Self-Destruction: Kool Moe Dee’s Words Relevant Today!

31 Aug

By Rev. Rodrick Burton

In the year of 1988 after a number of killings of fans and rapper Scott La Rock, KRS-One the lead man of Boogie Down Productions launched a Stop the Violence Movement. The enduring legacy of that movement was the concerted efforts of a then big East Coast rappers to produce the single Self-Destruction and its companion video. It is an interesting exercise in painful irony, if you take the time to watch it on YouTube.

The lyrics are powerful, prophetic, and especially painful as it seems no one in the rap community or our larger community seemed to have heeded a single line. The whole rap is excellent but I found Kool Moe Dee’s words to be especially relevant. The intro and chorus was …
Self-Destruction, ya headed for Self-Destruction

[Kool Moe Dee]
Took a brother’s life with a knife as his wife
Cried cause he died a trifling death
When he left his very last breath
Was “I slept so watch your step”
Back in the sixties our brothers and sisters were hanged
How could you gang-bang?
I never ever ran from the Ku Klux Klan
and I shouldn’t have to run from a black man
cause that’s

… self-destruction. Kool Moe references a time of real visceral threat by those outside the community whom had a national track record of violent acts against us, yet the reality now is exactly as he stated: “You shouldn’t have to run from a black man,” but yet we find ourselves exactly doing just that. Whereas the Klan had no love nor regard for our people and our children, recent shootings this year of so many children demonstrate we are not headed for self-destruction but that we are in the midst of it by our own hands.

Heavy D in Self Destruction would go on to rap, “They call us animals, I don’t agree with them – I’ll prove them wrong, but right is what you’re proving them.” Heavy D understood what anyone can by watching what’s on Animal Planet or National Geographic. Animals will kill their young, for some it is their nature but humans are supposed to be steps above the animal world. Our metro area children whom have been buried and hospitalized this year would show us otherwise.

The ongoing Black Lives Matter Movement will be a footnote in American History and a side show distraction that will confound Black Studies Professors in the future who be hard pressed to make sense of the explosion of outrage, protest and activism to confront external affronts to the community and the blindness, cowardice, impotence and hypocrisy when dealing with the self-destruction happing within the community. The grind of homicide, domestic violence, drug dealing, spread of HIV/AIDS, hit and runs, child abuse, and other self-destructive behaviors by African Americans of their own free will everyday had better get our attention and effort on ending the self-destruction facing us. This begins by getting out of self-denial and taking a real self-examination which will allow for true self-liberation.

This past weekend Better Family Life hosted PeaceFest for the community to gather and celebrate unity and community. This event was a welcome pause to our area which has been rocked by the deaths of children. PeaceFest is reminiscent of the family reunions African Americans enjoy. It is a reminder that we are family and for our family to continue to exist we must address the self-destruction.

Editor’s Note: Rodrick K. Burton is Pastor, New Northside Missionary Baptist Church, 8645 Goodfellow Blvd,
St. Louis, MO 63147, www.newnorthsidebaptist.org, (314) 381-5730. Rev. Burton is a weekly contributing editor to this website. However, the opinions expressed are not necessarilyours.