Everyone that covered this so-called "30th anniversary" has done so from an artist’s perspective. In my opinion we need to turn our back on any celebration, simply because the music has left its people behind. What hip hop really needs right now is a real snuff the public in the face truth session. A real talk about how Black and Latino communities truly feel about the birthday of their stolen art/tool. Honestly, what do the people who started the music have to show for it all? Why should we celebrate? How could a people that created a multi-billion dollar industry still be left behind?

You may dispute this point, but when I think of the creators of rap and the
community where it was born, I think ghetto. All those Blacks that Bill Cosby likes to disparage. Of course all Blacks relate to the culture, but not all of us lived the kind of life that "ghetto" blacks live. Today those people are still in the same position. Hip hop turns 30, who gives a fuck? What has it done for its people lately? The art has been successfully stolen from its people. Besides, wait a minute, who says its hip hop’s birthday anyway? Did we decide this? Or was it decided for us by those who stole it? Why are they celebrating our culture when we’re still crying and dying and being incarcerated in epic, unprecedented and inhuman numbers? We all know that if society could have hip hop without having Blacks, it would move heaven and earth to do so. Yeah they love the art, they always do, but they continue to hate and oppress the people.

At first the music reflected our lives, now our lives are seen as the music. BET and MTV make it look like we have arrived when in fact the masses are still fighting all the same battles. While the world sees the bling, the money, and the partying, AIDS is growing out of control in our communities and unemployment is looking like back in the day when Reagan had us by the balls. Police brutality is as constant and brutal as anytime in recent history, but we just don't hear about it unless it's a major case and Al Sharpton takes up the cause. The school system is still bullshit, failing to educate the last two to three generations - and yet we have cops in the hallways with our kids. Would they have been able to do that if Public Enemy was still making rap?

We used to have music that put pressure on society, music that encouraged social change if not social revolution. We can't expect 50Cent to rap about the importance of an education; he dropped out, and didn't have anybody to drop him back in. He is the image and byproduct of all that was rapped about before his time. Bad family structure, drug dealing mom shot in front of him, goes to live with his grandma that can't monitor him. The streets raise him, he becomes a drug dealer, poisoning our community with drugs and violence. He is us. Then he becomes a rapper, the idol of voyeuristic suburban millions. But music can't change the man, even though society would like to make it that simple. And even if he decided to make empowering rap, his label would never let it happen. There are millions of 50s walking around. The music might have saved him, but so many others are stuck.

Meanwhile, the prison system is making big money on our slave wage backs. Prisons feed entire dustbelt and rustbelt towns in this country and Black and Latino communities get nothing from the wealth created by their incarcerated father, brothers, mothers, sisters and sons. The ghettofied generation that created this never-ending money tree labeled hip hop cannot say they are doing better than ever before.