Past or Future?

Towards the end of the chapter three it talks about how rap music is a way of story-telling. "...rap has taken forward by embracing technology to construct a musical style that pushes African-American story-telling into the future. Rap refuses to languish in the past, but instead has found a method of speaking to the future." Do you think rap music defines the past or the future? Why or why not? I agree that rap is certainly a way of story-telling, however, I believe that it could be the past or the future. Or even a representation of the present and what is going on currently.