped, the “abnormally well-spoken” 14-year-old Diggy Simmons, now an Atlanta Records recording artist, recounted the extent of his Rap career/passion: “I’ve been rapping since I was 5 then I stopped. I don’t even know why I stopped. Then two years ago I got back into just recording normal tracks. I recorded a song and posted it on my blog and it got crazy feed back, it wasn’t even that lyrical it was more for fun. I love music, I love making it. I’m almost in the studio everyday.”
Once, Hip-Hop offered loud voice of political courage to command the attention of society toward moral correction. (Ever heard “The Message,” “By the Time I Get to Arizona,” “Evil That Men Do,” “Burn Hollywood Burn,” “Black Korea,” “Mystery Of Iniquity,” “Strange Ways,” or “American Terrorist”?) Today, Hip-Hop fills vacuums: it’s a hobby; it’s an emotional alleviator; it’s a social legitimator—it means you’re cool. Once, Hip-Hop offered the only legal means of true financial liberation for kids trapped into unlivable conditions. Today, Hip-Hop adds an extra “0”—to the many other 0s lined up from fashion and modeling and TV deals.
Aubrey Graham, better known as “Drake,” fares no better in my book. And though three years ago (please listen to Room for Improvement), I could vouch for him, today I hang my head in shame at the caricature Young Money has turned him into. But the once-Degrassi (some suburban White middle-class drama) star doesn’t mind: He rolled out the womb into a golden crib.
For his much-anticipated (sure-to-flop) debut album, So Far Gone, he’s been studyingNas (“to understand how he painted those pictures and his bar structure and all of that”) and Andre
I tend to judge the likes of Drake like Cormega would: “I don't like when these spoiled rich kids … just get into rap because it's something they can do. … They pops got money and they put 'em in the game and then they start rapping about something, a life they could never live. Go do something else. … Ni**as like us rap about sh** because we lived it. These ni**as use Rap as a hobby.”
If you’ve ever let your eardrums—and heart—fall victim to a Cormega track, the knee-jerk he’s hatin’ reaction shouldn’t find value following those comments: he embodies every word. And Hip-Hop fans and artists have always stood close to that timeless axiom—“no pain: no gain.” Not in a fascistic sense—as I picked up from Nas and Damian Marley’s “Strong Will Continue”—but meaning, if hardship to you is running late to a video shoot, or the late arrival of a chauffeur, or a missed opportunity to clock your closet with a limited-stock-collection-edition sneaker line, you might as well stay clear of the mic and pick up a more appealing, less transient hobby—like curling.
And, sure enough, Hip-Hop fans have come down terribly harsh on rich kids who, with good muscle movement, eventually made it onto the roster at some major label outfit trying to suck up to their parents. It’s only right that a keeping it real-obsessed community should take sharp swords to the ankles of anyone whose definition of poverty has more in solidarity with Carlton from The French Prince than J.J. from Good Times. (May I take this opportunity to plunge into Will Smith? Nah, let’s move on.)
The code shouldn’t take much to crack: we don’t greatly appreciate rich kids because they can tell us next to nothing of what nihilism means, of what fatalism means: in short, of what Hip-Hop means. If I ask readers to name one born-wealthy Hip-Hop artist whose message has poked in their hearts the perseverance to keep keepin’ on until someday, as Lil Boosie might put it (fall out your chairs, purists!), “selling out the store/ my money don’t fold now/,” we might be waiting till the trumpets sound, for an acceptable answer. But I let loose the name “Tupac Amaru Shakur,” and libations shower the earth.
Listen, folks: I hate to be that guy—you know, the party-crasher, the stink at the board meeting, the grump at the bar mitzvah, the atheist at church; but wipe off your lips: you’re drooling. These folks share nothing in common with the artists by whom our lives have been made meaningful and purposeful. So, feel free to wash over their albums at your local store: they don't need the money. But some do—and if you’ll rather shell out precious coin to enlarge the coffers of some glitterati scion, please don’t show your face around here any longer. I don’t mind one less reader.
"IT WAS A SAD DAY FOR ME TO GET CONFIRMATION ON THE DEATH OF A MAN WHO I WILL CONTINUE TO CALL MY BROTHER, KEITH ELAM, BETTER KNOWN AS GURU OF THE LEGENDARY GANG STARR.
FROM 1988-2004, WE EXPERIENCED SO MUCH SUCCESS TOGETHER THAT WE WERE ABLE TO EXPAND OUR BUSINESSES INDEPENDENTLY AND GIVE EACH OTHER WHAT GURU CALLED “CREATIVE SPACE”, BEFORE PLANNING TO REUNITE FOR OUR 7TH LP WHEN THE TIME WAS RIGHT. TRAGICALLY, WE WILL NEVER REACH THAT DAY.
I’VE BEEN ASKED TO COMMENT ON A LETTER SPEAKING ILL OF ME WHICH WAS SUPPOSEDLY WRITTEN BY GURU IN HIS DYING DAYS. ALL I WILL SAY ABOUT IT IS THAT OUR TIME TOGETHER WAS BEAUTIFUL, WE BUILT A HIP HOP LEGACY TOGETHER, AND NO ONE CAN RE-WRITE HISTORY OR TAKE AWAY MY LOVE FOR HIM. ONE THING I WOULD NEVER DO IS PLAY AROUND WITH THE TRUTH ABOUT HIS LIFE.
I WILL CELEBRATE GURU’S LIFE… I WILL HONOR HIS MEMORY… I WILL GRIEVE WITH THE ELAM FAMILY OVER HIS UNTIMELY DEATH… I WILL REMEMBER THE GANG STARR FOUNDATION AND ALL OF THE ORIGINAL MEMBERS OF GANG STARR WHO CAME BEFORE ME – WE ALL KNOW EACH OTHER… MOSTLY, I WILL CHERISH EVERYTHING WE CREATED TOGETHER AS GANG STARR, FOREVER. I’M GONNA MISS HEARING HIS SIGNATURE MONOTONE VOICE WHEN HE WALKS IN THE ROOM, BUT THE SONGS WILL ALWAYS BRING IT BACK TO ME….HIS RHYME FLOWS WERE INSANE, AND I WILL NEVER REMOVE HIM FROM MY HEART AND SOUL…….REST IN PEACE TO THE MAN WHO FELT “SATISFACTION FROM THE STREET CROWD REACTION” … I LOVE YOU GOO…….DJ PREMIER"
