Favor Flav and Public Enemy in support of the Sasha Bruce House – which has become, since it’s inception 30 years ago, the largest organization dealing with at risk and homeless youth in the DC region.

Sorry to be so light on new blog material the last week or so – but first it was wading though hurricanes…

Now it’ s suffering through the flu.

Try KSM in Gitmo?

Yo – Bring his behind on down to Brooklyn!

Why is it that all of these Republicans …

From places conservatism has made into somewhere where no terrorist would dream attack…

Because no one would notice or care (beyond the possible loss of pond scum spotted tree frog habitat)…

Suddenly believe that New Yorkers are as chickenshit…

As they are?

Since I have never gone a month without at least one entry in Xpinionated, I bring to you the Top 5 Famous Rich Folks Who Don’t Deserve Their Fame.

5) Jared from Subway. His diet and weight reduction plan was based on a Subway diet. Are we to believe it was due substantially to his diet and an insignificant amount of weight loss was due to exercise? And if that’s the case, why aren’t the The Biggest Loser episodes just a bunch of challenges to get to Subway, kinda like The Biggest Loser meets The Amazing Race…The Biggest Amazing Loser Race. Yeah, Jared shouldn’t be rich and shouldn’t be famous for doing what he should have been doing in the first place.

4) Flavor Flav. Quite possibly the most unattractive human being on TV. Scratch that, outside of Nene from The Real Housewives of Atlanta, the most unattractive human being on TV. And close to the least talented. He was a hype man, not a rapper. Standing next to a rapper does not make one a rapper just as standing next to me does not make you funny. Out of nowhere, the part of Public Enemy that had no talent has returned to the limelight, searched for love from apparently blind and deaf women (that’s the only way I can imagine they wanted Flav), and even starred (used very loosely) in his own bad (used very tightly) sitcom. Seriously, his fame hangs on the balance of an oversized clock gimmick…..

3) Kardashians. Ok, Kim is fine. Not have-her-own-show fine but fine nonetheless. The other Kardashian girls? Notoriety from what exactly?

2)Tila Tequila. Maybe I have the story wrong. I don’t care enough to look it up and plus it wouldn’t change her position on this list or my feelings about her one iota. But let’s take a shot at this: girl opens myspace account, girl puts up progressively sexier pictures of herself on myspace, girl develops a myspace following due to pubescent nature of myspace clientele, MTV gives girl show based on myspace popularity. Meanwhile, there’s some poor kid studying his butt off at a community college in between his two part time jobs that MTV, and the rest of the country could care less about…..

1) Lauren from the Hills/The Real OC. It is no coincidence that MTV plays a huge role in the top two personas on this list. Lauren’s is a slightly different story. Rich kid living it up in Orange County. No particular talent. Just a willingness to let MTV cameras follow her around while she finds 1,231 ways to put the word ‘like’ into a sentence unnecessarily while working her way through MTV created drama. Woe is her life as her and her friends hop into the Escalade for another trip to the specialty Boutiques…..Her reward for being a rich kid with no real worries: a spin off show with the same high school drama…just without the high school..

P.S. Lauren excepts top honors in this list on behalf of the entire cast of the Real OC and the Hills.

I would have loved to see a P.E. concert on a truck.

I realize I’m very fortunate not to be apartment-less in 2009 and damn I love that they performed Terminator X on the Edge of Panic! The clueless narrator mentions Flav’s name first but we know it’s Chuck and Flavor!

First there was Hammer, then there was Nas, then there was Meth and now there’s Flavor Flav.

Flavor Flav is the latest MC to conveniently “forget” to pay money owed to the government.

The state of California is tracking down Flav, real name William Drayton, for delinquent tax payments. According to the state, Flav owes $183,810 in unpaid tax payments and a lien was filed against him in a Sacramento court room. Flav has yet to comment.

As previously reported, Method Man was arrested in October for back taxes, Nas was outed for owing $1.5 million in taxes and MC Hammer was reported for owing over $600,000.

This is ridiculous, pay yo bills people!

