Chicago performing artist Hashim “H2″ Hakeem, also known as Hard Hed, is one of a growing number of unique entertainers spreading messages through hip hop and spoken word that are not often heard in the mainstream. Though his lyrics are positive and free of the explicit language used by many artists today, he is leery of being put into the “conscious hip hop” category since that phrase is a turn off to the core audience he seeks to reach.  As a member of the Nation of Islam (NOI) whose life has been greatly influenced by Minister Louis Farrakhan, he strives to season his messages with the teachings that have changed his life and yet the wordsmith puts them into a language and style the average hip hop listener can relate to and appreciate.  Many may remember his memorable and show stopping performance in the 2000 documentary called “Backstage” where he was shown freestyling with Jay Z and DMX.   He also still records and performs with Soldiers at War, a group formerly known as X-Niggas.The busy emcee recently traveled to Denver as a guest of The Speakout Poets , a group of spoken word artists who not only perform locally but travel to various cities to network with other performers.  While in the Mile High City, H2 performed at a number of spoken word venues and also took time to speak with Adeeba Folami of The Black House News (BHN) about his music, motivation and message.

________________________

(BHN) -  How long have you been performing?
(H2) -   Since ‘82.  Really since I knew nursery rhymes.  I fell in love with rhyming of any nature with nursery rhymes, my favorite was Jack Be Nimble.  I was just fascinated as a child with rhyming period: cat, rat, fat, bat, pat, whatever it was.

(BHN) -  What do you like more, performing hip hop or spoken word?
(H2) -   It’s all the same to me.  I dub myself as the surgeon which means I have meaningful music, it’s not just the let’s get high, smoke this blunt, kill this nigga typical type of hip hop.  It doesn’t matter [because] once I cut you, I’ma take out the cancer and sew you back up so as long as I have a mic, I know the dynamics to move the crowd and I’ma do that.  I’m a suicide bomber lyrically, whoever’s in the room I’ma hit you.

Spoken word is on the uprise right now and it’s a chance for recording artists of R&B, all genres, to express their talent.  Kanye West uses spoken word venues, Rhymefest uses spoken word venues in Chicago to get their talent out, and it’s just a matter of acting out with the drama and the lyrics but with no beat.  In particular I’m a hip hop artist but I’m also an entertainer, singer and songwriter.  I’m kind of a fearless, mild mannered, iron fist in a velvet glove type of entertainer.

(BHN) – What’s one of the key messages you seek to get across in your music?
(H2) -   H2 not only stands for Hashim Hakeem, as you see on the CD it stands for Hard Hed and I’m spelling Hard Hed a little different.  I took the prefix of the word ‘hedonism,’ which means extreme pleasure in oneself because I used to have extreme hate for self and my people.  So Hard Hed is a reminder to love self and to love others, the positive connotation of hedonism.  My message is basically whatever mainstream does not talk about whether it’s women who are pregnant but act as if they’re not, smoking, drinking, child molestation, why educators are poor but entertainers are rich.  Seems like everything the forces of evil do, it’s okay to do by this world’s standard and everything the forces of good say do, people are ashamed to come out and do good but they are not ashamed to come out and do wrong.

(BHN) -  You are originally from Aurora, Illinois, do you still live there?
(H2) –   My family, my generation is there, I visit from time to time but I live right now in a Northern [Chicago] suburb.  You know what, I feel like a rolling stone – wherever I lay my hat – but I’m all over the country.  Here I go back to Chicago, I’ll be back [in Denver] in September but I have to go train up my team because I was inspired by the way they do poetry here.  I have to write a whole new collection because a lot of my stuff is cutting you up but then I just let you bleed to death and I witnessed that with the gay community and I’ve never seen it as rampant as it is here in Denver.  I’ve heard about it in Atlanta but I’ve never witnessed it the way I’ve witnessed it here.  It’s shocking.

The first 2 performances I did when I got here, normally I come in, feel out the audience and it determines the piece that I give but I didn’t have a chance to do that.  The first venue was 30%  gay/lesbian and I got up there and talked about a whole lot of world issues that were backwards and ironic but the gay community focused on what hurt them.  I talked about how the poor educators of this country who mold and shape the minds of our youth are broke while our entertainers who do sport and play are rich.  I talked about how if you take the gun from some of these young brothers then they’ll be cowards.  I talked about how parents can no longer physically discipline their children when that was the standard bearer in the good ole days that helped save a lot of our lives and now the parents can’t do that but police can do police brutality.  I said, is something wrong with me because I’m not gay?  I asked that question.  I said, ‘men kissing men and women kissing women and it’s like I’m wrong cause I’m not grinning,’ and soon as I got off the stage [the next person said], “This is for the young gentleman who just got off the stage.  Where my homos at?”  Women [were] walking up to me and kissing right in front of me but the checkmate in thinking, where they become quiet is when I say, ‘if we all thought like you how could the human race reproduce itself?’  They get quiet and I walk away saying, “Did I do that?”

