Conscious hip-hop

Is there a rise in consciousness within popular hip-hop?

Here are a few tracks I've come across in the last couple of months that've had an impact. Enjoy!

J Cole - Be Free - He had the option of performing anything off his new album but chose this song dedicated to Trayvon Martin.

Kendrick Lamar - The Blacker The Berry - Any video that starts off with a Malcolm clip is revolutionary in itself, add that to the fact that he dropped it the day after winning a Grammy when at his most popular and it calls for respect for the skill and strategy.

John Legend and Common - Glory - Performed at the Oscars last night. Politics entering pop culture makes it impossible to ignore what's going on in the world, it provides anthems and common narratives. 

Social Media Survival Tips

Facebook:

Know who your interesting friends/pages are and check out the things they specialise in. Try build a balance in this group to give yourself a good range of opinions but make sure none of it is the dumbed-down stuff you'd get on the news. 

I've got go-to friends for well thought out and shared views on feminist responses to certain music videos, liberal Islamic trends, radical left wing politics, technological breakthroughs, community service projects - when I'm looking for good opinions on those topics I get them there.

The "close friends" list is brilliant for just that - keeping up-to-date with what's happening in your close friends' lives but without having to check in constantly.

My most clicked through Facebook links come from Mipsterz.

Twitter:

Use it to find niches, there are things that you care about but not many others in the world do. I love checking out the latest content from from my favourite artists and thinkers who'll tweet links to their latest projects - this includes philosophers, graf artists, musicians, poets, fine artists, magazine contributors. 

Instagram:

My memory sucks so my main reason for using this is so that I can go back and remember some of the cool things I got to do. I usually just post one or two nice pictures from the event that bring back all the memories and thoughts I had associated with it. I try follow people that present interesting ideas visually or present interesting visuals.

Also a great place to check out pics of baby animals.

My general rule is that social media should be used to develop you through the sharing of thoughts, ideas and beauty but all too often it turns into an outlet for vanity, pride and anger. So think before you post kideos...and forgive me for my shortcomings.

Social networks are ruining my life

I swear -  I’m on social networks like all day, every day, to the point of obsession where I am always touching my phone every few minutes, never missing any post from anyone, even catching up to posts I last saw AND I FREAKING HATE IT. 

Why am I like this? Are you this way too? Always in the know, never disconnected. It’s obsessive, wasteful and it’s exhausting. I guess there is a sense of ego involved - knowing things before everyone else, seeing breaking news as it happens, consuming the newest of new information all at your fingertips, always updated. Then there's also that feeling of pseudo-connection where you feel like one less lonely person by distracting yourself with all these social networks to help you forget that you don't have a cute boy to text… (kidding! kind of). I don’t know how healthy this is (probably not at all), but I think that it’s a major underlying reason why we use social networks as active, feeling,  human beings. That feeling of being a-part-of, of being connected. Only, the irony is that this is not actual human connection. It’s a bubble of mind-trickery and instant gratification. I want friend requests, likes, retweets and DMs in real life, dammit!  

Oh, this sweet, modern world we live in!

Using social networks is a major love/hate relationship for me but without it I don't know what I'd do with myself! They are my little friends throughout the day, my company, my escape. This, however, doesn’t stop me from complaining about them, just like I do about my real friends! 

Facebook :

The Original. I like Facebook because you get a lot of different kinds of information on it – people’s private life stuff/constructions, pictures, videos, articles, links, game scores. Yaaaay-ish!

But, Facebook to me is like going to a Joburg fete. It’s the place you go when there are absolutely no other fun things happening in the city and where you going to bump in to  a lot of annoying teenagers, old classmates, aunties/uncles and randoms - just people who don't interest you and whose lives you don't want necessarily want to know about. Nor do you want them to know too much about yours.

Facebook to me these days is so random and so communal - it’s the last place I go to post anything because I just feel that’s it’s a very public and open space to share things with people that are not necessarily my closest friends.  I mean I use social networks but I also don't want people I never see or hang out with all up in my bizznizz. Having said that, I feel more in control over the people I share things with on other social networks, mostly because those are newer and have a more updated version of people that are in my life. Also, I’m too lazy to go and remove every acquaintance on my long list of Facebook friends when I have other alternatives to use, you know? Facebook a place for the spreading of mass information like, “Oh hey, I’m moving to another country”, rather than day-to-day events “Yo! I saw this pretty sunset I saw today!”

Also, I must just say that in my experience the people who use Facebook as their primary social network are not usually the most cutting edge or interesting people, with the most fascinating or thought-provoking stuff to say/share, thus dulling my experience even more. Shame Facebook, I BEEN over you.

