Are We Ready For a Black President?

On Election eve, as emotions run high, the impending history weighs bulbously on our nation. The number of improbable American stories still in their piquant phase, from Condoleeza Rice to Lil Wayne is astounding. But the American tragedies in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, the depressed areas of Newark, and the Appalachian Valley remain a fresh reminder of imminent decline. In 1985, a young University of North Carolina alum bolted out of the gates to NBA greatness. In 1995, Shawn Carter began recording the seminal work in a now-storied career, that includes ten albums and millions more in personal profit. For every Michael Jeffrey Jordan on his ascent to foreseeable greatness, or Shawn Carter making his implausible clutch at wealth in a short span, there are thousands of forgotten men and women. The arc of excellence, with its fruitful associations, is rare for most Americans. Black Americans can count themselves among negative statistical extremes more prevalently than isolated wild success stories would imply. As of 2007, six times the number of the Black males are imprisoned as their White male peers. On the whole, black citizens in general are 45% of the prison population, while white ones make up around half that number.

Defending Love Lockdown, Gilbert Arenas

 

Kanye West is the most relevant musician on the current music scene, because he operates in a dying genre that he’s somehow resuscitating by reminding everyone what it’s like to take a gumbo of music forms and make it into one thing. He has this bold vision that he may never specifically articulate, except to say that it deals with greatness and dimensionality. Some of his best work is a berth of pride and spiritual boldness. “Love Lockdown” is part exceptionalism, not one rapped lyric finds its way in; and part leapfrog into a world of little accountability. If artistic liberation metes itself out in the quixotic “experimental” album moment for every musician, this is Kanye’s Electric Circus/Perfect Imperfections/Sgt. Pepper, if you will.

The Virtue of T-Pain’s “Can’t Believe It”

Fuego.

The short ad-lib that clips the melody of another T-Pain croon. Either we believe that T-Pain is the loose assembly of hollow machine sounds. Or we believe that he is the brilliant incarnation of many soul singers pressed through the strainer of digital synthesis. Obviously, he is a bit of both, and it’s hard to assign him a mode as he adopts a similar harmonious template for most of his songs, whether they are cloying or redemptive.

T-Pain is brilliant emptiness. He is not vapid. His clownish costumes recall Flava Flav, but there’s always some hidden meaning with the jester. I remember The Source article covering Flav in the nay-day of Public Enemy. The formerly grand hip-hop rag made sure to color Flav’s run-ins with authorities, and family court issues as part of the mad genius that made him. In a way, T-Pain is a Flava Flav protege.

With the T-Wayne hit “Can’t Believe It” we get the best of the circus motif, from the track’s insistent twinkling bells to the top hat on a dancing teddy bear’s dome. The video is a work unto itself because it renders T-Pain as the ringmaster, the sad engineer of a strange world in which only he and some bizarre others fit. To keep with the running theme of being in love with a stripper, T-Pain indulges a wild fantasy about saving her from her life of lecherousness. He has this absolutely morose dream of loving a woman who has set herself up not to be loved. And he wails distressingly about it.

“Cause you look so gooo-oood, you make me wanna spend it all on ya”

And the poetry there is that he cannot spend it all on her. For all the “you ain’t tricking if you got it talk” seeping into the framework of his songs, he is bitterly deciding against being with this morally insufferable woman. This stripper-harlot-trope makes T-Pain’s exceptional use of melody more than a jester’s prosaic call: it’s his pastiche for invention. In a radio interview on Hot 97, T-Pain talked to Angie Martinez about his married life possibly being in contradiction with his woeful Single Man in the Club image. And as playfully as Angie brought up the randy contrast between the two value systems, T-Pain niftily explained that he wrote many of those songs (about strippers) while broke. This leads me to believe that he was never fascinated as much about the marketing of a Strip Club song as he was about getting to the heart of the troubled, enraptured club patron.