I didn’t mean to offend them in that manner because my sister’s lesbian. I love her and somebody better not put their hands on her.  I was talking about issues that are ironic and the gay and lesbian, if we look at it from this standpoint, just from this vantage point, if we think it’s so bad, what about the adulterer?  What about the brother who kills  his own people, whether it’s with the gun, weapon or drugs?  It’s no different, it’s all negative to the community.

Those who agreed with me had to kind of sneak to me and say, ‘You’re telling the truth.’  Sneaking by to see me, do it real quick, make a transaction real fast like we’re selling drugs or something.  I have this mind frame that if you’re afraid to represent the Creator on earth, represent good on earth, then good won’t represent you.  That’s how I think.  You’re ashamed and so good will come to you in awkward ways, it won’t be up front coming to you, it’ll be coincidental type of stuff.

(BHN) -  So you fall in the category of what they call conscious hip hop?
(H2) –   I don’t like that title although I am conscious.  Anytime a brother, in particular we are from the streets, when we hear that word ‘positive’ or ‘conscious’ we get to thinking, man – this is Christian rap or it might not be the real, maybe church – a lot of young brothers aren’t in that because they watered down the truth so the nature of the male, in particular the black male, is a lion.  When a lion feels confined to a certain restriction, you kill his nature and he’s out of his habitat so if you just restrict me to ‘conscious,’ although the end result of everything I do is good, when you dub me conscious those brothers who I really want to get at, who they say are beyond hope on the streets and doing whatever they do, they ain’t gonna hear it.  But when they hear it, they’ll be like – this brother went through what I went through.  It’s kind of hard to label me because I’ma hit you at every angle.  I am conscious but that’s [just] not my title.

Backstage with Hip hop heavyweights(BHN) -  Do you have a website?
(H2) –    It’s Eracism Records, that’s the name of my label, www.myspace.com/eracismrecords.

(BHN) -  You mentioned your CD, is it your latest?
(H2) –    That CD, we function as any other major record label would function so this right here is probably, out of 8 albums, a softer, spoken word type of hip hop CD and it’s called “Limited Edition” but it’s a collection of 8 different albums compiled into one.  It’s the limited edition CD [while I'm] in the midst of recording a new album, Soldiers at War is working on a new project, 2008 it’ll be out.  I’m also in a group called the Odd Squad, where it’s a White guy with dreds, 3 women, 2 other brothers – almost on a Roots level but we get a little more of the modern language of the people today.

Probably the biggest feat I’ve accomplished was when we did a celebrity documentary called Backstage with Jay Z, DMX and Eve, Ja Rule, and Beanie Siegel before they were big.  I had a cameo that wasn’t supposed to be recorded but it was so profound that they ended the movie where I was in a suit and bow tie rapping with Jay Z and DMX and I managed to outshine them both due to the element of surprise that a security dude can rap without profanity and get their respect.  Although the world probably saw me, they didn’t know my name.

(BHN) -  How did it come about that you ended up being part of the performance?
(H2) – Well what happened was we were in Atlanta and the NOI had the security on the “Hard Knock Life Tour” so I was a security type person.  Memphis Bleek asked me where I was from and I told him Chicago.  He was, at the time, impressed with the fast style of rapping Chicago does.  I rapped this style and he was taken away.  So it was Jay-Z and DMX freestyling at first then Memphis Bleek asked Jay-Z if I could get in the freestyle and that was all she wrote.

(BHN) – What are your views on the state of hip hop?
(H2) -   I treat hip hop like a human being and they say you do unto others as you would have them do unto you and, if that’s the case, we were at one point sperm mixed with ovum.  If you’re married, your husband at one time was sperm.  You wouldn’t kiss him in his sperm stage but he developed and grew and through stages and stages he became the man that he was supposed to be.  Hip hop is going through stages and like everything – whether school, church or an institution – you have the yin and the yang, the good and the evil, you have negative and positive forces within it.  It’s evolving and has to go through negative to get to positive but hip hop is going through a double negative and when you multiply double negatives you’ll get positive.  That’s the state I think hip hop is coming out of, that double negative, and even some of the hip hop artists are dissatisfied with the state of hip hop.  They have went into providing for their families as opposed to providing for hip hop.  They don’t look at hip hop as a human being, they look at it  probably like men look at women they don’t intend to marry.  They get what they can get and they’re gone, whereas hip hop, if she’s a human being, she’s gonna get dissatisfied, grow, and eventually when the right person comes along that’s gonna maintain her, she’s gonna leave.  She’s gonna be all right.  I believe hip hop is gonna flourish because it has the potential to end racism and anything that is for the greater good will flourish.

