Peace is not the word to play

The Nation of the Gods and Earths aka 5%'ers must be held in high regard even by skeptics. If for no reason than for the Nation's ability to
artistic force of the last 100 years (at least).

Listening to the iPizzle on the 25 Bus and this post woke me up. I
remember speaking with J-Live about this years ago. He was the 1st
member of the Nation that I ever sat with for real. Anyone who knows J knows that
he takes his lessons as seriously as his music or family. So when he
broke down the basics to me I felt like I was listening to a proper
representative not an interloper.

That day in St. Louis before doing a show with Natural Resource (Ocean
and What What aka Run Run Shaw aka Jean Grae) J took pleasure in laying
out some of the elements Hip-Hop had co-opted from The Gods and Earths.

Just a few:

-The salutation of 'Peace'
-'Building'
-'Word is Bond'
-Cipher as in rhyming in one
-'Do the knowledge'
-'Ak' (as in "My boys I call them Ak")
-almost all Brand Nubian songs (definitely Jamar verses)
-The Wu catalogue
-Gang Starr
-more Busta lyrics than one would think

I also wonder what Hip-Hop would be without the overtly arrogant
patriarchal nature of the Gods. A strong case could be made that the
study of 120 by NYC's Black male youth empowered many of Hip-Hop's tent
poles.

Entrepreneurship, unabashed courage in the face of corporate money, the
limited sense of community re-investment. And unfortunately the
Judeo-Christian sense of male chauvinism in the wrong hands gave birth
to the rampant misogyny in Hip-Hop.