Nardwuar interviews Flavor Flav and pulls out a copy of issue #1 of the official PUBLIC ENEMY comic book series by myself and Chuck D. A nice little piece of publicity. I just wish the 30,00+ views resulted in as many comic sales. Issue #1 as well as the trade paperback that collects issues 0-5 are still available for sale at AmericanMule. Order today and get your books autographed along with two FREE cds! Show some love for a hard working, independent artist.

P.E.ace!

Aquí tienen a New York caminando muy tranquilamente el día de ayer. No voy a mentir, ya me tenía preocupado porque hacía ya un buen tiempo que no la veía aparecer en público, incluso llegué a pensar lo peor, es decir, que por fin la policía la había agarrado por ejercer la prostitución descaradamente. Pero por fortuna me equivoqué y está libre como un ave. Ya sé que la mayoría de ustedes o no la conoce o ya se olvidó de que ella alguna vez fue famosa, pero yo no, New York es una de mis personas favoritas de la tele (¿yo hablando bien de alguien?, sí, créanlo) y realmente espero que ya haga I Love New York 3.

Como pueden ver en las imágenes, New York necesita comprar ropa más chica, porque si el pantalón que trae puesto no deja ver su camel toe entonces no es lo suficientemente ajustado para ella. Y en la última foto pueden ver que va con su hermano a la izquierda y su manager a la derecha, así como van caminando parecen un sandwich de gata hecho con pan de horror. Lo bueno es que me cae bien.

Fuente

Dear Ray J:

Hey! Television viewer here. How’s it going?

Ray J's ready to put some skank on it!

It’s been a few months since America has seen you. A long time away from the spotlight, eh? I know. Attention-seeking sociopaths get lonely, too.

So I hear that you are coming back to VH1 and Celebreality with the second version of For the Love of Ray J. Deciding whether to cash that paycheck must have been quite the dilemma! Royalties from those guest spots on Moesha must be waning. What about music? You had a hit single with “Wait a Minute” from that one album, This Ain’t a Game. All Music Guide picked it as your best album at a lofty two stars! I bet they LOVED the song “Wet Me.” Oh, you are a wordsmith.

Who's ready for a STD?

Any-who, I’m rambling here. I wanted to write this because, again, you’re coming back to reality TV. And with such a momentous event, I had to say this:

You’re slimy.

Everything you touch is slimy.

Your music — if you can call it that — is slimy. (Seriously, “Wet Me?”) I know that you overcompensate for being the little brother of (formerly) squeaky-clean R&B singer Brandy, but your R. Kelly-wannabe Lothario act is even slimier than he is — and he loves underage girls!

The women in your life — Kim Kardashian, Whitney Houston, your mom when you were born — are now and forever slimy. Congrats for tainting them with that slime.

That poor woman.

That beloved art form known as reality TV is that much slimier with you and your show on it. Having women fight over the right to date you? Sure, it’s comical when Bret Michaels or Flavor Flav do it because, you know, they’re pathetic. But dude, you bring so much skeeze and swarthiness, it’s like a Nickelodeon slime-like film that drips off of the screen every time you appear.

Knowing that singer Brandy is your sister, I shouldn’t be surprised that she is slimy, but somehow, her being on your show is that much more slimy.

So, yeah, slimy. Damn. So slimy.

Anyway, keep in touch!

Yours,
Trevor

As the weather turns colder and the days grow shorter, I look forward to pulling out my winter clothes. Top among these clothes are what I consider a classy lady’s best friend: flannel pajama sets. I mean, even Liz Lemon wears them with pride! In recent years there has been an explosion in the different patterns available, from sock monkeys ( From Target) to toile (From Victoria’s Secret), from quirky (From Amazon.com) to refined (Another Target find).

My taste in flannel, like my taste in all clothes, tends towards the colorful and playful. My favorite set is from Target’s Nick and Nora collection and is pink with pandas on it. Flavor Flav, he of Flavor of Love, owns the same set.

You can imagine my joy when I settled in for a night of mindless reality TV and saw that this ridiculous imp of a man and I share taste in pajamas. It was like Christmas morning. And Christmas actually has a lot to do with my deep, abiding love of flannel.

I came to want flannel pajamas because it always seemed that was what the people in jewelry commercials around the Holidays were wearing. Christmas morning would be so much more picturesque if I had a nice set of pajamas that matched the Christmas spirit. However, why save something so comfortable and warm to just one night of the year? So now I have many sets and bring a little class to breakfast (and let’s face it, I’m unemployed so sometimes to dinner) by wearing neon cupcakes or blue stars throughout the year.

