Correction to This Article
A previous version of this article misidentifies the Hip-Hop Love Project.

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Why I Gave Up On Hip-Hop

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Now what you hear is not a test

I'm rappin' to the beat.

Then the white kids started chanting: Dis-co sucks, dis-co sucks, dis-co sucks, dis-co sucks , repeating the white-backlash, anti-rap mantra of the era.

The white kids got louder: DIS-CO SUCKS, DIS-CO SUCKS, DIS-CO SUCKS, DIS-CO SUCKS.

So we got louder, too:

YA SEE, I AM WONDER MIKE AND I LIKE TO SAY HELLO

TO THE BLACK, TO THE WHITE, THE RED AND THE BROWN

THE PURPLE AND YELLOW.

Then the white kids started yelling until their faces suffused with color.

And so we started yelling rhymes that I still know to this day, some of which my kids know and, I bet, so do some of the kids of those white kids who screamed at us from the back of my junior high school bus, raging against change, raging against black people, or, who knows, maybe just not appreciating our musical stylings.

SO I RAPPED TO THE BEAT LIKE I NEVER DID BEFORE.

We rhymed and the white kids disappeared before our eyes because we were in another world -- transported by the collective sound of our own raised voices, transfixed by our newfound ability to drown out their nullification.

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