Hip Hop philosophy

Talib Kweli vs. Seneca

What have you done with your life?
Everybody time comes to be embraced by the light
You only scared to die when you ain't livin right, man

Talib Kweli - Good Mourning ^{1 audio}

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death's final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.

Seneca ²

Outkast vs. Montaigne (Erasmus)

I know you'd like to think your shit don't stink
But lean a little bit closer
See that roses really smell like boo-boo
Yeah, roses really smell like boo-boo

Outkast - Roses ³

As it was ingeniously and aptly put by the man who first said it: 'Stercus cuique suum bene olet.' [Everyone's shit smells good to himself.]
...
If we had sound nostrils our shit ought to stink all the more for being our own.

Michel de Montaigne ⁴