Twitter:

I like to refer to Twitter as the big black hole on the Internet where inspired, great thoughts and ideas go to die. Well, for me anyway.  This is because when I have a thought that I actually like or deem valuable or super cool, I usually tweet it For example: my dream job of being a puppy photographer/Disney songwriter. I almost forgot they were my dreams after tweeting them!!! Tweeting quickly puts one’s thoughts out there and leaves one satisfied. In so doing, your thought seem to be shared, expressed, done. What this does however, is it prevents me from developing and reflecting on the idea, thought or opinion – it just ends up being tweeted and left at that. So for example, if I have an idea for a song or poem and think up a really cool line for it, I tweet that line. But, I never actually get down to writing it somewhere, thinking about it more or developing it even further by writing more lines and completing the idea. Or if I’m feeling frustrated by something, I can quickly just bitch about it in 140 characters or less and feel better, instead of really considering the situation and how I could learn from it or what I could take from it, instead of resorting to the quick fix of complaining about it.

 The idea of instant gratification here is a biggie. Twitter gives me both the comfort and illusion of being heard, even though all I’ve done is wasted a thought on a few hundred people, most of whom are probably not even active on Twitter.  It’s just a guise of expression. See, I told you it’s a deep dark Internet hole! Eventually the idea or thought is forgotten and the potential for its development also dies. 

I have obviously come to realize that Twitter is the wrong platform for these inspired brain farts and opinions on life. But it is a lovely, sticky web for the laziness of thinking and dealing with life, and also for the fear of writing. Two problems I have literally just discovered I have! Haha!  And meh.

Instagram:

Let me not even try to deny it - I love Instagram. It is the most stimulating social network to me. Statuses and information aka hashtags/description and pictures, both of which usually tend to be of a higher quality - literally and figuratively. It’s the best of both worlds.  It’s streamlined, with a focus of higher quality content than any other social networks and I think it’s pushing us in a strong direction in terms of technology, dissemination of information, our individual use of creativity and overall higher standards on the internet. I like it. 

As an individual user however, it’s a freakin stressful situation for me. I never know which of my 250 images I capture of 2 hours of my day I should actually Instagram. I’m always confused about which of those pictures are the best, which most authentically expresses what I want to show people (I always want to keep it real, no lies or fake representations) which do I look the best in (haaa! I know you do it too), how many pictures are too many of the same event, the time frame of posting… (side note : I once had a friend tell me she unfollowed me because #latergrammed too much. Really though?? I enjoy basking in certain moments because sometimes life is THAT good and THAT sacred). Don’t even get me started on choosing a filter! As an active user, I do want to share cool pictures that are of a good quality which will be appreciated by the above-average Instagram user (Yoh, I think I’m fancy huh!). Ensuring this happens though, is clearly a headache in my life. 

In addition, I do find myself doing a lot of eye rolling at the unavoidable culture of self-promotion and ego boosting that I come across on Instagram from including and notwithstanding the repertoire of too many selfies, too much showing off, too many hot bods, constructions vs reality, virtual realities, bling bling, etc etc. Instagram makes all this pretty normal and acceptable, even though I think we can do better as young humans. I do enjoy high-fashion posts, #ootd, Beyonce’s feed (also #bringbadgalririback!), design ideas, behind the scenes of lives and what’s happening in everyday lives, pretty, faraway places, pics of jewelry, wedding dresses and tattoos and of course the real reason I even got Instagram – pictures of baby animals!!!! So, I guess it’s not all bad.  Also, have you ever seen a picture baby hippo?? Just do it.

It’s a complicated and modern world we live in. When there wasn’t Instagram, there were polaroids. When there was no Facebook, there were letters and phone calls. When there was no Twitter, there were more public outbursts, I’m sure. These forms way of communication and expressions have always existed in some shape or form (So, stop blaming the demise of moral society on Facebook, old people). I guess it’s how we navigate through it all that makes the difference. I could never understand people who never ever had Facebook or don’t use any social networks, and I probably still don’t, but I do envy the peace that they have every day. Me, personally, I am going to try and focus on being more present and patient in all moments and maybe chatting up a stranger in the parking lot, or writing with a pen and paper more. Hey, maybe I’ll even scream at the top of my lungs with delight or annoyance in the grocery store. But first, I gotta update all my statuses with this blog post. The blasted irony.

Let me know how you feel about this too!

Peace!

Nafeesa x

P.S Just thought of posting blog posts to people. Like actually in the post. It can be the new blogging!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No? Ok bye.

Allow me to reintroduce myself….