If T-Pain’s Can’t Believe It is ostensibly about being in the V.I.P. section of some seedy strip joint, it makes no real pretense out of being that close to its subject matter. “She make the people say yeeeeah” could just as well be a chant in any other R&B song, but here it’s as if he’s commenting on the allure of some dancer in some flashing light panel. He is bathing the song in that same light of ominous revelations: that strobes can hide the scars; drinks and tips can push a good man away from reality.

That is why T-Pain has the most appealing song in radio rotation for my money. It’s not because there is something honorable about using the auto-tune capabilities as instrument, rather it’s the audacity of hiding such depressing themes in such upbeat music. The whine of the “yeahs” is fully submerged in their electronic coating. The ardor of unsanctioned love is also there beneath the sweet surface. To be honest, I didn’t know T-Pain was so deep.

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I’m A Jamaican in New York

These few weeks have felt like Prelude to An Historic Speech or America Week. The Election bonanza so fittingly dovetailed the Olympics. The Democrats and Republicans put on a show that showed how disparate and simultaneously ethnocentric America can be. It’s difficult to place myself in the middle of the American spectrum. First, I’m black so I have dealt with pressing “otherness” since I learned that blacks in this country were treated differently through a system of historical treatise. Then, uncoerced, Aime Cesaire showed me that the same system effectively suppressed blacks in the West Indies (of America/Britain) and in Africa.

 

Obama

Since I was born in Kingston, Jamaica but raised stateside, I always had an allegiance to a place where most of my memories had long dissolved. I was stumped trying to figure out my Blackness, my Jamaican-ness, and my American-ness in the face of this larger diaspora idea, which in itself implies dissonance. Then, this week, as if to tap me on the shoulder, Lamika Young, educator and friend spoke to me over chat about Barack Obama. She asserted that the idea of him being named “Barack Obama,” and in turn his separateness from Black Americans, made him less threatening to the general population. I was willing to acknowledge that his exotic nature and name sets him apart from any generalized description of Black American. In the same huffy breath, I was dismayed that we were getting into a discussion of what makes someone Black American. Was she telling me that Black America had institutionalized Blacker Than Thou tests?

Dear Barack, Please E-Mail Us

Dear Barack, Please E-Mail Us

Primary season letters made us giddy. On the campaign trail, David Plouffe sent frequent calls for help to our inboxes whenever the campaign was on the ropes. Even better, we got video speeches sent directly after the cameras clicked off, and campaign ads that would never land on television. If my e-mail doesn’t see my pupils at least thirty times a day, something’s wrong or I’m on vacation. Demography of the consumerism aside, the reason Barack Obama gained fanatics so quickly was e-mail. Public advocacy and a Harvard pedigree had made him a mainstream media stand-out (Barack made his first national appearance in an article in the New York Times in 1990). His ability to make speeches afforded him more publicity after the 2004’s DNC address aired on national television.

But the true advantage of having an online campaign is the personal connection that Millennial Generation makes to him each time we frantically check our hundred of incoming messages. He has prime mental real estate, ahead of spamming companies, ahead of school newsletters, and (for some of us) ahead of the e-mails from mom checking in.

It never seemed like he was begging either. Most of his e-mail messages never warranted the “Report User” or “Spam” click because they were loaded with information, and the requests for a donation had the language of involvement (i.e. “…because of millions of small donations like yours…) enough to induce the action without being forceful.

If the first of many Obama campaign missions was to solidify the base, he identified his base as a group who could spread their influence beyond their dollars. The Facebook and BarackObama.com users who did not donate were still nearly as useful as those who did because they acted as an organizational arm of his campaign among young voters. Rumors about his religion were just as quickly dispelled on the Facebook side of the digital divide as they were promoted among older e-mail users. In a sense, the media’s vast influence acted as President-elect Obama’s silent marketing campaign, and neutralized some threats from mainstream outlets with louder voices, but less reach.

From NYTimes.com:

Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. used radio to change the way he governed, J.F.K. was the first president to understand television, and Howard Dean saw the value of the Web for raising money,” said Ranjit Mathoda, a lawyer and money manager who blogs at Mathoda.com. “But Senator Barack Obama understood that you could use the Web to lower the cost of building a political brand, create a sense of connection and engagement, and dispense with the command and control method of governing to allow people to self-organize to do the work.”

