It was the seventies. She was called Jane Hill. She was the most beautiful woman who ever lived on Main Street. I was a nobody in New York, a dot in the Bronx, although not knowing about Hip Hop.
I loved that woman … I was all over her… slamming my face in the street poles, remaining enchanted by her apricot skin … I tried to conquer her: it did not work at all (this is the reason why, I did what I did).
After having tried with roses, love songs, doing scenes on the street – I tried them all! – I decided, one day, to go to her place at four in the morning. I was carrying six spray cans. In the shadows, I wrote in giant letters “Jane I love you! Written on her opposite wall.
The next day the whole neighborhood was talking about my love – because, after all, who could not know? – She finally allowed me to love her, that day, at sunset; it was not just her body that changed my world.
A week later I took another spray can. I went at nighttime, going around like a shadow, I wrote my name in small, two or three times. A month later, my neighborhood was like a flowing picture.
We found ourselves in the street, admiring “the criminal art”, leaving when rival gangs started shooting each other. One day, a friend of mine had a sensational idea: instead of killing in streets, one should insult others in rhymes, over a beat.
It sounds stupid, I know, but it was a success. It gave adrenaline to all, people cheering. A frenzy that inflamed, it was something that was beginning. Some people moved the discs; some guys were dancing like if they were ninjas.
It brought together a community, even if it was divided into those who did break dance, scratch, those who made rap and the writers. With an unworthy end that loomed over this plot: after a while, one’s own aim was to obtain fame.
Everyone was looking for a “refrain”, “choreography” for a disc or a “legal wall”, because of the risk of being seen. After forty years, the situation is different today: there’s who does it for fashion, and “the main picture is about the obsession for money.”
Who wrote this believes in it even more than before. Re-read the text, and you shall note that some is in rhyme. As ink dripping to the ground, this is the moral: how to find something that is fair and sound, in this society to chaos bound?
My answer I have found in Rap, in the poetry of a man whose name was Tupac. To fully understand the Hip Hop, he wrote me a song, called “Do For Love”.