Sequestering the World From the Greatest Minds

There is little difference between books and hip-hop

Photo by jurien huggins on Unsplash

We sequestered children from great minds, and, perhaps it’s worth briefly noting, we also sequestered great minds from children 

Erik Hoel

My younger self would never have imagined that I would be as fascinated with hip-hop as I am now.

My preteen self believed that I could learn anything about everything, each piece of knowledge taking the form of a string. Each string would begin to evolve, moving in space and through time, interconnecting with one another, incandescently buzzing with potential, eventually merging to form a glowing sphere. It was so crisp in my mind, I could reach out to the luminous ball in awe, pulsing in my palm like a pocket-sized disco ball. Years later, I would discover the Foundation series, with a similar gizmo, the Prime Radiant, but in a different shape. But first, I had to read. That was the only way I knew how to form the strings.

Apparently, leaders are readers and readers are leaders. That was pounded into us. Fiction works were my first introduction to books. I discovered non-fiction on campus. Late. Regardless, my interest in reading grew after watching Matilda, the movie. Convincingly, I knew if I read as many books as Matilda, I’d manifest some telekinetic abilities aside from my earlier belief in the interconnectedness of knowledge. That must have been the olive branch that grafted itself into my daily reading habits. Days when I don’t read are rare. I must. My brain feels like porridge if I don’t read a book for days. Not an article, a book. I crave the connection between one chapter and the next. Not a different article now and ten minutes later, yet another one.

Books sequester stories and knowledge. The smartest individuals in history recorded their insights within them. Often, but not always with good intentions, their wit remains dormant, sealed in pages, until an eyed creature such as yourself with the ability to make sense of words in a sentence flips them open. Books are the best way to consume physical and abstract knowledge. Conversing with the living and the dead, a page at a time, books are interactive ways of encountering and generating new insights. Books led your brother (that is me) to discover a theory of evolution which I believe contains more explanatory power than Natural Selection.

Regardless of this obvious introduction, education sequesters the young brains from stretching themselves when they are at their prime. Thanks to education, we’re made to believe that our prime years are in our twenties or thirties. History contains a different record.

For years on end, students sit in class, learn mostly from their peers or through self-concerted efforts, just so they can only be a topic or two ahead of the teacher. It’s what I used to do in high school. A fixed curriculum deters eager minds from irrationally chasing their passions at an early age. Education sequesters.

My biology teacher riveted us with the stories of Gregor Mendel, planting the seed of evolution in my mind, one I would continue to nurture years later when I joined medical school. Similar names, their stories, their failures and victories are sequestered far from a curriculum. A textbook takes the form of a rigid cube, the kind that separates and creates paper cuts for those who try to explore its edges. A storybook even sounds more circular, coaxing its readers to explore past its pages and edges. Inspired teachers can navigate curious minds through these cracks in the rigid system. That is not the least alarming aspect of the sequestration.

Astoundingly, the very iconic figures we praise were never anticipated products of an educational system. They were renegades. They passionately followed what made them tick. Darwin was due to join medical school. Russell had tutors from a young age, before joining school in his late teens. Feynman created his own means of understanding concepts different from what his peers were taught in class. Renegades. How ironic that education teaches conformity while praising individuals who learned never to conform. Education sequesters.

Thus far, I would summon the spirit of the renegades and introduce a topic you might not have seen coming. Now, it may not be clear upfront, and so most may not acknowledge the influence of hip-hop in advancing knowledge with just as much force. I want to present the thesis that it does.

Hip-Hop

I have never encountered a genre of music considered more immoral, decadent, and even evil than hip-hop. Maybe metal rock. Linkin Park, however, easily swayed me into their music during my late primary education. Wednesdays, from 5 pm, an hour of rock music convinced me otherwise — rock music was never evil.

Rock artists were the most in tune with their emotions than any other genre. Chester bled in front of a microphone. Jared Leto’s veins could pop from his neck when the song climaxed. Hayley Williams’ voice could ripple through nimbus clouds, before descending on listeners like afternoon rain and thunder. Hidden in their lines and facial expressions, their emotions were made conspicuous. It was never just songs.

