Is T-Pain a Republican? Is He Stomping for Sean Hannity?

There’s a lot of hoopla about T-Pain hooking up with Fox News icon Sean Hannity and him endorsing the Republicans.. Below are a couple of videos. One shows how Hannity and T-Pain hooked up.. The other one shows whats been going around on YouTube.. Personally I don’t think its a big deal.. There have been and will continue to be conservative folks in Hip Hop  as well as artists who back causes pushed by conservatives..

For starters.. a few years ago LL Cool J endorsed GOP Governor Pataki over Carl McCall who was running and would’ve been NY’s first African American governor.. I did an interview with MC Serch and Pete Nice of 3rd Bass at the Source Awards back in 99 or 2000 and they both said they were Republicans.. Bill Stepheney co-founder of Public Enemy I believe is Republican and if you recall Canibus came out and supported George Bush‘s call to war. In fact he did a song called Draft Me and then went off and served in the army..Not sure about Pitbull, but he’s definitely not supporting anyone (mostly non-conservatives) who are down to open up talks with Cuba. His stance against Cube prompted Mos Def to write an open letter challenging him..I was just reminded about Daddy Yankee showing up to the 2008 GOP Convention to support John McCain.. He said he was down to roll with him because he was against illegal immigration.. His remarks drew the ire of Fat Joe who publicly chastized him..

On a side note we can’t forget that in 2004, Jay-Z opened up his 40/40 Club to the GOP where RNC head Michael Steele held a big party and was bragging about how the GOP was connecting to Hip Hop the next day.. Jigga wasn’t there, but they sure did try to make the connection big time..

Peep the videos with T-Pain and you decide..Personally I think Hannity was having fun knowing that him standing nxt to T-Pain would cause everyone to talk.. I think Pain didn’t really care.. he wasn’t tripping like that.. Its publicity for both

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RunkCmu36Bw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zrkPEGp8Zg

http://hiphopblips.dailyradar.com/video/t-pain-with-sean-hannity-of-fox-news/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsvHrkRAJcA

Someone just hit me up with a commentary from J-Smooth of Ill Doctrine.. here’s his take on this..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtlHcl8WjCA

Return to Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner

An Open Letter From Mos Def About Amadou Diallo

Mos-Defhoodie-225An Open letter From Mos Def…

Diallo was a West African immigrant with no prior criminal record who was shot and killed by police in the dark of night for simply being black. He was unarmed and shot at 41 times! No unarmed man should be shot at even once! One of the police officers involved in the Diallo shooting was involved in the killing of Patrick Bailey no more than a year and a half ago! Tyesha Miller was shot in her car in Los Angeles while she had a seizure! I could go on and on with the names of black people who have been killed at the hands of police just this year. But the list is so long that it would turn this letter into a statistic sheet.

Most of the people that got killed by police this year and in the past have probably been some of your fans; fans of some of your favorite artists. They are black people who love us, who defend us, who protect us, who put us in our comfortable homes an dour luxury sports utility vehicles and our well kept hotels suites and our oversized tour buses. They’re the people that buy our records, our t-shirts, our concert tickets, and so on, and so forth. They’re the same people that are getting murdered, harassed, maimed, and beaten in streets all over the world everyday!

The only people in our community who have not responded to this incident are us. Hip-Hop made one hundred billion dollars last year!… A lot of those dollars came from the ‘Comptoms’, the ‘Brooklyns’, the ‘Crown Heights’, the ‘Chicagos’, the Detroit ghettos, the St. Louis ghettos… the same ghettos where police run around literally hunting black folks to murder… then cruise the streets shortly thereafter with impunity and arrogance.

We are the Senators and the Congressmen of our communities. We come from communities that don’t have nobody to speak for them. That’s why they love us. Because we talk about what nobody else will talk about. We represent them. And they need to know that we really represent them. Not when it’s just a romantic notion or a paycheck attached to it. When something happens to them it matters to us, because when something happens to them it’s happening to us. Because Amadou Diallo is your brother, your cousin, your man… Tyesha Miller is your sister, your aunt, your girl, your wife, your daughter… All of these people are you! You are no different! And just because we’re at the top of the Billboard charts, seen on MTV daily, livin’ comfortably doesn’t mean that we can’t get shot, we can’t be harassed, we can’t be maimed and mistreated.

I hope this is as important to you as it is to me cause when I pass by the projects and when I pass by the hood I don’t see nobody but me. I see everybody who looks like me. I see me many years ago as I’m sure many of you do. So it’s time for us to come together from the ‘jiggy’ to the ‘hardcore’; from the ‘backpacker’ to the man with the Lexus and really unite and show the world that we got strength. Show the world who we are. Represent who we are. Who we really are and where we really come from. Let’s show people where our heart is… that we haven’t forgotten.

Now I’m askin’ you and anybody who looks on this letter to come forward and show your heart, to show your love, to love the people who love you back by speaking out against the injustices that they suffer. Because believe me, if the clock was turned backwards we’d be those same people.

