Tap In: GOODWAVES! What Murs can teach us about the revolution

Groundwaves is a music mentoring program created by Murs, a hip-hop legend. Upon returning from performing at their 1st festival, Prop reflects on the importance of building community.

Learn more about Groundwaves here: https://www.groundwaveshiphop.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's no secret what our politics are here at Hood
Politics and, by extension, Cool Zone Media. Now, while there
are variations among us, things that may be not as
fully cooked or maybe others who have really thought these

(00:26):
things through, we're essentially... for the most part, there probably
shouldn't just be a dude running countries. And countries themselves
are kind of an unnecessary concept. And borders are made up.
Money's not real. We live on a planet that literally

(00:47):
gives us everything we need. It just comes out the ground.
But for some reason, we decided to make up a
value for a rock and say, you can't have this
plant that just come out the ground unless you pay
me for it. Absurd. That we have way more in
common with the working class on the other side of

(01:11):
the country than I do with the wealthy elites of
my own country. The only thing we got in common
is a passport. In other words, we're basically anarchists. But
What that requires, if you're going to live in a
world like this, if you're going to imagine this sort
of future, is a very robust community and understanding that

(01:35):
we are all we have and that we're stronger together,
we grow together, our resources belong to each other, and
that the absence of rulers isn't the same thing as
the absence of leaders. And today, I just want to
gush about my homeboy, Merce, who is a leader. Tap

(01:59):
in with me. Okay, so the reason I'm bringing this
up is that I think at this point, it was
last week, I went out to this thing called the

(02:20):
Good Waves Festival in Chicago. Goodwaves was growth out of
something he actually started in 2018 called Groundwaves. I have
bemoaned many a times the issue with artists, specifically hip hop,
generationally is they don't have open mics. If you make

(02:41):
music in your basement or in your house and just
upload it to YouTube, what you're missing is... one, the
idea of what we have, where it's like, you write something,
you think of something, I got to perform it Friday.
And that immediate response, the pressure, the fear of standing
in front of people, especially when they're your peers, people

(03:03):
that you respect, you admire, and to have to deliver
on the spot, that weight of being in front of
people immediately, it's the best. I tell you what, it's
why a lot of young dudes can't perform. It's because
that crucible was so important to us. Now, don't get
me wrong. We made our music at the crib. And

(03:27):
of course, there are ways to find community via the internet.
I'm not saying that. But what I'm saying is the
importance of working together because you realize you're not just
building our career. We're building the scene. That was what
was interesting about the hip hop scene I grew up with.
It's that we were We were not just becoming rappers

(03:51):
for ourselves. This was for the coast. We are doing
this for West Coast. This is Los Angeles. We are participating.
Hip hop was not something you watched. We are hip hop.
We are the culture. Sorry, pun intended. So we understood
that we're making something. We are repping our soil. So

(04:14):
we all need to be together. And on top of that,
it was fun, man. There was times where like, I
will shout him out by name. My man, David Poseidon,
what he would do is like, we're just on this
corner in Pomona and he would give us these like, hell,
these like writing prompts or like just these assignments of like,

(04:37):
all right, Hey, listen, everybody gets, everybody gets eight bars
and you have to rhyme your first bar with their
last bar. Um, this has to be, the freestyle has
to be all about nature. He would do, so you,
and I'm telling you, it's off the head. My, I
think I got politically radicalized by just being outside. There are,

(04:57):
Razzcast talked about the fact that there are probably street
deaths that were avoided because at the open mic, at
dim lights, at, you know, blowed at foundation. You meet
people from other parts of town. Like, Oh, he a blood.
He worked with them. Be all that dude from AT street.
We're all just here to break dance. You understand what

(05:19):
I'm saying? You find friendships over there. It's like, Oh man,
you know, are they cool? I seen your homeboy over there. Now,
of course stuff went down, you know, it is what
it is, but that community, I write the way I write.
Poseidon was the one that told us to like, yo,
When you're thinking of verses, when you're writing verses, think
of all five of your senses. Sight, smell, all of them.

