I reject that title. My choice to not promote negativity, does not make me “positive,” it makes me a little bit more real. I’ll tell you why I say that. A lot of the rappers that we call negative, what are they rapping about? They’re rapping about killing people who look just like them, they’re rapping about products that no one in their community owns. So who are they working for? We can keep calling positive rappers, “positive” and STIGMATIZING them… “conscious rappers.” We have to start reversing the stigma to the other way and referring to those guys as “negative rappers” or “corporate rappers” or “rappers that reinforce mental slavery.” We can’t start calling it hip hop because hip hop was a revolutionary voice from the beginning… So to then say that the revolutionary voice within it [hip hop] is the MARGINAL part of the culture, you’re saying that this bullshit that corporations have created is the culture and it isn’t. So I reject the title “positive rapper.”
Akala speaks out on the STIGMATIZATION of being promoted as a “conscious” and/or “positive rapper” (via daughterofzami)
