My introduction is yours too

Poetry in hip hop has two very common elements that I have noticed personally. First it is rhyming which is very important to the art, and secondly it is the use of metaphors. The lyrics should not be taken 100% literally and sometimes it will take you more than one listen-through of a track to get the full message, and sometimes you keep on discovering new things time and time again when you listen to a particular track.

Every track has a beat, no matter what instruments are used in the instrumental beat (be it piano, guitar or drums etc) every track has a regular beat, a rhythm. The aim of the MC (the rapper, the lyricist) is to write a rhyming poem that is rhythmic using the beat as a guide. And the last element that makes it art instead of some commercial trash is to add personal meaning without regard to whether your words will sell to the public or not.

My introduction to underground hip hop will be emulated in this introduction. The first track I ever listened to and that got me into it at the same time was Immortal Technique, Dance with the Devil from his album Revolutionary Volume 1:

(Lyrics in vid. give it a listen!)

Summary:

It is a story of a boy who lives in the projects/ghettoes of the USA. He is influenced by a materialist capitalist culture around him and aspires to gain wealth by whatever means. After tipping of the police himself his respect is lost and tries to regain it. He sees a market for cocaine dealing (hence the Scarface reference) and when he expresses his wish to join a gang they make him go through the process of initiation into their “crew”, that being the raping and killing of a woman to prove his willingness and loyalty. After assaulting a woman (covering her head with a shirt so she cannot see the criminals) and raping her he takes of the shirt and finds out its his own mother. An epiphany like moment approaches him and he realizes the wrongs he has committed, the corruption that defiled his moral sense and so he jumps off the roof and kills himself.

This is a story telling piece and has a conveniently simple flow. Notice how whenever the artist ends with the rhyme the drum in the beat taps and that is because he is “in flow” with the beat. There are various ways this could be done and this is one of the most basic.

“He was fascinated by material objects” This line is quite significant in the first verse, and it jumps out at me. Why? because we, all of us in the West, live in a primarily materialist society. We are always bombarded with advertisements and images and here is this very common feature capturing the eye of a budding opportunist; it is the beginning of corruption.

The chorus reads:

Everyone trying to be trife never face the consequences
You probably only did a month for minor offences
Ask a nigga doing life if he had another chance
But then again there’s always the wicked that knew and advanced
Dance forever with the devil on a cold cell block
But thats what happens when you rape, murder and sell rock
Devils used to be gods, angels that fell from the top
There’s no diversity because we’re burning in the melting pot

It describes those who aspire to be criminals for the sake of wealth. Of course they will not literally dance with a horned creature inside their cell, it is just a metaphor for their state of being. To dance with, and conform to a devil. The dark side of us. Devils being angels in the past is most likely a reference to the Bible, but no diversity of what? No diversity of purity, no “people” or “race” is pure. Every nation and ethnicity has people that have been corrupted, we are all in the melting pot of our own nature.

The rest is descriptive and active, using “rain” to set a dark mood. Words like “dragged” and “ripped” during the scene where “Billy” the protagonist is assaulting the woman with his friends. But near the end after all of that I was touched by another piece of amazing art within the words:

“She looked back at him and cried, cause he had forsaken her
She cried more painfully, than when they were raping her”

The spiritual and emotional pain of her son betraying her is greater than the physical pain she endured during the assault, and part of that mind you is having her jaw broken. Just afterwards:

“And crying out to the sky cause he was lonely and scared
But only the devil responded, cause god wasn’t there
And right then he knew what it was to be empty and cold
And so he jumped off the roof and died with no soul”

God is not literally not there, but it is used to symbolise the absence of morality after such corruption had taken hold of the protagonist. It leaves him with an empty and cold feeling, and eventually self destruction. A soul in this sense is the moral compass where someone describes as “soulless” is evil and ruthless.

“And listen cause the story that I’m telling is true
Cuz I was there with Billy Jacobs and I raped his mom too”  Don’t worry, the artist himself didn’t actually commit this crime, but it is to add a dramatic effect, a personal feel of experience of this corruption which supports what comes after:

“The devil grows inside the hearts of the selfish and wicked
White, brown, yellow and black colour is not restricted
You have a self destructive destiny when your inflicted
And you’ll be one of gods children that fell from the top
There’s no diversity because we’re burning in the melting pot
So when the devil wants to dance with you, you better say never
Because the dance with the devil might last you forever”

This refers back to his chorus and the suicide being self destructive. The last line is where it leaves off on a cold note; could forever mean after death? is what the artist hints at here. This devil that is following people around and dancing is not what we think of the devil, it is within us, it grows in our hearts which could also refer to our soul.