"So what the heck is 'Slingshot Hip-Hop'?", you ask. Well, it's the cry of young Palestinians who see their people being decimated day in and day out. These Arab emcees want to get the world's attention to show how their merciless occupiers are doing them waaaaay dirtier than any Black person was done in the South Bronx by Robert Moses and the State of New York. Similar to how folks in the SB had their homes burned to the ground, theses people are having their homes straight bulldozed, and the world (much like it was in the the Bronx) is not doing a damn thing about it.
"And then they wonder why we crazy..." -Tupac
Trying to get the word out about the injustices experienced by the Palestinian people is a Palestinian trio of lyricists who call themselves DAM, a triple-loaded name: an acronym for 'Da Arabian MCs, the Arabic for "blood" and the Hebrew for "eternity." Far from the bling-bling lyrics that flood western airwaves, DAM is a vanguard for a politically charged subgenre of Hip-Hop that focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It should come as no surprise that they say their major influence was Tupac Shakur's music in the 1990s, and artists that came before like Public Enemy and KRS 1. Primarily spittin' in Arabic, they have no problem getting their point across to the brothers in the region. So, will DAM and others' music cause Arabs to come to their aid? Will it expose the apartheid being leveled against them as the world chooses to look the other way? In my estimation, all it takes is one bangin' joint, one track... and people just might start sayin', "Yo, what the hell is goin' on in Palestine!!"
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