Hip Hop’s Love Letter 2017 by Master Educator Gina Humber

There are writers like my friend Gina Humber (@ghumber720), a respected New York educator for more than 15 years who just have a special touch with words. Gina is that craftsperson who makes ultra rich Carmel which sends your brain into a chemical reactive state that never lets you say enough! I’m a greedy man when I get my sweet tooth on and I look forward to having Gina as a consistent contributor, when her schedule allows. Also, look forward to our featured interview with Gina as she officially launches her global initiative, Diversity is a Verb, in July.

Enough of me!

Hip Hop’s Love Letter

I guess every parent at some point sits down and speaks to their own. Because, they see a storm brewing, not an unfamiliar storm…nah I’ve seen this storm before, but like any parent my desire is for you to thrive in a world not necessarily that plays by our rules. I’m only 47, but I’ve lived… livin in the South Bronx wasn’t easy but like cream flavored shit, I rose despite my conditions.

Photo by Robert Ronan

I mean like it was different then from now, when I came up on the scene. I started showin up at block parties, spittin these rhymes that told a story, got you hyped about who I was, where I lived, who was wack (yeah, that was the word then) and who was killin it. Man, stories I could tell you! But, in the midst of it all, I had to get it out, who knew others would vibe to it… but I guess through pain there is comradery and I watched me break into pieces and develop a cultural that can’t be definitively defined, but then it can be.

I saw my music, my style, my rhymes give life to graffiti art, and I began to not only have a sound which vibrated on the block on Saturday night, but I now had colors. Colors sprayed in a musical story, you were gonna know who we were, and it will be lasting, we won’t let you forget. Sometimes on trains back then, I’d see parts of me whizzing by with my hood represented in these bent letters with colors wrapped around it, it was like I could fly! And, all while this was going down, I couldn’t stop…my music not only gave the blind sight in a world where my colors were the only thing that stood out, amongst the dull abandon tenements.

Tag by Fernado Carlo

I gave in to feel that bass in my chest, pop my chest in and out, snapped my arms and hands to the scratchin of dj. I mean I had Bboys and Bgirls creating power moves with their bodies, from the slide, to the rock, freezes, air moves…I was destined to keep in flight, because I knew what would happen if I slowed down, if I stopped…so I kept moving, kept evolving.

My skills as a dj was definitely tested, at the house parties I was at. I wasn’t shit at first, but then I worked, researched, studied hard, understood that the touch of my finger had the power to create a musical disaster in someone’s parent’s house or I could get the kids to release this anger, this love, this anxiety, this feeling that we are here, we have a voice, and we ain’t going no where. It was the need to fly. Please know, I as the dj, created the foundation for those to become great MC’s or rappers. It was a marriage we shared, but I had to go into myself to become myself, and from that we became one. None of my parts are solely independent of one another, we are one bird with many parts, working together. Each one part needing the other, it was like we transformed our hood, and how we survived, into a music god, whose culture depended on its own self for survival.

Photo of DJ Red Alert & DJ Tony Tone

I was showing up everywhere, even in apparel! But, when I showed up in white surburbia that’s when I learned the hard lesson of enterprise. Now, don’t get it twisted, I have always been enterprising, but I can tell you my mistakes, so you don’t make them. I struggled…some days I didn’t eat, slept in a hallways, changed my look, forgot who I was at times, killed my fellow brothers and sisters over money and territory that I didn’t even own, and sold out to feed my family. Never follow in my footsteps of mistakes, which sometimes I don’t even look back to see, go forward move ahead. Be a game changer at any possible moment, don’t be afraid to jump off that cliff and fly.

But, I learned about the industry of enterprise in painful ways, it took years for me to get validation. Funny, how back then they didn’t even want to discuss me at the awards ceremony, now I help other music genres win. I won’t mention names, but I revived people’s careers! They brought me in movies, and I shined there too, there’s no way a kid like me from the south Bronx ain’t going shine, seen too much, been around the world. So when I tell you a storm is brewing heed me.

Understand this, without Hip Hop President Obama wouldn’t have been as cool as he was (yeah I said it). And we put him in office! Our movement of involving urban youth to get involved with politics with Rap the Vote was geared to register more than 850,000 new young voters to the polls. What we didn’t do after that is make him more accountable regarding our interests, but I blame myself…I taught you the game, you heard it from the mouths of KRS One, Ice T, Queen Latifah, Eminem, Dj Kool Herc, Lauryn Hill, J Cole, Kendrick Lamar and the list goes on.

But when one of my mouth piece’s show up in the office of Trump and it’s reduced to a photo opp, I gotta pull back and recheck myself. The days of when I get played ended a long time ago. So I chilled, and watched… and when I heard Tom Barrack explain in an interview with CNN that my sound, my colors, my dance, my culture was “not the venue” for the Presidential Inauguration I laughed. I stopped laughing when he said, “It’s going to be typically and traditionally American.” WTF…so I said earlier it was our power that put a president into office, now it must be our power to get the one in office now OUT.

So here’s what I want you to learn, about this storm that’s brewing that we control the heat, we always have. Yeah, we made it through this before, but this time…we aren’t just going to get by, we are going to fly. The time for us to be brave for change has come, this ain’t new…the struggle is there, but we know how to fly above the shit.

So, I want you to get the Party of Lincoln app, there you will learn how to fly politically. Start to read The Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey and read up on Assata Shakur, listen to audio recordings of Angela Davis. Familiarize yourself with the past leaders to change the course of our present situation. Get your finances in order! Don’t buy the sneakers of the ones makin dollars up in our community. Instead, buy stocks in their company’s; get in or create groups where you collectively invest, learn, research and become a master at flying regarding investing and creating wealth. Keep your dollars in the communities you live in, with people who support your interests. Get involved with organizations that are being held accountable and where we can see their accountability. You don’t get by anymore with just being a cousin, you got to be blood, and blood has a record, blood…sacrifices. Create grassroots programs for our youth, Hip Hop has always been entrepreneurial. But what Hip Hop will not do anymore is look for validation from AmeriKKK .

What Tom Barrack didn’t get with that statement was…” we’re not typical, we’re not traditional…but we damn sure are American, the blood of ours, and the sacrifices of ours is what made this country. And to prove it, we’re going to take our non-typical, non-traditional, money-making power and swag and recreate the machine again. So, I write this letter understanding that our destination of flight has to transform in this storm ahead. We can’t stay at the current altitude, fam…you know when there’s a storm and you’re flying, you’ve got to fly around it or higher, to be unscathed. We are Hip Hop, we can and are used to going around ish, flying higher, is something we’ve been doing since the 70’s. Cept this time, we are not flying to be heard or seen, we’re flying because that’s what we do and who we are. Plus, we’re goin love watchin them haters break their necks as they look up.

Love Sincerely,

Hip Hop

Written by Gina Humber

Pictured: Gina Humber (photo by Tanzie Johnson)

Twitter@ghumber720

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Tags: #TheHypeMagazine, Education, Gina Humber, Hip Hop, The Hype Magazine

About the Author

Dr. Jerry Doby Editor-in-Chief of The Hype Magazine, Media and SEO Consultant, Journalist, Ph.D. and retired combat vet. 2023 recipient of The President's Lifetime Achievement Award. Partner at THM Media Group. Member of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, the United States Press Agency and ForbesBLK.