KUUMBA: Make Something Unforgettable

Habari Gani! I spent my last night in South Jersey/Philly listening to a hip hop journey with my brother, an emcee named Mai Sankofa, while my daughter Alanna Naledi played different percussion instruments on the floor and my mother and Alanna's mother took a Kundalini class with my Aunt Mimi down the street. We were going through what he thought I should know and take home with me when we stopped on one of this top 5, an artist named Oddisee. I was asking him if he was going to get a big record contract sometime when he said, "Nah, he doesn't want one, he says he's good. He got a family and he making money and he doesn't want to get bigger." I couldn't really say anything to that. I am perpetually a hater of radio rap unless it's a great mind like Kendrick or Nas or something. But still, I had no words for this. My subconscious did though.

I was laying in my bed, having a good time watching my dreams, until around 4 AM I had one filled with hip hop and samurais and ninjas. One side was the samurai and one side the ninja, I can't really tell you who was who, but my samurai mind says that probably the true heads were represented by the samurai, because they at least had some honor, even though they stole and pillaged like the good militaristic class they represented, but ninjas, ninjas were said to have no code. My ninja mind says that the distinctions were built upon class, the samurai being a "noble" class while the ninja being of lower class, as such, the code was built upon privilige and exploitation and the ninjas did whatever they had to to survive, which sounds exactly like hip hop to me. In the end, this is why I don't get down with one side vs the other side, because all paths lead to God OR the devil. At any rate, I was find watching my mind's movie until one of the characters said, "They want to make the movement forgettable." What was that supposed to mean? I didn't know, but trying to figure it out just took me completely out of the dream until this point right now, where as you can see, I'm sitting in the bathroom at 4:12 AM trying to write down my thoughts because I'm afraid I might lose them.

They want to make the Movement Forgettable. Oddisee doesn't though, Oddisee knows what will happen. They want to make The Movement forgettable. How do they do that? They take away our creativity. I knew before I even started this meditation on the Kwanzaa Principles that this was going to be the one where I talked about the empire and how it has struck back by "electing" a mad man and how we can't use the master's tools of division no more, but how we need to bring out the heavy artillery of unification and underground collaboration like never before. And then this dream, They want to make the Movement Forgettable. That's what has been done over and over again, that's what's being done right now. From the Black Power Movement to the Flint Water Crisis to Standing Rock, from the Dakota Pipeline to the School to Prison Pipeline, they want to make the Movement Forgettable.