The question remains, however, how Barack Obama could use an inclusive opt-in e-mail network to enact his Presidential agenda. 

Read the rest of this story at NewsOne.com

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Barack Obama and the 9/11 Generation

 

The rise of our President-elect was not fueled by just ebullient star power trumping arcane theory. In 2001, through Clinton era reluctance, and a Bush administration with suspect ties to Saudi oil magnates, our nation experienced its painful adolescence in the form of a hideous terrorist attack. The foreign policy blunders of the New World came to bear as two jumbo jets exploded into the World Trade Center. Children and teens of that generation realized that we would confront a loosely organized but worldly-wise terrorist threat. The theological battle between peaceful Muslim nations and their internal seditious youth was playing itself out on the soil of several so-called First World nations. What a shock it was, too. 

The Morehouse men I convened with in a dorm room to watch the CBS live coverage that day huddled around the television in severe disbelief. College freshmen are poorly equipped to decipher the consequences of misguided foreign policy. 

“It has to be the terrorists,” we agreed, demonstrating little comprehension of the word or why it equated to unthinkable violence. A New York cluster interjected with some names, and then Osama bin Laden became part of our national vocabulary when news outlets tied the plane hijackers to a rogue group of Islamic fundamentalists known as Al Qaeda. 

In some way, those men had lived another American Dream, training in domestic flight schools, finding sympathetic underground cohorts to support their mission, and eventually carrying out the most effective strike on the United States since Pearl Harbor. The events that followed were responsible for Barack Obama’s meteoric ascent. My generation of dissatisfied, apprehensive voters witnessed government secrecy unseen in our lifetime (but surely commonplace since McCarthy era/COINTELPRO). 

The executive branch expanded its power to propel an international witch hunt with the Patriot Act. The Central Intelligence Agency stood at odds with the FBI because of the information crunch applied by President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their resident hawk Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Colin Powell and Condi Rice stood beside junior Bush as he recklessly stomped through Baghdad with few international allies, and decreasing support from his party. The Department of Homeland Security seized responsibility from all other defense institutions. Weapons of mass destruction was a term fraught with meaning: the basis of our pinpointed Iraq invasion. If a ragtag bunch of terrorists could make their stamp on history with planes, imagine what a nation empowered with devastating weapons and an erratic leader could do. Although the U.S. had seen Cuba wave the nuclear cape at our waiting bull, we had not learned from the mistake of pre-emption. Chest-beating bravado dominated our diplomacy, and gradually, we conceded our real power by chasing the wrong villains. 

Barack Obama, only a state Senator at the time, openly spoke out against our cowboy-ism, stressing that our only chance to conquer the terrorist threat was to stage a multi-pronged, multinational mission. Concentrating our mission in Iraq ran the risk of handcuffing the world’s most powerful military indefinitely. United Nations and NATO protocol behooves our vigilance even when the difficult possibility of covert terrorists stands to challenge the global accord. But as a green local politician, Obama’s voice was limited to the echo chamber of disloyal anti-patriots, according to the way of the day. 

Several events justified his rationale shortly thereafter. The 9/11 Commission findings, as well as the resignation and dismissal of key Cabinet members like Rumsfeld and Powell, verified the brash nature of pursuing unfounded tips. U.S. casualties in Iraq rose in flurrying activity. Perhaps most significantly, though, the American electorate viewed Bush/Cheney’s actions as evidence of a corrosive, single-minded effort to push out the rest of the world, to win at all costs, regardless of strategic soundness. As support for the effort plummeted, and stranded Guantanamo “terror suspects” found legal grounds to push against their totalitarian imprisonment, young Barack Obama’s theories seemed less like the cries of hasty dissent.

