Because I personally hate articles that people write like this, where they don’t tell you until the very bottom what the answer is, I’ll answer this now; “nope! It’s not”. Now, let’s get into why the article, and why the answer is “no”.

Since the whole leaked document from the Supreme Court, there has been a lot of White women on TikTok using Tupac’s “Dear Mama” as a “theme song”. Needless to say, Black TikTok DRAGGED them. The claim was, “music is universal”, “Tupac was talking about all women”.

If you’re reading this, 9 times out of 10, you know why they got dragged for all that, so I don’t need to tell you about his Black Panther upbringing, the lyrics to the song coming RIGHT out the gate, or how much he loved his mother – who it was dedicated to. That would be a waste of time, so let me break down why music isn’t universal.

Since the beginning, different African tribes spoke with drums. Not only did different tribes speak different languages, so did their drums. There are drums for everything from war, to marriage, to new children being born, and for worship. Although we got detached from all that here, it was still apart of our soul. As we arrived here, our “tribes” were forced to expand. Things like our spirituals were laced with hidden codes to communicate under the noses of the slave masters.

Fast forward to the Negro Code and the Jim Crow era after slavery. The Blues, became our language of extensive racism and just trying to survive, where jazz comes from a place of trying to make beauty and happiness in a place that was dangerous and unpredictable. In any case, our music managed to always incorporate pain of some sort. Take Billie Holiday’s song “Strange Fruit” in 1959. Or how about “A Change is Gonna Come“, by Sam Cooke, “People Get Ready” by The Impressions, or “Say It Loud” by James Brown, just to name a few. We are flooded with music like those, and a lot of them, some outside of the tribe wouldn’t even know. Hell, NWA’s “Fuck The Police” even hits different to us.

On occasion, there has been songs both stolen and covered between different races. When Blacks covered White songs, for instance, the soul was added in their version, making the song take on a whole new life – like Whitney Houston did with “I Will Always Love You“.

Bottom line, our music has always had a history of soul; our soul (music), consists of a shared legacy of trauma. Sure, others “outside of the tribe” could enjoy it, but they could never feel it the same. That isn’t just the case for us. That goes for all the different cultures that their music is rooted from. Like the African drums, it is still a language that speaks to that particular tribe.

Here’s an example: I like Spanish music. I could dance to it surprisingly well, but I don’t understand what they are saying. I can’t even say I can pinpoint the exact emotion a particular song is expressing, so I’m not going to feel it like “Roberto” is “going to feel it” at his daughter “Maria’s quinceanera”.

Me personally, country doesn’t speak to me, because I’m not in “that tribe”. Same thing goes for death metal, opera, bluegrass, and a number of other types of music both foreign and domestic.

Since my whole get-down is hip-hop, let me break it down even more. It is a fact that hip-hop is a culture. There’s no debating that. One has to understand that musically speaking, hip-hop even has sub-cultures.
Gangster, trap, boombap, backpack, Christian, dance (which usually falls a lot under pop), horror, even cannibalism, if you remember Brotha Lynch or Big Lurch, who is serving time for killing and eating his girlfriend….and not in the good way. The fact is, every hip-hop head doesn’t like ALL the rap styles. We too, even fall into our own “tribes”.

A couple stories ago, I mentioned who I felt didn’t belong in hip-hop (or any Hip-Hop tribe). This is an extension of that. For instance, if you are from the suburb, believe trump “really won the election”, no hip-hop tribe is for you; especially “gangsta“. Some hip-hop music cultures are dangerous if you’re not from that specific environment. As a matter of fact, a lot of the new generation is finding that out the hard way.

Our bodies connect to the vibrations of different music types. That’s why music enhances our emotions. When your working out, you may prefer upbeat joints to keep your blood flowing. If you are going through a break up, you are liable to lean hard into love/breakup songs. It’s all about the vibrations.

Music speaks to us in its own way because of the vibration. Vibrations aren’t “universal”. As a mattter of fact, no vibration is “universal”. My best friends and I, we “vibe“. We “get” each other and we are connected spiritually. Music is no different. With that in mind, it should be easier to understand that you can’t force a vibration that isn’t natural.