The Realness

Well first of all, I’d like to recognize some already existing hip-hop superheroes. Omar, from HBO’s The Wire, comes to mind. He’s a cowboy / Robin Hood figure placed in the ghettos of Baltimore, and is also the ultimate badass who happens to be homosexual. Luke Cage, the Marvel Comics character, could also be considered one since he has a very urban / hip-hop feel. But I’ll attempt to get more creative.

My hip-hop superhero would be named “The Realness,” after the Cormega album. Their power would be the ability to telepathically force someone to be truthful in revealing ways. Oh what fun it would be to see the president of the United States admit on television the terrible things they have done. Maybe George W. Bush would prove Kanye West in a speech about racism. Rapper’s careers would be ruined with such reveals as “I was never shot 9 times.”

This power is “hip-hop” because hip-hop speaks the truth in ways that are not usually heard. After all, Tupac said that 2pacalypse Now was a “report” of life as he had witnessed it so far. We would know where people stood, and everyone would be “real.”