M.I.A. in the Hood

I absolutely adore the music and style of Sri Lankan rapper/singer M.I.A. She is one of the most creative artists out there in my opinion. Her music blends all different styles seamlessly to create something entirely new. It seems that with the warm reception she received form the critics as well as the hip-hop community, that her music would be more popular among urban and inner city youth who like hip-hop.

At first, I thought maybe her music was just too weird for some people. It is very different, and in L.A. where I live the hip-hop community doesn’t really listen to much electronic music, unless it’s co-signed or performed by an acceptable hip-hop artist. Since M.I.A.’s music contains so many electronic elements, this seemed like a good reason.

Recently, I watched a short documentary on M.I.A. by acclaimed director Spike Jonze. In it, M.I.A. stated that she felt like hip-hop had always come from the perspective of urban and inner city youth in America and the UK, and her music spoke to a completely different kind of experience-the experience of a refugee from a third world country. She seemed to imply that their experience is nothing like that of people growing up in poor communities in developed countries.

This statement kind of blew my mind. There it is, I thought, that’s the reason she’s not as popular in the African-American community. She doesn’t seem to understand that the differences between living in poverty in the United States as a minority and being a refugee from a third world country are much fewer than the similarities. African Americans may not be refugees, but we were brought to this country against our will, enslaved for nearly 400 years, and then legally treated as second class citizens. We experienced an unprecedented level of racism, the remnants of which are still evident today.

The separation of families during slavery all but destroyed our concept of family structure, our African heritage and culture was forcefully stripped away from us. We have struggled, fought, and died for rights as simple as drinking from water fountains and riding on busses. Everyday in the black community there is genocide, and evidence of self-hatred. Many black people consider the definition of beautiful to be lighter-skinned with “good hair” and of course this description does not fit the majority of black people.

I don’t love M.I.A. any less, because much of what se said was true. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live in a third world country, and I’m glad to hear an intelligent, thought-provoking voice speaking out about the injustices the people there face, but in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” and we are experiencing severe-albeit different-injustice in the inner city communities of America.

To only focus on the differences is to marginalize the problem. Poverty, genocide, and racism are not third-world issues, they are world issues. We may not see the effects of the third world on America directly, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.

I want to walk down Crenshaw and hear somebody bumping M.I.A. I want to go to Hollywood to a popular night club and hear “World Town” blaring from the sound system and hear everyone singing along. I want everyone to have a little more substance to go with their style, and M.I.A. definitely has both. But until her music is a reflection of both experiences, hinged upon their similarities and not quite so hung up on the differences, I don’t think it will happen. I will, however, be listening and hoping.

Comfortable or Cracked Out?

In his novel The Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield speculated that mankind sent scientists into the world to explore its mysteries and come to some conclusions about the origins of the universe and our place in it. But, when the scientists went out to gather information, they found more than they were prepared to handle. The questions vastly outnumbered the answers, and after decades of searching mankind either lost interest or forgot why they sent them out in the first place. This “failure” on the part of science to explain the meaning of life was a pivotal point in the evolution of human values, because while mankind waited for answers they tackled an issue of their own: How to make life more comfortable.

When I look at the world around me, it seems that comfort is a top priority for the vast majority of Americans today. Whether it’s reclining in an easy chair watching TV and drinking a beer, or resting their asses on the plush leather seats of a luxury sports car while driving in traffic, comfort is like crack to Americans. We can’t get enough of the stuff. We need it all day everyday, even when we sleep. We want to be comfortable while we do even the most uncomfortable things. It got me to thinking, is being constantly comfortable a realistic expectation? And if so, what are some of the side effects of our obsession with comfort? Is it just making us weaker?

One of the most common definitions of comfort is: A state of ease and satisfaction of bodily wants, with freedom from pain and anxiety. Notice the word “bodily” in that definition. Somewhere along the line, we began to believe that being physically comfortable was equivalent to being mentally, spiritually, or emotionally comfortable in our own skin. Perhaps we thought, if I could just make my physical environment comfortable enough, everything else would follow suit. Perhaps being physically comfortable allowed us to dull our perception enough that we don’t perceive any discomfort within ourselves, much like taking an aspirin relieves pain but does not eliminate the problem.

And so here we all are, together, confined within the comfort zone we created. The question I can’t stop asking is, are we comfortable or cracked out on the most addictive, invasive drug mankind has ever known – luxury.

Photoshop is the SHIT!

My blog looks amazing, if I do say so myself. And it only took me 3 hours to do it! LOL

Let's watch a video and celebrate. :)

Baby Got Back... And A Rapper Got Jacked

At first glance, this is not a subject I would have chosen to blog about, but I would like to address the situation that occurred this week with “self-proclaimed groupie” Kat Stacks and rapper Soulja Boy. Apparently, Kat took some incriminating video in Soulja Boy’s hotel room while he was in the shower, which showed lines of cocaine. She also had a lot to say about how the coke was affecting his sexual performance, and how he was a huge “cokehead”. This whole situation is obviously dramatic for those involved or directly affected, but many others in the hip-hop community have taken it upon themselves to address the situation and Kat Stacks in particular.

I definitely don’t think what Kat Stacks did was cool, but I find it funny that all these rappers are jumping to Soulja Boy’s defense, and posting anti-Kat-Stacks messages on twitter. In my opinion, you boys are getting exactly what you asked for. All I ever hear on the radio is how some rapper needs a girl with a big ass and a cute face, and how all she has to do is shake it on the dance floor in order for him to like her. This attitude towards women seems to have transcended hip-hop in more recent years, and become the dominant attitude for men in popular culture.

