So Lupe sells out (on Islam) like every other Muslim rapper who has made it to the mainstream. What am I talking about? His lyrics are still conscious right? Yes they are, but today (it was aired today) Lupe did what Q-tip did with his Vibrant thing video. He performed on stage at BET’s Spring Bling Event in Palm Beach, FL with 10 chicks in bikinis. Mad haraam.
Muslim youth need to wake up. Mos Def, Q-tip, Lupe nor anyone else will represent Islam properly. They are selling themselves for money. All of this comes with the territory. It would be a shame for Muslim organizations like IMAN to call Lupe back to perform at their annual event.
I found this nicely written article on nytimes.com. If you were this guy would you have done the same thing?
ONE hot night last summer, just past midnight, I discovered that in the apartment building across the street from my duplex in Fort Greene there was a little crack house.
I was parking my car after a late movie, the windows down because my air-conditioning was broken, when I heard a man and a woman arguing on the sidewalk. I didn’t know them, but they weren’t new faces to me. In the four years I’d lived in the apartment on South Oxford Street, I’d walked past them many times. They were constantly moping around the block with glassy eyes, scratching themselves, and muttering. Any New Yorker could tell they were crackheads.
I never gave much thought as to why these two crackheads were on my block so often. Some days in Fort Greene you walk past celebrities like Adrian Grenier or Colson Whitehead or Mos Def. Some days you walk past a crackhead.
Back in April 2003 I read this article in the New Yorker magazine profiling the anti-corruption ball busting (excuse the phraseology) Attorney General of the state of NY. Elliot Spitzer came up quickly building his name as as a modern day Elliot Ness of sorts. He cracked down on white collar criminals and fat corporations without fear. His legacy though will now be: The Governor of NY who got caught hiring “high end” prostitutes.
Today On Tuesday I tried to get on the Brian Lehrar show. One of the screeners asked me what I wanted to share. So I said.. “Similar to Bill Clinton (’s affair in the Oval office with Monica) this instance should be seen as a broader societal problem”. She asked if I could rephrase my question to a legal one. She said they were no longer taking calls on whether he should resign or not. So I guess what that meant is: What he did was immoral because it was illegal, not that it was immoral because it was immoral and its illegal because its immoral. I was not able to quickly reframe my question and was asked to call back. There is a discussion on the WNYC website so I’ll just link this post there.
The Boondocks won a Peabody for this episode:
Imagine if Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t die when he was shot, rather he went into a coma and awoke 30 years later:
Interesting way for Aaron Magruder to comment on the state of his own people.Now some reflections on the current election and the status of race (issues) in this country. Let me ask you a simple question: Would Barrack Obama have a chance at the U.S presidency if he were not light skinned? I don’t think so, he would not be taken as seriously if he was dark (even by black people). We know of this self hate all too well in the Indian Subcontinent.His good looks are really helping him cut through the racial bias. Like Mos Def said.. he’s a good looking man. He has been put on numerous magazine covers, which has given him serious national exposure (even more so than Edwards). I think he should take Oprah on tour with him like Huckabee does with Chuck Norris.
Popular Muslim Blogger Umar Lee wrote a not so obviously satirical letter from Obama about his religious identity. This is also a racial issue because it has to do with Obama’s roots.
On a related note, Mitt Romney interacts with parade marchers on MLK day and stumbles over himself trying to use pop/hip-hop references. While taking pictures with a group of black kids he says “Who let the dogs out!” WTH, what a moron! Then he refers to a little black baby as Michael Jordan, says bling bling and comments on a little girls pretty (white) gloves! One youtube commenter says this must be his first time around black people (causing him to act so awkwardly). He wouldn’t do the same thing with prospective voters of the Caucasian race would he?
I had previously reported on Dave Chappelle becoming Muslim, and even posed a question and had it answered on Time Magazines Website. Amir blogged about Dave becoming a co-executive producer for a future Allah Made Me Funny DVD.
Well now Recently Dave was in the UK and did a short stand up bit. Watch Then Read my commentary (Warning!: Its Dave Chappelle! - not appropriate for all audiences!)
Man… today I was at associated grocery store which is located in a strip mall across the street from my building. I went grocery shopping with my wife. I was contemplating how Starrett City has evolved over the years from being a false ideal of Utopian white middleclassdom to becoming increasingly section-8. I knew things were starting to get ghetto when a Chinese Fast food joint and a foot locker came to the shopping center. But that’s cool, but whats not cool is what you can find in the associated supermarket. In the last aisle there is a special line for Lotto. Not only is there a long lotto line, there are 3 huge vending machines for instant scratch lotto games. These machines take 1 dollar bills for half a million in prize money, 5 dollars for 1 million, 10 dollars for 2 million, 20 dollars for 500 million. While in line I noticed mostly older African American men and women paying for their groceries and then taking the remainder of their money to these machines to buy tickets. This one man was putting in all these different one dollar bills and the machine just wasn’t accepting it. I went up to him and told him “That’s a blessing that it won’t take it, that’s your hard earned money don’t waste it”. He replied “But I might win”. I responded by saying “Use your money on yourself, you worked hard for that money”. He respond again by saying “but I might win”. I just shook my head hoping others listening would think about what was happening in front of them. My wife commented by saying this is a vicious cycle. What I understood from her comment was that these people are already poor and they are robbed by these allusions that they can become rich quick, and towards that end they blow alot of their money (which they don’t have an abundance of) in these false hopes. While I was walking home I saw an ad in the travel agency window which said “Daily Trips to Atlantic City”. The only thing that’s worse than the long line of people buying lotto tickets, is the long lines in front of liquor stores in the ghetto.
