The gate is closed
I’m on the side of the locked in.
We have a sister, Hip Hop, and she’s dying;
To whom do we owe this sin?

Born in the late 70’s, the Bronx, the 1520,
She, in time, enamored a planet.
Tickling radios with her rhythms and rhymes--
She sends the mainstream into a panic.

But the mainstream is a blob,
Like the amoeba seeking to consume.
Stunned, at first, by my sister’s ribald glory,
It sought to place her in a commercial tomb.

We, the Underground, repel the popular--
The blob has locked tight this gate of the fresh.
Seekin’ to cheapen Hip Hop’s life valve,
Popularity is an Underground’s death.

Time was, Hip Hop was the ****.
Now, thanks to the blob, she’s nothin’ but.
Good news though, she’s not all dead,
Even now she’s being revived from a wholesale rut.

The streets are calling her back;
The Underground is stirring once more,
Our sister will breathe fresh again--
And render the blob forlorn.