(My name is Hov', OH, H-to-the-O-V
I used to move snowflakes by the O-Z)

If this just rang through your head right now…......................Nice!!!

On the real though, this blog has been dead. Dead dead dead. The reasons for this are wild and vast. I mean we started this blog as unemployed graduates with a lot of time to indulge in our obscure, alternative thoughts and hang out on coffee shops fantasizing about life. Oh wait, we still subscribe to the latter, but now we have less time to mess around and pursue what we really want to. Ah the corporate life! Aslam, co-blogger and homie, in a bold move (great for him, but horrible for me), moved to Sharjah to teach English for almost a year now and is probably going to keep going on world adventures. I, on the other hand, have missed my friend A LOT, but I’ve also somehow become a workaholic type and this has pretty much killed my creative drive. NOT ON. NEED THAT.

This blog was started by us as outlet the share our thoughts, critiques, tastes and ideas on everything that we love and are inspired by. These are not always common or mainstream, but they are real and affect us in a real way. I must say though that, for me, it is very frustrating having all these ideas about the world I live in and not always being able to share it with people who relate and who essentially ‘feel’ me. This is one of the reasons I wanted to be part of a blog - a space that is mine, where I can share the things in my mind with more people than in real life. We’re not up in this blog game to get more followers, or be invited to the cool parties, or to win any popularity contests. No. The Rebel and The Urban Edge represents a place for us to share our honest, sometimes outlandish contemplations, and to share what keeps inspired, interested, bothered. It’s a space for authentic, original and fearless thought that will maybe inspire, maybe present new perspectives, maybe just be fun, hopefully all of these! Or none. Deuces!

I’m so grateful for this space! I literally dream of things to write. I am constantly jotting down and I am so driven by this blog! I’ve sat down a million times to write, but honestly it hasn’t just been time constrained. Things like being uninspired, distracted and fearful all got in my way. But ain’t nobody got time for that! So we're back in the game. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to visit this blog and read our stuff. It makes my heart happy! Plus, today I saw that had over 10 000 views. Good Lawwd! OK fine, 5000 of those views were probably me, but still! Me and Aslam are on it now! Please come back for more!

In our attempt to re-invigorate the blog, we have a shiny new banner! These pics were taken in December of last year, when I hung with Aslam-guy in his new hometown. We work up early, hustled from taxi to taxi to metro in search for a true gem in the heart of plastic Dubai – a place called The Archive in Safa Park. The Archive is essentially a coffee shop in a park attached to an even cooler modern library that boasts the most impressive collection of Islamic and Middle Eastern arts and culture books that I’ve ever seen or probably ever will see. I read so many different, amazing things – a photo diary documenting Hajj in 1939/1940 (my fave), a book on all of Azzedine Alaïa's work in the 21^st century, a book explaining the history and types of Graffiti work and their meanings in Palestine, an entire collection of poetry from Khalil Gibrain, a book documenting and explaining every single high rise building built in Dubai up to a few years ago, Zaha Hadid’s entire architecture portfolio, history books of the Arab dynasty, books on Arabic calligraphy, art work of Al Ghazali philosophy, just to name a few. Needless to say, we were joyfully lost in those books for hours. Literally. For breakfast, brunch, lunch and afternoon tea. We indulged and we found our happy place. Oh! How can I forget! We also got to see a mural that graf artist El Seed, who we love, did just a few days before at The Archive. It was a great day indeed.

So welcome back again and see you soon?

Peace and love,

Nafeesa

Corporates really suck

I came across an article listing the year's best employees and lo and behold, a company that I had just resigned from was featured near the top. I didn't resign because I saw a brilliant opportunity somewhere else but because I genuine believe that my work was making the world a worse place and being in a position where I did not have overriding financial obligations my moral obligation made it necessary for me to leave. This may have been a mistake and I may have to rejoin the corporate machine at some point and writing this piece may severely hinder my chances of being able to get a job back there but I thought it good to share my thoughts on what corporate jobs are all about.

Note that I was in one of the better ones.

1. Work sucks I know - moving from university to work one of the major complaints I've heard from several peers and experienced first hand is that your self-worth drops significantly. Decisions you were free to make are no longer yours (waking hours, skipping lectures hours, dress code) and more significantly your time is no longer yours. You can no longer spend a week reading into a new topic because being a grown up means doing grown up things. Working from 8 to 5, coming home exhausted, looking forward to an hour of television (gym if you're enthusiastic) and some supper table conversation before you get to bed in order to wake up earlier than you'd want to for yet another day. Trying to socialise or seek stimulation outside of work during the week will mean low energy and performance levels at work the next day getting you the looks you don't want from your superiors and colleagues (social manipulation). Weekend's are always too short and there's usually something from work you thought you'd be able to finish up over the weekend that ends up taking longer than you thought and further dampening the little bit of fun/stimulation the weekend was supposed to provide. This insight is not new at all. Everyone's experienced it, everyone complains about it.

