Words.worth

Hip-Hop vs. Crack-Rock the 10 percent nation

On a wind scorned day a 16 year old boy hustles on the block. Hustling dimes to make pennies. He makes his moves to and from the block like clockwork. 9 pm, on the corner handshakes go to every hype that comes his way. 5 pm on the corner still giving handshakes to hypes. 7pm, avoids the police. 9pm, a black Mercedes 500 appears from under the starlight that is hidden by the light pollution of the city.

"How we doing?"

"I got one thousand. That is about a hundred an hour."

"Aiight count it out."

"Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty....................nine-hundred ninety, one thousand."

"Good shit yo. Keep moving and I will take care of you."

This was thier dialogue. As the mysterious figure from behind the dark tint speeds off the boy looks at the diminished roll of money remaining in his hand. One hundred dollars. One hundred dollars as in nine hundred dollars less than what he had so stealthily hustled to make. Gone in ten minutes. He did the math in his head. One hundred dollars an hour to make the money. One hundred dollars a minute for him to have the money taken.

Then he begin to think about the other ten hustlas that the driver of the black benz had. Simple arithmetic came down from the blinking street light and told him. That is nine-thousand dollars a day and all this guy does is drive.

Imagine being an artist on a record label. You are hot. I mean back to back number ones on the Billboard. Four- hundred thousand the first week. The album even goes on to platinum status. That is one million copies at ten dollars a pop. That is ten million dollars you just made right. Wrong! Try three- hundred thousand for you and nine point seven million for the record label. How is this possible. How can their number that follows their comma be more than your number all together. Did I mention that out of your three-hundred thousand half of it is going to the budget for your next album. So you on MTV's cribs and you just made one hundred fifty thousand off your last album. Now you are frustrated. I think I want to leave my record label. Not so fast my friend. They have you inked for four more records and you know what happens to those that breach their contract.

They get sued. Welcome to the new block. Crack-rock the 10 percent nation.

Was a little shine worth all of this? Would it have been better to have stayed local and kept selling fifty thousand records at ten dollars each in your region and never reached mega-star status. Yeah but, what do you know. You were out hustling while the CEO over at Sony was driving a Benz 500 and doing pick-ups in the middle of the night.

My people.

Do your math.

-Peace-

posted by Words.worth @ 12:21 AM