Welcome To A Hip Hop Understanding
Welcome To A Hip Hop Understanding
It’s Just Chicken!
Disclaimer: I don’t like Chick-Fil-A anyway!
If you’re boycotting Chick-Fil-A because of the bigoted Christian views of its founder then you really need to get some better business in your life, seriously!
I’ve seen so many people over the past week or so claim they won’t eat at the restaurant simply because the founder does not approve of gay marriage. It’s a noble gesture but what are you actually accomplishing. Will your boycott help gay marriage? Nope!
It will hurt the pockets of the owner of the franchise, but before it does that, it’s going to destroy the franchisee. The person that spent their last dime to open up a business that they thought was going to be able to help their family and community for generations to come.
I feel you on the moral side of the equation, why would I continue to support a corporation that spends money to attack LGBT rights, I get it. But what about all the corporations that spend millions to support gender inequality; or those that are against women’s birth rights, those that are against healthcare reform, etc.
Win – Win for Citizens ………… United
Grover Norquist, The 5 Conservative Supreme Court Justices, The Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and everyone over at Faux News that have campaigned tirelessly to get Citizens United on the books as a law are really loving what’s being done by Mitt Romney right now. It was recently reported that Mitt will more than likely be the first presidential candidate to out raise a sitting president in a presidential campaign since the beginning of this great republic.
With billionaire after billionaire helping to raise funds for Mitt, Barack is looking at some hard times down the stretch, when Romney might be able to outspend him in key battleground states and pull out a few miracles courtesy of his magic underwear.
I still think that Barack is going to beat him handily as long as Eric Holder and his team put an end to the voter suppression being done by the GOP. But a Barack victory, as beautiful as it may be, comes with some ugly consequences.
There are two scenarios that will play out during this election cycle and both are good for the GOP and the Citizens United ruling. It’s a win/win for Conservatives no matter what happens in November.
Scenario 1 – If Mitt Romney raises more money than Barack Obama and gets elected citizens United will never come close to being overturned because the Supreme Court Justices that retire during the next 4 years will be replaced by more conservatives and there is no way that they will overturn the ruling. There needs to be a left leaning court to get the decision reversed and the only way that will happen is if Barack wins again. So if Mitt wins, Citizens United wins.
Church Tithing #BestHustleEver
After reading a post on FB this morning about Black Churches collecting $3 billion in tithes every Sunday I decided to do a little research. I already knew that Black Churches collect a lot of money on Sunday’s but $3 billion seemed a bit outlandish. After a quick search I found that those numbers were way too high but came across more realistic numbers that are still high but far less than the $3 billion that I had read about earlier.
In one report I read that the Black Church has taken in upwards of $420 billion in revenue since 1980. 32 years $420 billion, that’s approximately $13.125 billion dollars a year which comes out to which comes down to $252.4 million dollars per week. Are you F’ing kidding me?
$252 million dollars per week is an astronomical figure. In 2011 the Black Church collected over $14 billion in tithes which is $875 million higher than average. So in these tough economic times we still find enough money to prop up these churches with almost a billion more in offerings.
Am I the only one that sees a problem with this? Am I the only one that thinks that this issue needs to addressed by the Black community as a whole? I doubt it so if you are reading this and think like I do, please pass this on.
Based on last year’s numbers of roughly $14 billion in collections, that breaks down to $269.2 million dollars per Sunday being pumped into the Black Church economy.
Where does it all go? Do churches need that type of money to operate?
If half of that money was being put back into the economic development of the African American communities that it came from, we’d be seeing nothing short of a new age renaissance. But unfortunately it’s being used for other purposes like:
It’s Official – It Controls Your Brain
Dead Prez had a line in “It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop” that went – “Uh, one thing ’bout music when it hit you feel no pain/White folks say it controls yo’ brain/I know better than that, that’s game”. When this lyric was spit by M1 of Dead Prez, all who listened to it repeated the same phrase, or something similar either out loud or in their minds; yep, they’re trying to make rap music the blame for the problems in our neighborhood, it’s not the music.
Because hindsight is 20/20 can we say that now? I say not!
If we, Black men continue to say that hip hop lyrics and music does not play any role in the way we act on any level, then you my friends, are in denial. And when you read this and still say that it doesn’t play a significant part in the way our communities have been shaped over the past 3 decades, then not only are you in denial but you’re a blooming idiot and more than likely a part of the problem that plagues us. Any rational person who wants to be, or is, a part of the solution should be able to correlate hip hop and the landscape of the United Mind-States of African America, with the violence and misogyny that is prevalent within our communities today.
To make it easy for you I’ll sight a few instances that can show a direct cause and effect type of outcome.
