I Don't believe in Haters

You hear rappers talk about haters often. They credit haters as their motivation to keep moving forward. Some actually thank their haters. You’ll hear comments like “The hate only makes me stronger”, and I never understood that. When folks start to clump all the negativity towards them as hate, then they’re doing the exact opposite of making themselves stronger. When artist start believing their own hype and dismissing anything less than praise as hate, they’re throwing away gold nuggets of wisdom and opportunity for growth. This ignorance towards any view that is different from “You’re fucking awesome” is really just cutting you off from reality. It's dangerous to think that negative comments could be used to quantify success.The idea that: "the more they hate, the more I must be doing right" can cause a further disconnect to whats really going on. Take it for what it's worth and keep it moving.

People can provide constructive criticism, and that criticism shows they took the time to experience what you do, and care enough to help you enhance it. “you’re garbage” isn’t constructive, or even critical for that matter, it’s just an attempt to illicit a response. Comments like that that don’t make me stronger, it just makes the person making those comments weaker. The fact that they actually invested calories to share a generic insult for the purposes of trying to cause harm doesn’t reflect on my work, or myself, it reflects on them. Randomly calling a woman a bitch, doesn’t make her a bitch, it jus make me jerk. So these comments that are so often labeled as hate, aren’t really hate at all. Because they’re not directing hate towards someone, they’re just bringing attention to themselves and their hurtful intentions. Who really looks bad after the comment is made?

So I don’t believe in haters, I’m just flattered that people still take the time to write me, even if they aren’t leaving the most positive comments. And since I don’t dismiss those comments as hate, I won’t miss out on the knowledge folks kick at me, when they got valid criticism.

e.g.

Humble P: “Yo, what you think of the new track and video?”

Harman The Hater: “I loved the video, but can I make a comment about the track?”

Humble P: “yea man, go for it”

Harman The Hater: “I love the beat, but I can’t understand all your lyrics, you’re mumbling some of the parts, I think you need to re-record”

Humble P: “Your probably right, I know the lyrics, so they’re clear to me, never thought about what an outsider might be taking in”

My homeboys already call me Mumble The Poet, and the criticism is valid. So if y’all got something mean to say, just make sure it makes sense? If I’m an eMCee, then making disrespectful comments about my appearance doesn’t hurt me, it jus gets filed under “what the F#&@ does that have to do with hip hop?” folder. If you want to throw proper darts, make comments on the actual content I create, but if your comments make sense, I’ll be thankful for the advice. If your goal is to try to hurt my feelings, I’m too old for that; at this point, the only people that can hurt me, are the ones I love, and they wouldn’t be worth loving if they were trying to hurt me.

When I hear or see disrespectful comments towards myself, or anyone else, I just try to figure out what happened to the person making the comments. Either their mamma didn’t hug’em enough, or they’re just disappointed in themselves and need to project the frustration towards someone.

Personally I only hate when I’m jealous; lucky for me, I haven’t been jealous in a while :)