My [Projects]

You can find us beyond the urine filled elevators and up the graffiti tagged staircases. Journey pass the crack heads itching and drug dealers pitching. Walk around Bae-Bae’s kids and ignore the baby momma drama, and you’ll find us on the roof probably rocking paraphernalia that says something about Obama. Reflecting and thinking, maybe blowing square, as we sit up there, the masters of these projects, the many towering volumes of these unseen dreams, working and perfecting our craft as the superintendents of our personal self-esteem, speaking on visions of our lives and the world that only we’ve seen.

These are the projects of DJ “what’s his name” and MC “such and such” standing in his bedroom spitting his life and rhymes into a borrowed laptop for his myspace following, while he’s following his dreams as far open mics and talent shows can take em. Talent bubbling in his heart, confined, trying to break him. “Hip Hop Saved my Life” becomes his anthem, as Lupe paints this picture that only he can truly fathom. He spits his words over other somebody else’s beat. He and his boys are the street teams. They pound the pavements carrying their message with their feet. No grind no shine is on repeat in his mind. He refuses to trade it all for catchy beat and hook that rhymes. Instead he keeps broadcasting the reality of these hard times, a prose of sort that just so happens to rhyme.

These are the projects of the descendants of great thinkers, the baby Einsteins, the black Aristotles, the brown Socrates, the mini Cornell Wests writing their ghetto dissertations expressing their disgust with the current state of this supposedly united nation. Right fists in the air, middle finger to the law, words of fire being spit from their jaw; lawless, powerful, revolutionary rhetoric, message of truth directly from the few who are willing to tell it. They are street philosophers, uncertified hood doctors, professors of life, whose accomplishments include their knowledge of the lay man’s strife. Their words that brew within give us the audacity of hope, the boldness to dream, and the constant reminders that we are not forever slaves, but in fact the children of kings.

These are the projects of the engineers of the new millennium renaissance who pour the richness of their hearts out on the page. They live by Shakespeare’s words. They are the players and all the world is a stage. Their imagination runs wild painting vivid pictures of men, women, and every child. Their arsenal includes endless notebooks and journals, novels and memoirs of high literary merit, locked in loaded, but tucked in drawer like a pistol with no opportunity to share it. They are forever romanticizing the endless possibilities of existence by creating beautiful metaphors about the depths of the human spirit.

These are the projects of the great Spanish Harlem artists, the coffee shop designers, the runway hair gurus, the inspirers of Alvin Alley, the mo better blues saxophonist, the Spike Lees before do the right thing, the Alicias looking for their keys, the producers with the Kanye beats, the seventeen year old senators, the away from the pulpit ministers who all dwell in these in these projects, sitting on the rooftop looking out on the cities of their dreams.

They ignore their surroundings, send their minds past the defiling stench of their neighborhood, shake off the strongholds of ghetto mentalities and defy the status quo. Yes, you can find us beyond the urine filled elevators and up the graffiti tagged staircases. Journey pass the crack heads itching and drug dealers pitching. Walk around Bae-Bae’s kids and ignore the baby momma drama, and you’ll find us on the roof probably rocking paraphernalia that says something about Obama.

We’re writing songs of the revolution, painting murals of the new black man, writing poems about our aspirations and preaching to anybody who can understand. We are the forgotten youth, the unsigned hype, the literate blacks using the power to read and write. You can find us sitting on top of our projects, reflecting and thinking, maybe blowing square, as we sit up there, the masters of these projects, the many towering volumes of these unseen dreams, working and perfecting our craft as the superintendents of our personal self-esteem, speaking on visions of our lives and the world that only we’ve seen.