The Culture: The Eagle Gets Its Talons Back
The outstanding fact of late-twentieth-century European culture is ongoing reconciliation with black culture. The mystery may be that it too so long to discern the elements of black culture already there in latent form, and to realize that the separation between the cultures was perhaps all along not one of nature, but of force. -James A. Snead (Snead, 1981).
 Urban culture is a force of individuals who are springing themselves free from the hold of authority and institutions. To be part of this culture you do not have to be black or white, rich or poor. To be part of this culture you have to  be a self-reliant and innovative cyberpunk. You cannot be fooled by the name. Urban culture is not urban, its underground, and you either know or you don't. The wealth in this country is not distributed equally, and you do not have to be a scholar to realize that. New media has decentralized power and loosened the control of capitalism in America. Generations past relied on governments and religions to save them. As Malcolm X said, "capitalism used to be like and eagle, but now it's more like a vulture...it can only suck the blood of the helpless...You have to have someone else's blood to suck to be a capitalist. he's got to get it form somewhere other than himself, and that's where he gets it" (X, Malcolm). Timothy Leary called them cyberpunks, Malcolm X would refer to them as eagles. The urban culture is an expressive movement of cyberpunk individuals who are unified under the poetics of hip-hop. Everyone is a lyricist in the new urban culture; everyone who embraces the cyberpunk mentality and understands his/her role in this new media environment. The urban cyberpunk does not live visually but through the sounds of hip-hop, as jazz drummer Max Roach illustrates "the sound I tell them, that's the final answer to any question in music-the sound" (Roach, Max).
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