In similar fashion, I was also unexposed to most black literature. Those “good schools” I referred to earlier put me up on Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and the like, but left me utterly oblivious to the work of Ellison, Dubois, Hughes, Nikki Giovanni, and Amiri Baraka. The quest to educate (un-educate?) myself has also just recently begun; gradually at first, beginning in the late '90s, and now more rapidly, at an accelerating pace. I’m a bit like Keanu Reeves’ character Neo during his combat training in The Matrix; I can’t seem to get enough. Even in the absence of direct familiarity with these specific works (Hip Hop and literature) I am able to relate to them today because they speak to my experiences as a black guy in this American landscape. It is as if without reading or hearing them I already have a sense of their significance, a mysterious kinship with those artists thanks to a bond of shared circumstance. That’s what makes them so dope.

What strikes me at this juncture in my own life is the luxury of perspective. Not that I’m that old or anything, but at 28, I do have the beginnings of perspective on a few things. What I mean is this:  I am starting to get a faint, blurry idea of how much I don’t know. This, in my estimation, is the nature of expertise- to understand how much one doesn’t understand. Consider for instance, experts in the natural sciences. Talk to any biologist, chemist, or physicist about their work and they are sure to harp on what they don’t know about their respective disciplines. Read, for example, Albert Einstein’s famous lecture on the Theory of Relativity¹. The whole thing is about what his theory doesn’t explain. Sports is no different: expert coaches spend hours watching film of their opponents searching for new questions to ask about offenses and defenses; expert athletes practice for hours relentlessly trying to expect the unexpected.

That’s what qualifies me as a Hip Hop expert: I just-so-happen to actually know a little about how much I don’t know.

Not So Fast
If the beauty of “not knowing” is being able to grasp what you do know more clearly, than the beast lies in the inability to do anything about it. In other words, the amount of stuff I don’t know seems to grow day by day. Sure, realization of one’s own ignorance is liberating; but it also tends to be overwhelming.

Everyone thinks they know how things really work and what this country really needs. These are the folks that you see on CNN and MSNBC and Fox claiming to know what is going on and what should be done about it. The media knows what we need, that’s why they have the power to inform. Corporations know what we need, that’s why they have the power to sell. Politicians know what we need, that’s why they have the power to lead. Celebrities know what we need, that’s why they have to power to captivate. When was the last time you saw a news anchor say: “I’m not sure” about a story or a commercial that said “We think our product might work?”

Which brings us back to my question for Tavis. If we are to consider whether or not Hip Hop culture has or ever will have political currency in this country we must first consider (as a community) how much we don’t know about how this country works. In his latest book, Know What I Mean: Reflections on Hip Hop, Michael Eric Dyson, Georgetown University Professor and champion of the academic study of Hip Hop culture argues that one of the biggest problems facing America is its unwillingness to admit that it doesn’t know what is going on. In dozens of ways, we blindly forge ahead, refusing to look back, delirious with the notion that if we just keep doing what we’ve always done eventually things will get better. Every year we increase school funding. Every year we pass new laws. Every year we invent new medicines. Every year we produce more food.

Guess What
Every year more students fail. Every year more people commit crimes. Every year more people get sick. Every year more people starve. Things are getting progressively worse for people not only in our country, but all over the world. By all indications, 2008 will bring more war, disease, natural disaster, famine, and environmental destruction than 2007. Just like 2007 brought more than did 2006.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that there is hope. I’m not talking about any politically-branded rhetoric or shallow feel-good propaganda. The hope is a long shot. The hope is that because each successive generation inherits the blunders of those before it, one day a generation will emerge that will successfully get its predecessors to listen.

Right now, that new generation is undoubtedly Hip Hop. People, it seems, are finally starting to listen. Figures like Dyson and several others have devoted major time and energy into dissecting Hip Hop culture, objectively and unapologetically, to see if those generations who speak through Hip Hop have anything meaningful to say.

In Know What I Mean, (for which Jay-Z wrote the forward) Dyson says:
“But Hip Hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, Hip Hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics. Sadly, the enlightened aspects of Hip Hop are overlooked by critics who are out to satisfy a grudge against black youth culture and are too angry or self-righteous to listen and learn.” Continued on page 3 »