A Prayer for Indie Rappers

No matter how talented you are, you will never have as many Twitter followers as Ashton Kutcher.

No matter how hard you work or how many contacts you cultivate, your new music video will never have as many YouTube views as Miley Cyrus has for "Party in the USA.”

You are not a virtual basket of thumbs; even if you do everything right, not everyone is going to like you. As a matter of fact, if everyone does like you, you're doing something wrong.

You are not how many CDs you've sold, how many people come to your shows or how many big-name acts you've opened up for. You are not your co-signs. You are not your press clips. All of these things may matter at some point, but they will never define you.

You are not your label. You are not your labels. You are not the extra percussion instrument, the chuckle-inducing half a mash-up over jacked beats, the one-night stand of scenester trash, the punchline, the second act on a five-act bill playing for "exposure." Even when you are, you're not.

In less than a hundred years, every single one of your Facebook friends will be dead.

So forget the blogs. Forget the local media. Forget the national media. A good write-up in Pitchfork is nothing compared to a good obituary. You are not their background music, the soundtrack to their drinking/flirting/posturing. You are not a monkey, dancing for their pocket change. Nor are you a god, untouchable in the artificial smoke. You are not your hype; forget your hype, whether non-existent or hyperbolic.

And of course, they will tell you that you are, cram it down your throat until you are drowning in their shallowness, their rules and expectations. The haters, the cheerleaders, the yes-men, the tastemakers, the gatekeepers, the unelected leaders of this sinking kingdom-- they will point grenade launchers at your feet and ask you to dance. They will throw fat burlap sacks marked with dollar signs at your feet and ask you to dance. And you may actually be good at it. But remember:

Before everything else, you are a human being standing in front of a hundred other human beings.

They are waiting for you to speak.

So speak.

Def Jam is never going to sign you. So speak. Rhymesayers is never going to sign you. So speak. Say something honest. Say it because you have to. Say it like you mean it, like you’re scratching your epitaph across every mile of highway between Minneapolis and Chicago, between St. Paul and South Dakota, between here and wherever this culture takes you. Say it because no one else will, because it is so easy not to.

May the wind paint something beautiful with your ashes. May someone, somewhere, at some point in the future, find something to hold on to in your words. May every call have its response. May every hip have its hop. And when you ask the crowd to scream...