Please stay mindful of this. Please be considerate of this letter. Pass it around! Talk about this! Think about it! Keep it on your mind because if you don’t… it’s going to keep its mind on you.

I wanna thank everybody for taking time out to read this letter. I hope I didn’t take up too much of your time. All of the contact information and other information you need to know is enclosed.

I want to wish everybody, each and everyone of ya’ll peace, prosperity and love.

Peace,
Mos Def
Feb ’99

Why Hip Hop Is Dead?

Lethal-wonder-finalHip Hop is dead. I don’t care what anyone says, it has absolutely seen its last days. There used to be a time that everyone would come out and relish in the fact that they had conquered new skills or discovered a new technique. Kids couldn’t wait to drop a new style of rhyming on their peers.

Hip Hop was about creativity and to a lesser degree having fun. Today all that has changed. All these big willie and wanna be gangster types have ruined it. I know everyone is afraid to say it, but I will be straight up and honestly say, hardcore gang bangers like Suge Knight and his Death Row affiliates along with Fake Ass Puffy and his Biggie Bad Boy collective of friends have played a major role in killing off hip hop. They help usher in the dope game and the whole gangster mentality that now plagues this music. It was bad enough that you had kids from all over the planet trying to be like NWA or the Ghetto Boys. But now the gangster crap they spoke on records has become a frightening reality in the real world of hip hop.When I go around my block, everyone I see aspires to be the next Gangster Don.

Everyone wants to be like a Suge Knight and intimidate people. Everyone wants to be like a Sean Puffy Combs and get paid lots of money with no real concern for the art form they are ruining. Now alongside the Suges and Puffys we have Master P and Jay Z, Fat Joe and Big Pun and Ice Cube and Mack 10 and Jermaine Dupris. These are the are the supposed top Dons in hip hop. They all look and act like gangsters. Some of them even have a few dollars in the pocket. Unfortunately it’s chump change compared to the real big willies of the world.

Master P congress-225I don’t see Fat Joe owning a skyscraper in Manhattan. Master P may be the big money shot caller right now, but his country ass still has to go through Priority Records to get distributed. That means the owner of Priority is the real money maker and not Master P. Suge for all his worth and intimidation tactics is still locked away in some jail cell in California. You would think that with all the crap his Death Row affiliates talked that they would have had the whole Justice System in check for real. I guess when it comes down to it Uncle Sam has the last word.

Ice Cube and Mack 10 change with the wind. One minute Cube is a Muslim talking all this Black Power and righteous shit. Now he’s back to calling women bitches and hos and pretending he’s a gangster. He wasn’t much of a gangster when that kid who is down with his former partner Kam rolled on his ass and snatched his gold chain. For all the money that guys like Puffy, Jay-Z and Jermaine Dupris have you would think they would own some sort of tv station. Perhaps a cable access station would do. None of these big ballers own a radio station or even a magazine. Not a one of them own the record companies that distribute their material.

It sickens me to see these kids run around yelling money ain’t a thing. Some one needs to tell those assholes Money Does Mean A Thing if you don’t own a goddamn thing. Instead of throwing away all those 20 dollar bills like they do in concert, maybe should be stacking those dead presidents so they could save up and buy some stuff that they could own.

You would think that after 25 years of existence that hip hop would own something other then a bad reputation of violent prone niggaz who pretend to be gangsters because they have a little bit of money in the pocket. Hip Hop is sadly misguided.

Mos def

Mos def

On the other side of the coin you have all these fake ass ‘underground’, backpack wearing kids. They pride themselves on being broke and keeping it real. But like their hip hop gangster counterparts they too lack creativity. I would have to say a guy like Mos Def and Kweli have managed to shine through, but look at all these other kids who have fallen off in a big way.

I don’t need to name names. All you have to do is look around and you see these kids living in the underground bragging about how they are true to hip hop, but they have yet to step up and redirect the misguided flow of this beast. Hip Hop is lost and you definitely will not find it in the underground. All you will see is some buster ass rappers who will yell about how they are all about keeping it real. They will be sporting dreads even though they aren’t Rastas. They’ll have backpacks with nothing in it. They’ll be chewing on a stick or smoking a blunt with a young impressionable white girl under their arm. The sad part is that young white girl will most likely have a lot more game then these underground cats. She’s just using them as a momentary pit stop for experience while these underground bustas run away from the challenge that is before them. That challenge is take control and change the negative direction of hip
hop.

Hip Hop is dead my friends. It’s been overrun by gangsters and dope dealers and other unscrupulous motherfuckers who care nothing about us, the culture or the music. Hip Hop is dead because a bunch of motherfuckers stayed underground with their head in the sand. Hip Hop is dead.

By Lethal Wonder

let me know what y’all think.. by hitting me at :Davey D

I will forward all mail to Lethal