This is a father multiple times over, someone who is basically part of the hollywood fold more than the Compton fold-SMH

The whole stop Snitchin idiocy is a real epidemic in our society. Everyone who wears a stop snitchin’ t-shirt or promotes that foolishness in anyway should be slapped. As I have always said the White slave owner/slavery was & is genius in concept & perpetuation because it has managed to find a loophole in the declaration of the emancipation proclamation. Generation after generation slave mentality has managed to re-invent & repackage itself to continue making money & having dominance by having the ancestors of emancipated slaves convince themselves that we are not worthy of our freedoms & should remain silent & obedient in a psyche that denies us justice for children,grandmothers etc. We have attained some false sense of power by calling ourselves the name that our ancestors fought to leave behind with the shackles that kept them from freedom & justified, differentiated & labeled them as lesser humans. What’s the point of a stop the violence march & initiative if we go on with business as usual & our mentality never changes once the smoke & tears clear. Our so called Black leaders who are so quick to rally us & protest when a White cop or person perpetuates a crime upon us often sit silent & fall prey to the street idiocy when we perpetuate it unto ourselves. They know this is wrong & they have shown in many instances that they have real power to change people & industries who have a broad influence on our young people, not just locally & nationally, but also globally. If censorship will stop the poisoning of the minds of our young people & prevent deaths then I am for it because we are really doing it to ourselves. We can stop blaming the government & the White man because all we have done is use the same formula that we rant against. There are more young Black people killing one another than White cops shooting Black people yet I don’t see the level of outrage & marches when we perpetuate the idocy on our own. When will we change? It is so said that an 11 year old child is getting national attention for his leadership in telling & showing Black adults & leaders the errors of our ways & letting us know he will not fall for the self-bamboozling education of him & his generation as we have done to previous generations.

Why are we confusing our children?

Look at the celebrity of Jay Z & the young people who are going crazy over him & tell me how rappers or the hip-hop industry have no responsibility to be role models or that the music does not have a powerful impact & influence over their everyday lives. How many of these young people in this video skipped school that day just to get a glimpse of Jay Z, or just to say they were there when Jay Z walked through the block? Jay Z & all artists who careers are supported & funded thru captivating our youth have a responsibility to our youth because without them the Oprah show would have never been possible along with the praises & accolades she is bestowing. Oprah once said that she would not give a platform to hip-hop because of the lack of taking responsibility, but I guess ratings have now become the priority instead of keeping our word to our youth. Be “unquestionably impressive” by being the change we all want to see –our children are not Niggers/Niggas and Oprah should have taken Jay Z to task for that instead of just agreeing to disagree because it’s a direct state of mind that greatly influence the forward movement of us as a nation. It is a lot easier to walk away from responsibility that to face it head on because ignorance seems to be a harder habit/addiction to break than crack/cocaine. Black people long before Jay Z brought people/races together with Jazz, Soul, R& B , Blues & yes, even Rock n Roll so hip-hop does not hold that claim on bridging the racial divide globally thru music. We are at a time now when hip-hop has been passed the baton to continue the race with more power & stake in the service & uplifting of our community than ever.

We can’t be so flippant about talking about pasts of drug dealing, pimping & doing jail time. Oprah Winfrey , the most powerful Black woman in media is laughing with Jay Z comparing his life of drug dealing to Scarface & saying “I heard good drug dealers don’t do drugs”- huh? You can see in his body language that is a lie because he may not be doing the crack he was slinging, but the weed smoke was definitely being blown- but Oprah couldn’t go that deep because she was too busy being a fan instead of an elder of the community with an opportunity to truly challenge the status quo, which we have made all too acceptable in our community to our own detriment. Jay Z is no James Brown or Michael Jackson, but there is time to grow with self knowledge because “to whom much is given much is expected”.

I was shocked when a certain person in Ghana who is highly looked up to by many of the young Ghanaian artists said we should not judge a certain Ghanaian who was building up the Ghanaian fashion industry thru being a drug mule & had been caught at JFK & jailed, simply because Jay Z & all these other rappers basically built the hip-hop industry thru drug dealing & we all still love them so he didn’t see anything wrong with a Ghanaian following the same blueprint. This is the global message that we are sending to the world & we really need to be careful because the consequences can be, are already & will continue to be GRAVE!

We celebrate & put rappers on a pedestal for getting shot multiple times & surviving by calling them “gangsta” for perpetuating violence, misogyny , worshipping materialism & just plain living a lifestyle of moral bankruptcy. We have Oprah, the goddess of pushing book sales, having someone like Karrine “Superhead” Steffans on her show to promote her book, where she basically speaks of being a video ho, exchanging oral sex for money & hanging out with rappers/celebrities, while major authors could not even buy their way into that level of publicity to push their book projects. We do not seem to see anything wrong with that & the fact that this is adding to the rise of young women engaging in oral sex for popularity & money hoping one day they can also write a book about it and end up on Oprah- Why bother with an education. Children don’t come out with a desire to sell & do drugs, to sell their bodies for fame & fortune, or to murder one another, this is all taught behavior & we all must take responsibility in our part in the teaching & stop making excuses like you can’t blame the music , film, tv etc, when most of these young people spend more time listening to music, playing video games, watching movies & surfing the internet than they do in a classroom or at home engaging with their parents or guardians. Parents particularly in these same communities where these rappers come from have to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet & the help is not there because we no longer have a sense of community as a people & the idea of “it takes a village to raise a child”- everyone would rather say they are not responsible & that they have their own problems, so we will continue to attend more funerals of a generation lost.

Class, self respect & dignity can not be bought with any amount of money- How did they not see anything wrong with this on a day that was to elevate Black people in America from all the stereotypes that kept us from the white house for centuries- All the stereotypes that are being displayed in this video-Not cool at all!

Why do we compare ourselves to White people when it’s convenient but harp on our differences to talk about how the White man brings us down? Black children are not going to Elvis Presley for influence or to represent them & White children are not killing themselves at a ramped rate because violence is seen as part of their culture & everyday life, nor are they facing the type of rise in the A.I.D.S epidemic and reeling from the ills of poverty where anything & everything is for sale including one’s soul for one’s daily bread.

I thought it was interesting how there is a room full of White people pumping their fists to this great MC talking about the perils & problems of Black people yet BET or urban radio would not even consider putting him in their rotation. He is truly bridging the racial divide which Jay Z speaks on that Hip-Hop has done but he is not doing it by promoting violence, drug culture & misogyny & worship of materialism yet White people are still supporting his music so who really wants to see the worst of Black people? Yes- we do it to ourselves!