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One thing about your demons they bound to catch up one day / I'd rather see you stand up and face them than run away / I understand this message is not the coolest to say / But if you down to try it I know of a better way / Meditate
— J. Cole "Friends"
It’s not often you hear a big name artist rap about meditating. In the song “Friends,” J. Cole suggests meditation as a better way to face our demons than the usual suspects of drugs or alcohol abuse, which are the common themes in hip-hop, especially in relation to songs about stress and depression or the anxiety of being famous.
Cole starts the song off by telling us he “wrote this s**t to talk about the word 'addiction',” and then sermonizes about the conditions and effects of the system on our communities, sympathizing with the resulting feelings of hopelessness, stress and depression. He goes on to recognize our cultural tendency to internalize and normalize our stressors and the pitfalls of self-medicating, having seen it first hand.
Type of s**t that normally would call for therapy / But you know just how it go in our community / Keep that sh*t inside / it don't matter how hard it be
— J. Cole "Friends"
We have cultural stigmas regarding therapy and a sort of innate hesitation to “airing our dirty laundry” with a stranger. So why is J. Cole suggesting meditation as a way to deal with our issues?
Meditation isn’t a substitute for therapy or counseling, but the benefits of meditation are useful to improving or sustaining our mental health.
Meditation reduces stress, improves emotional health, helps control anxiety, enhances self-awareness, lengthens attention span, reduces age related memory loss, generates kindness, fights addictions, improves sleep, help controls pain, reduced blood pressure, while also helping to control and improve thought.
J. Cole Talks About Meditation
There are religious stigmas about meditation as well, however even Christianity has adopted a form of Christian meditation in recent years.
The practice of meditation can be traced back as far as 5,000 B.C. with origins in ancient Egypt, and has been incorporated into Judaism, Hindu and Buddhist religions.
The Black Buddha also has lineage tied to the Hebrew Israelites.
Black Buddha and the Hebrew Israelites
"In the first place, Buddha was a Negro—or rather he was what we should now call a Negro if we saw him. His statues in the oldest temples of Asia are black as jet, with the flat face, thick lips, and curly hair of the negro; in some cases the stone is black, in others, which is more to the purpose, it has been blackened, and that this is not the effect of accident is pretty evident from his teeth and the whites of his eyes being white and his lips red "
Rappers like Kendrick Lamar, BIG K.R.I.T. and Ace Hood have also spoken on the benefits of meditation and its spiritual connections. Even 50 Cent has talked about getting into meditation, and Russell Simmons wrote a book on meditation.
"I meditate and it helps me be centered. It helps me think through things in the midst of times when things are most dysfunctional for me. It keeps me at ease. It helps me see clearly. It opens me up. I feel the energy. I know when scenarios are bad. It gives me intuition and feelings on people who are around me… You are more in tune"
— Ace Hood interview with Rolling Out Magazine (2018)
There are numerous forms of meditation with varying focuses and practices relating to the mind, body and soul.
Even listening to our favorite music can be a form of meditation if it helps us relax our mind and improves our mood.
I stepped it up another level / Meditated like a Buddhist
— Jay-Z "Can I Live"
What else can be learned about religion and spirituality through hip-hop, or about hip-hop through religion and spirituality? There's more to the connections than you may think!