Read the rest at NewsOne.com

Obama’s Calm After the Storm

Electing our nation’s first black president allowed America to breathe the next day. On the buses and commuter trains the next morning, children attended school with their parents tucking a copy of the Obama newspaper under arm. It’s a collectible. Where the night before we heard honking horns, the next dawn was sober as the news sunk in. Clouds covered the metropolis, from which tears never flowed in such unison. But instead of congratulating the country too much, we breathed to prepare for the next steps down an unknown path. President-elect Barack Obama (great ring to it) has been in the fire before as an Illinois State Senator. He has even faced down the Clinton juggernaut, the best Democrats had to offer in 20 years. But what stately man has thrived solely on poise in our time? Media superstars have sound bite power, but if we took Al Sharpton’s qualifications as seriously as we sometimes take his loud-mouthed approach, he would have had a chance at higher office. I digress.

Our future president has never stopped calculating the options. He was likely choosing Cabinet members once he thought the electoral map had been secured in October, and even before that. He could not predict that his world would be so profoundly affected though; that the emotions are stirring in our very souls. When a group of people has been moved to believe in the audacity of hope, as he puts it, their lives change in internal ways. The tremendous outpour of emotion is still washing over us. Images of people celebrating throughout the world are as common as their precedence is uncommon.

Read the rest at NewsOne.com

Thoughts on the NBA, Losing Isiah

I opened the season last year with League Pass. The rich have gotten richer, but I haven’t yet re-upped on my NBA fix. Instead, I’m going to be journaling the season in quick shots in a new category called “Losing Isiah.” It will feature photos, lists and summaries.

                                               

Delonte West started out as a Celtic. He became a Seattle Sonic, before being traded for the second time in his four-year career to Cleveland. He resides there as a man of No Land. 

Charity bros. 

                                     

                                    The number thirteen represents fortune. 

Whose Knicks are these that I saw take the floor Wednesday night? They were consummate passers. It is terrible to have the Knickerbocker hangovers from coaching carousels. They thrive nonetheless. It is a new psychology, if only for today. Whether or not this will mean a Buddhist sense of calm, a changed organism, winning in the Rotten Apple, I have no idea.

I do know that Mike D’Antoni will have no trouble convincing the Knicks to take all the shots they want. Before, this kind of clandestine philosophy held among players as a symbol of gradual destruction and incoherence. Now, it’s a temporary salve for a deep wound. Wait and see. 

Shoot-first doesn’t have to be a bad thing!

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Updates

This is a drop in the bucket. I’ve been doing a lot of writing for NewsOne.com. So much that they even blessed me with a go-round as a featured blogger. Nice to be seen alongside Bakari Kitwana, Mark Anthony Neal, Casey Gane-McCalla and Stephany Rose, to say the very least. Here are a few joints from that site.

1. When Politico broke the story of Palin’s wardrobe spending, I thought it appropriate to talk about the contradiction in terms that is saying “spending freeze” and “fiscally responsible” and then splurging because you have enough money to do so. It’s an insult to the same hard-working Americans they’re making an appeal to.

10 Things Palin’s $150K Outfits Could Buy

2. In the same aspect of pushing the cultural message, McCain-Palin and Co. have been helping themselves to a large portion of the white American apple pie. Nothing wrong with saying you advocate for a group as historically critical as this one, but there was another easy contradiction in dissecting Joe’s aspirational sense of capitalism. The media bit at this kind of white-branded individualism, almost missing the point of a national, broad-based election. 

Media Chases the White Joe Vote

3. It wouldn’t be the internet without some instant commentary, would it? Nazneen Patel of NewsOne.com and I talked about the final presidential debate as it took place. Think high school time capsule. 

NewsOne Debate Chat

4. The list of Republicans who have joined the Obama cause. Apparently, the ideological rift in the party between the sensible intellectuals and the class-race-tinkering cowboys has become external, prevalent. With Buckley, Will, Kristol, Brooks, Parker, Noonan and a host of others leaving for the moderate outskirts (or gasp! the left), there will be a vacuum of new ideas. Tucker Bounds just won’t do in heady economic times. Hat tip to the Jed Report.

List of Republicans Ditching McCain So Far

On TheUrbanDaily, there’s a review of Wale at a CMJ Showcase for SOB. He disappointed the crowd using his body of work is his defense. Giant Mag has a review of Eagle Eye also. This is a March essay about New Orleans recently found on King Mag’s site. 

