Lonzo Ball, rookie point guard for the Los Angeles Lakers, caught heat a few weeks ago saying, “No one listens to Nas... Real hip hop is Future and Migos”. Of course, there is a huge age gap between the two (Lonzo 19, Nas 44), but at the root of the issue is a lesson that African and Indigenous ancestors learned thousands of years, and that’s the importance of Rites of Passage.

In ancient African (and places with similar traditions) societies, when a young man became of age, he had to go through a process of development by the elders and Men of the community to become legitimate adults in the society. If the young man completed this initiation successfully, he became eligible to take a wife, and there was some form of wealth that passed down to him to help him start his life. The series Roots from Alex Haley depicted this well in the opening episodes before Kunta was captured and taken to the “New World”.

Now Fast forwarding to the 21st Century, there is cultural in fighting between the older generations and younger generations. Part of it is due to influence from social media, television, music etc., but the main reason this exists is due to the lack of a “rites of passage” program in modern black society. Especially in hip hop.

Somé: Initiation means a rite of passage from one stage of life to another. The absence of formal initiation in the West is why young people create their own informal initiations, such as engaging in reckless and dangerous behavior. Maybe drug addicts and alcoholics are trying to break into a different state of reality, as happens in a true initiation. The problem is their initiations never end.

In ancient times the rites of passage was a very important tool put in place to insure the survival of culture and values. The younger generations had to rely on the older generations in their community to get their start. In exchange, the younger generation would embrace their culture and Push It Forward.

Today in the entertainment business (and life in general) the younger generations have to get their start in large part from Entertainment executives outside of their culture. This removes the systematic loyalty put in place traditionally to maintain the respect and cooperation between generations. Now the younger generations do not have to respect the elders because the elders do not give them anything directly. Of course, the elders of hip hop created an art form, which has allowed kids from the hoods of America to make millions from practically nothing, but the youth are not mature enough to understand that.

The ancestors understood that, and that’s why they gave them cultural traditions along with tangible resources to incentivize their loyalty. Outside groups whose interest is to exploit and oppress another group leverages this division for their benefit. In slavery, the slave masters would take the most talented children of slaves and “educate” and expose them to “opportunities” so they would embrace the western ways as opposed to what their slave parents could teach them. Today the youth are given opportunities by entities that do not look like them or are financially backed by those that do not look like them, and thus are not forced to pay homage to those who came before them, because those who came before them did not give them their opportunity directly. The elders complain about this lack of respect and acknowledgement, but oftentimes fail to realize that in some ways it is of their own creation. In their “hay day” they did not position themselves to control the industry (in most cases were unable) financially and thus be able to give the next generations an opportunity. Instead the children of the label executives that gave the elders their opportunity are the ones who are giving our young generation their opportunity, and there lies the problem.

-HAR

Goodman, Leslee. “Between Two Worlds.” The Sun Magazine, The Sun, July 2010, www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/415/between-two-worlds.