INVISIBLE PYRAMIDS
(An ode to the Nacrobats crew and the 1990s underground Hip-Hop scene in Chicago)
It was a colorful time.
The most colorful time that I’ve ever known in Chicago.
Concurrently naïve and wise beyond our years, we built a world within a world.
A secret society that was all up in yo’ face.
The streets were stages and the stages were the streets.
The styles, the flavors, the smells, the colors.
The beats.
The rhymes.
The nights.
So many nights.
The cyphers.
The sistahs.
Everybody was feelin’ the Muse at the same damn time.
Some of us spit rhymes, some of us tagged walls, some of us moved to the music, but all of us added to the color of the time.
The most colorful time.
We built invisible pyramids all over the city.
Holy temples to honor the Muse that inspired the elder builders before us.
We wrote our names on the outside of these pyramids.
Most Chicago city-dwellers walk past them, oblivious to our world within a world.
There are those of us who remember where the invisible pyramids were built.
And we visit those places.
And there are children with the gift to see them.
