ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT'S CONSCIOUS HIP-HOP HEADLINES AthFest.

From SOUTH AFRICA.

The band’s mantra is to bring up topics most others in hip-hop shy away from. Speech, the Atlanta-bred rap group’s frontman, is adamant about this.

“The fact that in Orlando a couple days ago almost 50 people were murdered, and another 50 were injured — there’ll be no songs about that hardly. The fact that black men, in particular, and young boys were getting shot down for the last four or five years consistently by police, you rarely hear, if any, songs about that,” Speech said.

Whether you obsess over it or not, music is always playing  from speakers at restaurants and stores, popping up in snippets on TV and blaring from nearby car speakers at stop lights.

Speech calls music “life’s soundtrack,” so he worries issues will be forgotten if they don’t make it onto the soundtrack.

“Right now with mainstream music is so void of depth and deeper meaning, and it’s not really talking about the things you may see in the news,” Speech said.

When Arrested Development was first reaching popularity in the 1990s, listeners could hear rap on the radio that was a mixture of serious songs addressing problems played among songs hyping gang life and partying.

To give you an idea of where Arrested Development stands on that spectrum, its recent album “Change the Narrative” features a song on which Speech’s reply to being asked why he hasn’t been at the club recently is “I don’t see you at the bank.”

It’s not that Speech thinks all rap should be socially conscious, but he knows his rap should be.

He believes it his mission on Earth to speak up because “God really plants activism inside people’s’ souls.”

Speech’s philosophy is encapsulated in a few lines he spouts off in the song “Devoted to the People”: “Backdrop is music, foreground the truth/ Backdrop a party, foreground a movement.”

Speech didn’t always have to fight to be heard.

Arrested Development’s history is disjointed because of its break from 1995 to 2000.

In 1992 the band won two Grammys for best new artist and best rap single. The group was celebrated as the first African-American artist to donate to the African National Congress and later were joined by Nelson Mandela on stage.

The collective that now includes 1 Love, Tasha LaRae, Fareedah Aleem, Za’ and JJ Boogie along with Speech.Since its return it’s been harder to find fans in the United States, Speech said.

He believes people can love all kinds of music, but first they have to hear it. With modern technology, many people often don’t hear genres of music if they don’t seek it out.

He practices indulging in variety himself. Speech’s playlists are a mixture of classics from the 1960s and 1970s, plus Drake and other modern artists.

“A lot of people say, people listen to the music that’s out there now because that’s what they love.

I don’t actually believe that. I think that’s what they get, so that’s what they then love. Whatever you’re exposed to is what you learn to appreciate or you just get used to it,” Speech said.