We all have that special outfit or piece of clothing that makes us feel like a million bucks. For me, I like to feel like a million bucks while I’m drifting off to dreamland or whiling away the hours on the couch. So if you have never worn flannel pajamas and are looking for a way to treat yourself this Fall, I highly suggest snapping up a set. There is bound to be a pattern out there that captures your heart like the pandas captured my heart and Flavor Flav’s.

Do you have a favorite flannel print? A set of beloved pjs? Prefer satin to flannel? Prefer nudity to pjs? Let me know in the comments!

♣ We Can Do Better All By Ourselves ♣

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

DETROIT — It has been just over a month since I last checked in with you guys in the bloggosphere. For that, I sincerely apologize. But now that I’m back, I’m here to put a foot up the ass of someone who has been dodging it for a long time. That man is Tyler Perry. I know what you’re probably thinking: “But Jay, his movies are so touching and uplifting and they have a really valid, positive message that everyone can relate to.” The problem is, while that may be true, I can never seem to get to the proverbial “knowing is half the battle” moment in any of his televised/motion picture fecal matter because I’m too busy being assailed and bombarded by just about every modern negative black stereotype you can think of, with the ringmaster of this circus loudly prancing around like a taller, lighter, slightly younger version of Flavor Flav wearing your Grandmother’s Dress and a wig instead of a Viking helmet and a clock.

I just turned 30 last month. Turning the clock back 20 years to 1989, I was 10 years old and was growing more and more intrigued by this music called Hip-Hop. You see, back then, Rappers used to have these things called lyrics. Often those lyrics were integrated into Black Cinema much in the same way Curtis Mayfield and Issac Hayes were an integral part to 1970s Blaxploitation. The 1980s and 1990s answer to the over the top classic movies such as Shaft, Superfly, The Mack, Truck Turner, Foxy Brown, etc. came from people like the Hughes Brothers (Menace II Society), John Singleton (Boyz N Tha Hood), and a groundbreaking cat from Brooklyn named Spike Lee. The first Spike Lee movie that I recall seeing was Do The Right Thing. The message in his movies was like good old fashioned blunt-force trauma to the head. It very unabashedly told of the struggle of Blacks in the United States in what was much more modern day language. Spike’s creativity carried over into the legendary film Malcolm X.

Say what you will about some of the subject matter of his films, the messages, the treatment of women, etc., the man is a legitimate ground breaker. So when Spike decided to shoot (Pro Wrestling Lingo Alert!) on Tyler Perry during an interview back in May, you could kind of understand why he may not exactly have been a fan of “Madea”. Quoting Spike’s interview with former BET reporter Ed Gordon:

“We’ve had this discussion back and forth. When John Singleton [made 'Boyz in the Hood'], people came out to see it. But when he did ‘Rosewood,’ nobody showed up. So a lot of this is on us! You vote with your pocketbook, your wallet. You vote with your time sitting in front of the idiot box, and [Tyler Perry] has a huge audience.

Ok, so for now, it seems like everything is sunny and rosey, until Spike started to be Spike:

“We shouldn’t think that Tyler Perry is going to make the same film that I am going to make, or that John Singleton or my cousin Malcolm Lee [would make]. As African-Americans, we’re not one monolithic group, so there is room for all of that. But at the same time, for me, the imaging is troubling and it harkens back to ‘Amos n’ Andy.’”

Let’s pause the tape right there. The operative line in that quote is that we as blacks are “not one monolithic group”. That is apparently news to many Black people because, for one, 85% of blacks have no idea what “monolithic” means, and secondly, Black people tend to think that we need to be in total lock step with each other. We’re to NEVER publicly disagree about anything or dare criticize our own in public, for fear of what message it sends to the “White Man”. Chuckle all you want, but that’s what has actually been said to me about why Spike Lee had no business cracking Tyler Perry. We continue with the true money shot of this interview:

“…I am a huge basketball fan, and when I watch the games on TNT, I see these two ads for these two shows (Tyler Perry’s “Meet the Browns” and “House of Payne”), and I am scratching my head. We got a black president, and we going back to Mantan Moreland and Sleep ‘n’ Eat?”

