And I'm including both these artists (RZA to a larger extent) AND the cats debating this dumb shit in this thread.

Probably at other times many of you agree that the culture is in some way very sick, racist, shallow, money-centric, etc., that's what the actual ENVIRONMENT is, everything else stems from your ability to TRANSCEND your environment, including whether you pick up Isis Papers or Plato or whatever. Transcending your environment should be the whole fucking point but it's not because people would rather score some sad points bigging up their area in a global sense. Arguing about which region promotes a better base level intellect for people who don't try to learn anything anyway (like RZA, Jay, and most musicians for that matter lol) is pointless and ridiculous.