Excerpted KRS-One Lyrics from 9 Elements
Well my ladies and gentlemenThis is a rap session and my name is "KRS-One!"And when I talk about "Hip Hop Music!", I know
One: Breaking or breakdancingRally b-boying, freestyle or streetdancin'Two: MC'ing or rapDivine speech what I'm doing right now no actThree: Grafitti art or burning bombin'Taggin', writin', now you're learning! uh!Four: DJ'ing, we ain't playing!You know what I'm saying!Five: BeatboxingGive me a... Yes and we rockin'!Six: Street fashion, lookin' flyCatchin' the eye while them cats walk on bySeven: Street language, our verbal communicationOur codes throughout the nationEight: Street knowledge, common senseThe wisdom of the elders from way back whenceNine: Street entrepreneur realismNo job, just get up call 'em and get 'em
Here's how I'm tellin' it, all 9 ElementsWe stand in love, no we're never failing itIntelligent? No doubtHip Hop? We're not selling it out, we're just lettin' it outIf you're checkin' us out this hour, we teachin' hip hopHoly integrated people have it, I'm the present power!
Rap is something you do!Hip Hop is something you live!
Hip Hop as Civilization - KRS One
Hip Hop’s history is not the history of Rap music; that’s why [Sociologists] think it’s not a culture. Because they say Rap is a music genre, it is not a culture. Rap is not a culture; Rap is a subculture like Reggae, Jazz, and Gospel. But what Rap comes from, what causes you to Rap is called Hip Hop, and that is a behavior, that’s not music.
Interview with KRS One
Judaism as Civilization
The Jew's religion is but one element in his life that is challenged by the present environment. It is a mistake, therefore, to conceive the task of conserving Jewish life as essentially a task of saving the Jew's religion. When a person is about to abandon a house for fear that it might fall about his ears at any moment, it is folly to try to convince him that he ought to remain in it because of the beautiful frescoes on its walls. Jewish life is becoming uninhabitable because it is in clanger of collapse. The problem is how to make it habitable...
Put more specifically, this means that apart from the life which, as a citizen, the Jew shares with the non-Jews, his life should consist of certain social relationships to maintain, cultural interests to foster, activities to engage in, organizations to belong to, amenities to conform to, moral and social standards to live up to as a Jew. All this constitutes the element of otherness. Judaism as otherness is thus something far more comprehensive than Jewish religion. It includes that nexus of a history, literature, language, social organization, folk sanctions, standards of conduct, social and spiritual ideals, esthetic values, which in their totality form a civilization. It is not only Judaism, the religion, that is threatened but Judaism, the civilization...
Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, pg. 177-178
The irresistible appeal of Black individuality - where has all of that gone?The very people who blazed our path to self-expression and pioneered a resolutely distinct and individual voice have too often succumbed to mind-numbing sameness and been seduced by simply repeating what we hear, what somebody else said or thought and not digging deep to learn what we think or what we feel, or what we believeNow it is true that the genius of African culture is surely its repetition, but the key to such repetition was that new elements were added each go-round. Every round goes higher and higher. Something fresh popped off the page or jumped from a rhythm that had been recycled through the imagination of a writer or a musician.
Each new installation bore the imprint of our unquenchable thirst to say something of our own, in our own way, in our own voice as best we could. The trends of the times be damned.Thank God we've still got musicians and thinkers whose obsession with excellence and whose hunger for greatness remind us that we should all be unsatisfied with mimicking the popular, rather than mining the fertile veins of creativity that God placed deep inside each of us
Michael Eric Dyson
(כב) בֶּן בַּג בַּג אוֹמֵר, הֲפֹךְ בָּהּ וַהֲפֹךְ בָּהּ, דְּכֹלָּא בָהּ.
(22) Ben Bag Bag said: Turn it over, and turn it over, for all is therein.
ת"ר מעשה ברבי יוחנן בן ברוקה ורבי אלעזר (בן) חסמא שהלכו להקביל פני ר' יהושע בפקיעין אמר להם מה חידוש היה בבית המדרש היום אמרו לו תלמידיך אנו ומימיך אנו שותין אמר להם אף על פי כן אי אפשר לבית המדרש בלא חידוש שבת של מי היתה שבת של ר' אלעזר בן עזריה היתה ובמה היתה הגדה היום אמרו לו בפרשת הקהל ומה דרש בה (דברים לא, יב) הקהל את העם האנשים והנשים והטף אם אנשים באים ללמוד נשים באות לשמוע טף למה באין כדי ליתן שכר למביאיהן אמר להם מרגלית טובה היתה בידכם ובקשתם לאבדה ממני
Our Rabbis have taught, it happened to R. Yochanan ben Beruka and R. Elazar ben Chisma, that they went to visit R. Yehoshua in Pekiin. He said to them, What innovation was there in the house of study today? They said to him: We are your students, and of your waters do we drink. He said to them: Even so, it is impossible for the house of study to be without something new. Whose week was it? It was R. Elazar ben Azariah's. And what was the discussion on today? They said to him: On the section of Hakhel ("Assembly"). And what was his exposition? (Deuteronomy 31:12) "Assemble the people, the men and the women and the little ones". If the men come to learn, and if the women come to hear, why do the little ones come? In order to give reward for those that bring them. He said to them: There was a beautiful pearl in your hand, and you sought to deprive me of it!
אמר רב יהודה אמר רב בשעה שעלה משה למרום מצאו להקב"ה שיושב וקושר כתרים לאותיות אמר לפניו רבש"ע מי מעכב על ידך אמר לו אדם אחד יש שעתיד להיות בסוף כמה דורות ועקיבא בן יוסף שמו שעתיד לדרוש על כל קוץ וקוץ תילין תילין של הלכות אמר לפניו רבש"ע הראהו לי אמר לו חזור לאחורך הלך וישב בסוף שמונה שורות ולא היה יודע מה הן אומרים תשש כחו כיון שהגיע לדבר אחד אמרו לו תלמידיו רבי מנין לך אמר להן הלכה למשה מסיני נתיישבה דעתו
When Moses ascended to the heavens, he found the Holy Blessed One sitting and attaching crowns to the letters [in the Torah]. He said, "Master of the Universe! Who is staying your hand?" God said to him, "There is one man who will exist after many generations, and Akiva the son of Yosef is his name, who will in the future expound on every single crown and piles and piles of laws." Moses said, "Master of the Universe! Show him to me." God said, "Turn backwards." He went and sat at the end of eight rows [of students in Rabbi Akiva's Beit Midrash], and he did not know what they were talking about. Moses got upset. Akiva's students said to him, "Our teacher, from where do you learn this?" He said to them, "It is a law that was taught to Moshe at Sinai." And Moses calmed down.