Other rappers, like KRS-One in "Stop the Violence," offer, if not a solution to the identified social ills, then at least a way to deal with them that can combat depression and foster motivation for change:
Time and time again as I pick up my pen
As my thoughts emerge these are those words
I glance at the paper to know what's going
Someone doing wrong the story goes on
Mary Lou just had a baby, someone else decapitated
The drama of the world shouldn't keeps us so frustrated
I look but it doesn't coincide with my books.
Characterized by their challenge to the existing social order, much like the poetry of Cullen, Hughes, and Baraka, the lyrics of rap tend to refute middle class values in their use of profanity and slang or "street talk." At the same time, the Hip-Hop cultural ethic of FUBU ("For Us By Us") echoes the communal ideal of the early African slaves, as well as the political ideal of an unattainable American democracy. In their aggressive use of the continuing theme of black identity, rap's young poet/musicians are the self-styled griots of their generation who can (to use the vernacular) "lay down a rhyme and keep comin' wid it" for a long as necessary, all the while "crackin'" on the societal status quo with adroitness and wit. Hip-Hop/rap lyrics supply the political protest of Baraka, the realism of Hayden, the social criticism of Johnson, and the celebration of African American culture of McKay and Hughes.
Because of the enduring essence of Sankofa in African American poetry, as well as the ongoing practice of drawing from the Sasa and looking back towards the Zamani, the emergence rap, like the creation of the spirituals, was inevitable. Rap is a communal song/dance/oration phenomenon of evolution.