By Sunez Allah #SkillastratorLO
(with crucial reporting from Sharif Allah, The Founder)
All the mathematics are round,
odd enough to point to understanding,
even enough to balance equality,
they always tumble into rolling ciphers.
If it’s peace?!
Embedded in this culture, Hip Hop, song of looped drum and long rhymed vocable, the knowledge of self has traveled. Indigenous men the world over have heard the words and when the drums stop and repeat, they saw the arrows to Mecca. Bowing back to their own words to express their fight to joy, their affairs with sorrow all with the developing illness that heals them, they became the Zur7 crew, formed in Venezuela in 2011. Zur7, meaning South American Gods was Messiah Allah (Jonathan Hernandez a.k.a. Jahlodijo MC), one of the original members of the first Venezuelan cipher of Gods building, a collective part of the musical chapter of the Victory Through Culture (Venezuela) School. All rooted back in “The Founder,” the God Sharif Allah, after his return from Mecca, Allah School in Mecca, in Harlem, New York City, a real place, not mythical but neither typical. A little build on these distant brothers of mine, A-Alikes to all of us Hip Hop…
MESSIAH (a.k.a. Jahlodijo MC, the honorable Jonathan Hernández)
The creator of the Zur7 crew inspired to focus the knowledge of self into the Hip Hop music he was creating for years.. Born in Miami, Florida via Venezuelan parents and raised in Margarita Island, Venezuela, Hip Hop was officially a living by 2001 as part of La Armada (The Army) crew. The resume stretched him to different groups (7 Stars, Manicomio All-Stars, etc) to shared stages with some of the biggest Hip Hop MCs and groups of Venezuela (Ardilla MC, Tres Dueños, Canserbero, Guerrilla Seca, etc.).
As the knowledge of self traveled back to Venezuela with the Founder in 2010, Messiah becomes a student enrolled under the study, getting his lessons directly from the Allah school’s lineage. This inspired the creation of Zur7 as he began reaching \the youth, getting in different musical ciphers and bringing many students to the knowledge of self in the process such as Zur7’s own Guaiquerí and Knueve.
Messiah, promoting his latest single, “Er Pirata” (The Pirate), a meditative chant to the love of diversity, through hard snares, smooth bass drums and chimed bells, he is working a goal of bringing a cultural movement to his country. A movement that informs the mission of Zur7, that the music is to spark builders in the community with the tools of their own awareness.
And so vindicate a vista de Venezuela, one lonely man,
yet not to be forlorn
The Founder in the South first came to the Mecca’s teachers,
Wise Jamel, Allah B, Al Jamaar and even I, Sunez, honored am I.
Himself to find first, brethren upon brethren next
KNUEVE (Knowledge Born, the honorable Adrian Brito)
With a guise for introspection that grooves the search for resurrection of the mind and soul, Knueve, is a tempered cadence that naturally absorbs into the rpm of the tracks around him. Whether intensely exhorting on “123 Legaliza Tu Actitud” or falling into the jazz’d horns of “Mis Elementos,” his versatility in lyrical dexterity is subtly intriguing as it is precocious.
Born the same month as Poor Righteous Teacher’s Black Business LP, in Caracas, specifically the barrio of Petare, one of the biggest slums of Latin America, to a working class family, Knueve moved with his family to Margarita Island, in Venezuela, when he was 10 years old. At 14, the rhyming started and upon returning to Caracas four years later, to study graphic design, he formed his own crew, LPU (La Pandilla Universal/The Universal Gang). At this young age, the crew of graf artists and MCs, social commentary was already in their bars and walls ripped.
After returning again to Margarita Island in 2014, he became a newborn building with beginning his Messiah Allah (A.K.A. Jahlodijo MC). From then, Knueve has had many students himself, as brothers Juan Afro 96 and Winston Asko. However, the one that he must now Remember In Perfection (RIP) is the young God Splake, who passed away in February from a car accident. His “1,2,3 Legaliza tu Actitud” (1,2,3 Legalize your Attitude) is dedicated to his memory.
And knowledge of self, truth, turns wisdom, a life supreme in use,
into rhythms of understanding
So the way sounds like a culture of songs,
Tough words, harder music
And with these notes, The Founder spread the slums with that KOS
A schooling they called Victory Through Culture
Mere superior first world assets learn they supreme, first in this world,
Just been true and living trapped in places so cruel and unforgiving.
GUAIQUERÍ (the honorable Luis Aguilera)
Ruggedly voiced with the chopped cadence, Guaiqueri got his righteous name from the ancestral Guaiquerí tribe, from his land of birth, Margarita Island, in Venezuela. Raised in a humble town of fishermen, he stood out as a very good student from a very young age. Reciting poetry in his earliest school days he found his passion in rappoing, through an interest in Caribbean Merengue Hop acts as Proyecto 1 and Sandy & Papo. By high school, his beatboxing and MCing got him the nickname “Miniteco,” the mobile-sound-system-man. Graduating through many of the regional Hip Hop groups from The Killers to Maestría” the rep grew bigger and he shared stages with famous international acts from Don Omar, Tres Dueños, Calle Ciega to Guerrilla Seca.
In 2013, he starts building with Messiah Allah (A.K.A. Jahlodijo MC) and other Gods which simultaneously leads to connecting with the Victory Through Culture cipher. Receiving his Supreme Mathematics as well, he begins his journey into the knowledge of self, learning to kill his 4 devil heads and sharing his understanding through art. The music now reaches a deeper level for him than prior. There is a reason to the rhymes bust, the truth in the crimes upon us…
Zur7 is a developing story, a history they write in advance, from bar to bar, through snare to snare. There are others in the crew we’ll do the knowledge to from the MC/visual artist Six-Two (Hon. Carlos Arteaga), the writer/MC Sun Thinker (Hon. Adrian Trujillo) or Scientific (Hon. Juan Longart), Justo Allah (Hon. Carlos Bermudez, a.k.a. SK Bermudez) and the late graphic designer Splake (Hon. Ainer de Jesus) so Remembered In Perfection (RIP). These are reminders that we wonder of the exporting of the commerce of corruption or the dilution of a counter-cultural service as Hip Hop into an international sub-culture hustle. Too many got BET and made reggaeton, Zur7 got KOS and make Boom Bap. Rejoice, Revolt, Rewind, Repeat…
Is revolution a fast circle to comfort or a daring ciphering of innovation?
It better be the one I get badder not just the one #RespectFAKE get fatter!
Zig Zag Zig a Zur7,
the fruits of a tree fell far but they ill,
one and the same
¡Diganle!,
Devils’ societies dead in a day
with done daring of one declared derelict’s determined idea:
Deliverance of our definition, the knowledge of self.…
#LOVEandLOYALTY A #LoLife
The organization of these principles around a counterculture, an expressive arts of creation that uplifts the ideas and thoughts of an oppressed people, is why I’m an honored builder amongst legends, knighted by heroes of Medina (Rakim Supreme Shabazz Allah/Rudy Lo, Thirstin Howl the 3rd, Bonz Malone) to further create in my element as a Hip Hop Writer of #ArtOnArt & #ScienceOnMusic. So the world may find love that locks in with the action of loyalty though they may never find another writer with my kind of grammar…
Representing the pillars of:
#KnowledgeOfSelf
#LoveAndLoyalty
#OriginalCreativity
Peace, Sunez Allah
#SkillastratorLO #PowerWrite