Sunday, July 9, 2017

Who Says Rap & Hip-Hop Music Are Always Bad? How the Young Adult Novel, Got the Flow: The Hip-Hop Diary of a Young Rapper, Plans to Change that Perspective




I have to confess that my upcoming book, Got the Flow: The Hip-Hop Diary of a Young Rapper is my current obsession. Everything has become second priority, including writing more quotes, short stories, and articles. I just wanted to take a minute and write about why I am writing this trilogy. I figured that since this is my first novel I’m completed to full-length, others could benefit from my experience. 

There have been plenty of intellectual hip-hop acts like Whodini, Public Enemy, Tupac, Ice-T, N.W.A., and many others. One of my favorites is a Christian rapper named Lecrae (watch his “Blessings” music video).

What I want to do with this book is show that hip-hop and rap music can be an intelligent and inspiring voice for the youth. Teenagers can get so many mixed messages from the music of hip-hop and rap. If you put a controversial or just plain wrong idea over a catchy beat, it can become infectious and spread faster than ever with the hyperconnectivity we all have now with the rising popularity of smartphones.

In this young adult urban fiction novel, the protagonist is sixteen-year-old, gap-toothed Troy Jones. He is passionate about hip-hop and helping his mom get out of poverty. He calls this movement in rap “Intellirap”. He uses the power of hip-hop, rap, the microphone, and voice to pen several songs including “The Scientist Rap” (a rap song about prominent scientists including Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison), “Slim Samurai Rap” (where he makes creative metaphors and similes about his rapping abilities), and “A Rapper’s Prayer” (where he raps to God asking for guidance and strength so he can change the world for the better after his mom has a heart attack). All of these songs are available on my YouTube channel or on soundcloud (downloadable).

Free PDF excerpt here!

Read full article here

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