The sun had gone down over the Rhondda Valley. It was Sunday evening and the world of Hip-Hop was gathered in the lounge bar of the Miner's Arms in Ebbw Vale, South Wales.
They were waiting for Kanye West to come and explain the origins for his new creation 'Valley Rap' which has taken the charts by storm.
Rap can be many things. It can come from many places. Particularly the cold pavements of New York and South London.
So what was it doing here in South Wales? Amongst these pretty cottages and their front gardens and the green hills that rise yonder to the north looking up towards Snowdonia?
With Jay-Z, Eminem, Common, Dizzee Rascal, Dr Dre, Nas, Snoop, Lil Wayne and a room of other top artists, all seeking an answer, The Miner's Arms was the place to be as the beer began to flow and the spirits of Welsh forefathers began to gather round to listen.
Then the room went dark.
A giant screen was lowered from the ceiling. A projector flickered into life. This had to be South Wales. People were smoking everywhere. Clouds of cigarette tobacco mixed with ganja and marijuana danced in front of the screen.
We were looking at a coal mine. A giant wheel on the surface. Everywhere black steel ropes, darkness and misery. Shots of men with black faces. Sweat. Tin boxes. Lamps. Those who did things. Men who worked.
We thought for a moment. How could they ever have sung so beautifully.
Then Kanye West came to the microphone.
And the music began.
"You come here today and you pay and I say
where that road took me next from satanical mills
where they don't write no text for these valleys and hills
You say
Cos you know to connect to the bad how I feels
Is to stay in the street where the beat is suspect
And the man with the drugs has his own dialect
for his plight
Right here in the fields in a land with no shields
And the stink of the coal from the man in a hole
Is all gone for good like I told you it would
Like today
On the hill with the school and the black daffodil
and the scream in the wind calling Aberfan ow
as the sill hears the drill and the will dies
Until
It's so still and the gold turning black as the cold
and the wail in the dale turns the wheel I am told
as a lung like a dirge is spoke never sung
Before
Grime has its time like quicklime sometime
diggin' deep in the soul like a mole in the soil
when the coil of the wire takes him higher and higher
Never out
of the pit and the shit and the clay with his shout
not a doubt every sum comes to nowt
at the end of the day with his take home pay
is still far away
Turns his face to the wheel and the feel of the dust
in the eye and the sigh as he sinks down to die
and they cry to the sky as the man whispers why
is it me
Can't you see perfectly that's a lung full of soot
that you put out the fire of men in the choir
that sang in the hills in the land of their fathers
As others
have done when the sun does no favours to bathers
on sands groaning shift as I budge to the trudge of the miners
who crawl through the sludge to the lift that has come
to take him
away from this hell and the burn and the smell as you turn
for the sanctity of a moment's alacrity from deep in the stern
to the front of the queue and a view for the few of the city
in London
That's far from the station a distant relation who's making the money
this nation's ovation our town hall's creation this really ain't funny
when deaf are half blind Lord Nelson's not kind and neither has time
for our pity
full words as the wind blows again and again and again as it washes
the stain in buckets of rain and again with the pain of the past
that can't never last in our brain to explain when he came at the last
To die"
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