Hip-hop, in contrast, is philosophy. Popular artists, unmoored by a curriculum, would archive their wisdom in their punchlines for archeologists to pick. From 2017, I began picking the relics. Once you’re down that rabbit hole, there is no going back. You never want to go back.

From these lines by Kendrick, we discover Stoicism:

I done been through a whole lot
Trial, tribulation, but I know God
Satan wanna put me in a bow tie
Pray that the holy water don’t go dry
As I look around me
So many motherfuckers wanna down me
But an enemigo never drown me
In front of a dirty double-mirror they found me

And I love myself

But the world only thinks of hip-hop as one riddled with violence. If they do, then it's because the songs are a mirror of what is happening in corners never broadcast on the news.

Epictetus was a slave for longer than I have been alive. He knew the power of perception. The world will throw curveballs, whips, and lashes, but it can never control your perception. The slave’s wisdom shaped the legacy of the last great emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius. This message is proudly brought to you by another of Kendrick’s lines:

And I love myself
(The world is a ghetto with big guns and picket signs)
I love myself
(But it can do what it want whenever it want, I don’t mind)
I love myself
(He said I gotta get up, life is more than suicide)
I love my… self
(One day at a time, sun gonna shine).

Students of hip-hop find gems inside these words.

Hip-Hop Evolution was the documentary that I needed. It divided hip-hop into epochs. Its history is marked by uprisings and war. It was a form of expression that the young adult resorted to when the world frustrated their every move. As Lupe Fiasco, a hip-hop legend who teaches at MIT and Yale, reminds us in his international hit, hip-hop does not destroy. Hip-hop is a coping mechanism.

This is a perspective that may not be evident prima facie to those who never took time to understand the genre. Music was never supposed to be limited to instruments. Orchestras are one vertex of a hyperdimensional space. Elvis Presley explored this dimension by merging country music with rhythm and blues. Ever considered why he is called the King of Rock and Roll? Just as well, hip-hop is one of those vertices. It, however, is sequestered with much more force than the subtle efforts that continue to stifle creativity through education.

“Education made me stupid.” I saw that printed on someone’s t-shirt. Not completely correct, but the message is clear. Education indoctrinates and blinds. It sequesters students inside a room, far from the world teeming with opportunity outside it.

Books sequester wisdom, but today, as they continue to get cheaper, they are hardly explored.

Hip-hop also sequesters. It’s not for everybody. Not everyone can understand J. Cole’s or Lil Wayne’s lines when they drop double and triple entendres. The Kendrick-Drake beef had most people choosing sides without appreciating the bars both parties threw in their artistic pieces.

Hip-hop is art.

Kanye West will sample from a soul classic and make a soulful hip-hop production. Legendary hip-hop artists have gained inspiration from other artists in the field, just as Plato learned from the footsteps of Socrates. Hip-hop is artistic philosophy.

It also tells us how art can never be packaged. Bohemian in nature, it ripples through the barriers set to impede its progress. Despite Nas’ classic, death could never kill it. But since we have been massaged into conformity, chasing dreams is a tad scary. Kendrick explains it in this line:

Everybody lookin’ at you crazy (crazy!)
What you gon’ do? (What you gon’ do?)
Lift up your head and keep moving (keep moving)
Or let the paranoia haunt you (haunt you)

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Dionysius developed his philosophy from the cards he was dealt in his life. Socrates held discussions in the marketplace. Zeno’s shipwreck marked the beginning of Stoicism.

While we’re at it, Stoic philosophy is an everyday practice. You don’t walk into an institution, register to do philosophy, major in Stoicism, and graduate as a Stoic. Its life force is derived from everyday activities. Songs such as the one I use in this piece, by Kendrick, highlight just as much. The keen reader will notice Aurelius’ version in: Lift up your head and keep moving, or let the paranoia haunt you?

These lines will never make it to the news headlines. They will never wind themselves up in philosophical books. They will never be inscribed on tombstones.

Hip-hop sequesters artistic philosophy.

Like reggae, it can free. Bob Marley would remind his fans:

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery,
None but ourselves can free our minds,

He wasn’t lying. His grandson would quip: “Tell me that’s not true.”