That was an epic shot because he managed to pub the NBA on TNT, reference characters from one of the most shameful periods of Black American Cinema, and reference a movie that he previously made about the subject matter. If you couldn’t tell, I’m no fan of Tyler Perry. Not his crappy and overly preachy stage plays. Not his one-dimensional, coonish movies. Not his overly corny, and stereotypical TV shows (I’ve watched all of three minutes of House of Payne before becoming nauseous). His lame response to this whole thing of “Madea” being based on people he grew up with and the sheep who love his movies demanding that Spike do everything from say nothing to congratulate him to “not saying his name” just continues to annoy me.

Like I said earlier, you can sell me the BS that all of his movies have this great and lovely message, but if all I’m drawing from it is that there is some Black Woman invariably done wrong by one black man, Madea jumps in midway through and does her “comedy” Bojangles routine, Another black man (usually of the opposite complexion) rides to her rescue, more Madea nonsense, Game Over, and the women have something to talk about while they get their hair done…then there’s a distinct failure to communicate here. However, in the spirit of full disclosure, I have seen one Tyler Perry movie from beginning to end: Why Did I Get Married? Not coincidentally, it was one of the three Tyler Perry movies that doesn’t feature Madea the Dancing Coon. The movie itself was actually pretty good. It got off a strong message that black couples go through the same issues as all couples, and was startlingly realistic (albeit the acting left something to be desired). The thing is that particular flick got the point across w/out having to bring Madea out waving a pistol and smoking a square. And it didn’t do nearly as well as the others. You see where I’m going.

The reason why Spike Lee was not out of bounds with what he said is simple. In the early 1990s, He drew heat for addressing what the mainstream American public saw as controversial. That would be Race relations…something that we’re still a bunch of pussies about dealing with mind you. Spike’s movies, especially early on, were troublesome. Conversely, Tyler Perry is safe. Tyler Perry’s movies are never going to cause any real mainstream controversy. They really aren’t going to make you think. He refers to Madea as “Bait” to draw in viewers to his “positive message”. And yes, there are many people who can stomach the wacky hi-jinx and hilarity of Madea, so the bait can nab you the fish. But at a certain point, the fish can snatch the bait, and escape off the proverbial hook and swim along to something else and then what are you left with? It’s bad enough that people of all races have preconceived notions about what black life is like. And some sugary sweet, yet horribly mediocre movie with a latent, clandestine message isn’t gonna change what many of those people think of us.

But as Spike said, we as blacks are not one monolithic group of people. Therefore, we don’t all have the same tastes, nor do we always stand in lockstep with each other on everything, in spite of the numerous people thinking that we have to do so to preserve some face of “Unity” and in essence, look good in front of the white man. To that, I call BS and say “F–k Unity”. This isn’t 1836, and we’re no longer on the plantation. I don’t care if “other races” see us bickering and arguing over something philosophical. It’s good to disagree. And once again just because a Black person wrote, starred, directed, created, sang, rapped, or danced in it doesn’t mean I have to admire, support, like, or appreciate it or them. And just because he makes money off of it doesn’t mean I have to show him/her love and respect it. Fox News gets higher ratings on average than CNN. That doesn’t make what they say legit, that just means a lot of hillbillies have cable.

In closing, Tyler Perry is free to make all the movies, TV shows, and stage plays he wants. That’s his right as an American. It’s my right as an American to choose to watch something else, and to have a problem with the characterizations in his films, shows and plays. Stereotyping is prevalent in everything. That’s never gonna change unless we stop being cowards and start staring it dead in the face. The day we start doing that, and stop worrying about what the “white man” will think, is the day we can have two influential people have a disagreement and it ends in some form of civility and doesn’t disintegrate into some juvenile, girly bed of BS where everyone gets called “haters” and “jealous”. As Common once said: “If I Don’t Feel It, Then I Don’t Feel It. Doesn’t Mean That I’m Hatin’”. Spike Lee, Thank you for speaking up for us. Tyler Perry, get your money and all that, but how about you try to fish w/some better “bait” and you would be amazed how many more fish you can catch.

