CONSCIOUS HIP HOP This is the music that is mobilising Britain's youth and getting them to think about issues they might not otherwise have done Richard Sudan guardian.co.uk, Saturday 30 April 2011 11.00 BST
Thousands of students protesting against the government's plans for tuition fees in recent months put paid to the myth that young people are apathetic and don't care about politics. On the contrary, they do care so much that many were subsequently beaten by the police, illegally kettled and demonised by the press in the weeks that followed. There's a soundtrack to accompany this struggle, and that soundtrack is conscious UK hip-hop – a vehicle that is mobilising young people and articulating their collective voice.You can hear it in the lyrics and you can hear the music. It is played at almost every major protest, blaring out from soundsystems. Differing from the often violent image that rap has been tarnished with, conscious hip-hop is generally the opposite of what is marketed and supported by corporate labels. As London-based rapper Lowkey, one of the best-known figures on the scene, puts it in a track entitled My Soul: “They can’t use my music to advertise for Coca Cola / they can’t use my music to advertise for Motorola / they can’t use my music to advertise for anything / I guess that’s reason the industry won’t let me in /
refuse to be a product or a brand I’m a human / refuse to contribute to the gangsta illusion.” In short, conscious rap is hip-hop as it should be. Many people know of US conscious rappers such as Dead Prez, KRS-One and Immortal Technique. But how is it relevant to activism here in the UK? US professor and author MK Asante Jr argues that hip-hop simply means “making an observation [about society] and having an obligation”. Asante, who also co-wrote and produced the film The Black Candle – a Maya Angelou-narrated film about the Kwanzaa festival and African American history – recently teamed up with British rapper Akala and Lowkey to discuss this topic in front of a packed audience at the British Library. Their conclusion was simple. While hip-hop should reflect reality, it should also have the capacity to offer solutions and provoke debate as any art form should. This brand of hip-hop is embodied by anti-capitalist rappers who are key figures on the un erground scene. The rap group they founded, the People’s Army, exemplifies the kind of hip-hop which can galvanise socially conscious young people. One