{"id":5043,"date":"2023-08-10T13:11:10","date_gmt":"2023-08-10T18:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/read.streamapse.com\/?p=5043"},"modified":"2026-04-13T16:58:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T21:58:22","slug":"how-a-key-phrase-from-islam-knowledge-of-self-became-a-pillar-of-hip-hop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=5043","title":{"rendered":"How A Key Phrase From Islam \u2018Knowledge Of Self\u2019 Became A Pillar Of Hip-Hop"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Knowledge of self\u2019: How a key phrase from Islam became a pillar of\u00a0hip-hop.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was 9 years old when Eric B. and Rakim\u2019s \u201cPaid in Full\u201d dropped. I have vivid memories of the bass-laden track booming out of car stereos and hearing it on Black radio, like Kiss FM<\/a>\u2019s top eight at 8 p.m. countdown.<\/p>\n

On the track \u201cMove the Crowd<\/a>,\u201d Rakim \u2013 also known as \u201cthe God MC<\/a>\u201d \u2013 rhymes \u201cAll praise is due to Allah and that\u2019s a blessing.\u201d Growing up as a Black Muslim in the Crown Heights<\/a> neighborhood of Brooklyn, I was already familiar with the phrase. Like all Muslims, I learned to say it during my daily prayers and as an expression of gratitude.<\/p>\n

But when Rakim laced those words into the lyrics of what ultimately became a popular song, he affirmed what I was seeing around me in my Brooklyn community \u2013 that Islam and Muslims were prominent features of Black life.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A key concept<\/h2>\n