Until Next Time, That’s The Way It Is, Monday October 26, 2009. The 28th day since the Detroit Lions’ last Victory. Take Care, God Bless, Always Dare to Be Different, and G.O.M.A.B. Σ

Chat host B. Scott gets the scoop on our Kim Zolciak from Real Housewives Of Atlanta.  Does she spill any juicy secrets?

Check it out!

A video is making its way across the blogosphere of a group called the Jackson Jive, that performed a Michael Jackson/Jackson 5 tribute on an Australian variety show called Hey, Hey, It’s Saturday.  American jazz musician Harry Connick, Jr. was a guest judge on the show and spoke out against the performance, giving them a “0” and then telling them why. In his explanation he communicated how hard America has worked to eliminate images that make Black Americans look like buffoons, and in his country, this show would be off the air.

Kudos to Harry Connick, Jr. for saying what needs to be said and communicating in a very accessible way, why these images are wrong. Later in the show, the host stated that this same group had done the same performance on the show 20 years ago, which is the saddest part of this incident.

I do not understand why people cannot seem to figure out why Blackface performances, also known as minstrelsy are offensive.  Let me be really clear about it.  It is the humiliation of Black peformers like Bert Williams who were capable of much more, but reduced to being the butt of the joke, literally and figuratively for the pleasure of whites, most of whom at that time believed that Blacks were less than human.  Blackface performance is an assault on the dignity of the collective consciousness of America in general and on the Black community specifically.

Having visited Australia, I am not surprised that this type of show exists. They trot out their Aborigines (native populations) on the docks of Sydney and allow tourists to take photos with them as if they are chattel.  In a city where you are hard pressed to find Aborigines within the city limits (Sydney is sprawling), the only representations of the original inhabitants are for entertainment  and moneymaking purposes. No, I’m not surprised that this would happen in Australia or any other place where there has never been a civil rights movement. That includes Europe for all of you that are dying to go there, but that’s another post.

Having said that, Harry Connick, Jr. stepped up and said what needs to be said, like many before him.  Unfortunately, his words cut deeply because there is a generation of young people and some old (Flavor Flav anyone), who act like modern day minstrels (Kanye West, anyone?).  Yes, I said it and I mean it.  Spike Lee hit the nail on the head with his film Bamboozled, which many Black folks failed to see.  What really makes me mad is that their isn’t some white overseer standing over them making them dance.  We are doing it to ourselves in various forms including reality television, some hip-hop culture comedy, and dare say it, network television (BET anyone?).

Can we really be mad at the Jackson Jive who are still comfortable performing the same heinous act 20 years later, when so many of us willingly perpetuate denigrating images of Blacks – Tyler Perry, anyone? Yes, I said that too.

As Fannie Lou Hamer said, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired of the same old thing. White folks need to commit to memory that Blackface is not funny. Black folks need to get a memory and a conscious to remember why we should be careful about how we represent ourselves. There are people that thrive off of our continued subjugation in fantasy and reality and there are consequences to every misguided action that you make. The Jackson Jive is one of them.

Harry Connick, Jr., a white man, said that if he had known that this was going to be a part of the show, he would have declined to participate. What are you willing to give up to eliminate damaging images of Blacks in the media?

Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D. is managing editor of TheLoop21.com. She serves as cultural critic for Creative Loafing and is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Goucher College. Follow her on Twitter @ntellectual.

Flavor Flav showed up to the VH1 Hip Hop Honors at the Brooklyn Academy of Music looking like this.  SMH.  More images when you

Oh. My. God.

Yeahhhhh, Boyeeeeeee!

You Know Who just killed him again!

Ulp!

After you clean out your brain with mental floss, check out the story behind that debacle. But I believe the appropriate Kurt response is right here.

You’d believe that if you’re the kind of person who thinks that daily periodical USA Today is printed by way of spraying truth dust on bible parchment. Judging by the fact that it’s the #1 selling newspaper, the odds are high that the average American might just agree with my sarcastic and misleading headline.

While they also threw Joe Wilson, R-SC on the page too, to make it seem like they’re not trying to paint black people as the reason for the peril of civility, I’d say that Joe Wilson should have been there, because he did something that actually matters. All Kanye West did was hurt a 19-year-old megastar’s feelings, and all Serena Williams did was threaten a referee with death by tiny yellow fuzzy sphere. Joe Wilson continued the hack tradition of misleading the public to believe bullshit about the healthcare debate that is simply and easily disproven.

