is preparing for its “Justice or Else!” protest march on 10/10/15, which also celebrates the 20th Anniversary of the Million Man March.
AllHipHop.com discussed The Nation of Islam’s take on prominent issues within Hip-Hop culture in a candid interview with one of Minister Louis Farrakhan’s most diligent assitants, Brother Sultan Muhammad.
Brother Sultan Muhammad has worked with Minister Farrakhan for more than 30 years in server roles, from security to personal assistant. Brother Sultan has also contributed to the Final Call newspaper.
AllHipHop.com offered up Brother Sultan keywords and various themes prevalent in Hip-Hop culture and asked him for his views on them.
The Nation is also backing a new Hip-Hop artist name Nadirah X, who will be distributed by Brother Sultan’s record label, New Birth Digital. In this interview below, he also takes the time to differentiate her music from the music that seems to be destructive to the community.
The Term “Trap” Music:
What is the purpose of a trap? The purpose of a trap is to ensnare to catch something. Well, the question is, once you trap and once you catch what you are after, what do you tend to do with it? So what about music who’s objective is to trap? And I do not think that we came up with the term trap. You can trap something and ensnare it. But when you can think of a trap and imagine a trap, you can become very dangerous, because of the idea of a trap.
Some animals are trapped and put on display in zoos, and some police say “let’s go deal with this zoo when they talk about the trap.” If the zoo is a place of entrapment for animals, where they are taken out of their natural environment, they won’t act how they normally do. Take a lion and put him in a cage that’s only so many feet square when he’s accustomed to roaming hundreds of miles. You can damage the psyche of any animal, so it would certainly damage the psyche of the human. So someone needs to free the entrapped. And to free the entrapped they have to have knowledge, that will give true freedom justice and equality for all.
Islam comes from the language of Arabic which has remained our language, and we are the oldest people on the planet by tens of thousands of years. Anyone speaking this language is speaking our language. But Islam simply means peace. What about a whole planet or nation of peace. Who would object to that? Not 94% of the people who live on the planet who suffer.
Over Dosing On Luxury Items (Chains, Designer Brands, Foreign Cars):
You know what came to mind for me? Do you watch these shows where people sell the “oldies but goodies” songs? I looked at that, and many of these people that they talk about died broke. They couldn’t make money on their music by selling their music unless the labels owned the masters. So while someone else owns the masters and continues to make hundreds of millions, many of those entertainers died broke, and some are dead broke to this day.
So I wondered how does this always happen? After speaking to athletes and entertainers, I found that we do not understand money because it was kept away from us. We were never taught the science of business or accounting. Going to business school or becoming an accountant doesn’t give one the science of business. Think about this.
As a label, maybe I’m going to give this guy $2 million and then after that, you say, “I’ve never even seen $200,000 or $20,000 in my life.” Then after I give you the $2 million, I say, “why don’t you go over to this store because you got to have the bling bling. Then go to this store and get a car, and then give $600,000 this back because we had some things to pay for but don’t worry about that.” So go get this, get that, and go get the other [and I’ll] send you to all my relatives in business and I get every dime of the $2,000,000 back.”
So you get the money but the one who pays the money understands the science of business, and when I’ve never had anything, you can’t blame me for getting excited. I need those things based on what I have seen. From what I have seen those things mean something, it means that you are successful and wealthy if you keep it in your pocket and multiply it.
The one’s who kept it in their pocket and knew how to get it back in their pocket invested and multiplied. While the talent that makes the money that doesn’t know the science of business, spends the money and is eventually broke again, after continuing to lose time and time again. The science of business would tell you to hold on to every dime and find out how to multiply it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2&v=LfiUg2iKoEc
Smoking Weed:
Question: Would doing any drug be necessary if we were not in some pain? Nobody loves pain, even though the pain can produce gain. However, only if we get through the pain, with the right formula to get us to the right gain, which is overcoming whatever the difficulty may be.
What does the Minster mean when he says he’s always high? He’s high on the wisdom and knowledge of God. What that means is that we are high on the knowledge of the solving problems because the problems represent pain. We all know how to deal with pain. Nobody wants to be in pain, but when you’re lifting weights you know on the other side of the pain is a stronger or better looking body. What’s on the other side of the pain we are suffering?
We have to have a guide that can give us the right solution, that reefer, excessive sex and getting drunk won’t give me.
That might be why the Bible says “pain is enjoined for you.” Just like the pain of the mother that has a baby, there is a pain involved in growth, so we just need to know how to get through these pains. Its that pain that makes us the strongest people on the surface of the earth, and that’s what makes us the right material to bring in a new world.
The Use of the “N####”
The beauty of it is, regardless of what we have called ourselves, we are the greatest of people ever. You know, I don’t know of a people that were refused and even killed for learning to read. And then we would steal away to learn to read. Then we would go on to create great inventions like the automobile or mobile carriages. That was a Black man that did that.
There is hardly anything in the way of an invention in the U.S. that we were not a part of. And that may be how America was able to surpass the European countries. The only difference I have found was the use of our people, which shows something in us of God’s creative power, and we were certainly brought here as skilled people. They talked about how we did everything, the iron workers, the miners of gold and silver, architects.
Our brother Frederick Douglas made a case for us; we are the iron workers, architects, and other labors. He talked about all the things we do. Through our research, we found if the white man were working in that period, it would draw a crowd.
So when you consider all that we have done and do, calling us something less than we are does not change anything. “N####” was a term that was slang for negro, which means the dead. Some say it means “Black” in Spanish, but in Spanish you say “moreno” or “morena “- thats how you say “Black man.” Negro is used to describe dead inanimate objects, “zapatos negros” – “black shoes.” “Pantalones negro” – “black pants.” Those are not living things.
So the term given to us by someone else, who saw us not as just being “Black,” but being dead. And as time goes on it becomes a slang. If the root of it is not good, the plant is going to have poison in it too.
On October 10, 2015 in Washington, D.C., at the National Mall, The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan will convene the 20th Anniversary of the Million Man March under the theme: Justice or Else!
