“Obama’s tete-a-tete with Bush is a watershed moment for him, because media outlets reported it with headlines like “Democrats Outraged”. Not “Some Democrats” or “Obama Supporters”; just “Democrats”. By taking Bush to task, Obama formally took the reins of the Democratic Party. Even Hillary stood up to defend him!”

The past few days have renewed the faith of many in the Democratic Party’s ability to unite in the wake of one of the most bruising presidential campaigns in recent memory. And it was good for this former Hillary Clinton supporter to see her look and sound like the Hillary Clinton some of us grew up with.

The famed professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University has long been an outspoken social figure and will use so-called “urban” music to air his views regarding the N-word, Sept. 11, racial profiling, the Bush administration and more.

“It isn’t a commentary on hip-hop. And I’m not coming in as a hip-hop scholar or critic,” West told Billboard. “This is an attempt to go back to hip-hop’s prophetic roots, which are about truth-telling, exposing lies and having fun. It’s what I call a danceable education or a singing paideia, the Greek word for deep education. If there is one person whose spirit I try to embody on this CD, it’s Curtis Mayfield. His music is about love and freedom and really informs.

Read more…

Source: Billboard

According to the Stamford Advocate, the rapper was dissed by Jere Eaton, a former Yerwood Center board member and a potential presidential candidate for the NAACP’s Stamford branch, who was concerned violence would break out at the event.

She was so concerned she hopped online to gather Web site links, articles and lyrics before sending out a warning email blast to community leaders and the media demanding Jadakiss be dropped.

“Under the leadership of Dr. Robert Perry (pastor of Union Baptist Church) and other clergy in Stamford,” she wrote, “we are demanding that the Celebrity Basketball Fundraiser is canceled or ‘CLEAN’ entertainment is provided by artists with ‘CLEAN’ reputations.”

Eaton had previously made her views crystal clear by saying, “All of these artists are the worst of the worst. They’re criminals, their favorite word is the N-word, and they demean women by calling them bitches and hos.”

Deborah Sewell, the Yerwood Center’s president and CEO, canceled the fundraiser after receiving over 60 phone calls expressing concern. There was no time to schedule a replacement.

One leader who spoke out against the event was Rev. Tommie Jackson, pastor of Faith Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church.

“It doesn’t make it right if it’s said by Don Imus or black rap artists,” Jackson opined. “It is antithetical to the morals and values that we’re trying to teach and impart to the sons and daughters of the community.

“The bottom line is we believe that the Yerwood Center needs to raise money, but there are better ways of doing it than bringing in Jadakiss.”

The Stamford Advocate 

However, I just absolutely have to say I am soooooooo disappointed.

Simmons, the man primarily responsible for building the rap music industry, and who I’ve supported for years, has shown himself to be a real publicity whore.

Case in point, let’s examine the recent controversy still brewing around the derogatory remarks made by radio shock jock Don Imus towards the Rutgers women’s basketball team. When community leaders raised a big stink and caused Imus to get fired, Simmons came out weeks later recommending that the rap industry voluntarily remove the words bitch, ho, and ni**er from songs.

As quoted in the Hollywood Reporter: “These three words should be considered with the same objections to obscenity as extreme curse words.”

However, during an interview I conducted with him five years ago (June, 2001) he was freestyling a totally different verse.

When I asked him how he viewed rap music, he commented on the power that rappers have, but said he wasn’t interested in cleaning up rap.

“There’s not one record that I hear on the radio that I think shouldn’t be on the radio. I want to make this clear. There’s not one record that I find offensive.”

When I brought up the rampant misogyny in the rap industry and how, as a father of a then baby girl, he felt about it, he tripped over his pre-prepared responses and took a long pause, afterwhich he said:

“I feel… that [it is] for parents to govern what their kids’ understanding [is] of what’s in the world. What part of it do they want them to hear at an early age is the parent’s choice and the way they want to explain to them what they hear - if they hear it. Now if you don’t have parents [who can do that]… then it’s a hard world that you’ve fallen into… You can’t stop sexist statements.”

Check the whole interview: Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 and judge for yourself whether Simmons is using the recent controversy as a publicity vehicle for his own interests, namely the Hip-hop Summit and his new forage into Africa’s diamond mines. I can’t help to think that if he truly felt that “bitch,” “ho,” and “ni**er” were “extreme curse word” he would have done something about it decades ago when it could’ve made a real difference.

For real.

“A white Clemson University student attends a bash in black face [oh my] over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend [oh my, my]. A fraternity at Johns Hopkins University invites partygoers to wear “bling bling” grills, or shiny metal caps on their teeth.”

