Social
Activism in Hip-Hop — New York’s ReadNex Poetry Squad
By Peter Aaron
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Eventually,
they landed spots on HBO Latino, mtvU, and the Black Family Channel’s
“Literary Living,” and shared the bandstand with icons
like Saul Williams, The Last Poets, Patti LaBelle. But they also
did something extremely uncommon for a group of self-funded hip
hop artists: They hit the road, touring not just across the US,
but overseas as well, in both Europe and the UK. “We’ve
been to England twice, and the reaction there was really good,”
says Decora. “Germany was really good, too. And so was France,
which, believe it or not, is the biggest market outside the US for
rap music. Spain was cool because a few of us also speak and rap
in Spanish, and so the audiences there were very into that.”
The
group dropped its second disc, Social ISsUe (also on Debefore),
in late 2006, and the album started to blow up almost immediately,
selling over 200 copies its first week out. In addition to the record’s
fine beats and sharp production by Middletown mixmaster Graham,
Social ISsUe’s success lays in its universal messages.Which
makes perfect sense when you learn that when writing the rhymes
that went into its creation, the band members interviewed more than
100 people of varying cultural backgrounds, genders, and localities
about which issues were affecting them most. The results? Biting,
thought-provoking word-bombs like Latin Translator’s “We
Came from Queens,” which attacks male society’s mistreatment
of women and how it relates to dissolution of the family unit, and
Free-Flowin’s “Ms. Education of Bling,” which
takes aim at rappers who all too readily sell out the revolutionary
legacy of Martin Luther King and other forefathers for quick cash
and glamour.
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