Rakim dropped another familiar phrase in the song: knowledge of self.<\/p>\n

With knowledge of self, there\u2019s nothing I can\u2019t solve\nAt 360 degrees I revolve\nThis an actual fact, it\u2019s not an act, it\u2019s been proven\nIndeed and I proceed to make the crowd keep moving.\n<\/code><\/pre>\n
When Rakim extols the benefits of \u201cknowledge of self\u201d to himself as an emcee and a human being, he is drawing on a philosophy that has been critical to Black Islam<\/a>, a term I use to describe the different forms of Islamic belief and practice found in Black America.<\/p>\n
Knowledge of self comes from this tradition, beginning roughly a century ago, which has become known for advancing Black consciousness, resistance and redemption. Knowledge of self is an ethical pursuit to understand one\u2019s place in and relationship to the world in order to positively change it.<\/p>\n
In my 2016 book, \u201cMuslim Cool: Race, Religion and Hip Hop in the United States<\/a>,\u201d I demonstrate how knowledge of self is fundamental to hip-hop. It is often described as hip-hop\u2019s \u201cfifth element<\/a>,\u201d the others being DJing; emceeing or \u201crhyming\u201d; graffiti or \u201cwriting\u201d; and dance, from \u201cb-boying\u201d to \u201cpop locking.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the phrase and the consciousness that it represents have been mentioned in too many songs to count \u2013 from Public Enemy\u2019s \u201cFight the Power<\/a>\u201d to Lauryn Hill\u2019s \u201cDoo Wop<\/a>\u201d and Talib Kweli\u2019s \u201cK.O.S. (Determination)<\/a>\u201d \u2013 history shows the term has been a part of Islamic literature for nearly a millennium. For example, the first chapter of the celebrated 12th-century Islamic scholar Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali\u2019s famous text \u201cThe Alchemy of Happiness<\/a>\u201d is titled \u201cThe Knowledge of Self.\u201d<\/p>\n
In my book, I make the case that Islam, specifically Black Islam, gave hip-hop knowledge of self.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
The lessons<\/h2>\n
Rakim\u2019s reference to knowledge of self\u2019s being an \u201cactual fact\u201d is a nod to the \u201cactual facts<\/a>\u201d of the \u201cLost-Found Muslim Lessons,\u201d the catechism taught by Master W.D. Fard Muhammad, who founded the Nation of Islam on July 4, 1930. Master Fard taught these lessons to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who would become the religious movement\u2019s leader.<\/p>\n
These lessons are fundamental to the way that the Nation of Islam understands the world and the role of Black people in it. The lessons are also studied by the Nation of Gods and Earths<\/a>, a related spiritual path, of which Rakim is a member. Knowledge of self comes to hip-hop through these lessons.<\/p>\n
Rakim was not alone. During the golden age of hip-hop<\/a>, a period from about the mid-1980s through mid-1990s, rappers \u2013 influenced by Black Islam \u2013 steadily proclaimed their knowledge of self in their music. Big Daddy Kane declared there\u2019s \u201cno pork on my fork<\/a>,\u201d an acknowledgment of the Islamic injunction against the consumption of swine. The Poor Righteous Teachers gave the Arabic greeting as salaamu alaikum<\/a> with the dome of Harlem\u2019s Masjid Malcolm Shabazz in the background in the music video for \u201cRock Dis Funky Joint.\u201d And from Brooklyn to the California Bay, acclaimed emcees like Guru<\/a> and local acts<\/a> were rhyming about \u201cpraying to the east,\u201d a reference to the Muslim practice.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
The message<\/h2>\n
Long before rappers spoke of knowledge of self in the 1980s, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad expounded on the term in his book \u201cMessage to the Blackman in America<\/a>,\u201d released in 1965 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. In it, he emphasized Black self-reliance \u2013 with knowledge of self being a key component.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe so-called Negroes must be taught and given Islam,\u201d Muhammad wrote. \u201cWhy Islam? Islam, because it teaches first the knowledge of self. It gives us the knowledge of our own. Then and only then are we able to understand that which surrounds us \u2026 this kind of thinking produces an industrious people who are self-independent.\u201d<\/p>\n
In some ways, it comes as little surprise that a term promulgated by a fierce advocate of self-reliance in the mid-1960s would be so widely embraced by hip-hop shortly after it was born as a counterculture in the early 1970s.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Hip-hop\u2019s consciousness<\/h2>\n
When Black Islam helped hip-hop culture cultivate knowledge of self, it created an aspiration, arguably unique for contemporary popular music as a whole, to not just rhyme about it or write graffiti about it, and so on, but to apply it in real life. As a result, knowledge of self became hip-hop\u2019s consciousness, emphasizing an awareness of injustice and the imperative to address it through both personal and social transformation. Critically, this consciousness, while informed by Black Islam, is embraced by hip-hop community members of all stripes.<\/p>\n
The consciousness led to different forms of hip-hop-based activism. Songs against gun violence like The Stop the Violence Movement\u2019s \u201cSelf-Destruction<\/a>\u201d and \u201cWe Are All in the Same Gang<\/a>\u201d by the West Coast All Stars.<\/p>\n
\u201cSelf-Destruction\u201d opens, not inconsequentially, with a sample of a speech by Malcolm X, the onetime spokesman for the Nation of Islam and icon of Black Islam. The consciousness also contributed to the formation in 2004 of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention<\/a>, which set the stage for other, albeit less radical and comprehensive, engagements with politics by the hip-hop generation, like the Vote or Die<\/a> campaign and the push for Obama in 2008<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Nearly 10 years later, this consciousness was on display at the 2017 Grammy performance by A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes and Consequence that was an open call to \u201cresist\u201d in the Trump era. This consciousness also continues to inspire the many organizations like Kuumba Lynx<\/a> and the Inner-City Muslim Action Network<\/a> in Chicago that use hip-hop as a form of arts-based activism for youth.<\/p>\n
And, of course, it remains in the music.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
The knowledge continues<\/h2>\n
On the track \u201cFamily Feud,\u201d Jay-Z \u2013 like Rakim \u2013 praises God, but this time in Arabic: \u201cAlhamdulillah<\/a>,\u201d Mumu Fresh<\/a> questions others\u2019 knowledge of self with the line \u201cGood morning, sunshine, welcome to reality\/I tried to wake you, but you were sleepin\u2019 so peacefully in your fallacy.\u201d Busta Rhymes <\/a> dropped \u201cExtinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God,\u201d full of warnings and prophecies. And in a freestyle<\/a> viewed around the world, Black Thought rhymes about the wisdom he got at the masjid<\/a>. This consciousness is so entwined with music that Kendrick Lamar\u2019s \u201cAlright<\/a>\u201d became a Black Lives Matter movement anthem.<\/p>\n
Like hip-hop, this consciousness operates globally. Take, for example, the Iraqi-Canadian Narcy<\/a>, Cape Town\u2019s YoungstaCPT<\/a>, Cuban hip-hop artist Robe L. Ninho<\/a> and the U.K.\u2019s Enny<\/a>, whose works track their own journey for knowledge of self.<\/p>\n
Things have changed since Rakim dropped \u201cMove the Crowd\u201d in 1987. Gentrification is pushing my community out of Brooklyn, and Islam and Muslims are more known and subject to the state and interpersonal violence of anti-Muslim racism. Yet hip-hop still affirms what I see around me \u2013 knowledge of self is as vital as ever.\"The<\/p>\n
Su’ad Abdul Khabeer<\/a>, University of Michigan<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
Su’ad Abdul Khabeer<\/a>, Associate Professor of American Culture, University of Michigan<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u2018Knowledge of self\u2019: How a key phrase from Islam became a pillar of\u00a0hip-hop. I was 9 years old when Eric B. and Rakim\u2019s \u201cPaid in Full\u201d dropped. I have vivid memories of the bass-laden track booming out of car stereos and hearing it on Black radio, like Kiss FM\u2019s top eight at 8 p.m. countdown. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5043"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5885,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043\/revisions\/5885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}