Fear Not of Man

Transcript

I was thinking again about this track Nathan Fallau recommended to me by Mos Def, Fear Not of Man. And most people say this is the hip hop track with the best introductory monologue ever, in the history of Hip Hop. And the first few times I listened to it I skipped over the monologue.

Or I thought I won’t listen too closely and get to the verses to hear the actual rapping instead of the spoken intro. Wow I’ve listened to again and thought wow what have I missed?

How did I not think this is important? This is actually excellent, this is actually a work that makes Yasim Bey or Mos Def more like a prophet as an artist.

It’s beautiful what he says here, I am going to paraphrase some of this for you.

So he talks about the 21st century coming, this record was released in 1999.

20th century almost done, a lot of things have changed, a lot of things have not. Mainly us, we going to get it together right? I believe that.

Here he is expressing his faith in humanity, the faith that people are going to be able to make a better world and improve the world for every one of us.

I can tell that is the implication from what he says later “People be asking me all the time, Mos, what’s gonna happen to hip hop? What’s getting ready to happen with hip hop? Where do you think hip hop is going?”

Here he says hip hop but I know he means much more than hip hop, I can feel it. Hip hop is a metaphor for the world, for black culture and society in the United States and the entire world, world society and world culture.

I tell him you know what’s going to happen with hip hop? Whatever is happening with us. What’s going to happen to the world? Whatever is happening with us.

If we smoked out hip hop will be smoked out. If we are illusioned the world is going to be illusioned. If we are doing alright, the world is gonna be doing all right.

People talk about the world like its some giant living in the hillside, like culture is some giant living in the hillside coming down to visit people.

We are the world, me you everyone. We are the world. So the world, culture, society is going where we are going.

Next time you ask yourself where society is going or where the world is going, ask yourself where am I going? How am I doing? Till you get a clear idea.

So if hip hop is about the people, culture society is for the people and the world won’t get better until the people get better.

How do people get better?

From my understanding people get better when they start to understand that they are valuable and they are not valuable because they have a lot of money or because someone thinks they’re sexy. They’re valuable because they’ve been created by god.

God makes you valuable. Whether or not you recognize value as a thing.

You got a lot of governments and societies trying to be god, wishing that they were god. These parts are interesting. These seem more potent than ever, more relevant than ever today. Some of you will know what I am talking about.

They wanna create satellites and cameras everywhere and make you think they are the all seeing eye. Huh

I guess the last parts weren’t too far off. Certain people got a god complex, I believe its true. I don’t get phased out by none of that, none of that. Helicopters, TV screens, newscasters, satellite dishes, they’re just wishing. They can’t really never do that.

When they tell me to fear their law, when they tell me that to try to have some fret in my heart about the things they do, this is what I think in my mind, this is what I say to them and this is what I am saying to you. Check it.

Then he goes into the verse and of course prominently in the verse, those words from the Quran, god is sufficient in disposing of affairs. So many things happening in the world right now, years ago there were those revelations by Edward Snowden talking about how government is trying to spy on is.

Mos Def got in before that saying he doesn’t believe it, he doesn’t believe governments have the power they present to have. They try to represent themselves as all powerful but as he says in the verse “fear not of men because men must die. Need not fear mortals if we have a little faith. We will ask where we are going, that’s the more potent thing.

We don’t need to worry about what is going on in the world. What we have inside is much more beautiful and much more powerful and our own actions can bring us liberation. Our thoughts, speech and action, these three tools mentioned by the buddha and the tradition he came from always available to us.

So fear not. Fear not of men.