Who says hip-hop doesn't watch the news anymore? There it is, smack-dab in the Spyder D–rapped title track to the early-February release Big Apple Rappin': "We've got mo' mad mics [something like that anyway] and transit strikes"! Timely or what? Especially if you forget the line was recorded a quarter-century ago and is surrounded by tourist information about Earl "The Pearl" Monroe, Son of Sam, and the World Trade Center. Spyder D's on disc two; on disc one, the presumedly unrelated Brother D warns that "America's got concentration camps" and "The party may end one day soon when they're roundin' niggers up in the afternoon." So "How we gonna make the black nation rise? We're gonna agitate, educate, and organize." One year before "The Message," six before the presumedly unrelated Chuck D.
I want to wake up in the city that never coughs.
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