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Rap? Hip-hop? What has this thing become? (Free verse) by DreamerSupreme
What is this mumbled street verse,
with curse of hollow catch-phrases?
Mimicry like gangstas stealin' a purse,
uttered in tune to stiff beat & funky meter that raises
anger whose root is the fact that I hate form made mundane
& verse whose substance is material & ultimately inane.
Ghettos & urban strife now seems plastic,
a picture of something comic & so unreal.
Attempts to keep the image alive seem drastic,
sustenance offered mainstream & lacking intellectual appeal.
Can't feel passion for empty messages routinely repeated--
urban form of expression turned capitalist, the irony makes me sick;
sad to hear street poets speak, "rapping" in tune to the defeated.
It's rare to hear todays hip-hop say anything my soul can feel;
my radio echoes verbal graffiti that fades like words written
on walls of rotting brick.
Even proper articulation is abandoned to maintain foolish rhyme schemes,
with chorus making claim to the illusion of skill,
giving me reason to kill--
witnessing the dissolution of hip-hops' dreams.
Disturbed by its slow death, I reach for blunts on my windowsill,
demanding the profits be burned & its image torn by the seams--
hoping to watch investors & rap go bankrupt to avoid paying the bill.
What had offered expression to urban oppression
is now an ignorant voice who persistently blasphemes,
all its content empty, or so it now seems...
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