Hip-hop is beautiful because 'it's a world of survivors,' rapper Mos Def says


"I think there is a social and racial dynamic that comes into play," he said. "Limp Bizkit and those bands were like these mannequins, these caricatures of what we started, and the people who were really doin' it are not being recognized at all. It's the classic story.

"Hip-hop was a response to isolation. Under-representation. Misrepresentation. Abandonment. Poverty. Outlaw classification. There was a lot of things going on in New York City in the late '70s. A very difficult time, and that's the era that hip-hop came out of. They was doin' this to survive. To create some sort of psychic space of inclusion. The world does not want us, so we have to create our own world where we want each other. If no one else wants us, we want each other.

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