In 1991 Ice Cube said “I told all my friends, don’t drink 8 Ball cause St Ides is givin ends” in his song “Steady Mobbin”. Shortly thereafter St Ides became the #1 selling beer in the Black community, this gave rise to commercials by just about all the top rappers of that era. From Ice Cube, to 2pac, Dr Dre, Snoop Dog, The Geto Boys, Mc Eiht, The Wutang Clan, Biggie Smalls, Cypress Hill, EPMD, Redman and even Eric B and Rakim got in on the money grab. St Ides was paying rappers to endorse their malt liquor and it worked to the tune of millions and millions of dollars in sales. This was the very first time that I had noticed the power of hip hop. I never correlated the fact that the reason that I was drinking Old English 800 was because NWA rapped about it constantly, or that we went out and bought Brass Monkey because the Beastie Boys wrote a song about it. But when Cube said that line in his song and then did subsequent commercials, I saw firsthand how hip hop lyrics influenced our buying habits, so why wouldn’t they affect other things as well.
The very next year Redman came out with a song called “How To Roll a Blunt” in which he rhymed about how to use a cigar as rolling paper for weed instead of using joint paper. Before this song people smoked joints instead of blunts, although blunts had started hitting the streets before the song came out but it solidified its place in black communities after Redman wrote about it. Blunt cigar makers have made 100’s of millions to billions in revenue off the sale of Blunt cigars since that song was made 20 years ago.
Ask and Ye Shall Receive
So one night I was headed to sleep and I asked The Most High what I needed to do to heal myself and live a longer better life and a word came to me. The word that came to me was Priyaha. I had never seen nor heard this word in my life. So as we do in the internet age, I googled it and I got 2 hits. One was Bhrahmana Priyaha “he is lord of all pious souls who dedicate their life to God” on gurusfeet.com. The other was from Chapter 12 of the Bhagavad Gita and it goes as follows:
Arjuna
1. Dear Lord, Who is better versed in Yoga – the ones who worship You in constant devotion with your form or the ones who worship You as the formless?
Sri Bhagavaan (Sri Krishna)
2. Those who fix their minds on me and worship me (with form) ever with supreme faith, I consider them as perfect in Yoga.(Yoga meaning– Union with God)
3. But those who worship me as the formless, as the unchanging, the imperishable and the Omnipresent ONE…
Martial Law Chicago, Coming to a Street Corner Near You!
228 + murders and 100’s and 100’s more shot this year in Chicago already! Why, people are asking? Why so much violence is such a beautiful city? You have a plethora of talking heads; the mayor, the police chief, and anyone else with an opinion churning out answers and happily standing in front of cameras at press conferences all around the city, but the violence continues on.
At this point Jody Weis has to fill a little bit better about his track record as police chief here. No matter what he tried to do it kept coming back to these wild wild west type of spring and summer occurrences. I remember posting on a social network a few years ago that I loved it when it rained during the summer, and everyone chimed in about the rain helping to break up the heat, the smell of rain and so on, but I came back and said, I like it because at least then you’ll know that there will be no shootings. Because for some reason gangbangers don’t like getting wet. When it rains no one is standing around outside selling drugs, smoking or drinking, they’re all in their cribs or somewhere indoors, so the shooting stops. But as soon as the sun comes out it’s back to the gunplay.
So as city leaders debate about what will stop the shootings, making it rain seems to be the only thing that has stopped it so far, and rain is an act of God, so in short, only an act of God can stop it. Or there is one other alternative, Martial Law. Yep, you heard it here; martial law is the only other way to stop the violence besides an act of God!
Let’s be serious, the vast majority of the violence in Chicago is centered in the same neighborhoods every single year, then you have a few problems outside these areas but nothing as major as what you see in Englewood week in and week out. Would the mayor be wrong for laying that option on the table? I say no! The mayor should have the option to declare martial law and disperse them to these problem areas until they can get it under control. As a Black man spewing this I know this will get a lot of people heated and the so called Black leaders will chime in about how it’s like being back in slavery. Or what’s going to stop them from putting all Black people in concentration camps like they did the Japanese, blah, blah, blah!
Which would you rather see; a neighborhood of law abiding citizens being murdered weekly, and be under the control of vicious gangs, or an over powering military presence that makes sure that the gangbangers stay in check for the most part? Yeah, it will cause some angst amongst the community but no more than being scared to sit on your porch.
So to all you gangbangers who are destroying your communities because of drugs and gang affiliation, Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Fuck your rights as American citizens. You are enemy combatants and you should be treated as such. The vast majority of people that live in these areas are law abiding citizens and you are making it hell on them day in and day out. People can’t even sit on their porch or near the front window of their homes because one of you no aiming bastards are shooting the wrong person all the time. Travelling to and from work is a problem because of you ignorant bastards. read more…
“Niggas In Paris”, In Real Time!
Disclaimer: If you are offended by the usage of the word Nigga, Niggas, Nigger or any variation of the word……………….. get over it!
So Gwyneth Paltrow Tweets out, “Niggas in Paris for real”, and the Black blogosphere goes up in arms, white blogs discussed it also, but Black bloggers seem to want to keep it on the front page for propaganda purposes. After seeing it x amount of times since the incident I decide to add my hundred billion cent opinion to it, yeah I said it, 100 billion cent opinion.
My first thought was niggas please, my second thought was niggas please and my third thought was, I just used the word nigga in written format more times than in one sentence than I have since I thought I was destined to be an MC. Casual T was the name, people call me Tab so I was Casual Tab, get it, then T Slang, Tab Slang. Don’t laugh T-Pain getting money, I wish I would have thought about auto-tuning myself back then, but oh well!
