The rapper PAPOOSE deserves some kind of award for being the ONLY street poet to record a verse or more about the SEAN BELL murder. Oh yeah, my bad, GRAF has a track floating around the internets too. Hip-Hop is dead when here in the artistic birthplace of rap no one with a record deal wants to say shit about this man’s murder. Niggas will jump on a Jim Jones remix with the quickness to talk about their money stacks, but as far as recognizing the ‘hood and the people that eke out a living on the remnants of these crack strewn streets there isn’t even a peep. Not even a mixtape track from the Street’s Disciple who claims Queens all the time. Nothing from your boy FISTY either, who incidentally comes from the same neighborhood as SEAN BELL. These fools are the first to talk shit about picking up a gun against someone who looks at them sideways or steps on their sneakers, but the last to admit that their attitude influences a generation of youth. There are too many men in Hip-Hop raised by women alone. Bitchmade.
In the wake of the SEAN BELL murder I give you readers a lot of credit for keeping this issue front and center in your hearts. In only a few short years we were given the direct information on how the devil brought the pain of crack cocaine into our lives by trading guns and death all the way from Central America. We learned how the prison industrial complex is a private, for-profit entity that needs more bodies to help the shareholders increase their inhuman stock earnings. America eats its young, and soon little Black boys won’t be enough.
Do you realize the the Bloods and Crips organizations are supported by the government much the same way that the NAACP and Urban League are. Think about this… The Black Panther Party was into home schooling kids and free lunch programs before they were dismantled by the Federal government. Here it is three decades in and the Bloods and Crips are even bigger than they ever were. And still no free lunches for the people.
Who is gonna take the weight?
I miss Black Power medallions and Hip-Hop teaching me things that I should do instead of providing me with cautionary tales.
its sad COINTELPRO decimated any semblance of black conscienceness; the only real conscienceness. I used to laugh when I used to watch videos of jigs dancing around w/ requisite bitches, money, & other material concomitants. But now?! its nauseating! Given the current climate, theres no more time for partying & bullshit black people! Listen to the chorus of D’Evils….
cot damn dallas. bo bo bo!
who is gonna take the weight? not these damn cRappers, that’s for sure. they’re too busy leadin ghetto jungle safaris for the suburbanites that pay for their mtv cribs.
who’s gonna take the weight? you, me, us. that’s part of what this blog cypher is for.
peep uncle murda’s track aimed at the popo over at NAH RIGHT.
peep this classic FUNKADELIC piece, America EATS its young:
http://www.zshare.net/audio/funkadelic-america-eats-its-young-mp3.html
Co-sign whole effin post. Btw, not to change subjects completely, but Yo, this very effin’ weekend I was at the Park Slope Food Coop doing one of my shifts and overheard this white woman saying she had just brought this miniature house for her cats. She was telling her buddy’s that what attarcted her to purchasing the one she did was because it was very cheap and because this specific line of cat homes are made exclusively by prisoners incarcerated in the jail system. WTF?!? They got brothers locked up making bullshit liek this for old white women’s leisure? America, Slavery is alive and well!
How’s FISTY gonna make a record against his own boys? I’m sure some 4th generation G-Unit WC was the reason there was heat on this situation in the first place.
Hood consipracies aside, great post here… Outside of all the albums that have dropped (leaked), the 4th quarter has not been good at all for us… Word to Ricky Ross this is a crazy cycle they got out there for us. Damn COMBAT JACK, that right there is some shit! Whats nuttier still the revelations of systematic programs for containment and explotation is baffling and taken as status quo…
BTW, Real World gave the fag a pass and blamed it on his booze… Whats the excuse that I can use to haul off and create mayhem and have a carte blanche reason to avoid any concsequences or reprocussions?
This is real. The cRappers now a days just want to stack paper….they don’t have a REAL message. The true messengers, scholars, street poets are GONE. GONE.
You what’s stranger still, and could be wrong, but I don’t even think I heard any responses from Mos Def or Talib. Which I say is strange because they are they are usually first to fire shots back when things ain’t right for black folks. Which is also not to say, that it is their job alone, we should get out there and at least voice our concerns.
word to papoose. should be interesting to hear something from the rbg camp as well. in line with this post, everyone should go to nahright and check out the open letter boots from the coup sent to all of us about his and mr. lif’s bus crash. support eachother. we have to.
I personally know Mos Def and even though dude is on my top 25 emcee list and tends to put out that politico stance, he oftimes in person seems to get caught up in his hollywood/ rap star ego trip. In addtion, dude is addicted to punany hence his multiple momma drama. I guess when word got back that his latest cd was trash – kaa kaa, he prolly holed himself up in his Dumbo apartment with like 5 puerto rican chicks and an ounce of blow. Expect to hear from him this March.
i guess hip hop is dead some of the most vocal representatives ie, talib, mos, kiss, nas….haven’t said sqwat….only papper and graph put a lil something down on wax….where’s the anger 50?…wheres the swagger Jigga?….wheres the heat X???….wheres the truth Esco???….too busy with gap ads Comm???
i guess it is what it is..and it aint the same as what it was….then again nothing last forever….i kno dude nyoil will bring something to the table…..fuck even uncle murda dropped a little hit on this equation indirectly or not.
back to my MIS paper….
^ “Expect to hear from him this March. ”
about the Sean Bell shooting.
