Kropotkin, and most honest thinkers throughout history, would readily acknowledge the sociopathy of a society in which individuals were trained in high-order thinking or trade skills, at a cost to society, and then subsequently used these skills to better themselves, with disregard to the their community.

The great Roman philosopher Cicero once remarked:

For he who so interprets the supreme good as to disjoin it from virtue, and measures it by his own convenience, and not by the standard of right, — he, I say, if he be consistent with himself, and be not sometimes overcome by natural goodness, can cultivate neither friendship, nor justice, nor generosity;

So…

Duty to others and society at-large is an important value for anyone to have, but we tend to find this most often in young people. The “idealists”, so-to-speak.

This is an important remark; if a man/woman was nothing more than the physical force and power with which their bodies produce, it would clearly be a high cost to society to have fit, young people forego labor-intensive work in order to study for a few years, without producing anything at all.

However, a well-functioning society recognizes that citizens are not just empty vassals made for physical labor and consumption, but rather living, thinking, feeling beings who have much more to offer if given the right tools.

Children generally acknowledge that a job or career is important insofar as it contributes to society or their community. If you polled a group of 12-year olds, it’s unlikely you’ll hear about dreams of working in mergers and acquisitions or aspirations of becoming a gossip journalist, and so on.

For example, in this online response to the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” an overwhelming majority of the answers (from young teenagers) have to do with societal duty and helping others. Some may refer to this as “idealism”, but in a well-functioning society, people realize a life of individual plunder means little to nothing.

Kropotkin starts out his appeal by, sort of, stroking the ego of his audience (the post-studies crowd), but more importantly, he is drawing a distinction between the audience and their younger/older counterparts. It is as though he is making this appeal to this specific group because they are in a unique position to think freely about it and internalize certain important aspects. Some of the unique characteristics of this group, which he mentions here, are:

• These young men and women are now at one of the greatest crossroads in their lives, e.g. looking for a career, a partner, etc.
• Not only are they beginning to build a life for themselves, but they are doing so in an autonomous way. They no longer have teachers or parents to tell them how to live.
• Young people making a way for themselves often have the “invincible mentality”, e.g. YOLO
• Finally, after spending 18-20 years listening to what everyone else wants them to do, young people are not apt to start their lives with further authoritarian institutions, like the church.

Fop

noun

1. obsolete : a foolish or silly person
2. a man who is devoted to or vain about his appearance or dress

It may be the braggadocio nature of Hip Hop, or it may just be the art in weaving a narrative that flows well over drum beats, but the fact remains: rappers lie.

Whatever the cause, Kembe is denouncing this characteristic of the genre. However, as he mentions in the verified annotation below, this goes beyond Jeezy’s tales of the trap or B.I.G.’s musings on armed robbery; it’s aimed more at the psuedo-intellectual rappers, or anyone whose espoused values do not match up with what they express on the mic. For Kembe, the Rap game is about giving up a piece of yourself to your listeners, not about selling them some false reality:

I really want people to get me and the way that I think. Its going to take a lot of music for people to see that, a bigger stage, with more people hearing it. The goal is for people to realize that the way that I think and the stuff that I go through in everyday life, I respond to differently.

This must be what’s missing in the game, from his perspective.

Off-top, the tone for the rest of the song is set, with X pointing out the lack of substance within the amorphous realm of mainstream Rap. He has previously mentioned a lack of role models in the Rap game, and his subsequent preoccupation with his own music rather than that of his peers:

OK, so who influences you to rap the most?

[Kembe:] Now, it’s more of what I like and what I do hear cause I don’t really listen to music like that anymore. But, if I hear like 2 Chainz I can take something if I think it’s raw and that’s not really my lane. It’s all about hearing something in a song and it being something I can add to and make into my own. Other than that nobody really influences me.

I read somewhere that you like to listen to yourself. Is that what you do more than anything?

[Kembe:] Yea. (Laughs)

According to the Stratfor emails released by WikiLeaks in early 2012:

They dont believe air intervention would happen unless there was enough media attention on a massacre, like the Ghadafi move against Benghazi. They think the US would have a high tolerance for killings as long as it doesn’t reach that very public stage.

The President has previously cited chemical weapons as his “red line”. The line was crossed at least as far back as June, as far as the U.S. was concerned; others believe it was the rebels who were responsible. There have been many questions as to why Assad would cross that line and invite western intervention by using chemical weapons, especially in a war he seems to be winning.

This is where the poem transitions, from one exulting the great heroes of ancient Greece, to one which understands that glory and other ideal Forms exist within our natural selves. These Forms are not attained individually, through some selfish means to an end, but only through recognizing their perpetual existence in life outside of our own.

This goes back to Jeffers' belief that:

It seems time that our race began to think as an adult does, rather than like an egocentric baby or insane person…