Hip Hop

Kendrik Lamar is the latest statement about Hip Hop in the United States, perhaps more than Childish Gambino; but before the two of them, it was a carefree —and therefore existential— way of expressing American culture; which is always that of the dangerous black ghettos, because gentrification has already distorted everything else. In this sense, the guilty silence in the face of the scandal with which Eminem triumphs, on black stages, is understandable; recalling the legend of the King, who is said to have stolen the spirit (soul) from the blacks, to commercialize it, white at last.

No one seems to stop before that undaunted faculty of reality, which realizes itself over the artificiality of prejudices; because Eminem and Elvis would be the proof of a process as surreptitious as it is public, of blackening of culture. The phenomenon is less scandalous —although denied just the same— among Cubans, because of the coexistence in the tenements; which, forced by economic precariousness, does not offer the lateral escapes of the state of well-being, and forces mutualism.

In any case, Elvis Presley's vulgar sensuality and Eminem's white trash violence show the same thing; and it is the existential nature of all transcendence, as a condition proper to the immanent, and not a parallel value. This is the peculiarity concealed by the fiery political speeches of Lamar and Gambino, who are black; because it resides in that precariousness that protests, not in the protest, which is delegitimized by the success of the protesters.

Obviously, as a peculiarity it is also subtle, and that is why it can go unnoticed by the interest of those protesters; who are obviously not interested in the effectiveness of their protest —making it banal— but in the success it brings. This, in fact, is also understandable and legitimate, if in the end precariousness has aesthetic value and in that a commercial scope; even if it loses consistency in the racking, as another trap of God, when it promotes our ethical suprematism.

The truth is that Hip Hop is poetic, because it is the pure and legitimate expression of an existential experience; visible even in that sublimated violence of Destiny Child in Iwant a soldier, already dissolved in Beyonce's divinity. Hip Hop today, like Blues yesterday —and rumba in Cuba—, is the contribution of blackness to the cultural adjustment of the West; and it is no coincidence that they all resolve themselves in a footwork, with which the dance expresses its rhythmic naturalness.

On the other hand, the great speeches of Lamar and Gambino are not made for dancing, or even for reflection; they demand assent —not consent— looking defiantly to see who dares to make any other gesture than their obviousness. They are hypocritical in its uselessness, like the critical Realism of the French with the falsity of their anti-heroic humanism; while, in contrast, the simplicity with which the violent man condescends to the gentle gesture is more realistic and effective.

Hence the poetic efficacy of Hip Hop, so little elaborated that it blushes the snobbery of the damned and lost poets; and for which Cubans should rethink the simplicity of regaetón, whose “reparterismo” replicates neigborishm. With similar subtleties, timba emerged in Cuba imitating the arrangements of black Disco music in the United States, for example; and even a mythical Rob Parissi has no problem acknowledging that Funky rescued him, precisely because of his uniqueness as a white.

It should not be forgotten, the dynamic is due to the reflexive function of poetic act, which never descends into discursive; that is why American television is populated with horror, speaking to emotion and not to intelligence; for if it were truly to speak to the intelligence, then he would have to be honest, and that is only guaranteed by horror. It is not a rhetorical game, but the dramatic value of existential experience, which is always bitter; because as sensible, effective knowledge is based on pain, giving meaning to pleasure and joy.