Good night all. 

 

Ballad of the Blunted Boy

I got my Masters in Dutch and a Bachelor’s in Swisher

Graduate Hard Knocks by the Narrowest Slither

I’m Smart But Not the Flashiest Nigga and once I learn lessons

Class dismissed 

A Homerun Hitter no asterisk; though you try dealing your fastest pitch

When Last I quit, I can’t recall proper

Scalded lungs pass the spliff poured Vodka I am neither man

Nor monster; won’t deny I have a sore spot for 

classy chicks

I’m aloof like the shower sponge, crass emit a sour tongue 

Amass my riches outta slums; jousting with guns is such a downer

One dollar does not a dream make; Gun Powder to prop extreme statesmen

 

But –

 

No bwoy nah guh test me yo

We posture ’cause it’s the best we know

I’m the poet-emcee’s wet dream though

’specially blowed off the best weed, cho!

slipped inside the vestry door 

forget priests I got some questions

 

Dear father, does my ambition beget greed?

A balladeer 

I asked him cavalierly

I’m strong in my heart

My feet are rather weary 

What sign of the weak

that I splatter theories so loud

the people have to hear me

 

The youths are misguided 

we split sides spit fire piss iron

the best of us tip tides amidst liars

but after our time 

we git tired

 

I wanna 

collect bitches like figurines 

walk o’er floods to kick a breeze 

smoke more buds with thicker leaves 

Stalk tall funds like nigga please 

Feel familiar like six degrees 

The treasure is in the mysteries

 

Are these

Men or monsters

reading from teleprompters?

 

(per my advice 

you better watch)

 

Mind parables that ignore your children

And demagogues who war for scores 

Hording billions 

 

I used to hate but now I sorta feel ‘im 

I realize now that we was buildin’

 

That Gen. T-SO got me right mah nig…

The Genteel Oath To Life Unlived 

I spell dawg with an A-W

The first and last letters of my name trouble you 

I taint love the way lovers do 

Plus got flow like rain puddles 

We gain through struggle so who could say I ain’t true?

Oh You Mad Cuz’…I Punched You in the Face

I know about the narrative arc of hip-hop seemingly representing this “end to violence” in the South Bronx, giving way to breakers and b-boys to go along with emcees and DJs. But realistically, this is a romantic view of the tension and competition inherent in rap music. Freestyle battles, whether in a public space or at the local radio station drip with oneupmanship and dog-eat-dog fury. Of course, speaking as an armchair social scientist, this means that it ultimately feeds into the disunity complex among black men. It means that something that is partly responsible for a new creative class among blacks has much more of a destructive tendency than a constructive one. So there’s just as much aggression and violence in the outer world in this black art of hip-hop. Sometimes that manifests in good ways, like in Ice Cube’s “Today Was A Good Day” where Cube talked relief from the stresses of L.A. strife. Sometimes it just transfers violent memes to violent acts, as in its traditional stance on all things women.

It yields a humorous distance from reality for me. I like a good rap battle as much as the next fan. But when it deteriorates–like these do–into fights for physical dominance, I still appreciate it for just showing its ass. Hip-hop can never really be bought or framed for the positive or negative because it’s visceral. These reactions come from outside factors even if the music itself has a dandy relationship with violence. Violence courted hip-hop from the get-go, and now we have YouTube to watch the result. Enjoy!

In the storied legacy of rap battles, there have been some heated exchanges on wax. Since the millennium turned, those turned into knockout blows knuckle-up style in the form of Smack DVD clips and YouTube snippets. These fist-fighting battles trumped the tradition of wordplay, and sunk hip-hop into the dregs of other internt sensations like Bum Fights, Street Fights and Kimbo slice marauding.

Here are the HeardonmyStoop faves:

Oh You Mad Cuz I’m Stylin On You

Nikz and ENJ are having a pretty sound, typical street-style battle until ENJ drops the line of the year “Oh you mad cuz I’m stylin’ on you” which throws Nikz into a rage unseen…and then KNOCKOUT!