As you may have heard in the news, Kanye's West's mother, Donda West, passed away over the weekend at the age of 58. The cause of her death is not yet known, as it will take several weeks for an official report to be released. However, many people speculate that it was due to surgery complications. This is truly a sad turn of events, and I would like to give my condolences to Kanye West and his family. Kanye's fans already have shown an immense amount of support for him during this tragedy. If you check out Kanye's Blog, for example, many people have posted comments regarding the situation, and given their condolences to the West family. At times there seems to be a wall between celebrity and fan, but it's always touching to see this kind of emotional support from fans when incidents like this occur.
Listen to songs like "Hey Mama," and "Touch the Sky." There are references to Donda. She even his full-time manager and released a book about Kanye titled, Raising Kanye: Life Lessons From the Mother of a Hip Hop Star. Kanye was undoubtedly inspired by her. Although this sad event has occured, the mother-son relationship between Kanye and his mother reminds me of something positive and even touching: that family, and particularly the appreciation of mothers has very often been a recurrent theme in Hip-Hop music.
On Kanye's own "Hey Mama," he claims, "As we knelt on the kitchen floor/I said mommy imma love you till you don't hurt no more/And when I'm older you ain't gotta work no more/And imma get you that mansion that we couldn't afford." The sincerity of this is moving, in its own way. Other Hip-Hop songs have paid tribute to mothers. 2pac's 1995 single, "Dear Mama" has become a sort of anthem for showing gratitude towards mothers.
However, the intertwining of family into Hip-Hop is not also seen between mothers and MCs. Nas and his father, Olu Dara, for example, show a very strong relationship in their musical collaboration. His father, a jazz musician, sings and plays the trumpet on two tracks of his seventh studio album, Street's Disciple. He even appears in the music video for the song, "Bridging the Gap," in which Nas proudly claims, "Pops gave me the right tools to think with."The culture of Hip-Hop itself, being very community-driven, is impacted by what may be a smaller community: the family unit. Whether paying homage to mothers, or fathers, many MCs have definitely shown their respect for those that raised them right. So take an example from some of these people, and show some love/respect for the parental units. For most of us, they do a lot.
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