In the House Bill, (Sec. 246) titled “NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS,” states: “Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”

A rapper and an athlete were rude, but their acts, albeit in the public sphere, are far from the DESTROYING THE NATIONAL FABRIC level of sin that the mainstream media (i.e. old white people in dead tree media, like David Brooks, who had to mention Kanye and Michael Jordan in the same sentence as Joe Wilson in his NYT op-ed today) are making these moments out to be. Also, their professions are in the Entertainment industry, which I think it’s safe to say Politicians should not be classified as, no matter how unproductive they tend to be.

Is there anyone that should be blamed for demolishing the national conversation that we’ve been led to believe this nation used to have and hold so near and dear to itself?

Well, I’d say all of us are to blame, at least those of us who don’t speak out when douchebaggery goes unchecked. We let our tempers undo our thinking for us, and it leads to a nation where the phrase “Fox News Channel” isn’t always followed by laughter.

A nation where one of my favorite funnymen, Jon Stewart, during his return from a three-week vacation last night, still thinks it’s great to make Black People Yell During Movies jokes (Jon, remember: you’re the host of a quasi respectable news show, you’re not Greg Giraldo scraping the barrel of obvious at the Comedy Central Roast of Flavor Flav).

A nation where science is on the verge of being outlawed below the Mason-Dixon line because Jesus isn’t in The Periodic Table Of Elements.

A nation where doctors at Planned Parenthood fear for their safety on a daily routine, simply because they practice legal medicine.

Simply put: we’ve got a tendency to walk around as a nation of haters.

Yes, Kanye is a douchebag, and the Williams sisters really get into the game of tennis to the verge of orgasm-sounding guttural noises on the court, but for both of these examples, they’re far from the only ones in their field who are guilty. Tim Commerford, of the sort of defunct Rage Against the Machine, was so offended that MTV, bastion of great music programming, gave an award to Limp Bizkit and not his band, that he stormed the stage, and scaled the set and had to be talked down from his temper tantrum, which lasted FAR longer than Kanye’s did. And in terms of Tennis, I only have two words for you: John McEnroe. But because USA TODAY needs to sell copies, they forget that everybody’s been shitting on each other for far longer than this almost over decade, and the especially vitriolic last summer.

And the public loves this stuff. Almost everyone on Twitter for the last two days has just turned into Kanye Joke Spam Bots, myself included. But there’s a simple line between joke and hate: anger. Where else is anger less stomachable and obvious than when the N word comes into play.  Reggie Osse, twitter user Combat_Jack, spent a good part of tonight highlighting the guano-insane racism directed in Kanye’s direction on twitter.

It’s the responsibility of the adults in the room, who used to be the media, to step in and try to curb the anger and racism and educate people, back to sensibility, even if they’re kicking and screaming. But no, Glenn Beck, who I mentioned earlier, is at the center of this all, making himself filthy rich, not that CNN Headline News didn’t bring him there already, off of his 9/12 Movement, which is another phrase that the lunatic fringe The Birthers/Truthers/Lyndon LaRouchers/Tenthers/Deathers/etc. will be veiled in other than their real name: The Racists.

The rest of the non-Fox MSM, for the most part, gave a lot of coverage to the Glenn Beckers as they marched on Washington this weekend. Lately, in discussion with friends and family, I’ve shared my disapproval for the way Obama’s handling the health care reform. I think he’s been ineffective and too defensive. The same can be said 100 times over for the majority of the Democratic Party. What I do approve of, though, is the constant turning of the cheek that Obama’s given to the nutters in the street. I don’t know how I could have not, if I were in his shoes, spent my weekend throwing water balloons filled with piss at these groups, or at least had Rahm Emanuel do it for me. At least in this capacity, we finally have a President who displays the maturity we all should strive to achieve.

But yes, every moral high ground has an exception, and mine is Glenn Beck, who I will argue is one of the five biggest assholes on television.

