According to legend, the eighth day was God’s busiest. He woke up in the morning, and, apparently, decided to create golf, football, chocolate and the SuperPretzel. I’ve also heard that at sometime he thought he’d like to party with a purpose, so he decided to work on a few projects. He settled then on developing breakdancing, graffiti art, turntablism and rapping. Finally, in the late 1970s, the four were finally let loose on society, and hip-hop was born. Or so I’ve heard.

The real story is a bit more complicated, but I usually prefer mine. Yet, if hip-hop was created by divine will, it was definitely one of God’s choose-your-own adventure creations. For the most part, his children focused on rhyming and scratching, working to develop them into new and separate art forms. Even so, some jerk ended up flipping to page 73, and we ended up in a dead end with “No Scrubs.”

When the Sugar Hill Gang skimmed the vocals off the top of “Good Times” and added new rhymes to create “Rapper’s Delight,” it would have been tough to imagine anything like it existing a few decades later.

But it would have been truly amazing to have predicted the stagnation of creativity and power hip-hop has experienced in recent years, right down the path we followed.

Hip-hop was once described as the CNN of poor black youth by Chuck D of Public Enemy. It was a revolutionary force that gave anyone with a record player and a vocabulary the chance to reach out to millions and express their own feelings and desires. But the accessibility of the tool has worn it down. The force of the radio waves has been blocked by the glut of thousands of new artists with nothing to say, pressed in by the same financiers, producers and conmen.

Some true artists are making their way through. They may or may not be old enough to have experienced the birth of hip-hop firsthand. Yet, they have learned what made many of the best hip-hop records explode when the needle hit the groove.

First, there is innovation. While rapping about parties and the fantasy life can make records sound the same as those created 20 years ago, it was a new idea at that time. People just didn’t take the mic and say hello to their friends in rhythm to a beat at Manhattan parties before the ’70s.

There was an effortless urgency found when someone spoke or shouted without their own tune, while someone else improvised a new structure to background music. Today’s best rappers and producers learned that the spirit of change, not the actual lyrics or beats, was the gift of the elders.

Second, sincerity dripped from the best rappers’ voices and from the best beats. When you heard them speak, you knew they were speaking about their own lives, the lives of those they knew or lives that could be theirs. And when they spoke about the fantasy life they might never reach or exaggerated their own, they would almost wink to remind you to keep the words and sounds in context. Many have now forgotten the concepts of irony and real desperation — they simply speak of what they have and what they want. The sincere speak of what actually makes them happy, but admit that they may never know and may never find it.

Third, the best artists felt and feel what you feel. They speak a language every person can understand. When rappers speak of objects with no life or meaning and beat makers focus only on creating movement, there will be no empathy. Yet when we hear a love song, party song or a political song that is focused on the experience of the listener rather than isolated incidents, we can and will be moved. The force can fulfill its promise.

Fourth, a great piece of hip-hop music is the light we feel when pulling the blinds in the morning, blinding us, burning our skin and warming our blood. It is immediate and blocks out everything else. Once awakened, we can’t return to our slumber, at least until we force ourselves to block it out and escape or simply adapt.

There is no need to choose which artists we believe are holding us down, and which will carry all listeners to a new level of experience. But we must demand the beats and lyrics be interpreted in the same manner as one force.

If there is a divine plan behind the creation and distribution of hip-hop music that can lead us to its promise, we still have choices to make before it’s pulled away once again.

We were given the ability to choose which albums we will buy, which concerts to attend and which artists we’ll support with our dollars. We must demand that our artists learn from our past and create music for us and for our future.