Nah, there are very few hip hop fans at Mudcat. Most folks here know nothing about the art form, the cultural references, etc.

And to me, if anything of value will come out of the Obama impending victory, it will be that it might hold the power to change the thug culture that is destroying generations of urban poor black kids.

But I don't hold out much hope of that either, considering the mother of two of our students at my school who threw her twin babies off a bridge into the Mississippi River on the 4th of July, and then followed them in--was a hip hop diva w/a slew of mental health problems.

Pop culture hip hop isn't getting these kids anywhere beyond feeling more deprived of material goods, of decent parenting, etc. and fuels the vicious cycle of status quo poverty.

I happen to love the art form of hip hop, but detest most of the artists. I've been doing slam and spoken word poetry w/my students for years. But they know how I feel about the hip hop crap that is hateful, misogynist, and greed based. But I LOVED Straight Outta Compton, and back then, hoped it would lead the hip hop music movement to great new heights of social criticism.

Sadly, it all degenerated into the thug thing, instead--to make it palatable to the mainstream values of MTV.