Islamoblog: 10 Most Successful Muslim Rappers

Who's the Outsider?

This blog entry points out:

There’s plenty examples within the lyrics of rappers themselves, much of the time, the rappers themselves aren’t even Muslim, but clearly show an affinity for Islamic teachings and principles. A few examples of lyrics that relate to Islam, or acknowledge Islamic scripture include:

Aiyo, I'll die for the prophets and I'll die for the Lord
On the battlefield, wounded badly, holding a sword
With no questions asked, I already know, it's all for the cause
Just laying me facing the East, when I'm under the floor – Ghostface Killah – I’ll Die For You (The Big Doe Rehab)

The voice of racism preaching the gospel is devilish
A fake church called the prophet Muhammad a terrorist
Forgetting God is not a religion, but a spiritual bond
And Jesus is the most quoted prophet in the Qu'ran – Immortal Technique – The 4th Branch (Revolutionary Vol. 2)

Passin judgment, you niggaz second-guessin Beans
Cause you don't eat swine don't make you Amin
Dog you know a couple suras, out the Qur'an
I guess you all on your din and I ain't on mine – Beanie Sigel - This Can't Be Life (The Dynasty: Roc La Familia)

So, clearly there is openness about Islam in rap music, whether picked up by the general masses or not, there are plenty of popular rappers of past and present who are openly practicing Muslims. [To read the complete article, click here.]

In his review of Steven Lee Beeber's The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk, Renée Graham connects punk with hip-hop (rap):

While such composers as George Gershwin and Irving Berlin fashioned music that embraced assimilation -- after all, Berlin, a Russian Jew, wrote "White Christmas" and "God Bless America" -- Jewish punks reveled in their outsider status, and crammed it in society's smug face. (It's worth noting that as punk was ricocheting off downtown tenements, this nation's other perpetual outsiders, African-Americans, were a few uptown subway lines away in the Bronx creating their own sound -- hip-hop -- also born from alienation and disenfranchisement.)

Where rap is honest and open, Jewish punk is apparently self-delusional.

Beeber makes the obligatory obeisance to the Holocaust as he apparently ignores the whole history of Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazi musical experimentation during the late 19th and early 20th century:

Central to Beeber's idea of punk's inherent Jewishness is the Holocaust. He even goes so far as to declare "No Holocaust, no punk." Yes, the roiling anger and dark humor of punk was a reaction to lingering feelings of victimization.

When punk begins to delve into the sort of Nazi ideas that have become so powerful among Jews because of the effects of Zionism, Beeber forces an interpretation to cover up the power of the Jewish elite and the gusto with which Israeli Zionists and their supporters demonize, brutalize or kill Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians:

Yet, Jewish punks also adapted Nazi slogans and symbols both as a shock tactic and a campy send up. Songs like the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop " and the Dictators' "Master Race Rock " weren't celebrating Nazism as much as mocking its ignominious defeat, the author maintains.

In Jewish History: Facts versus Delusions, I quoted a fellow Harvard Jewish Studies student (who probably should have been a rapper):

"Many the lie that Jews live by."

His quip seems more true today than it did 30 years ago.

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