It’s
funny how time has flown by, but the issues in the urban community seem to remain
the same. The 1990’s—that some refer to as the “Golden Era” of hip-hop—was the
birth of an era of truth --a forbidden truth.
A truth that you could smell, taste, touch and see if you lived it but,
if you were not from that truth … you had no way of understanding what was
happening. It was inevitable for storytellers to emerge and speak this truth to
reach the masses. They rose from the concrete, so to speak, with talents and
stories to express truth and wisdom, from a place greater than their own. It
did not matter what form that truthful message was released in, or the method that
was used to reach the masses—the darkness of that truth had to eventually come
to light.
The
global oppression that some black people were experiencing created a shift in
enlightenment. The late 1970’s and early
1980’s birthed hip-hop, a unique form of expression that emerged from
oppressive low income communities that many blacks resided in.
There
are five components of hip-hop: 1) B-Boying, 2) MC-ing, 3) Graffiti, 4) DJ-ing,
and 5) Knowledge, Culture and Overstanding (as defined by the Zulu Nation). The
1990’s continued to shape and mould the art form of hip-hop through MC’s like Tupac
Shakur, with his album “Me Against the World” to Mobb Deep’s album “The
Infamous” to Nas’s album “Illmatic” to name a few classics. These and many
other hip-hop MC’s were able to craft lyrics/poetry about their experiences
growing up in the “concrete jungles” and it was a form of storytelling that
exposed their living conditions, in poverty.
Hip-hop gave many black people in these circumstances a voice, when the
rest of the world was not trying to hear what they had to say. The physical shackles had been removed, but
the mental prison was now on the mind and still is today for many, who continue
to live in these conditions.
These
oppressive conditions isolated some black people from the norms like others in
society. This oppression whether evident (in the physical) or not, marginalized
some black people, and continued to try and hide the oppressive truth.
The
creativity of hip-hop also began to inspire other talents in other creative
forms used to express the oppression and tell the stories that was being pushed
under the rug … and still is today, to some extent. Urban Fiction was one of those forms of
expression that emerged first in the 1970’s, with a graphic tale from Iceberg
Slim’s story, Pimp. A new type of
literary fiction had emerged and the stories continued to surface in the
1990’s.
Hip-hop
music was graphically telling stories of the lost children in the streets on
records, while Urban Fiction authors were creating characters and plots, and
also unraveling graphic stories of what was happening in these oppressive low
income communities. It was very
difficult to bring this type of manuscript to corporate America/Canada to get
published, and it still isn’t any easier today … but the story, regardless,
will and has to be told.
Author’s
like Sista Souljah, Omar Tyree, and Teri Woods went against the odds and
created novels that will always be used as references to the Urban Fiction
reading community. The Coldest Winter
Ever, Flyy Girl, and True to the Game are ground breaking novels that
exposed the stories that were situated in these oppressive black communities.
These three authors had the hustle, ambition, and talent to fight for a place
in the literary world whether accepted or not. They clearly exposed that black
people have a story to tell to the world—and the literary world—no matter how
they try to hide that truth.
Activist
Sista Souljah is a true revolutionary Urban Fiction author of our time. Her writing career began first as a featured
rapper debuting on Public Enemy albums in the early 1990’s, and she eventually
released her own album “360 degrees of
Power.” Her music videos were banned
by MTV because of the “black power” messages she was portraying in her work. In
1992 when the Los Angeles riots occurred, she made a comment that is still
talked about today when racial/political debates surface. Sista Souljah said “If black people kill
black people every day, why not have a week that we kill all white people?” Her message spoke loud and clear; she was and
is for the voices of black people ‘by any means necessary’, and her work
continued to portray that. Sista Souljah realized that some oppressed black
people needed a voice. In 1999 her debut Urban Fiction novel, “The Coldest Winter Ever”, sent chills down the spines of readers everywhere,
with her raw and explicit tale about the life of Winter Santiaga’s story in the
streets. If you were not from Brooklyn,
New York, you immediately felt like
you were walking through the toughest parts of the neighbourhood, watching this
young girl’s story unfold.
The
door had been opened and the gateway to the enlightenment of Urban Fiction
storytelling had begun. Sista Souljah,
Omar Tyree, Terry McMillian, and Teri Woods all proved that Urban Fiction was a
new literary genre and a force to be reckoned with. These best-selling novelists
proved that no matter how many doors the corporate world closes in your face,
if you keep fighting, hustling and working, the path of truth will shape itself
while appearing right in front of you. The economic corporate agenda in our
society today—or yesterday—has nothing to do with the creative talents of
individuals in our world, no matter how these agendas may try to keep them
oppressed and without a voice. The story will always be told and these stories
will always crack through the concrete with lights to shine in the dark places
they’ve been silenced to live in.
“Darkness cannot drive darkness,
only light can do that. Hate cannot
drive hate, only love can do that.” ~ Martin
Luther King Jr.
Kamilah Haywood’s Urban Fiction novel “Concrete Jungle” is
available at Amazon.com; she can be reached at kamilah@lffpublishing.com.
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