Black Thought Neat

For anyone who grew up in the music or who has a deep love for the culture, there’s a song that takes you back to the exact moment when you first heard it, what you were doing, and who you were with. And easily the best era is Hip-Hop’s Golden Age. Some of the best music from the 90’s was influenced by the speeches and iconography of Malcolm X, the teachings of the Nation of Islam and the theology of the NoI off-shoot, the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths. Black Muslims were hardly new to black political thought but Noble Drew Ali’s Moorish Science Temple never had a soundtrack like this. Turn on a hip-hop radio show in the early 90’s and you couldn’t get three tracks in without a five-percenter on the mic. From MCs like Rakim and Nas, groups like Brand Nubian and Poor Righteous Teachers—five percenters shaped a culture and provided a few that, for better or worse, questioned political norms, stressed intellect, and persistently attacked what they considered mental slavery. The notion of the black man as God is esoteric as hell but it appealed to a generation that suffered from the racial entrenchment of the 70’s and 80’s, the Reagan Era, HIV/ AIDS and crack. It also lead to a lot of great music. If the cypher is where five-percenters build then the 90s albums and CD where cyphers with a national distribution network that could reach and civilize 85-ers globally.