2. The insignificance of it all. If you end up at a large multi-national corporate (the one's we're supposed to want to work for because they offer the best salaries, packages, travel opportunities) the decisions in your office aren't yours to make. Even the top boss in your office isn't making many real decisions. His (usually a he) job is merely to execute whatever plan has been developed on the other side of the world by analysts who've looked at the models and past case studies and reasoned that this course of action will be best. Their work would seem equally meaningless as they never see any of their plans being executed, just reams of paper passed on for approval and a performance evaluation congratulating them on the paper used. You become a tiny cog in a big, big machine. Sometimes your efficient spinning makes a little bit of a difference - when you just start out, whether you spin or not is pretty inconsequential...they make sure of that, too much risk attached. The multi-nationals got so big for a reason. They don't let mess-ups happen. Everything is well-reasoned by those with experience. Your job is to execute, not to think, just execute. If you have some insight feel free to pass it up along the chain until it reaches someone (usually your immediate supervisor) who will tell you (nicely) that they had the exact same idea when they started but it won;t work because of x,y and z.

3. The work is genuinely evil. This is the crux of it. We know that their is inequality in the world. We know that inequality is increasing. Inequality and not poverty is the root cause of unhappiness, and crime so it affects those on both sides of the divide. We also all aspire to get corporate jobs - jobs that deepen inequality. The big picture became clear to me when I was selling a new washing powder in an informal settlement out of a Shoprite store to whom I can only affectionately call a Mama. The new washing powder brings competition into the previously monopolized industry, great because it means lower prices but this is the smallest band-aid over the largest bullet hole of what is going on. The band-aid does more damage than good because everyone applying it doesn't look past it at the bigger picture and only focuses on the "good" they're doing. The Mama's money will go to the corporate. Seems fair enough but there's a book well worth reading called 23 Things They Don;t Tell You About Capitalism and one of the things is the decision making within corporates.

The corporations profits are reinvested or given to shareholders, seems fair because they each own a share of the company but if we look at who your typical shareholder is it's quickly apparent how inequality is being deepened on a daily level and how we contribute to it every time we make a purchase and especially when we get jobs making corporations more efficient and making profits. Shareholders are people with money. The Mama's money is not going back into her community to improve her life, the life of her family and friends, it is going to middle and upper-class shareholders who sit very far away and use that money to improve their lives. What did the shareholders do for their lives to deserve being bettered over that of the Mama's? Basically they had more money first - legacies of colonialism, years of racism, slave-trade, it all fits in.

So when you get offered a job at one of the year's best employees it's best to check the criteria of best-ness. Best for me because I am trained to narrowly perceive my life in terms of how much money I make to buy nice cars, homes and clothes, go on nice holidays and impress potential in-laws; best for the Mama who I will work hard to more efficiently take as much money from her as possible (nicely termed as up-selling or increasing the basket size of her purchase); best for the corporates who get the best of university students to work for them to improve how much profit they can take from the poor and give to the rich; best for my soul to be accountable before God of all my life's actions?

On Love and Reason

A Journey of Understanding Love

I began thinking about love years ago when I heard the term come up in talks at mosques. Love is something we normally start thinking about thanks to television and movies, or maybe within families but my first serious engagement around it was through a spiritual lens. I would often hear that having love for your Creator and love for the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) were amongst the highest aims for a Muslim to strive towards. In this way love is a spiritual exercise.

I found it strange however that both love and spirituality are two concepts that rarely received the discussion space needed for me to come to understand them. Both terms relate to a fundamentally subjective experience. The subjectivity tends to take it away from the limited realm of topics that are discussed. We'll talk easily about those quantifiable and measurable sciences like physics, physiology and the like because they are in the shared objective world around us. Less easily we speak about common abstract topics like politics and economics. However, only with great hesitance do we engage in subjective experiences that are perhaps the most meaningful and universal, like love and spirituality. 

The first problem is that there is an insufficient vocabulary to speak about these topics. Because they are so closely tied to our emotions we often conclude that they cannot be, or aren't meant to be understood and instead they are to just be accepted. This is not to say that they are not expressed at all, in fact the expression of love and spirituality is most sought after, but the expression tends to take the form of poetry and not prose. Through poetry a glimpse of what is felt can be expressed although I find most poetry to be largely insufficient in giving me an understanding of the concepts. I think in prose, I need prose.

