Gangster rap

I love it.

I know it sounds so strange when a thouroughly white, thouroughly middle aged mother of suburbia rural America says this.

I like that it sounds strange.

I like that gangster rap is a slapping indictment to the majority rule. I like that it is not p.c., often violent and even more often a form of urban poetry and protest. I don't understand why the rest of white American can't see this.

We've raped the very flower of black culture in the U.S. since this country's creation. We've pulled out all of the meat that makes it soul food. We've processed it, packaged it, advertised and marketed it and put it in a nice little box. We've made it white bread.

Very few white artists manage to capture the purity of rap music -- the ones that do are wildly successful. And they owe it all to the black folks, the predecessors, who took their mad poetry to the mic and started to spit it.

So let me say - I'm almost forty, I am raising and have raised three beautiful white girls. I'm an aid worker. I was raised a good Christian girl. I'm a feminist...and..

I love gangster rap.

I love Tupac Shakur.

I love Dr. Dre.

I love Biggie Smalls

I love Fifty Cent.

I love Public Enemy.

I love Mr. Ice-T, even though he sings about killing cops.

And...

I love Eminem.

If that makes me an anomaly, I guess there are worse things I could be...

Like a mother in favor of censorship.

I could be...a junior Tipper Gore.

Thanks...

but I'll pass.


"I see no changes. All I see is racist faces.
Misplaced hate makes disgrace for races we under.
I wonder what it takes to make this one better place... let's erase the wasted.
Take the evil out the people, they'll be acting right.
'Cause mo' black than white is smokin' crack tonight.
And only time we chill is when we kill each other. It takes skill to be real, time to heal each other.

And although it seems heaven sent, we ain't ready to see a black President, uhh. It ain't a secret don't conceal the fact... the penitentiary's packed, and it's filled with blacks.

But some things will never change. Try to show another way, but they stayin' in the dope game. Now tell me what's a mother to do?

Bein' real don't appeal to the brother in you. You gotta operate the easy way. "I made a G today" But you made it in a sleazy way. Sellin' crack to the kids. "I gotta get paid," Well hey, well that's the way it is."

Tupac Shakur - Changes

...wish he had lived to see the first black president.