BY THE HONORABLE MINISTER LOUIS FARRAKHAN | LAST UPDATED: OCT 27, 2009 (FinalCall.com News)
Accept the responsibility of leadership
[Editor’s note: The following text is excerpted from a lecture delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan to a gathering of leaders of the hip hop community on June 13, 2001 in New York City. It was originally printed in Volume 20, Number 37. Click here to order CD/DVD and webcast.]
In the Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.
Minister Louis Farrakhan delivered the keynote address to hundreds who attended the June 13, 2001 Hip Hop Summit in New York.Photo: Kenneth Muhammad
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Allah (God) created nothing without an aim and a purpose, and, blessed is the man or woman who discovers his or her reason for being. Each of you in this very powerful and revolutionary hip-hop community may have only wanted to make a good song and make a great impact, but, maybe you are not aware that you have been chosen to lead.
I am a spiritual man so I have to speak to you from the Books (Bible and Qur’an). You may not think that I am too hip, but, when you hear from the Books who you are, why you are called, and, what your mission is that you have just begun to see, then, you will know that the Prophets of Allah (God) who saw all the way to the judgment and to the end of the present world, had to have seen hip-hop. You will not find the words “hip-hop” necessarily in the Bible or in the Qur’an, but, you are there in a very big way.
In the Book of John, it says, “In the beginning was the word. And the word was God and the word was with God and the word became flesh and the flesh dwelled among men. And the light shined in the darkness but the darkness comprehended it not.” I do not think it is an accident that music and culture have moved to this time and that the spoken word has become that which is affecting youth throughout the entire planet. In countries where governments do not like western music or western civilization, people are sneaking around listening to the word and moving to the beat of the hip-hop generation. If in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, then, God here means Force and Power. The Word has Force. The Word has Power; Force and Power to move men to think new thoughts and to do new things.
There are a lot of people my age that talk about the lyrics of rap artists. They are upset that the rap artists speak of killing, using drugs, the misuse of our women, ripping off people and killing police, but, these lyrics do not come from apples that have fallen from some other tree. The society says it wants the rappers to clean up their lyrics, but, the society does not want to clean itself up.
So, what have you done, young people? You have brought out of the closet peoples’ realities. The youth have manifested the wickedness of their parents, their teachers, the judges, the politicians and the rulers. When you talk about gangster lyrics you are literally showing aspects of a government that tells you that you should kill a leader that they disagree with—assassinate him, destabilize his government, cause hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people to die because you do not like their form of government. What is that but gangsterism in the name of government?
When you talk about killing, when you talk about shooting, you have got to clean that up. You talk about smoking weed and snorting coke, but, that is something that went on in the White House, and, it goes on behind the doors in the best of society. What society would like to do with the young people is break the mirror rather than look in the mirror and clean themselves up. If your lyrics reflect what is in the society, and, society cleaned itself up, then, you would have to talk about something else.
In China, in Japan, in Europe, in Africa, in the Caribbean, in Central America and South America, the youth are following you. You are already the leaders of the world, and, it is frightening folks in power and they are asking themselves, “How do we get our children back?” Then they determine, “Let’s get Puffy. Let’s create problems in the hip-hop community. We have already put guns among them, drugs among them, fostered gang life among them, now let us put them against each other so they will never come to realize their power potential. Let’s make them fight and kill one another.”
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