I don’t really want to get into all the details we could analyze as to why this is, I just want to say look at the monsters y’all have created! It is a widely published and accepted scientific fact that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and apparently choosing a mate or sexual partner solely based on the size of their ass has some pretty hefty repercussions.

I also find it extremely entertaining and funny that Fabolous chose to speak out with some of the harshest remarks against Soulja Boy, because Soulja Boy allowed Kat Stacks to be in his room alone. Fab called it “Stupid Boy Swag” after one of Soulja Boy’s recent songs “Pretty Boy Swag”. Well, Fab should know all about it, since I seem to recall an incident back in 2003 on the Roc The Mic Tour (which I did promotions on) where everyone, and I do mean everyone, that was working on the tour was laughing at Fab because he was robbed for $10,000 by a stripper who he let into his room, had sex with, and apparently fell asleep on. Soon as he closed his eyes, girlfriend jacked him for everything he had and bounced. Don’t get me wrong I like Fab, but come on. That is obviously the teapot calling the kettle black.

Be careful what you wish for guys, because there is power in the words you speak, and the subjects you choose to rap about can easily become themes in your life. So, if you want to make these songs glorifying groupies and their behavior in the club, don’t be mad when one of them catches you off guard and puts you on blast or even worse, sets you up. And if what you want is a good woman who has some class to go with her ass, maybe you should make some songs praising women for being intelligent and worthy of respect as well as being sexy. I’m just sayin……….

Sticks and Stones...... and Enriched Uranium?

It’s hard to be an American sometimes… Not because our country is one of the worst socially, economically, or from a development standpoint, but from the perspective of a citizen of planet Earth, watching fellow citizens from other countries go through ridiculous, unfair punishments that do not fit the crimes they have supposedly committed; the Iranian woman sentenced to stoning for adultery, the Australian woman who narrowly escaped the death penalty but was sentenced to 20 years in a Bali prison for smuggling drugs even though it was proven that drug smugglers were present and hiding their illegal wares in the bags of unsuspecting passengers the day the woman was caught… These are the kind of stories that make my skin crawl as an American, because even though our country has its imperfections, at least I will never face the possibility of being stoned to death. At least in America, you have the right to a kind-of fair trial judged by a jury of your sort-of peers.

It is mind boggling that the same Iranian government that accepts stoning as a sentence for the crime of adultery receives support from the international community when it wants to buy enriched uranium (supposedly for medical purposes). Obviously, there are cultural differences at work here, but at some point (hopefully when the words “enriched uranium” come in to play) we have to ask ourselves, can a country that is willing to stone someone to death for adultery in the year 2010 be trusted with the ingredients of a nuclear weapon?

Let’s examine this critically. In Iran, a woman can be stoned to death for allegedly committing adultery, but not only that, a woman can also be sentenced to death for fending off the attacks of a rapist. So obviously, according to this school of thought, a woman is not the equal of a man. If it can become a widely accepted cultural norm to think of a woman as a lesser grade of human being, it could be just as easy to think of an African, Latino, or Asian person as a person of lesser value as well.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, if your country wants to be trusted with a do-it-yourself WMD kit, please at least do the bare minimum and prove that you have the morality to treat your own countrymen and women with the level of respect that all human beings deserve regardless of gender, religion, or race.

The walls are crumbling around me.......

When the walls around you are crumbling and, though you have no clue how they got there, you’ve got a brick in each hand and a pile at your feet it’s almost too easy to let yourself slip away from everyone and everything… Those are the moments of true despair, when you know that there is only one thing causing the problems in your life, and that cause is YOU.

You want to let everything go. You don’t want to talk to or see the people you love, because to see yourself reflected in their eyes is unbearable. You want nothing more than to be worthy of their love and respect, but in your heart you know that you are not doing everything that is required to achieve that.

And so, you retreat into the deepest darkest part of yourself you can find. You hope and pray that by the time you get yourself together, people will still be there with those same shining eyes, filled with unconditional love… but you know there is a possibility they will not. You know that you can’t expect people to put their own feelings and needs on the backburner while you figure out what your problem is, but that doesn’t stop you from asking anyway.

Deep down, you know that this is a risky thing--this hiding, this MIA routine, this invisible person costume you’re wearing… but what else can you do when evil and ugliness have attached themselves to you like a parasite and you have allowed yourself to become a host, establishing some kind of symbiotic relationship with the darkness?

All you can do is search your soul for the answers, and pray for favorable conditions during the inevitable journey back to the source of who you really are.

Static/Major.... 2 Years Later

Yesterday, I celebrated the life of one of my biggest inspirations, writer/artists/producer/husband/son/father Static/Major. He was an incredible artist and a loving family man who stayed humble despite his huge success in the music industry. I have written about him here before, as a mater of fact I think this was the first place I wrote about it the day he died... But the reason I want to write about it now is because of the manner in which he died.

Hospital Malpractice. Plain and simple. Please, please, each and every one of you, take your health very seriously. If any doctor ever tells you that you require any kind of severe or invasive treatment, get a second opinion. If Static had done that, he might have still been with us today, mesmerizing us all with his amazing harmonies.... *sigh*

I'm just sayin guys, it may be hard. You may be in pain or discomfort, and just want to be treated and get it over with... But that decision may cost you your life. We live in a world where even the health care profession is a business, and just like any other business they want to make a profit. The huge corporations often look at people as nothing more than statistics that are expendable. Don't let yourself or your family fall victim a tragedy like this. Always, always, get a 2nd and maybe even 3rd opinion.

By all accounts, Stephen Ellis Garrett aka Static/Major should have walked out of that hospital on February 26th 2008... But he did not.