To me, music is the shorthand of emotion. I hear a song and it tells me story deeper than any words can convey.

When I listen to music, I don’t just hear the lyrics and the melody, I don’t just feel the rhythm I listen on a much deeper level, its almost like I enter an alternate mind space were the music is almost like an entity speaking directly to me. 

When a song is great, it speaks to your soul and not your mind or your body. It resonates through out your being. It permanently colors your perceptions no matter how subtle.

Great music broadens the mind, it leaves you with that feeling of simultaneous fulfilment and emptiness. It either soothes your soul or agitates it. It challenges your beliefs and reaffirms them.

Great music is incomprehensible and yet makes perfect sense. Great music is subjective and objective. Great music is the great contradiction. It is the expression of the inexpressible.

Great music is a side effect of a deliberate attempt. And perhaps most importantly; great music is not explained only experienced. Have you ever experienced great music?

A few days ago I finally got around to writing my review of Modenine’s Paradigm Shift and his track A Hero Comes Home struck a cord (DNH). Why exactly does he think we need a hero? And also important why does he think he is that hero? Well methinks the issue is how Hip Hop is defined or rather who is doing the defining. As far as I’m concerned, Hip Hop in Nigeria is alive and kicking like Chuck Norris’ newborn baby boy.

Apart from the fact that I hate most music called Hip Hop nowadays but some how still end up listening to it, I think I have simply just allowed myself to evolve with the times while some others, aka the Hip Hop heads, refused to adapt.

I used to consider myself a head and for a long time I’d only listen to folks like Nas, Common, Outkast, Mos Def, Talib Kweli etc on the popular end of the spectrum and then underground acts like Canibus, Jean Grae, Zion I, Jedi Mind Tricks, Dead Pres and Immortal Technique. But you see somewhere along the line I woke the fuck up and wanted to get crunk in a club and that just wasn’t looking likely with most of the above cats. I wanted to just kick back and listen to some good music that wasn’t attempting to shove some ideology or their interpretation of the mysteries of the universe on me. I wanted to listen to something bob my head, stamp my feet and break my neck without tasking my mind also. Yes I said it. I wanted some plain old “dumb” music and boy when I finally got it I “got it” (DNH).

So now back to the main issue: Do we need a hero? Yes. But! the kind of hero we need is the kind of rapper that can bridge the divide between the heads and everyone else. The kind of rapper that can get people who generally don’t listen to rap (and there’s loads of em in Nigeria) listening. What we need is the rapper who can talk about it but also be “bout it bout it” ya dig? Someone with that originality but simple enough for the majority. Someone with that swagger but also got those lyrics that can drive you mental. Someone who isn’t afraid of being labeled commercial but stays grounded and doesn’t get too tribal.

Anyway, that’s my take. What’s yours? Am I a “sell out” or a realist?