(BHN) -  How do you see it has the potential to end racism?
(H2) -   I was driving the other day and I heard a loud sound system at the intersection – boom, boom, boom – window was tinted and I liked the rhythm of the bass so I signaled [the driver] to roll their windows down and it was a white guy with dreds.  He said, ‘what’s up brotha?’  I said, ‘what’s up brotha, what’s that you listening to?’  He said the new Common album.  Common is conscious but [the white guy] had dreds and called me brotha.  This young generation is starting to wake up – all nationalities – and hip hop has transcended all cultures as the Black man did at one time – transcended all cultures in his prime.  Hip hop is just all over – France, China, Italy, Africa, on myspace [there's] a person who’s in Malaysia who loves hip hop and that’s why I believe it has the potential  to end racism now that we have the ear of White America’s youth, the ear of the young Asian and Latin American.  As hip hop evolves from sperm mixed with ovum to fetus, to child, to man child to young man or lady, it’ll be  a human being and as this double negative is phased out, the positive is phased in.  Now that we have the ear, we just have to put the right spokespersons or emcees in place, talking about what hip hop originally talked about  in the beginning – which was conscious and spoke to the ear of our community.  As it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end, just magnified and modernized.

The influence of Islam on the man and the message

(BHN) -  How has Islam affected you?
(H2) –   I’ll just go to the most profound by telling you that hip hop is the voice and the language of the youth regardless to what any parent wants to say.  This loud noise that the older generation says is noise, is language and it is very influential as it was to me in my youth and I had so many influences, Public Enemy being one of them.  Whatever our favorite rapper likes to do, we’re gonna want to do.  However they dress, we’re gonna want to dress.  Public Enemy [Chuck D] was revolutionary, militant and he said one sentence that I didn’t understand but it made sense when a brother came knocking at my door [years later.]  [Chuck D] said, “A follower of Farrakhan, don’t tell me that you understand until you hear the man.”  Not knowing who Farrakhan is, I want to understand so I guess I gotta hear the man.  [Later on], a brother came knocking on my door in Aurora, Illinois – rural, White America –  Brother Samuel said, ‘would you like to buy the Final Call?’  I said, what is that?  He said, ‘it’s the life giving teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad as taught by the Honorable Min. Louis Farrakhan.  This is the ’90s and I hadn’t heard of Elijah Muhammad.  Here go Public Enemy Farrakhan and [then] here go this brother talking about Farrakhan.  I said, ‘Public Enemy Farrakhan?’  He said, Yes sir.  I said, ‘what I got to do?’   I went [to a meeting] and Min. Farrakhan spoke directly to me as everyone who hears the truth, it connects to truth in their soul and all I wanted to know was, “I’m with everything, do y’all believe in Jesus?”  That’s all I wanted to know and yes sir, shonuff they did and the real Jesus was revealed to me shortly thereafter.

My name Hashim stands for destroyer of evil and I was the opposite of that as a child, I was a destroyer of good – from women to my family, jail, everything – so Islam gave me guidance and discipline and to the degree that you are negative when you get with the Almighty, to that degree you will be positive.  I was extremely out there so now I’m extremely out there using my gift.  Everyone has gifts, mine is my mouth and He has blessed me with a way of putting words together because I was the opposite of that.  I used to could not express myself at all, I was so frustrated all I could do was ball my fist up.  When I lost the game the whole table had to get flipped  – just the opposite of good.  Now Islam has influenced me vitally, in a life saving way and is the remedy for those they say are beyond hope – the worst of the worst.  [They are] my calling and the remedy, or my faith, is Islam, which means peace.  So the truth’s where most of those they say are beyond hope end up anyway.

(BHN) -  What are your comments on the respect that Min. Farrakhan, a man in his 70s, has for hip hop, as far as the potential and reach he says it has.
(H2) –    He does [say that.]  In fact, that whole comment I made, “hip hop has the potential to end racism,” comes from him, that’s his quote and that’s why I named my record company Eracism Records, inspired by him.  He, like so many others even my age and younger, I have a group of young people that do not like the negativity part of hip hop and they’re 17, 18, 19.  We play a game where I name the artist and they say past, present or future. I’ll say something like Twista and they’ll say past and present.  He won’t be in the future.  I’ll say Lupe Fiasco, they’ll say future.  I say Lil Wayne, they’ll say borderline.  He’s got lyrical wit, nice rhyme scheme but if he doesn’t step up his substance and his lyrics, he’ll be just present.

Min Farrakhan is so far into the future, we need to catch up to him.  He loves us, he loves the hip hop generation, he loves the street organizations [gangs] and we love him but as any parent with their children when they get suspended for doing anything wrong, they’re not happy with that action but they still love their child.  This is how Islam has influenced me – everything that I’m saying I got from the teachings of Min. Farrakhan. The whole sperm stage is from him, he used that with the street organizations and its generation.  He used terms like, ‘they’re so vicious and violent that they’ll burn water and kill concrete, that’s how destructive this young generation is,’ and I use that in my everyday language.  People don’t know where it’s coming from but you asked me how Islam has influenced me – just like that. Everything I’m talking about is Islam and [in] the language where people do not get offended especially the modern day religious gang bangers or people caught up in the matrix of religion.  I’m able to penetrate them without them being skeptical of someone trying to influence them with their own personal beliefs.

(BHN) -  Thank you.