This particular post was inspired by my younger brother and I watching the documentary “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975” yesterday with his sister (my niece) yesterday afternoon. While I was born in 1975 & he was born in 1978 we were well aware of this era and what happened through our mom and older siblings (our eldest sister was born in 1967 and our eldest brother was born in 1969).

As I watched this documentary I saw how the world looked. How the cities looked. The cars. Street signs. Store awnings. Old logos on different products. I remembered all of these things because with the urban blight of the Reaganomic era few of them changed until the early 80’s. Since I was born in 1975 and my brother was born in 1978, pretty much all the TV reruns we watched still contained images or content from this time. Whether it be the films we say on TV, the TV shows that were in syndication at the time or even the educational shows we watched on PBS.

We regularly watched “Sesame Street” and “Electric Company” segments that were from the late 60’s and early 70’s. Even though we weren’t there to witness the era ourselves, our parents and older relatives told us more than enough stories about what happened and how it affected them.

I remember the late 70’s pretty clearly but I grew up in the 80’s. That being the case I also recall how completely different things were in my community between when I first entered Kindergarten (back then you had Kindergarten 1 & Kindergarten 2) in 1978 versus when I went to middle school/junior high in 1986. Whereas we’d come out of the turmoil and uprisings of the Civil Rights/Black Power Era where awareness was raised, we’d entered the “Me Decade” where Jimmy Carter was supplanted by Ronald Wilson Reagan. During this time, the inner cities and urban communities of America would suffer tremendously.

As a little kid growing up in South End/Lower Roxbury, Boston I remember the sense of community that once existed. Parents would look out for each other’s kids. If Lil’ Hakim & Deron were doing something they shouldn’t have been doing over on Lenox, then Miss Wilson was going to get a call from Miss Ruiz about it. By the time crack hit, if Miss Ruiz made that same call, there would be a gun in her face or her kid’s lives would be threatened later because she wasn’t minding her own business and stopping Hak & D’s money.

I still remember heroin fiends on the cracked sidewalks of Boston and the collection of winos that used to hang out in front of the Harriet Tubman House when I lived on Mass Ave. in the South End as a little kid. I remember sitting in the welfare office with my mom in the late 70’s and noticing that the girl sitting across from us had the shakes then she started scratching herself. Mom told me that she was a heroin addict and explained what it was in detail when we finally got home a few hours later.

I remember the parties the adults had around that same time when they’d be smoking weed and slide into the bathroom to do some coke. I also remember when those parties stopped. There’s a reason those scenes were in “Menace II Society”, we mid to late 70’s babies remember all of that shit. It all gradually changed somewhere between 1982 and 1984. This is also when crack first hit the streets and inner cities of urban America.

Those were transformative years for the Black community in general. The music on the radio went from mostly being traditional instruments played by musicians to synthesizers and drum machines. The Hip Hop & Rap the kids listened to went from being a nuisance and what was once thought to be a fad to the leading youth culture/movement in the United States (then later on Earth itself). Once heroin was flooding the streets but now crack had turned the inner city into a warzone. Those Blaxploitation film era heroes were nowhere to be found. COINTELPRO had all but wiped out our real life heroes. Who was going to save us now?

As it turns out the way we mid to late 70’s babies learned to survive the 80’s was thanks to the kids that were born just before or during the era of 1967-1975. Chuck D was born in 1960. KRS One was born in 1965. Most of the emcees and artists that helped us weather this tumultuous time and instilled pride in us while making music that stuck with us for life were actually kids and impressionable youth during the Civil Rights/Black Power Era.

They saw firsthand how the Civil Rights movement lead into the Black Power movement and they lived during the end of the Vietnam War and the fallout of it. All of the things that were covered in “The Black Power Mixtape” they got to experience firsthand. This was the same generation that would help empower the younger generation through their words, actions and music. They were the ones that told us to stay off crack, be proud of our heritage and to aspire to greatness in the 80’s just like James Brown did back in the 60’s and 70’s.

This same generation would continue to help us well into the 90’s until of course artists from younger generations who grew up with those same influences came into prominence. I’ve heard the voices of Huey Newton, Fred Hampton, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, H. Rap Brown, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure), The Last Poets, Gil Scot Heron, Gylan Kain and several more all through Hip Hop albums during my younger years. I was introduced to literature that changed my life by these same emcees through their music and interviews. They continued the grand tradition of leadership that these slain, exiled and imprisoned leaders began so many years ago.

So here we are in the Post Telecommunications Act Era where any trace of consciousness or dissension has been systemically erased from mainstream urban music. Where I had Brand Nubian and Poor Righteous Teachers during my teen years alongside acts like Kid N’ Play and Kwame & A New Beginning there’s no real balance in today’s Hip Hop scene. Sadly enough, it’s been that way for more than a decade.

It’s almost as if the musical equivalent of COINTELPRO came into the industry and made sure that no revolutionary or conscious voices would exist on major labels past Dead Prez signing to Loud/RCA in 1998 or get burn on urban radio. So whom exactly is instilling pride, teaching and leading the youth of today through their music? Lil’ Wayne? Nicki Minaj? Drake? Big Sean? Wiz Khalifa? Mac Miller? B.o.B? Tyga? J.Cole? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

One.