As I grew older and wiser, I decided to limit my usage of the word and my MC names transformed into Reign Philosophe, yeah that’s right with an E and Wizdom Manifest, with a Z. What kind of Hip Hop titan would I have been without corrupting the English language just a little bit right? Sadly my career as the world’s greatest MC never took flight, probably because I only recorded 1 song and never went back to get it mastered, but I was cold I tell you, cold!
But anyway, back to Nigga, that infamous, diabolical 5 letter word that has caused this “uproar”. To the niggas that keep posting about how offensive it is, Niggas Please.
Historically ……………… blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. Now that you are caught up on the historical meaning and significance of the word, let’s move on shall we.
For the past 30+ years of the existence of Hip Hop, the word Nigga has been used. We, Black men, hoisted the word into the stratosphere and said that we were going to change the meaning of it. We urbanized the spelling by subtracting the E & R and added an A to take it from nigger; a term of hatred spewed by whites, to Nigga a term of endearment when spoken amongst brothers. Hip Hop, which was quickly becoming the culture and language of the worlds disenfranchised youth translated this new meaning and spelling to people from New York, to England, to Japan, Africa, China, South America, Russia, Germany, and to every crevice of this planet that had the capacity to receive radio waves. At this point the word started to take on different meanings associated with the way it was spelled and with how a non-black person used it. read more…
Where Was Trayvon Martin Shot?
After scouring through pages of info on the Trayvon Martin murder today, once again I noticed a glaring omission.
We know what Trayvon was wearing, the hoodie of course, what he had in his possession, Skittles and an Arizona Tea we know that he was suspended 3 times and was on a 2 week suspension for an empty marijuana bag.
We know that Zimmerman “reportedly” had a Broken Nose and Gash on the BACK of his Head, we know that he was kicked out of Seminole University, we know that his father is a retired judge, mother a court clerk, we know that he has been arrested 3 times; one for resisting arrest with violence, which is a felony, one for resisting arrest non-violently and one for domestic violence, we even know the make of the gun that he carried and used to commit this heinous crime.
There’s a great article on Think Progress chronicling this story.
But what we still don’t know is, Where Was Trayvon Martin Shot?
What body part did the bullet strike? Was he shot in the Chest, the Stomach? Where did the bullet strike him? Or was he shot in the Back?
If the latter is the case, then we know that what Zimmerman has been saying is a complete lie. But regardless of where he was shot he still was being pursued by an unidentified strange man with a gun, so he had the right to defend himself.
Update:
After being told where he got shot by someone on Facebook, I changed my search keywords to include where he got shot and I found a bunch of articles saying that he was shot in the chest at close range, Google be damned! Didn’t want people using the same keywords as I did and coming to the same erroneous conclusion as I did, where he was shot is known, it’s just not part of the narrative unfolding.
Stand Your Ground Trayvon Martin
As this story has been unfolding over the past month something is being lost in translation. We’re wearing our hoodies, we’re calling for justice and we’re angry that the system has failed us once again.
Black activist and leaders like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Tavis Smiley, Cornell West, and others have spoken out, and even President Barack Obama waded in on this tragedy that has galvanized the African American populace across the nation. The New Black Panther party has even put an ill advised $10k bounty on George Zimmerman’s head, because if something happens to him the BPP will be blamed for it and will be promptly arrested which will bring tension to it’s highest point since OJ’s trial. And still something has been looked over in the narrative that is unfolding.
Even with Geraldo Rivera’s idiotic, down right hypocritical stance against the hoodie no one has mentioned that George Zimmerman was the aggressor. By his own admission in the 911 call, when he told them that he was following Trayvon, he should have been pegged as the aggressor, arrested and locked up for first degree murder.
The law that police say is keeping them from arresting Zimmerman should be applied to Trayvon Martin with 100% impunity. read more…
Too Many Chiefs Not Enough Indians
The quote for Black people should be; Too Many Indians That Think They Are Chiefs and Not Enough Chiefs for all These Damn Indians.
I wholly understand the first quote but over the years I have come to realize that it’s not as accurate as I once thought. The reason for this is that these Indians that are trying to be chiefs are really acting and they have no real understanding of what it takes to be a chief. They posture themselves and try to talk like a chief but they can’t walk the walk, not even a block, let alone a mile in the shoes of a real chief.
They get ahead of themselves when dealing with Black on Black situations, but if you toss them into the room with a white chief they quickly play the subordinate role. (more on the Black on Black situation in a post to come)
On the other side there’s the multitude of Indians and not enough people willing to stand up as chiefs. This is when it has to do with enlightenment and uplifting of the Black community. All of a sudden no one wants to be the chief, no one wants to die for the cause anymore or be the martyr. They all want a chief to step up, whom they will conveniently try to undermine when given the chance. (more on The Crab Syndrome in a coming post)
So let’s refresh the phrase a bit to include the latter 2 so we can really become more enlightened on the way we think.