Rap and the Five Percent Nation of Islam

‘I was homeless, Fightin’, shootin’ dice, smokin’ weed on the corners, tryna find the meaning of life in a corona. Till the 5 percenters rolled up on a ni**a and informed him: “You either build or destroy. Where you come from?” - Jay Electronica

What’s up guys? The time has come where we start to explore movements within the art of Rap music. There was a time in Hip-Hop where the music was influenced with what was happening on the streets. And on the streets there was a collective movement based upon the spiritual, pro-black teachings of The Five-Percent Nation also known as the Nation of Gods and Earths or the Five Percenters. As the Rap mogul and entrepreneur Russell Simmons described in his autobiography, ‘during the period when the gangs I hung with in the ‘70s gave way to ‘80s Hip Hop culture, it was the street language, style, and consciousness of the Five Percent Nation that served as a bridge.’

So what is this consciousness of the Five Percent Nation that Simmons is talking about? In short the 5% Nation of Islam’s base beliefs are that each black man is God, Allah – whilst the white man is the inferior. The name 5% comes from the idea that only 5% of the world knows the truth and it is their purpose to enlighten the rest of humanity.  Perhaps the most famous follower of this belief was the late Malcolm X.

You could say that this was just a mere sociological subculture that the young oppressed black youth of America turned to, to finally have a voice in a medium that they were restricted of. As you used to peep in 90% of rap songs in the late 80s and first half of the 90s most rappers used to call each God like you heard in that Memory Lane song by Nas, ‘with side-bets, I roll a deuce, nothing below (Peace God!) – Peace God’.

And there is where I take you back to the start of this blog where the rapper Jay Electronica reflects on what his fellow hood dweller said to him, ‘you either build or destroy.’ This question, not only troubled Jay Electronica, but also troubled the youth during the 80s and 90s as the moralistic values of the Black Five Percenter conflicted with the stresses of life that the young black man was facing on the streets. This is what the rapper AZ reflected on in Nas’ Life’s a Bitch song, ‘we were beginners in the hood as 5 Percenters but something must’ve got in us cause all of us turned to sinners.’ It seemed that this newfound spirituality didn’t really last for those who fell back into the old habits of life.

Funnily enough around the years of 94, 95 and 96 this faith in the 5 Percenters fell off. But that doesn’t mean it’s totally dead, you still have the likes of Eminem and Kanye West who consider themselves a Rap God and a God respectively – but whether that has anything to do with the 5 Percenters is up to you (feel free to comment if you disagree). However, more recently the rapper Jay-Z landed himself in a little bit of controversy in wearing a 5 Perfect chain to a basketball game. So…not only did it have an effect on the lyrical side of rap but also on the fashion side. Quite profound hey!

Coming to an end of this post, what we have checked out is the influence that the 5 percent Nation had on Rap music, from around 1988 to 1996 the influence is seen, whether that was in the raps of Rakim, who Rap folks call the God Allah, or the raps of Wu-Tang Clan straight up to today in the raps of Jay Electronica. Who knows, maybe this whole movement of the 5% Nation of Islam for the young black youth was just a response to their socio-political status as they founded themselves ostracized in all walks of life. The only place that they weren’t ostracized was in the music that is Rap.

Well, hope you guys enjoyed this little exploration, anything you think about it feel free to drop it in the comments.

Rap and Black Gospel Music

Hey family, this is the first post of the exploration of religion and spirituality within Rap and Hip-Hop - as the one before was obviously the introduction. 
I feel that to understand the role of religion and spirituality in Rap it would be clever to look at the music itself. You may be thinking why, or even how, does this billion dollar industry have anything to do with religion? 
Let me kick it to you...

Rap music has more to owe to religious music than anything else, arguably. Just like Jazz and Soul, this art form sprang from the religious gospel music like a flower blossoms from a seed. This is both seen not only in the instrumentals but also the vocals. Gospel and Spiritual music often reflected words of hardships and oppression but finding a heaven in religious concepts such as ‘Zion’, for instance if you peep the well known song ‘The Gospel Train’ by the Fisk Jubilee Singers the lyrics are follows ‘Crowds at the station stand, with passport in their hand, To start for Zion’s land, be in time, be in time’. Although Zion could denote Jerusalem, for the Black oppressed people it could mean a place of toleration and freedom. 

This is where the uncanny links of rap music comes from. Where back in the day the people would sing about their pain through music and finding salvation through God - the oppressed youth of black America of the 1980s and 1990s would turn to music for exploration and in turn salvation or even in some cases they, again, turn to Jesus...

In 2004 Kanye West released probably one of his biggest songs to date, Jesus Walks. Not only is this probably the biggest gospel rap song like ever, but it was also voted on the Rolling Stones list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time"...and for a gospel song that is quite profound I'd say.

The music itself from the song is taken from an older record called ‘Walk with Me’ by the ARC Choir, where several times the choir is singing ‘Jesus walks with me’. Kanye explores many themes throughout the song, one is just speaking how Jesus walks with all, even all the sinners, he says ‘to the hustlers, killers, drug dealers even the strippers – Jesus walks for them.’ He goes on to say how even the people on welfare are walking with Jesus, whom he thinks are getting ripped off because of where they live, ‘to the victims of welfare for we living in Hell here, hell yeah – Jesus Walks for them.'

For me, what was the most important part of the song in regards to preparing this blog was where he says how record label executives and radio bosses don’t want a song about God – they want songs about sex and violence – peep what he says,

‘so here go my single dog, radio needs this, they say you can rap about anything except for Jesus. That means guns, sex, lies, videotape but if I talk about God my record won’t get played, huh?' 

The irony of this is that, I feel, even though this rap music itself owes something towards Black Gospel music, now it's become a billion dollar industry, the powers that be don't want anything to do with 'talks-of-God' - they're happy just to make more and more money. 

Even beyond the lyrics, you can just take a look at the music instrumentation and you’ll see resemblances. Traditional gospel music was very simple, the music would be based around a drum kit, piano, bass (double bass), tambourine and vocals – if you look at rap music in its early form it was very simple – the music would be based around drum kit, bass, piano (aswell as other sampled melody) and vocals. If you look DJ Premier’s music, who is arguably the greatest Hip-Hop producer of all time, he himself based his early music from the 16 bar blues. This structure of music was too seen in the early black gospel music. 

So coming to the end of his blog, the link between Black Gospel and Rap can be seen. Not only the lyrics of hardships was seen in both music but also the choice of music instrumentation – both forms of music were often very simple. 

To be honest, I could go on to show more how these two link but I think it’s time to begin to explore faith and rap through the whole 5% Nation of Islam movement and see what that brought out for the art.

Until then, peace!