“There are kids in the audiences now who weren’t born when there wasn’t hip-hop. They grew up on it; it’s part of the culture. It’s a huge thing. It’s not segregated anymore. It’s not just in the Bronx; it’s all over the world. That’s why I think it’s more crucial now that we, as artists, take advantage of our platform.” Lauryn Hill in TIME Magazine, 1999.

BALANCE. HARMONY. RECIPROCITY. I was gonna write about honoring “the b-code” this morning.  But I decided to hold off on talking about that after coming across this Jay-Z clip yesterday.  I think it is dope because it exemplifies what The DDR stands for and why we continue to believe in the educational and inspirational potential of the 30 Days of… Series.  Similar to Lauryn Hill’s quote above, Jay-Z describes rap as “poetry”.  He says it is “thought-provoking.”  “There’s great writing in rap as well,” he says. “You never hear rappers being compared for like the greatest rap writers of all time. You hear Bob Dylan. So is Biggie Smalls in a Hitchcock way. Some of the things that Biggie wrote… Rakim, I mean, listen to some of the things he wrote. If you take those lyrics and you pull them away from the music and put ‘em up on the wall somewhere and someone had to look at them, they would say, ‘This is genius! This is genius work!’ I want people to take that away.” Regarding hip-hop Mr. Carter said he wrote Decoded because “I want people to also take away the quick judgments. Listen to the song,” he commands. “Listen to its intent. Try to figure out why a song like ‘Big Pimpin’ can exist. The same way that you try to figure out a song why ‘Meet the Parents’ exists. It’s clearly obvious that it has different meaning, but this, on the surface, is just fun and party music but there’s reasons behind that as well,” he continued. “I really wanted to lay this out in a clear and concise way [so] that people could look at it and say, ‘OK, if there’s thought and there’s intelligence and there’s reason and logic behind it, then maybe you have to deal with everything like that.’ ”

The DDR: This is why we do what we do.  This is why it matters.  Check out the video above.

Sidenote: LeBron [is] still talking. Where is his publicist?  Hasn’t he said enough? He’s vented, apologized, and acquiesced..  I’d like to see him fall back and take a family vacation or something.