This book depicts the socio-philosophic and historic influence and impact of the lyrics of Curtis Mayfield, Bob Marley, and Tupac Shakur. My most emphasized objective is the critically conscious dissection and elucidation of the lyrical artistry created by these great men. The critical essays that follow are not exclusively intended to be biographical sketches nor personal indictments of the represented poets, for such writings are currently available. Motivated intensely by the vision and voice of these great Black men, I set out to explore and document the supreme revelations encompassed within the circumference of their verbal influence. An influence based on a profoundly prophetic vision of reality, truth, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, self, God, and enemy. And perhaps even more so, a powerfully protagonistic voice which embraced the hopes and ambitions of the Dark masses of anti-oppression, suppression, genocide, fear, despondency, ignorance, enslavement, poverty, exploitation and pro-liberation, upliftment, empowerment, rebellion, and revolution. The result: a compilation of well-researched and purposeful discussions on a collective lyrical legacy incomparable, invincible, yet, especially to those of us whose very survival and possible summit as a race depends on our overwhelming reception and conscious acceptance of it, relatively, and perhaps intentionally, invisible. This book is as much a profound collaboration of lessons than it is anything else—lessons necessary for the possibility of liberation and fulfillment of prophecy.
Reality, along with all its relative references and awesome inferences and, in particular, Black reality, is what makes the lyrics of Mayfield, Marley, and Shakur so extraordinary and worthy of scholarly evaluation. Boldly interpreting and recreating reality as they saw it or would like to have seen it, these lyrical geniuses divinely articulated to an entire race their distinct and common predicament, intentions, and predictions. They induced their own undeniable will on and for the glory of the Black masses through the rhythmic conveyance of reality-conscious and challenging lyricism. Most people will be quick to argue in favor of the superficial unconnectedness of these artists, as well as their musical genres, without or before seeking absolute comprehension of the contiguous and communal power of their vision and voice. We too often fail to recognize that soul music, “rap[,] and reggae are fingers of the same hand. It is music that spun from the objective reality of the suffering of the people who developed [and revolutionized] it. It is living tissue, at its core is the people and the lives they are living.”