(05:42):
So that your verses are immersive. So when I tell
you some of these like writing packs and stuff that
I learned at the open mics, at the community, hearing
each other like, yo, let me go into the car,
hearing what they put together, how this person did their voice.
I'm like, yo, how did you record that? It's like,
oh yeah, you stack it like this. Like it happened together.

(06:06):
These people are still my friends. These people are people
I still look up to. So that when somebody succeeds,
it feels like a win for all of us. The
Black Eyed Peas are from this scene. So me seeing
Will.i.am be what he is, I feel like I was
a part of that. Does that make sense? Blue, like,

(06:26):
you know, dilated peoples. This is our, these were our scene.
It feels like we all win when you see that.
Does that? It's a, I am so excited when I
see somebody from our era, from our open mics become stars.
You know who was the young homies from that scene

(06:46):
that I was from? Top Dog, Kendrick. Kendrick was the,
they were the young dudes at our, you understand what
I'm trying to say? It was a community and that's
been gone. Merce built one. Merce decided, You know, it
wasn't about his own, him being on stage. He has been,

(07:10):
I've never met anybody with such a clarity of mind
about what brings him joy. And what really brings him
joy is the community of hip hop. He took it
upon himself, not waiting for nobody else, went and found
a grant in Tulsa, in Northwest Arkansas, in Colorado, and
in Chicago. He created these communities. They're all ages. They're

(07:34):
open mics. They're writing workshops. They get immediate feedback. There's
production things. They get one-on-one talks with a person who, like,
do your Googles. Like, just do your six degrees of Merce.
There's nobody not connected to Merce. So after all this
work finally culminating into the Good Waves Music Festival in Chicago. Now,

(07:57):
one would say, how could somebody from L.A., be disrespected
in the city of Chicago. Let me tell you how
he did that. One is because he has been flying
out twice a month for the last two years and
helping with their scene. Number two, he knows how to
check in. Who's really the hottest person? Number three, it
was very clear that he's not building his own career,

(08:18):
that he is there for their scene. You know how
I know? Because Killer Mike was on this. Rhapsody was
on this. I was on this. Brother Ali was on this.
The Coyotes, DJ Premier, Static Selector. These were people that
are just his friends. And he brought them in. And
rather than stacking the headlining set, he interspersed in between

(08:43):
every national act with the Chicago act, all the way
down to the end, rather than putting all the locals
up top. You understand what I'm saying? And then, so
it's almost like you're using their scene. No, no, no, no.
Everyone gets a shine. Because of that, I had to
go on like at 1.30 in the afternoon. I went
on pretty early, but normally it would have been much later.
But it's because, no, I am a guest in their scene.

(09:08):
They should shine. People were driving, carpooling, people that met.
There's a story that Justin told us about Justin from
the Cultures United, the company, man. It's all happening. Justin
told us about there was a dude that just got
out of jail and a trans person. that they met
at Groundwaves and started doing music together. What I'm trying

(09:29):
to tell you is community is the keys to the revolution.
I know I got radicalized in the community of hip hop.
And what Merce proves to all of us is a
cornerstone principle of anarchy, of anarchism, is the absence of
rulers is not the same as the absence of leaders.

(09:52):
I thank God, Allah, and the ancestors for Brother Merce,
who took it upon himself to not build his own
career but to build a community. So I don't know
if he gonna see this, but I bring this from
my heart. I know hip hop's the culture I fell
in love with. It's my first language. And it's what
brought me to, it was my first taste of what

(10:16):
it looks like to truly live in one accord with
people of all sorts of diverse thoughts, ideas, and positions,
but to understand that we got one mission. That mission
is liberation. Ain't nobody telling him to do it. He
just did it. So listen, go meet your neighbors. Tap

(10:39):
in with me. Tap in with me.