One reason I like jazz is how incorporates other musical genres like blues, soul and samba. Does hip-hop have a future in this stream? Nas certainly floated the question when he released his album, Hip Hop is Dead. His statement wasn’t if hip-hop is viable but was it more than a product. Can it survive as an independent art form or like disco will it be gobbled by a music industry looking for steady revenue?

Like most musical genres hip-hop started out as a megaphone for those who normally didn’t have a voice. It came from the streets of a bleak urban landscape and it was raw. It was most definitely raw and there were a great many that dismissed it as garbage, which I always found a false claim. It’s as if those who decried its reckless and wild nature conveniently forgot that the birth of jazz came from speakeasies, gambling riverboats and strip joints. Sydney Bechet didn’t get his start at Carnegie Hall. Louis Armstrong’s first manager happened to be a Chicago mobster.

If you can see through the misogamy and the misplaced glorification, you may hear a pretty good beat. Hip-hop isn’t just one thing. Besides the hustlers looking to make a quick note, there are those who see its more artistic possibilities. Recently, Mos Def became the first rapper to perform at the world renowned Guthrie Stage. His show even incorporated the theater’s current production of A Street Car Named Desire.

I also see The Roots moving their music in this direction. It was their first album, Things Fall Apart that caught my attention. By chance I knew the title came from Chinua Achebe’s novel about the disintegration of a Nigerian family, which took the words from a William Butler Yeats’ poem, “A Second Coming,” which foretells the disintegration of society’s moral compass.

“Things Fall Apart,” heavy words for hip-hop. But The Roots have always been more than booty calls. Sure, they can get low down, but they have also snuck in songs about drug addiction “Water”, commercialization run amok “Pussy Galore” and global responsibility “Rising Down.”

“How I Got Over” is a nod to a prior work. Its source is a traditional gospel song. (See The Fairfield Four’s version.) Hearing these two songs together may lend to you believe not much has changed when it comes to the travails of the African American experience. The Roots song is more soul than gospel, but that doesn’t mean it won’t carry an uplifting beat.