![]() "We let the world speak through us," he told OPB's "Think Out Loud" on June 26.Ĭ3 has been performing at Portland protests over the past few weeks. Portland rapper C3 the Guru says he "channels the truth" through his music. Music isn’t going to change anything … I think hip-hop’s place is telling the truth.” They play that song (‘A Change is Going to Come’) as background on movies when Black folks are getting abused. “If it could, Sam Cook would have done it. “I think music can be a bandaid that folks can listen to,” Jamal said. But to him, hip-hop alone cannot bring social change. ![]() ![]() “This is not the first time Black people have stood up to fight for our rights - maybe it is the first time it has been accepted on a mainstream level.”īlack people have a tradition of “rising to the occasion,” Jamal said, through art or through politics. “It’s just symbolic to me of humanity waking up from this place of being calcified and being closed off, and awakening to our true nature,” Jamal said. It ends with him rapping in a forest, and walking solemnly along a hazy beach. It begins with Jamal waking up in the middle of a street, blood dripping from a gunshot wound in his chest. On May 14, 11 days before Minneapolis police killed George Floyd and ignited a worldwide movement for Black lives, Jamal released a remarkably prophetic music video for his song "Urban Decay Pt. Right now, in the midst of worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, Jamal and other Portland hip-hop artists sense that people are finally recognizing a reality they have been living for years. “Hip-hop has always been about what’s really going on in the neighborhood,” Jamal said. Jamal uses music to reflect his reality, and the reality of Black America. Jamal started making music when he was a teenager, growing up in an all-Black Arkansas neighborhood, in a community that flew confederate flags downtown. For Portland rapper Rasheed Jama l, hip-hop music is about describing the world around you.
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