Open Letter To Slim Thug

In a recent interview, rapper Slim Thug unleashed a very disturbing attack on Black women, here’s an excerpt: …Most single Black women feel like they don’t want to settle for less. Their standards are too high right now. They have to understand that successful Black men are kind of extinct. We’re important. It’s hard to […]

AllHipHop.com Endorses Kevin Powell For Congress (Brooklyn)

DONATE $5 to Kevin’s campaign NOW at www.kevinpowell.net (click DONATE) “When you consider the intelligence and breadth of Kevin Powell’s writing and activism, you come to the conclusion that there may be no better spokesperson and representative for a generation that has too long been counted out.” —asha bandele An interesting thing happens in America […]

Meditations on Hip-Hop: Of Disposability, Death, and Destiny (Pt. III of III)

DESTINY A learning process might appear … for the crushed, the forbidden-to-be, the rejected, that would teach them that, through serious, just, determined, untiring struggle, it is possible to remake the world. —Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: The Continuum Publishing Co., 1994), p. 198. Must survive any how […]

Who’s The Real Terrorist?

Who’s The Real Terrorist?April 19th marked the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh. While many gathered on that day to commemorate that tragic event, the act itself, and others like it, continues to shed light on a fundamental hypocrisy in American society. The hypocrisy […]

Republicans Buy Sneakers, Too

A popular sentiment shared among members of the sports community is that politics and sports should not mix.  After all, with the vast investment of Corporate America, astronomical ticket pricing and multi-billion dollar television contracts, it is simply safer and financially more lucrative to accept the status quo than to challenge it. The Phoenix Suns […]

Africa, The Next Throne of ‘Hip-Hop’

I’ve mentioned this story before because it was one of those experiences that always stays with you. In December 2009, I wrote the following in a column at AllHipHop.com: “In 1996, while serving as GM of Wu-Tang Management, I participated in a private meeting with executives from RCA Records. At a certain point they brought […]

How High Can Hip-Hop Go?

People have always smoked marijuana, for one reason or another.  Some people justifiable reasoning was religious/spiritual or medicinal, others used the drug-induced state to escape, some indulged to make stupidity seem gut busting hilarious, if not genius, while others just geeked and got the munchies.  I’m from the red light, beaded sectional dividers, burnt incense, […]

Meditations on Hip-Hop: Of Disposability, Death, and Destiny (Pt. II of III)

DEATH All deaths have causes … Corpses are cut open, explored, scanned, tested, until the cause is found: a blood clot, kidney failure, hemorrhage, heart arrest, lung collapse. We do not hear of people dying of mortality. They die only of individual causes … No post-mortem examination is considered complete until the individual cause has […]

Gucci The Role Model? Really?

 The views expressed inside this editorial aren’t necessarily the views of AllHipHop.com or its employees.“The term role model generally means any “person who serves as an example, whose behavior is emulated by others” – Wikipedia “This is something I will make sure never happens again. My time in jail was trying, but I grew from […]

The Renaissance of The Female MC: Ana Tijoux and Queen Yonasda

Renaissance – any new birth, re-birth or revival of art, thought, science, literature, or architecture. [(French for “rebirth”; Italian: Rinascimento, from ri- “again” and nascere “be born”)] Listening to the new albums from Ana Tijoux and Queen Yonasda made me think of Akinyele. I know what you’re thinking so let me explain. About 11 years […]

Un-American America: Why Fear Mongering is So Damn Frightening

We are living in precarious and dangerous times.  The economy remains unstable, joblessness is continuously skyrocketing, development is stagnant and unpredictable circumstances around the world are exacerbating the fears of many.  But what is also quietly bubbling underneath the surface is a far more treacherous and detrimental push for a shift in American psychology that […]