Tag Archives: Rappers

An Impromptu Rap Cypher

By Michael Anthony Moynihan a.k.a. Renaissance the Poet
By Michael Anthony Moynihan a.k.a. Renaissance the Poet

I went out for a photo shoot today with the goal of snapping shots of animals and to my surprise I caught two wild rappers. These two random guys, B-50 and Jonathan Rojas, stopped me to say hello and the next thing I know I was dropping a beat and the cypher was on.

Much of their conversation was focused on dealing with the law and the struggle to make it as an emcee. When they found out that I go to the University of Washington they were shocked and embarrassed. Then they congratulated me and thanked me before saying; “Not to many of us make it there.”

That was the second time in twenty minutes I heard that from a stranger. This is unsettling because I thought more of us, young intelligent, male minorities were making it, but it seems that I am beating the odds while most are not. And here in the midst of this random excursion I got to be a positive influence, by just doing me, and to be an example revealing that there are more options for a young black male than being an emcee and dealing with the legal system.

If you are open to it, you can find beauty everywhere.

I accomplished one of my goals though, I was able to catch living beings, who are also strangers to me, in the act of enjoying life and tell a bit of their stories.

The Word “Nigga”

These Rhymes

Carry with them

Explosive obnoxious notions

And inoculations to erosive emotions

 

So pay attention with your best ear

Because this world is vicious

With its conspicuous ill-nutritious

& Victim-us mentalities

Dishing us pity me card sicknesses to our realities

 

 

Me

I’m just way too wild to be a Sisyphus

Held down by this society

 

The plot is thus…

 

I am a BLACK MAN

With the will to be free

Like Galileo

My mind will expand the universe

But I am just a tree from a seed

You see

The beach is but a part of the sea

It’s just harder to see

That using a stereotype to my benefit will only feed the greed

And even though Sun Zu marked that as a definite factor to a wars victory

Making my enemy think I am weak, when I am not

But that’s not the case in this plot

It’s a vasectomy

& I’ve been stripped of my pride

Like, inject the beat

Intravenously

That bullshit would have me stripped of my dignity

Crawling on all fours

Begging with pleas

 

The MAN

Has been disrespecting me

And however,

Incorrectly put it may be

He has miss-took me for a lesser being

The knife of his oppression- held half in my back

Held, half in your back

And he would have had more,

But the people who identified as Black

Took a stance and pushed him back

 

The script was flipped

But somehow we’re still off track

And while these “Uncle Tom Rappers”

Continue to profit on the exploitation

Of our modest situation

Doing the MAN’S work for him

Spewing his poisonous dominion

Into the minds of our behavior negative

Perpetuating the hate within our children

 

So many of us LOVE the rap

The Cadence and the flavor of

The heart of the speech in our people

Clearly there here

Where are you, my people? (repeat until they answer)

Yeah

We’re here

Standing

In defiance to the oppression we hear

 

Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

They bring our culture back

Better yet they give us a scope of culture to aspire to

Our mentors

Who remind us of what it means to be black

And furthermore what it means to be a people

And why the word nigger

YES

& the word Nigga

Will forever and always

Be whack.