Ta-Nehisi Coates - Feed Me Hip-Hop And I Start Trembling

In my memoir, I talk about a buddy who, whenever he was about to get jumped, use to recite the last half of Rakim’s Microphone Fiend. It was like armor for his nerves. I think about that whenever I hear society mocking the mask which young black boys don in urban America. We manufacture the conditions, and then rail at kids for creating a code of survival in response.

…

When I heard this…

I’m everlasting, I can go on for days and days
With rhyme displays, that engrave deep as X-rays.
I can take a phrase that’s rarely heard
Flip it. Now it’s a daily word.
I can iller than all nam, a killing bomb,
But no alarm—Rakim will remain calm.

And this:

So follow me or where you thinking you were first?
Let’s travel at magnificent speeds throughout the universe.
What can you say as the earth gets further and further away,
Planets as small as balls of clay.
Astray into the Milky Way, world’s out of sight,
As far as the eye can see, not even a satellite.
Now stop and turn around and look,
As you stare into darkness, your knowledge is took.
So you keep staring and suddenly you see a star,
You better follow it, cause it’s the R…

…it was one of those moments that clarified what I wanted to do. I can’t tell you how many afternoons I spent, as a kid, trying to write something like that and then taking it up to Wabash, with my brother Bill, and struggling with the beat. Here’s the thing: I was a horrendous MC. I mean just abysmal. But those were basic lessons about writing, that stick with me to this day. Constrained by form, be it blog post, sonnet, or the beat, how do you say something original and beautiful? How do you do it with potency and economy? There’s a reason why “I can take a phrase that’s rarely heard\Flip it, now it’s a daily word,” is, perhaps, the most hailed couplet in all of hip-hop. It’s two lines of braggadocio which are worth about ten verses from your average battle rapper. But it’s also a beautifully circular statement about the power of words.