Hip Hop Planet
Whether you trace it to New York's South Bronx or
the villages of West Africa, hip-hop has become
the voice of a generation demanding to be heard.
This is my nightmare: My daughter comes home with a guy and says, "Dad, we're
getting married." And he's a rapper, with a mouthful of gold teeth, a do-rag on his
head, muscles popping out his arms, and a thug attitude. And then the nightmare
gets deeper, because before you know it, I'm hearing the pitter-patter of little feet,
their offspring, cascading through my living room, cascading through my life,
drowning me with the sound of my own hypocrisy, because when I was young, I was
a knucklehead, too, hearing my own music, my own sounds. And so I curse the day I
saw his face, which is a reflection of my own, and I rue the day I heard his name,
because I realize to my horror that rap—music seemingly without melody, sensibility,
instruments, verse, or harmony, music with no beginning, end, or middle, music that
doesn't even seem to be music—rules the world. It is no longer my world. It is his
world. And I live in it. I live on a hip-hop planet.
Hip-hop breaks out of the Bronx via New Jersey.
… now what you hear is not a test—i'm rappin to the beat and me, the
groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet see i am wonder mike
and i like to say hello to the black, to the white, the red, and the brown, the
purple and yellow …
"Rapper's Delight," by the Sugarhill Gang, was the first commercial hip-hop
single to hit big. It sold more than two million copies and reached number 4
on the Billboard R&B chart and number 36 on the pop singles chart. The 1979
hit wasn't only a surprise to radio listeners but also to the established hip-hop
crews throughout the South Bronx, where the music thrived in playground
battles and nightclubs, for it was the brainchild of a record producer in New
Jersey.
Hip Hop Nation.
"Hip-hop is the rebellious voice of the youth. It's
what people want to hear."
Wyclef Jean confirms he will run for Haiti president
Wyclef Jean, the Haitian-born rap star who became one
of the world's most popular hip-hop artists, has told the
Guardian that he will run for president of Haiti in the
country's November elections.
The singer-songwriter's declaration ends weeks of
speculation after Jean began exploring the possibility of
standing. For the past five years he has been steadily
increasing his engagement with Haiti through his charity,
Yéle Haiti, having left the country to come to the US when
he was nine years old.
Wyclef Jean's manifesto will focus on what he calls
his 'four policy pillars' – education, job creation,
agriculture and security.
Photograph: Paul J Richards/AFP/Getty Images
In an interview at his recording studios in New Jersey where he is putting the finishing touches
to his latest album, The Haitian Experience, Jean said his decision to run was informed by his
experiences after the 12 January earthquake. About 230,000 people died in the disaster, and
Jean was involved in rescue missions amid the rubble.
He said: "I just feel singing is not enough. I'm being drafted. Every year I probably do 200 shows
and I have a very comfortable life. But people are saying to me: 'Clef, if you don't put yourself on
the ground, in 10 years' time you will look at it and say you could have.'"
Jean plans to launch his electoral campaign in Haiti next Thursday. He has already assembled a team of
political advisers and is fine-tuning his manifesto, which will focus on what he calls his "four policy
pillars" – education, job creation, agriculture and security.
By formally entering the race, Jean throws himself into a wide-open competition with numerous
candidates, including his own uncle, Raymond Joseph, who serves as Haiti's ambassador to
Washington. Jean will have the disadvantage of having lived largely outside Haiti for the past 29 years,
but the huge advantage of being Haiti's most famous son.
The rapper must now convince the electoral board in Haiti that he is eligible to stand for president.
Under criteria introduced recently, any candidate must have lived in the country for five consecutive
years before an election.
Jean has put a team of lawyers onto the issue, arguing through them that as a roving ambassador for
Haiti with a home in Port-au-Prince he fully qualifies. "The word in Haiti now is that the opposition
want me out so bad that every day they add new criteria. I think the new one is that I have to be 6ft
5in," the singer said.
There will also be issues of security surrounding his candidacy within the volatile and still devastated
country. In the lyrics of one of his songs, written long before he conceived a real presidential run, he
imagined standing for president of the United States:
"If I was president, I'd get elected on Friday, Assassinated on Saturday, And buried on Sunday, I'd be
back at work on Monday."
"Security is always an issue in Haiti," Jean said. He added that he had already been the subject of a
foiled assassination plot in his native country.