Dumb asses are documenting their ignorance by uploading photos from these parties. Look closely and you will see white kids from the suburbs throwing up gang signs… like this one, shown above and found through a Google search.

WTF? If this chick was ever anywhere near a real Crip in…. say… Compton, she’d sh*t her pink panties… Come to think of it, so would I…

“The segment of rap music that is glamorized and popularized by the media is gangsta rap,” said Venise Berry, an African-American associate professor of journalism at the University of Iowa. “It has become an image that is normalized in our society. That to me explains clearly why they don’t see it as wrong.”

What’s really “wrong” is these people don’t realize how ass-out stupid they look.
“One student wore blackface; another white student put padding in her pants to make her rear end look bigger.”

Ok someone really needs a reality pimp-slap. And a punch… and a good stomp. Hey I’m just ranting, I’m not advocating violence…

But seriously… what’s worse? The people making fun of African American stereotypes, or the morons in the rap industry who continually market these stereotypes and pass it off as “reality.”

I say the latter.

Not that it’s ok to racially mock anyone, these college kids are really out of line, but so are the garbage lyrics and videos from these wanna be gangsta rappers, the majority of whom would crap their pink panties if they were anywhere near real life gangsters.

James Johnson, a black psychology professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington says: “In the civil rights movement, you didn’t have blacks who called themselves `niggers’ and who called their women `bitches’ and `whores’ and who glorified being violent and being thugs. Now these white kids are kind of confused.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

RIP Alice Coltrane.

Ironically, in 2007, a highschool student’s documentary shows that not much has changed. This 7 minute film is all over the news, sparking national dialogue and invoking straight-up weeping.

Yeah, I cried.
The doc brings up an important question. Why, oh why are so many young people still suffering from feelings of low self worth despite the progress our society has made? Could our own popular culture be part of the problem?

Hell yes.

Hey, you in power. You rappers and some of you singers who routinely spit “nigga” and “bitch.” Take look at this documentary and recognize.

Yeah, I said “those in power,” ’cause, guess what, if your music and videos are reaching millions of people all over the world, then you, my friend, have power. Power to affect the minds of people. Power to affect a generation. Power to either negate racial stereotypes or perpetuate them.

In the new millennium, it’s not just institutionalized racism that kills our self worth, it’s the songs, albums and videos, filled with lyrics and images of self hate that pass on the legacy of low self esteem.

My 3 year old, the only dark-skinned child in his daycare, came home last week and said he was “black.” As he held his head in his hands, I realized he felt traumatized by the way this information was given to him. I immediately told him he is beautiful, smart and able to do anything he put his mind to. When he smiled, I knew that I’m doing my part to neutralize society’s message that he’s somehow lacking.
And I’ll be damned if I let a rapper tell him otherwise.

Watch the video “A Girl Like Me”

Accompanied by its own website, the song sees the Brooklyn emcee address the ongoing problem of gun violence in America by expressing his lyrics from the viewpoint of a bullet.

The song talks about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Tupac, Biggie and others, while the video addresses murders-by-police, and shows a little boy mistakenly shoot his sister in their parents’ bedroom.

“This is my effort to help awaken the unconscious and nourish the youth,” Monch says at the end of the clip.

Despite the fact this video is less violent than the majority of video games out there, it’s been deemed “too graphic” for television video outlets such as BET and MTV (who, ironically, don’t see anything wrong with airing a ton of videos marketing violent and/or sexually explicit images and themes). The video is currently running exclusively on YouTube.

The track’s website offers lyrics to the song as well as disturbing gun facts such as: “US Children are 12 times more likely to die by gun fire than in 25 other industrialized combined,” as stated by the John Hopkins University Center for Gun Policy.

“Gun Draws” is the lead single from Monch’s eagerly anticipated Desire, set to drop in May.

VIDEO
Pharoah Monch - “Gun Draws”

Thanks to our litigious society, our government-for-sale was forced to make the disclosure in response to lawsuits filed under the Freedom of Information Act by TREA Senior Citizens League.

According to Yahoo News, the agreement “could allow millions of illegal Mexican workers to draw billions of dollars from the U.S. Social Security Trust Fund.”

Now on one hand, this could be as Malcolm X would say “the chickens coming home to roost.” After all, Mexico used to encompass much of what we call the South West U.S. before our conquering fathers killed everybody and divided the spoils.

But on the other hand, it’s yet another wake up call; a massive bell-ringing for the benefit of every American citizen, courtesy of a government that ditched “by the people, for the people” in favor of “big business at all costs.”
BTW, happy new year.

Download the agreement

Today’s New York Times talks about how, after decades of worker abuses via sweatshops and the like, the Chinese powers-that-be are working to fix the situation by “giving labor unions real power for the first time since it introduced market forces in the 1980’s.”

