While watching the 6:30 evening news on WPIX-TV, New York, I caught their quick rundown of stories they’d be covering once returning from commercial break. One of the stories featured was on a bill sponsored by two Brooklyn Assembly Members, Annette Robinson (D-Bedford Stuyvesant) and Darryl Towns (D-East New York) that would mandate police officers to shoot to wound rather than to kill a suspect. Patiently, I waited until the program returned from break to hear the details. They quickly reported the; who, what, when, where, why and moved on. Later in the program the matter was addressed in an editorial segment titled “Lionel” which, to sum up, is an old white guy ranting about the good old days. I found myself to be incensed by his insensitive, unsympathetic, uninformed, and irresponsible diatribe on the issue. Describing the bill as something that would require police officers “to shoot gun-wielding suspects in the arm or leg rather than shoot to kill” and declaring the people that the bill would protect to be “thugs”, Read more...
I was watching an Indian comedian on Comedy Central a few nights ago. He wasn’t really that funny, but that’s beside the point. I was bothered by him constantly referencing Middle Eastern people as Brown. See that’s where this whole using a color to categorize race thing gets confusing. Read more...
A young militant Muslim boy is allowed to board an American bound airline with explosives, despite being on a terrorist watch list, and now the government wants airport security to get a good look at my nuts. Read more...
I was thinking about dreams the other day. You know how big our dreams are when we’re young? We think so grand. For me, I wanted to be a famous MC traveling the world with mad adoring fans, making millions of dollars, driving expensive cars, mad fine ass women, etc. As you get older, you find yourself having to make that compromise. You want to just do your art but “real life” gets in the way of that. Read more...
Who’s really to blame for this shit? I think everybody is. Even no action is action and those that have taken no action bear some responsibility. Record companies are businesses; businesses aren’t going to invest in what doesn’t make them money. The music people claim they want to hear, they don’t financially support or support in any other fashion. Everybody just feeds into the negativity, they roll with the mob shouting hip hop is dead, it’s a minstrel show, and it’s whatever. That time and energy would be better spent supporting an artist they feel does make the music they’d like to hear. Read more...
I hate when people talk about how much they hate “commercial” music. Commercial music is good music. Besides that, how many artist with a deal, whether considered underground or mainstream aren’t making music with the intent of profiting off of their music? Pushing a product for profit is all “commercial” means. Read more...
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I have a niece who was born to a 16 year old father caught up in the street. My mother had kicked my brother out when he was 14, let him back in the house, and then put him in Job Corps. He used to cut school and work doing construction for the landlord of the building next door. My mother wasn’t having that not going to school shit, so he had to go. Read more...
Dialect: Variety of a language spoken by a group of people and having features of vocabulary, grammar, and/ or pronunciation that distinguish it from other varieties of the same language.
Dialects usually develop as a result of geographic, social, political, or economic barriers between groups of people who speak the same language. When dialects diverge to the point that they are mutually incomprehensible, they become languages in their own right. This was the case with Latin, various dialects of which evolved into the different Romance languages French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian….
- dictionary.com
Hip hop slang, in my opinion, is what could be characterized as a socialect, which is a dialect determined by social factors rather than by geography. In the opinion of others outside of hip hop it’s a sign of ignorance or lack of education, or just plain bad English. What causes the division? Read more...
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Malcolm X once spoke about the existence of what he called, “House Negroes” and “Field Negroes”, in our modern times it appears to me that a new spin has been placed upon that dynamic. Being that slavery is no longer in overt existence, the terms house Negroes and Field Negroes don’t carry as much weight as they once did, but the existence of what those two terms stood in representation of is still very much a part of our modern day black American society. Read more...