So apparently some more idiotic conservatives have decided to unload a “Tea Party” on Washington DC…

Look really closely at all those pictures. Every one’s an Angry White Dude or Dudette. Some other interesting highlights from this lovely little march:

• Idiots talking about Civil War as a righteous last resort should things continue to get “worse”
• One woman convinced Obama is trying to turn the youth of America into his personal united defense force
• White conservatives aren’t racist! Just look at this thoughtful protest poster that could be applied to any American of any race!

Yep, definitely not racist.

Now, if anyone is guilty of attacking the background of a president, it’s the Democrats and their “George W. Bush is a dumb white redneck’ campaign they waged for 8 years. HOWEVER, that was usually just making fun of the man in a malicious way. This – the blatant attacks upon the man’s skin color and questionable United States nationality – is, plain and simply, fear mongering to take advantage of your dumber constituents’ abilities to drastically overreact.

Quick question to those conservatives out there: Have you actually tried to read the proposed Health Care reform bill that is currently being batted around in the Senate? Oh no wait, reading isn’t exactly ‘in’ with you folks, and you’d rather just believe what Glen Beck and Sean Hannity tells you to do. Oh I’m sorry, did I just mock you using a stereotype? My bad, I stooped to your level there for a second.

Redneck genius at its best. Real question: Did he attempt to dive in?

Yes, Obama’s proposed government-funded health care option has a few kinks in the system that need to be worked out. Yes, the bill has some carefully placed footnotes that need to be brought to the general public’s attention. But these idiotic Tea Parties are making you look like fucktards incapable of intelligent conversation and debate, and more like you honestly believe life would be better if we went back to living like they did in the late 1700’s…

…and you do sound like dumb white rednecks when you talk. Might want to work on that. Inject some color into your campaign…I hear Flavor Flav does pretty much anything for money these days.

When Hip-Hop was born in the late 70’s, beats and lyrics were the structured body of the phenomenal genre. Being the greatest lyricist with the most creative rhymes was an artist’s claim to fame when Hip-Hop hit the streets. It was all about how the artist could assimilate his/her rhymes to something a listener could effortlessly relate to – the art of storytelling. Public Enemy, De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest were the leaders of the then new school genre where beats loaded with drums, bass and scratch solos paired with rhyme skill was the pinnacle of their notoriety.

But as time progressed, Hip-Hop was no longer a creative display of lyricism and began to shed the image of emcees, breakers and DJ’s. Controversy has shrouded the art form and its constituents since its inception, but more so when gangsta rap became the cause for concern among those who believed the hard core lyrics perpetuated violence. Although the hype surrounding such theories came to its eventual end, it didn’t hurt record sales, in fact, millions were sold and record label execs saw there was money to be made.

Once corporate music moguls took control over the rap game, imagery has become the thriving crux to its existence. No longer are emcees boasting of poetic flows; rappers are now swinging chains laced with diamonds, glamorizing drug money, murder and harems of “hoes” for the star and each member of his entourage. While the phrases and Hip-Hop culture has found its way into commercial marketability, what does it truly cost? How does is affect the children who listen and aspire to be like their favorite rapper? Does it create a false sense of reality among adults? Are rap artists selling their integrity to a label in exchange for a check and stardom?

HipHopWired has launched an investigation into the societal affects of Hip-Hop culture and its imagery. HHW is looking to find a balance of responsibilities. Are the labels pumping ignorance to the community for the sake of entertainment and capital gain? Or do the artists have a moral responsibility to the community? We will seek the opinions of professionals, the artists themselves and label execs to get the truest depiction possible of the general purpose behind such portrayals.

Warren Ballentine, motivational speaker and host of his self-titled daytime talk radio show, weighed in on the subject and feels that both parties are partly responsible.

“I think, it’s a little of both. I think it’s an escape process for a lot of the people but I do think that a lot of these children are hearing these songs and looking at these rappers and thinking this is the way they really live. Not realizing that most of these cats are married, raising kids, living in the suburbs. They’re not out here selling dope, shooting people, it’s how they make their money and that’s why they’re rappers and all this.

But they really not living like that, and I think until you get a PSA where you have maybe a Warren Ballentine with a Lil’ Wayne and a Ludacris and we’re talking about, ‘Hey, this is music, this is not reality and that you can be a lawyer and you can be a doctor outside of being a rapper, I think that’s when you change the dynamic.”