Immortal Technique Lyrics
"Homeland and Hip Hop"

To think about the origins of hip hop
in this culture and also about homeland security
is to see that there are at the very least two worlds in America.
One of the well-to-do and the struggling.
For if ever there was the absence of homeland security
it is seen in the gritty roots of hip hop.
For the music arises from a generation that feels
with some justice that they have been betrayed
by those who came before them.
That they are at best tolerated in schools,
feared on the streets, and almost inevitably
destined for the hell holes of prison.
They grew up hungry, hated and unloved.
And this is the psychic fuel that seems to generate
the anger that seems endemic in much of the music and poetry.
One senses very little hope above the personal goals of wealth
and the climb above the pit of poverty.
In the broader society the opposite is true,
for here more than any place on earth wealth
is more wide spread and so bountiful.
What passes for the middle class in America
could pass for the upper class in most of the rest of the world.
They're very opulent and relative wealth makes the insecure.
And homeland security is a governmental
phrase that is as oxymoronic, as crazy as saying military intelligence,
or the U.S Department of Justice.
They're just words that have very little relationship to reality.
And do you feel safer now? Do you think you will anytime soon?
Do you think duct tape and Kleenex and color codes will make you safer?
From Death row this is Mumia Abu Jamal