{"id":400,"date":"2014-09-27T07:20:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-27T07:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/09\/hip-hop-and-religion.html"},"modified":"2014-09-27T07:20:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-27T07:20:00","slug":"hip-hop-and-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/09\/hip-hop-and-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"Hip Hop And Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
For a while, during our adolescence in the nineties, it felt like hip-hop could answer all of life\u2019s questions for us. \u00a0While it evolved spontaneously, it was nurtured by healthy doses of street corner intellect and convergent esoterica to such an extent that relating to hip-hop has often felt like relating to an all-knowing, all-powerful being.<\/span><\/div>\n
I had these thoughts dancing in my mind when I visited an old acquaintance in a Craighall complex the other day. I remembered once, almost ten years ago, riding wild in the streets of Joburg trying to decipher his copy of Ghostface Killah\u2019s woozy classic\u00a0Supreme Clientele<\/em>. Ghostface, a proclaimed adherent of the Five Percent Nation\u2019s beliefs (they believe that Allah is the physical black man \u2013 Arm, Leg, Leg, Arm, Head), took language to extreme heights by melding the \u201csupreme alphabet\u201d (a coded language based on ascribing meaning to each letter of the alphabet) to his already heady, psychedelic street poems. That album pretty much cemented his place as one of the culture\u2019s premier lyricists, even though much of his subject matter tread worn ground.<\/span><\/div>\n
Today, Mfundisi Dlungu is a self-employed architect. When we do reminisce about hip-hop\u2019s importance, it is with the distance and objectivity of hindsight, and arguments about who is the \u201cfreshest\u201d are underscored by an existential urgency.<\/span><\/div>\n
Seated on opposite ends of a work desk in his lounge, Dlungu\u00a0\u2013\u00a0an athletic figure in a pale yellow shirt, cream jeans and white cross-trainers\u00a0\u2013\u00a0cues tracks on his iPad as we chew the fat on our favourite subject. \u201cWhat made me check for it [hip-hop] was that they were saying that Islam was a religion for the black man, and not Christianity,\u201d says Dlungu. Emerging from the kitchen, he places drinks on wooden coasters and continues. \u201cBut when I checked both of these religions, neither belonged to us. So how could we, as Africans, lay claim to something that is not ours?\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a while, during our adolescence in the nineties, it felt like hip-hop could answer all of life\u2019s questions for us. \u00a0While it evolved spontaneously, it was nurtured by healthy doses of street corner intellect and convergent esoterica to such an extent that relating to hip-hop has often felt like relating to an all-knowing, all-powerful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nHip Hop And Religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For a while, during our adolescence in the nineties, it felt like hip-hop could answer all of life\u2019s questions for us.  While it evolved\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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