Most decent people who’ve ever read about sweatshop laborers, many of them children, and the horrid conditions they are forced to work in, would welcome this news, however our government is actively lobbying against it.

Why?

Well since foreign investment has risen since the free market lowering of wages in the 80s, big companies have made a ton of money in China. Now those outrageous profits are in danger of diminishing. God forbid these American companies, such as Disney, or Walmart (recently forced to bow to the Chinese unions) would bring some of these jobs back to the States.

But their attitude towards the Chinese wanting to strengthen their unions is despicable.

“’This is really two steps backward after three steps forward,’ said Kenneth Tung, Asia-Pacific director of legal affairs at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Hong Kong and a legal adviser to the American Chamber of Commerce here.”

Hmmm… I’m sure if Mr. Tung’s balls were sweating in one of these factories, he might have a different view. The Times also reports:

“The skirmish has pitted the American Chamber of Commerce — which represents corporations including Dell, Ford, General Electric, Microsoft and Nike — against labor activists and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the Communist Party’s official union organization.”

Big ups to watchdogs such as Global Labor Strategies (GLS) are issuing criticisms and reports “denouncing American corporations for opposing legislation that would give Chinese workers stronger rights.”
Source: New York Times|CNNMoney 

Also read: Chinese Labor Watch

In his own defense, the hip-hop mogul released a statement today that serves as a good example of how this country’s voters need a good kick in our collective ass. Blind loyalty to your chosen party, while easier and far less challenging, is no longer viable, and never was truly American. The ugly truth in this new millennium is that our archaic, limiting party labels are quickly becoming obsolete, and if we the people can get with the program while we still have our current borders, we might have a fighting chance.
Here is the statement in full:

Some of my liberal friends and associates are quite upset with me for personally endorsing Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele for the United States Senate. Steele is conservative and a Republican. I am an Independent who has, in the past, supported numerous Democratic candidates with the recent exception of my endorsement of the re-election of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a moderate Republican.

At a time when the ranks of the poor and impoverished across America and throughout the world are on a steady increase, I am going to support and endorse those political leaders who are bold enough to commit publicly to playing an active leadership role in building an effective legislative strategy to end poverty and ignorance. Real leadership, however, should not be limited, solely defined or circumscribed only by political party affiliation.

Hip-hop culture is global and universal. It not only transcends race, ethnicity, class, gender, geography, religion and national boundaries, hip-hop also transcends established political parties. Hip-hop is inclusive, not exclusive, of all of the realities that impact the quality of life of millions of people who daily cry out for a better way of life.

I was pleased to witness Michael Steele as a statewide official taking action in Maryland during the last four years to reform mandatory minimum sentencing laws, initiate educational programs for incarcerated youth, increase access to minority community economic development, clean up the environment and develop alternative energy sources, as well as support equal, high-quality education for all in the public school system. My attention was focused on these accomplishments and the fact that Steele kept the promises and commitments that he had made to the voters.

Steele’s criticism of President Bush and the war in Iraq further exemplifies that Steele is an independent thinker and leader who is not chained or bridled by the neoconservatives of the Republican Party. Of course, I know that no politician is perfect and there are many issues that Steele and I do not agree on. What’s important to me is that I believe, after reviewing his track record, Michael Steele will be a leader in the U.S. Senate toward making ending poverty and ignorance a clear priority.

Love is neither liberal nor conservative; it is what God gives to us all. Love requires justice, fairness and openness for new ways of making a difference in the quality of life for all people everywhere. One of my mentors, Dr. Benjamin Chavis, encouraged me to directly connect my daily private practice of Yoga to my public actions and endorsements. Dr. Ben was with me when I made the trip to Baltimore to announce my support of Lt. Gov. Steele. In one of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, it is written, “The practice of concentration on a single subject is the best way to prevent the obstacles and their accompaniments.” In other words, a singular focus or concentration on ending poverty is a necessary commitment by anyone who is serious about this issue.

That night Steele announced, “I declare a new agenda for America; an anti-poverty agenda – an economic empowerment agenda that I will take with me to the United States Senate – because empowerment creates opportunity that poverty will never let you see. To tell you the truth, not enough people in either party are willing to even say the word ’poverty’ ….. much less do anything about it. To begin, unlike a lot of Republicans, I believe we need to raise the minimum wage.”

Great movements for change always require taking risks and acting outside the close-minded boxes of society. Building an effective anti-poverty movement will need many elected officials like Steele and many others from different constituencies from across the nation and throughout the world. Let’s stay focused. Don’t get distracted by party labels. Let us all work together and share responsibly in God’s love for all. Let’s end poverty and ignorance!