to go back to a place much simpler than this /
cause after all the partyin’ and smashin’ and crashin’ /
and all the glitz and the glam and the fashion /
and all the pandemonium and all the madness /
there comes a time where you fade to the blackness /
and when you’re staring at that phone in your lap /
and you hoping but them people never call you back /
but that’s just how the story unfolds /
you get another hand soon after you fold /
and when your plans unravel /
and they sayin’ what would you wish for /
if you had one chance /
so airplane airplane sorry i’m late /
i’m on my way so don’t close that gate /
if I don’t make that then I’ll switch my flight /
and I’ll be right back at it by the end of the night /
can we pretend that airplanes /
in the night sky /
are like shooting stars? /
i could really use a wish right now /
somebody take me back to the days /
before this was a job, before I got paid /
before it ever mattered what I had in my bank /
yeah back when I was tryin’ to get into the subway /
and back when I was rappin’ for the hell of it /
but nowadays we rappin’ to stay relevant /
i’m guessin that if we can make some wishes outta airplanes /
then maybe yo maybe I’ll go back to the days /
before the politics that we call the rap game /
and back when ain’t nobody listened to my mix tape /
and back before I tried to cover up my slang /
but this is for the Cada, what’s up Bobby Ray /
so can i get a wish to end the politics /
and get back to the music that started this shit /
so here i stand and then again i say /
i’m hopin’ we can make some wishes outta airplanes.”
- B.o.B., “Airplanes”
Loving this song right now. It captures everything I need to hear.
Rap is such a fucking blessing. I love rap. When I was in college, a boyfriend — to this day one of the smartest people I’ve ever met — told me that rap was the closest thing our world had seen to Shakespeare since Shakespeare. I didn’t understand it at the time.
Rap creates brilliant, practiced poets and then it provides them a worldwide audience. I don’t know that there’s ever been another time in history that produced poetic talent of such excellence, and in these numbers. Because there’s never been a time in history where poetry was practiced so diligently by so many people.
Every single day this enormous mass of people congregates in elementary schools, in the projects, in bedrooms and living rooms, in cars and on street corners, and practices poetry. They start young. They give each other honest, sometimes brutal, feedback. They try again. And again. And again. For hours each day, every day of their lives — relentlessly refining and reimagining the skill of poetry en masse, the way the endless swarm of boys on Wall Street pore over financial statements and market cap and futures to erect and sustain the most powerful economy in the history of the world.
And even though being a poet for a living is a long shot, they keep at it. The best and the brightest stick with it, day after day, because, in many of these cases, they don’t see a better career option. They don’t abandon poetry to become advertising copywriters or newspaper journalists or management consultants or lawyers. In their mind, in their world, the poetry is their only shot. There is no safer route. There is nobody to tell them that there is a safer route. So they never stop practicing. They never stop sharing. They never stop taking feedback.
The best and the brightest — that handful of the millions with the sharpest gleam of genius about them, the ability to deconstruct a situation, an emotion, creatively and then, impassioned, communicate the results succinctly and spot-on — don’t go to college. They don’t get MBAs or go to J-school, and they don’t get recruited to work at Goldman Sachs or CNN. They don’t stop writing poetry every day because everything about it is tinged with a rusting air of angst, of ennui, of general uncoolness. Poetry is the coolest thing going on in their communities - often, it’s the only thing.
The result is a never-ending stream of exceptionally refined poetry distributed daily to an international, unimaginably enormous audience that is listening. That is paying and caring and providing further feedback. That loves it and wants more. That is recognizing the inherent beauty of language. An audience that is learning and growing from the wisdom passed along through poetry in a way they haven’t been able to do for centuries. Or ever, really, on this scale.
It totally rocks my world.
