Holy Intellect

Many moons ago, rap music was infl uenced by a NYC-based sect known as the FIVE PERCENT NATION OF GODS AND­ EARTHS. From the World’s Famous Supreme Team to Rakim to Wu-Tang Clan, the Gods sought to inspire and courted controversy. A look back at an era—and at the spiritual heart of East Coast hip hop itself.

"We can never fall off,” ­said Brand Nubian’s Sadat X to Fab 5 Freddy, “’cause this is God right here.”

Filming a 1992 episode of Yo! MTV Rapsin front of the Five Percenters’ headquarters, Allah School in Mecca (aka Harlem, NYC), the dreadlocked Lord Jamar ran down the long list of classic Five Percenter MCs. It read like a hall of fame from the East Coast’s golden age: the World’s Famous Supreme Team, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Poor Righteous Teachers, and Lakim Shabazz—rappers who used their consider- able skills to espouse the street gnosticism of the Five Percent Nation. And it don’t stop.

Though condemned as heretics by Sunni Muslims and demonized by law enforcement, the Five Percenter move- ment has thrived in various forms until the present day, due in large part to the sense of purpose and dignity that gods brought to the microphone. “The music just sounded really intelligent, with some of the terminology that they used,” said 50 Cent in 2006.”

They studied their lessons, so they speak a certain way,” he said, causing Five Percenters like Rakim to “ap- pear a lot more intelligent than the other artists who were out there just rappin’.” The Five Percenters bridged the gap between hip hop’s humble beginnings and New York’s long tradi- tion of black Muslim consciousness. Alternately known as the Nation of Gods and Earths, the movement began in the early 1960s with Clarence Edward Smith, a decorated Korean War vet who joined the Nation of Islam’s Harlem mosque under its minister, Malcolm X. As Clarence 13X (the 13th member named Clarence to drop his “slave name”), he became absorbed in study of the mosque’s secret “Supreme Wisdom Lessons.”

In these tran- scribed dialogues between Elijah Muhammad and his teacher, W.D. Fard, who established the fi rst NOI mosque in Detroit in 1930, Clarence was taught that images of God as a white man in the sky were only a trick of the “devil.” “There is no mystery God,” read the lessons. Rather than waste time searching for someone who did not exist, Clarence learned to recognize himself and all black men as living gods. As the “best knower” among the Gods, Fard was elevated to the status of “Allah.”
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