Will and Ariel Durant don’t hesitate to echo the sentiments of the rich and free. Education is meant to equalize, but the stinking rich don’t like equality. They like freedom. Laws and policies can be instituted to keep the large flock contained through education. Minds get sequestered from the inspirational stories of the heroes who shaped the very disciplines we study in school. In part, through books. The other part, through music. Hip-hop gets a bigger dosage of censure, with some of its lines previously used in court alluding to individual crimes.

The challenge of getting out of such a trap is cognitive. Successful artists battle with it, aside from the curveballs life already throws their way. Kendrick tells us:

I went to war last night
With an automatic weapon, don’t nobody call a medic
I’ma do it ’til I get it right
I went to war last night
I’ve been dealing with depression ever since an adolescent
Duckin’ every other blessin’, I can never see the message

Like

Khe Hy

, how do you leave the golden cuffs and start life differently from the herd? Through battle after battle. Critics typically never create. Rumours are a dime a dozen. Thus, Dr. Dre gives us his go-to antidote to such voices, an important lesson at this attention-mining age:

It ain’t that I’m too big to listen to the rumors
It’s just that I’m too damn big to pay attention to ‘em
That’s the difference

Philosophy has never been taught in classes. Teachers would have their students accompany them everywhere they go. Hip-hop has this advantage: played in concerts, in cars, and privately in rooms. The teachers continue to teach. Lupe Fiasco will tell you that he has been putting substance over style, and still delivers his wordplay in incomparable style, philosophically.

Notably, among hip-hop artists is their belief that they are the best. They believe their wordplay is unmatched. As they ascend into greatness, they feed from their energy and continue to create more. The reason is largely because nobody will ask a musician to copy what another did. Their paths are different. Like the icons of the very fields we began to describe in this essay, they are renegades. They carve their own paths.

I was first inducted to J. Cole’s greatness before I discovered Kendrick. I later learned that you can’t compare oranges and mangoes. Snoop Dogg’s sleek sound and Pharrell’s tracks, Kanye’s soulful beats, and Timbaland’s human-voice mixes will always be different. Philosophy doesn’t serve anyone if it converges. The more it diverges and challenges, the better for its disciples. One has to make bold moves to create their unique path — that is the overall message hip-hop sends to all its fans. Kendrick raps:

Peace to fashion police, I wear my heart
On my sleeve, let the runway start

Indeed, the runway should start early. Zombies confined to consumption rather than creation can be freed from their reverie through creation. Experimentation requires a double dose of inquisitiveness and tenacity to hold onto your ideas. Education creates little room for experimentation while the cancel culture chokes tenacity. In school, those who stick to the rules are rewarded or shielded from punishment. Do that for years, and you have a conveyor belt of employees with decades of evidence to show they will show up at work relatively on time and not too infrequently to tank your business.

But if you love yourself, as Kendrick consistently asserts to himself, you can take the bold move. Conformity is the easier resort. He understands your conflict, the back-and-forth cognitive dissonance, but he also promises you the feeling will be liberating when he raps:

Everybody lack confidence, everybody lack confidence
How many times my potential was anonymous?
How many times the city making me promises?
So I promise this

I love myself

What I’m trying to say is…

An analysis of Kendrick’s song shows artistic mastery and sequestered philosophy. I wouldn’t be a disciple if I didn’t spread the good gospel, written not in a book (another sequestering device), but in a song. A rap song. I would therefore urge you to heed keenly these words:

Blow steam in the face of the beast
The sky could fall down, the wind could cry now
The strong in me, I still smile

A smile is a reminder of what you can control. Hardened souls can still smile even with busted lips and blood gushing from their nostrils after a jab to the face.

Socrates knew the consequences of sticking to his word. Nassim Nicholas Taleb would say he had skin in the game. In Kendrick’s words, he gave himself to his ideas until his well ran dry.

Hip-hop does not encourage ghost-writing because it believes one should hone their craft and live its message. Hip-hop has little room for hypocrisy. It advocates and uplifts those who give it their all, bleeding, engraving their name in the industry, until their wells run dry. Socrates would have loved hip-hop. And he as sure would have enjoyed the witticism from Kendrick’s climax in the song when he exerts:

Give my story to the children and a lesson they can read
And the glory to the feeling of the holy unseen
Seen enough, make a motherfucker scream, “I love myself!”

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This song inspired some of the lines used in this essay. Source — YouTube