Homeland and Hip-Hop

Editor's Note: Mumia Abu-Jamal is an American political prisoner and former deathrow inmate, this excerpt was originally published in his book Live From Death Row. The audio interview was featured on Immortal Technique’s Revolutionary, Vol. 2.

To think about the origins of hip-hop in this culture

And also about Homeland Security

Is to see that there are, at the very least, two worlds in America One of the well-to-do and another of the struggling

For if ever there was the absence of homeland security, it is seen in the gritty roots of hip-hop

For the music arises from a generation that feels, with some justice

That they have been betrayed by those who came before them That they are at best tolerated in schools, feared on the streets And almost inevitably destined for the hell holes of prison

They grew up hungry, hated, and unloved

And this is the psychic fuel that generates the anger that seems endemic in much of the music and poetry

One senses very little hope above the personal goals of wealth to climb above the pit of poverty

In the broader society, the opposite is true

For here, more than any other place on earth, wealth is so widespread and so bountiful

That what passes for the middle class in America could pass for the upper class in most of the rest of the world

Their very opulence and relative wealth makes them insecure And homeland security is a governmental phrase that is as oxymoronic as crazy as saying military intelligence

Or the U.S Department of Justice

They're just words, they have very little relationship to reality Now do you feel safer now? Do you think you will anytime soon?

Do you think duct tape and Kleenex and color codes will make you safe?

From Death Row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal