"Music creates a cultural feeling of belonging and puts into coded and affirmative language the values of a given social movement. It's part of the cultural backdrop that keeps activists moving forward. But it is, for the most part, supportive. Once you place a heavy revolutionary or social agenda on music that doesn't grow organically, it's very difficult for it to survive artistically. Revolution is a very specific word that speaks to an extraordinary and very dramatic kind of social change." - Trisha Rose

It's disheartening when you have a very talented emcee like Jay Z come out and speak as though he has to "dumb down" his rhymes to make them more palatable and digestible for the mainstream audience, so that his records would sell. Last time I checked, Jay Z was worth 400 million, his fiance, Beyonce (hey that rhymes! A career maybe?) went from hometown church girl, to getting "upgraded" to wearing more ice than Antarctica. Oh, and there are still homeless people in New York, let alone Africa.

B put it best - it's such a beautiful lie. At the forefront of commercial hip hop were always messages promoting lust, uncontrolled anger and violence, hedonism, and the degradation of the value of women. It would sound good, look appealing, but step by step as the depth of message would deteriorate, so too would the creativity.

Now about 30 years old, the culture, which was birthed out of urban ghetto struggles, providing outlets of expression, it has neglected it's roots. Since we're no longer hungry, we're no longer hungry to create either. I learnt that from a Donald Miller book - that the reason why we're hungry is because we need to eat, and in order to obtain sustinance, we need to work. Cats just ain't hungry anymore.

I once had a good conversation with my friend Adam, who is a lecturer at a university in Auckland. He once told me that rap music has been a tool for the outlet of urbanites in the ghettos, but was never really intended to bring answers, just ask questions. Like jazz, it was not intended to resolve, and like soul it was just meant to tell our stories. I think about some of my favourite more "conscious" hip hop groups, that lately have just been releasing album length complaints about the state of hip hop. But no answers.

And oh the hypocrisy of it all! A rapper will on one track blame Bush for their struggle and lack of funds, then on another track talk about their "pimped out" escalade. On another track they'll rap about their mama, and then on another track totally demoralise women as objects. Some will even go as far as to do a gospel number to God, usually at the end. Oh he/she is a Christian now?

There have been answers, but false ones that haven't worked. Late 80's and early 90's hip hop was looking for someone to blame, from the Republicans, to the Man, to the Record Company Executives. By the mid 90's hip hop was blaming other regions, when the east and west engaged in what became Hip Hop's civil war. By the turn of the Millenium, hip hop was the best selling form of music on the planet. Former ghetto dwellers were now CEO's of multimillion dollar companies with clothing lines. Now rap is rich, yet, without a change of heart condition. Now hip hop can afford bigger guns and expensive bullets, only to shoot itself in the foot. The answer was supposed to be money making a better life? Then why are the best selling artists still winding up in court on gun, driving and drug charges - only this time with better lawyers?

Here is a valid question for hip hop and rap artists worldwide: "Does hip hop need answers that work?"

From an impoverished and unfortunate society arises hip hop which appears to be a beacon of hope you would have thought would inspire other people in similar societies all around the world, whether in Asia, the Americas, or yes, even Africa. We all thought Diddy would be the black Bono - fighting world poverty with a cape.

Hip hop ain't hungry no more it's just straight up greedy. There are more rap artists than there are classical music artists or metal artists or emo cats on MTV Cribs, ETV. It's all about who they're with walking down another red carpet, wearing some designer with an unpronouncable surname while we watch Angeline Jolie adopt these third world nations kids. While most of the conscious rappers just complain about both.

The ghetto never left - the Bible was right.
Like the people of Israel in the desert, God was trying to work the desert out of them, before he worked them out of the desert.
As a man thinketh, so shall he be.
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

If I had the true remedy and could give it in one dose I would. But I can't speak for all of hip hop - because there are some real cats that are growing the art form all for the love. At the heart of the remedy though if summed in one word would be this:

SELFLESSNESS