Shawn Setaro
[Allah B, one of the earliest members of the Nation of Gods and Earths (formerly the Five Percenters), the influential group that gave hip-hop most of its slang and teachings, recently sat down with hip-hop personality and SOHH correspondent Shawn Setaro on his popular “The Cipher” podcast. Listen to the full interview and check out five gems Allah B dropped during the Q&A. Photo credit: Khalik Allah]
On seeing Malcolm X speak when he was growing up:
“I used to see Malcolm X there when I was about 12, 13 years old. He became known to me in about ’58, ’59. As a youth, I had a great sense of identification with a black man standing up [against the police], and so I wanted to meet him.”
On the Five Percenters’ founder, Allah the Father:
“He was saying almost the same things that Malcolm was saying, but he was giving me a suit of clothes to it that I could readily put on – that I didn’t have to change my dress, because I was a young fly guy dressing nice in the street, and I really loved that. And he was giving me that knowledge that I wanted, but it was with a suit of clothes for the youth, that I could be me with this knowledge.”
On what Allah the Father was like:
“I sought out the error, not in his ways, but in his teachings, and I couldn’t find no errors. I found out he was perfect, not only in his application of Mathematics but as an expression of life, because he taught me that ‘Allah’ spelled out on his body [Arm-Leg-Leg-Arm-Head]. He was precise in his application of Mathematics. And I understood why, out of all the men that came with knowledge at the time that he did, he was the one.”
On the relationship between the Five Percenters “rapping” their teachings in the 1960s and 70s and hip-hop:
“I think it was a serious, direct relationship, but it wasn’t recognized as anything special or different. It was just that we was rapping, in that we had the flow with the wisdom and our teachings. The way we taught when we spoke the lessons, we talked real rapidly. It was attracting a lot of the youths. So if you wanted to rap, meaning teach or speak well, you had to get the knowledge.”
On 5% slang spreading thru hip-hop:
“I felt elated. I felt great about it because it was all about teaching and influencing others with those teachings. So we needed the medium. We did the work on the streets, word of mouth. And we did it in the auditoriums when we had Parliaments, spreading the word. And we did it in the papers when we wrote the papers – the WORD, The Five Percenter, the Son of Man, those papers. So we was disseminating this. Now we had a broader medium in which to do it, and that was the music.”
