One unique thing I like in rap, is the frequency of times people share the lead voice, share who is in charge, for instance De La Soul, Kanye West. It seemed a community based position vs. the usual song spaces that celebrate one individual. One night I went down a Temptations Youtube marathon and realized that sort of consciousness, questioning who is the leader, dates back earlier, even further than Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams, Otis Williams and David Ruffin. Seemed community minded, though eventually David Ruffin, following Diana Ross destroying the Supremes, announced his new idea – why don’t we call ourselves David Ruffin and the Temptations! Poof he’s out of the band and a few years later not exactly a happy ending. Didn’t Shakespeare write about the intoxication of personal gain at the expense of meaningful relationships, four hundred years ago? I bet the same dynamics also were with the troglodytes. If the human mind is an all encompassing collective, experiencing individual states of self important blindness, then what does that mean about the life of the organism and its many apparent dramas. Just chemical reactions? I guess you can’t know what’s what from inside the system but you can sense what’s not the norm, maybe play with it. Going against the current is not the norm but gets you somewhere else, a place the current can’t go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"