We're Fired Up! We Won't Take No More!

Brother D With Collective Effort : How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise?

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In 1980 Brother D, a school teacher in the South Bronx, recorded what is likely the first political rap song.  "How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise?" is set to the musical track of "Got To Be Real" by Cheryl Lynn. Brother D is Daryl Aamaa Nubyahn, a member of the New York Family of Black Science, a revolutionary organization “dedicated to the uplifting of black people and to the acquiring of knowledge and skills.”. He tells the story of the song to Steven Hagar in his book Hip-Hop: The Illustrated History Of Break Dancing, Rap Music, and Graffiti : 

“I noticed kids around my block doing rap, but there was no message. I was teaching math in a vocational training program and I started running some raps for the kids in my class. I made deals with them like, you do a certain amount of work and I’ll rap for you at the end of the period. And they loved that. There was a strong desire in rap records for people to soup themselves up. Big fantasies-folks in their teens talking about my big car, I’m a movie star, I’ve got all the women in the world. People are very materially centered. Something flashes on TV and they have to go out and get it. With the idea of hooking rap up with political information and the practice I got rapping for my students, I began to write.”

Some of the lyrics could have been written in 2020:

Come on My people, people, people, can’t you see 

What’s really goin' on? 

Unemployment’s high, the housing’s bad 

And the schools are teaching wrong 

Cancer from the water, pollution in the air 

But you’re partying hard, like you just don’t care 

 Wake up y'all, you know that ain’t right 

 Cause that hurts everybody, black or white 

 Winter’s cold, can’t get no heat 

Just move your body to the beat 

While it takes you on a disco ride 

Get high until you’re pacified 

Our youth actin' like the living dead 

Ain’t talkin' bout the body. 

Talkin' bout the head... 

 Rising up! won't take no more! 

Rising up! won't take no more! 

 America was built, understand 

By stolen labor on stolen land 

Take a second thought, as you clap and stamp 

Can you rock the house from inside the camp? 

As you’re moving to the beat 'til the early light 

This country’s moving too, moving to the right 

Prepare now, or get high and wait 

Cause it ain’t no party in a police state 

 Blessed are we who dare to be free 

We gotta change the way we behave 

You gotta sacrifice for our righteous cause 

Or remain a passive slave 

 We’re not anti- any other racial group 

Just understand we’re pro-Black 

 And we’re against any one or thing 

That tries to hold us back