"Best Rapper Alive"???

Well, Fantz, like my daddy used to say, I reckon that's what makes for a horse race... Different opinions...

I'd put mu son's rap up against this stuff an' my son's stuff went over well with a predominantly white (and rural) crowd... The music business is a crap shoot... The best don't necessarilly make it to the top... It's more like hitting the lottery becasue of media consolidation like ClearChannel... I know this first hand... I've been in and out of a performing musicain going back to the 60's... I know folks who have "made it" that aren't near as good as folks who ain't...

I reckon that's why I didn't finish reading Jay-Z's lyrics because I didn't find them appealing or acceptable... I think he could say the things without the inflmatory stuff... But then again, okay, maybe I'm of Jay-Z's daddy or grand-daddy's erra... An erra where women weren't "beeeches", black folks were "niggas" and no ome were "mf'ers"...

As for "dustin'"... I remember when I learned that lesson and who taught it to me... It was like '68 and several this black, articulate, minster was working for R-CAP, (Richmond Community Action Program) where I was being paid (haha) as a communitty organizer... There were three or four of us rowdy radicals in a meeting with this minister... We all just knew him as Joe... But we youngins were talkin' trash... You know, the current revolutionary rhetoric od the day and Joe wnt into a little Dr. King-ish sermon about putting distance between ourselves and folks who were preachin' violence and during that sermon he took his right hand and swept it not accross his sholder but accross the lapel on his suit jacket... It must have been a very meaningfull lesson as it still burns in my memory...

Culure is evolutionary for the most part but like in a plant it will on occasion "sport" (think disco here) and then get back on the path... I'm not saying that hip-hop is a "sport" but I am suggesting that some the the language, along with the imagery, will one day be looked upon as dated and innappropriate...

Does it disturb me that Obama would us a jesture which is founded in the black culture going back generations??? Well, no, it doesn't... Does it disturb me that Obama can do some of the current dances??? Well, no... Would it disturb me if Obama referred to his wife, Micelle, as a "bitch"... Yeah, and enough to make me a former Obama supporter...

Face it, in this tribalized world where rock throwing Palestinians kids wear Air Jordons, we are are somewhat interlocked in a global culture and we pick and choose from a vast menu of choices, entertainment and product... But with each choice there are all these off-shoots and when one gets into them things can get very murky...

That is purdy much what has happened here with this "dust-up"... Something rather benign compared to real issues gets pushed out in front as if it is the Holy Grail while the real issues get the back seat... This is the politics of division and destraction that Obama so very well articulates...

But like I said, that's what makes a horse race... There are a lot of folks who have seen where diastractions and pea-under-the-shell games have gotten US and if I'm a bettin' man then I'd have to put my bet on the voters not buying the same old crap...

B~