In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.
Allah (God) created nothing without an aim and a purpose and blessed is the man or woman who discovers his or her reason for being. Each of you in this very powerful and revolutionary hip hop community may have only wanted to make a good song and make a great impact, but maybe you are not aware that you have been chosen to lead.
I am a spiritual man, so I have to speak to you from the Books (Bible and Qur’an). You may not think that I am too hip, but when you hear from the Books who you are, why you are called and what your mission is that you have just begun to see, then you will know that the Prophets of Allah (God) who saw all the way to the Judgment and to the end of the present world had to have seen hip hop. You will not find the words
"hip hop" necessarily in the Bible or in the Qur’an, but you are there in a very big way.
In the Book of John, it says, "In the beginning was the word. And the word was God and the word was with God and the word became flesh and the flesh dwelled among men. And the light shined in the darkness but the darkness, comprehended it not." I do not think it is an accident that music and culture have moved to this time and that the spoken word has become that which is affecting youth throughout the entire planet. In countries where governments do not like western music or western civilization, people are sneaking around listening to the word and moving to the beat of the hip hop generation. If in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, then God here means Force and Power. The Word has Force. The Word has Power; Force and Power to move men to think new thoughts and to do new things.
There are a lot of people my age that talk about the lyrics of rap artists. They are upset that the rap artists speak of killing, using drugs, the misuse of our women, ripping off people and killing police, but these lyrics do not come from apples that have fallen from some other tree. The society says it wants the rappers to clean up their lyrics, but the society does not want to clean itself up.
Minister Louis Farrakhan delivers keynote address at the Hip Hop Summit, June 13, 2001 in New York.
