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| Photo courtesy of Christine Jongen |
Twenty years have passed since a scrawny white kid from Minneapolis, Minnesota named Slug, one half of Atmosphere released a thought provoking song called scapegoat. What’s interesting about this song is that it completely fits the current social situation around the world. Saying and speaking the truth has become a rarity. Moreover it’s easier to blame the other for our afflictions and not to own up to the problems that we create with our own actions or inaction.
If you remember my previous post on Hip Hop, you will recall how I said that the genre provides a vivid first person commentary on society. This song though twenty years old seems to diagnose a problem that is still evident within our current environment.
When Slug raps: “It's the foreigners sightseeing with high beams, it's in my dreams. It's the monsters that I conjure, it's the marijuana It's embarrassment, displacement, it's where I wander It's my genre, it's Madonna's videos It's game shows, it's cheap liquor, blunts And bumper stickers with rainbows It's angels, demons, gods, it's the white devils” we see a man trying to identify the cause of his problems looking out.
Close to home, I see it portrayed in a different form when people say “if only” or “the problem is that they” or we would be better off if we had our own land. While previous years were marked with people coming together as unions of nations, today we see a feeling of autonomy sweeping through the world. Citizens are splitting up to form nations within nations, tribes and communities grouping together (though calling for their own identity) are in fact walling themselves in from their neighbors.
Sadly some of us seem to be crafting more artificial boundaries now more than ever instead of coming together in our commonality as a human species, because:
“It's on your face and it's in your eyes it’s everything you be, Cause it ain't me…”
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