Talib is also going through hella baby momma drama right about now. Something about them politico’s seems to git the mommy’s moist. Shit I even know this older (formerly baaaad) puerto rican woman (about 65 yrs old) from Harlem that the late Rev. Martin Luther King used to dig out on the regular. Sheet, I’m bout to get my politico on like Kevin Powell. Kev’s always surrounded by mad chocolate snowflakes. FIGHT THE POWER!
“Think about this… The Black Panther Party was into home schooling kids and free lunch programs before they were dismantled by the Federal government. Here it is three decades in and the Bloods and Crips are even bigger than they ever were. And still no free lunches for the people.”
The realest ish you evar wrote….
These comments might be better than the fucking post.
I need to add this to my Grammy post.
Nas and Chris Webber are donating money to the victims’ families. But Esco shoulda dropped a record about the situation though, he usually do. I guess the paper he was gettin from the Blood Diamonds soundtrack was a little more important.
The reason why they don’t take down the gang organizations is because we are killing our selves. The Black panther party was about protecting ourselves and empowerment, you know they had to shut that shit down. As long as we’re killing off our own people they will sit back and let us.
Powerful post
I applaud & respect the way the Bloods & Crips were able to recruit youth in large masses…if only they had the guidance and the correct leadership. I support brother Malik, the leader of the New Black Panther Party and his efforts to unite the Bloods,Crips & Latin kings.
Its still to early to tell but Sean Bell’s tragic murder may be the spark that is needed to change the unfair and excessive treatment blacks and latinos receive from the NYPD.
I wouldn’t be so quick to pass judgment on the rappers I’ve seen Dead Prez, Talib, Mos def and common at past BPP meetings and rallys on unity ownership & police brutality . There down for the cause but there also only human. Our presence & voices are equally as important.
Can you really expect this artists to speak out against anything these days?Succese in Crap music these days is mesuared by how Capitalistic you can be, and Speaking out against Institutions isnt a Captalistic trait. Speaking out only f#$ks up the balance that is vital to continued profits.
Good post Dallas as always. It’s a damn shame. These jigs all have the power and the resources to reach many but will only speak on dumb ignorant ish. They have made being dumb, dropping out of school, and looking stupid with gold grills, the new “cool”. Imagine the impact a tremendous amount of positivity and education could have? I’m done. I can’t do any more of this crap music anymore.
“America lost its collective mind when Kanye West suggested George Bush didn’t care about black people, but that sentiment still seems pale to the actual rap music that was made during the ’80s and ’90s; in 1993, KRS-One compared police officers to plantation employees, and the video still got on MTV. Over time, rap music has become less incendiary. There is no longer any reward for being legitimately provocative. More often, there is a commercial penalty. ” – CHUCK KLOSTERMAN….
Maybe we expect too much from people that don’t have an overall sense of what’s going on……..I mean really if you only hear of these stories in passing what’s your first reaction…..”that’s fcuked up” right {and that was probably it}…..but i highly doubt any of you went out and started a rally or did anything to alleviate the situation. I mean preaching awareness amongst people who are already aware…….*blank stare*……I don’t know I just fear alot of the typing above me was just done to “flex one’s perceived acumen”…….basically alot of talk very little action and, no I don’t know what any of you all did and, I did like reading your point of view…..but….I had more but I deleted it what’s the point right…..good post DP…1
^911,
That is the point so don’t silence yourself. We need the knowledge that our voices are together in accord. It becomes the equivalent of watching a solar eclipse with a crowd of people. The shared experience empowers us to reach out to others and tell them what we saw, what we felt. We become our own set of missionaries for the truth. Not my truth, or your truth, but THE truth.
I believe our artists’ owe us more than they are delivering. You can’t call yourself Superman and then shrink into oblivion when the world needs you. You can’t call yourself the Street’s Disciple while you have no connection to the real people in the streets. These nicknames and accolades are heaped onto artists who have not earned them in the real sense.
These are things to consider before we consume during this season of consuming.
To be honest I think Common said it right when he said, “Rap music in the ‘hood played a fatherly role”, black activism is dead locally & nationaly.
We can blame it on the youth or the musical leaders, but really I think this is more of a larger issue.
If there is nobody willing to lead and captivating enough to earn followers? Why should they be followed? The arguement I think is that there are not enough leaders and we cannot turn people who are not natural leaders into leaders, for the mere fact they speak on issues, does not make them a leader. Chuck D was a leader through and through and we can argue a lot of the emcee’s like the Mos Def’s and Talib’s are more followers than leaders.
Anyways like Fred Hampton said “You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can’t jail a Revolution.”
i think we need another dp/oh word documentary based on this shit homey.
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/whiteprivilege.htm
To the Street’s Disciple’s credit, he is giving money to the family. So in essence he’s actually taking it a step further by putting his money literally where his mouth is.
co-sign on DP and 911 comments.
the thing is, we’re always waiting for leaders to step up…where do you think leaders come from? who do you think they are? WE are the leaders. And while we’re all looking at each other, standing in a room, silent, with the wind whistling in our hair, waiting for someone else to stand up… shit just passes us by.
be a cliche — be the change you want to see.
it’s better than the other cliches we so willingly embody.
lola luv…
shit-happens 3255046 Very actual information about lola luv….