The vagueness of understanding love has consequences. Expressions like "they love you they just have trouble showing it" are common and reflect the differences in what one expresses and the other perceives. I believe a common language or framework of understanding love is essential to allow the emotion to be translated to the rational. Even if the framework of understanding exists only within your mind. It may still be inconclusive and never "truly" capture what is felt; but certain people are rationalists and they need rational explanations of concepts to develop a framework of understanding.

What is this "Love"?
Instances in which love arises: from the personal "love yourself" to "love thy neighbour"; a parent's love for their child and the reciprocal; the most spoken about love between partners; and spiritual love. Each of these is different, we have an intuitive grasp of this but are we able to go beyond the intuition and describe these differences? More importantly, is a description of these differences useful in terms of negotiating and managing that specific relationship? 

Preceding a reflection on the conditions of love what may be useful is a general understanding of relationships. Relationships will always take place between two individuals, that seems to be obvious enough, except of course unless we're talking about a relationship with your self...which I will argue is the necessary starting point but that needs to be put on hold for now.

How to relationship:

1. Know who you are.

2. Know what you need from another human.

3. Find another human.

4. Try your absolute best to know the other human.

5. Decide if that human can give you what you need and what you can provide in return.

6. Establish rituals with the other human that define your relationship and allow needs to be fulfilled.

7. Recognize that humans change. (This is very important)

8. When you or the other human change decide how the change affects the relationship.  

NB: 

on points 1 and 4, knowing yourself and knowing another human is not easy. 

To know requires: 

a) care

b) to seek knowledge

on point 7, humans change all the time...it is important to constantly engage in conversations that allow you to gauge the nature and extent of the changes in order to adjust your expectations from the relationship accordingly.

Consider how the above applies to the relationship we have with ourselves, our parents, our Creator.

Care
Love requires care. It seems easier to describe why we care for someone rather than why we love them because in many ways care has a foundation in reason. We care for some human beings based on what they provide for us but this is based on our construction of a particular worldview, a specific creation of meaning. To say that we care for the company of person A over person B is to say that we find stimulation more appealing from one rather than another based on our definitions of what is valuable, what is meaningful, what is stimulating - a reasoned claim despite its roots in our various unique life experiences. The perception of care thus differs from the carer to the one being cared for.

Because there's a human need to socially interact. There's societal norm that dictates actions that can be misread as caring. I need to know why someone cares. How they show they care to ensure I'm not misreading etiquette or being a polite human for care. 

Understanding/knowing as a prerequisite for love: 
Some parents that claim to love their kids without knowing them, without having the type of conversations with them necessary for them to get to know their children and this is problematic, it leaves scars. Likewise many ritualistic actions are performed "for God" but without knowledge of God are these acts really meaningful for Him or is it like the child who gets all his material needs fulfilled without any emotional needs recognized?

Can we know another person? Can we know ourselves? We are dynamic so understanding requires constant dialogue aimed at knowing the other and the self. It might be best to understand knowing another person and knowing yourself as a metaphorical "peeling off of layers". Unfortunately none of us can see all of ourselves at any one time and simultaneously need to see all of yourself to truly know yourself. Furthermore, in any relationship the other will only be able to see a part of you at any one time and that instantaneous snapshot of you can only be an aspect of who you are, one that may be perceived differently by you and by the other. "Peeling off layers" is a mindset of acknowledging that I will never fully know another. That there will always be something more to know which has the advantage of making the other a fascinating subject of enquiry that never ceases to provide more beauty, grace, complexity but the disadvantage is that you have to accept that you will never, ever truly know another. Whatever idea we have of another could change at any moment as another layer is peeled away and complexities of character are revealed.

Change:

What happens when change happens within a person and when change happens in our perception of a person? Do we forsake the relationship or rather just adjust its nature? There must be a criteria for this based on a knowledge of why you are in the relationship, what are the essential elements of the person are beyond which the amount of change means they're no longer the person we entered into the relationship with.

Concluding thoughts:
This post is probably not the coherent and articulate piece it was intended to be. It was the result of many hours of grappling with these ideas, processes of internalization and difficult conversations. I hope there were some useful phrases and ideas that are helpful in developing these complex ideas within your mind.

I had written these lines without knowing exactly where to fit them in so thought I might as well drop them in at the end and you can decide.

- If you love it is your duty to understand, to listen, to care. If you don't do these things it reflects an element of laziness. If you don't do these things and still claim to love you're a liar. 

- To love is active, requires activity and thought and to assume otherwise causes pain.