Freyr

. Many of the rappers who emerged during the early 1990s, the great Wu-Tangs, the formidable Nas of the Queensbridge Houses, were deeply influenced by the Five Percenters, a.k.a. the Nation of Gods and Earths. The movement had been founded in the late 1960s by Clarence Edward Smith, a.k.a. Clarence 13X, and eventually “Father Allah.” Kicked out of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam for heresy and gambling, Father Allah said it was necessary for black men and women to become “lyrical assassins.” The tongue was “the sword,” Father Allah said, and when properly sharpened, it could “take more heads with the word than any army with machine guns could ever do.”