And when Johnson made a point, it didn’t just resonate with the packed crown of listeners. It echoed – with laughter, affirmative cries of “hello” and, later, with intense discussions in the hallways and restrooms of Hawthorn Suites in Champaign, where the conference was held.

That’s just the kind of response organizers like Imani Bazzell of the Urban League of Champaign County, the host for the conference, were hoping for. For Bazzell, the conference brings representatives from Urban Leagues around the region together to “recall our purpose and revitalize our spirits.”

For Johnson, that purpose was to help people gain an understanding of how the hip-hop generation is a direct product of the civil rights era and “to deal with the generational divide that does exist,” he said.

Johnson said that after the civil rights era, “there was a failure to maintain a spirit of movement.”

He said many young people grow up dealing with issues like poverty and poor education. They are also exposed to adult music, sexuality and images.

At the same time, those youths are often without religious faith, adult supervision or empathy from their family and community elders. Many also grow up without an accurate historical context to understand their struggles, triumphs and flaws, Johnson said.

“You had a generation of young people who did not culturally know who they were,” he said. “They created hip-hop to express their pain, to express their frustration, to express their joy.”

“Hip-hop,” Johnson said, “is the child of neglect of civil rights.”

Johnson suggested older people talk with younger ones, listen to their ideas and issues and “be as honest about (the older generation’s) shortcomings as it is about its triumphs.”

Young people, for their part, need to understand the socio-political activist roots of hip-hop as opposed to the music industry representations of it.

“We have to stop defining hip-hop by hip-hop artists. We are hip-hop,” he said.

To that end, he feels, black people should develop and nurture organizations to include and empower youth and to teach them about bettering their lives and the lives of those around them. If hip-hop is the language of black youths, he said, then use hip-hop in a relevant, honest way to teach and discuss issues.

Will Keltee, a representative from the Metropolitan St. Louis Urban League, already sees the positive power of hip-hop. He’s heard about issues in songs, and then gone and found out more for himself.

“There’s a lot of music in there that talks about civil rights,” he said. “It introduces it to a lot of people.”

Rodney Vassar, who is earning his GED through an Urban League program, said he already knew most of what Johnson said about hip-hop, but felt the link Johnson made between civil rights and hip-hop made the aspiring music producer think about his place in history.