Monday, March 3, 2008

Hip Hop Roots Awareness: Spoken Word: Ms. Latifah

Okay, so now that we've gotten two of the three main dances that sparked in the 80's and helped launch as a basis for Hip Hop on the table. I thought we'd take a detour from the dance age and look into the main aspect behind where hip hop came from. Yes peoples, I'm talking about Poetry, and Spoken Word. Now "rap" as you probably known is an acronym for "Rhythm and Poetry".

Now this is different from written poetry in the idea that it is written in the manor it is going to be recited aloud. It is also written so it is easy to understand the meaning, and the concept behind it. While alot of Poetry is abstract in it's ideas and meanings.

Now I could go very deatiled in this post and talk for just about two pages. But I'll get to the main point of the post. Ms. Latifah is a native Atlanta Spoken Word artist. Now she has a Spoken Word album as well as a Hip Hop album, that has a track, possibly two that features Lupe Fiasco.

I had the great honor of meeting Ms. Latifah at a Potery Slam at my old high school where she proformed I think three of her works. I got them on video but my cheap camera's mic didn't pick up any sound but the applause, (which for her and the other speakers were deafening).

So I went to her myspace and as well on youtube, and got some of her work to let you hear her amazing words. She told me she'd check otu the page and I'm hopeing she'll like it and tell Lupe to check it out (hint, hint) =)

Well the first video is off her hip hop album, while the second is from her spoken word album. ENJOY!





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