The brain drain, in rap form.
Mainstream Pinoy rap has gotten a bad rap for a long while because aside from the late Francis Magalona, who did the country ever have who had a deep message behind the lyrical calisthenics? Andrew E certainly didn't, nor did ::shudders:: Carlos Agassi, so yeah, that was a problem for quite a bit.
Thank heavens for Gloc 9, then, because he has certainly done more than his fair share of uplifting mainstream Pinoy rap to something laudable and not just a plain attempt to ride the gravy train of hip-hop.
This song is one of those songs that really speaks about the Filipino situation, how it seems that this nation has gotten so bad that the best opportunities for Filipinos only ever come outside of the Philippines, and you do end up wondering why this is the case. Third world problems? Maybe. Real problems? Absolutely.
"Walang Natira" bluntly addresses the fact that the best and the brightest among us are more likely to leave this country, and yet, we can't really blame them when they do so, can we? It's a vicious cycle, and though many of us cannot deny the good that globalization can bring upon all of us, few of us can also deny that it is an inconvenient truth that the Philippines itself is not good enough to entice the best and the brightest among us unless a tenuous appeal to a sense of patriotism is used.
Why is it that the only ones left to make this nation better are the very people we really wish were not within five hundred miles of this nation's political institutions? It is what it is, and Gloc 9's lyrical gifts illustrate these questions very handily, and make us ask of ourselves the difficult questions we would otherwise be wary of.
I guess that kind of lyrical genius more than justifies why Gloc 9's song is the one I'm featuring on this week's Project 52.
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