Alicia Keys and gangstar music

[j]

The Following makes 50cent look like a 1cent. He is a dumb piece of nuts. keep you head up Alicia. Atleast we still got people with standards around that value life over money. 50cent is the ultimate dummy. Intelligent folks dont listen to his garbage.

(CBS) By The Showbuzz's Melissa Castellanos

When it comes to "Gangsta rap" 50 Cent doesn't play around.

He's not happy about comments Alicia Keys was quoted as making in a recent interview with Blender, even though the R&B songstress later said the quotes were "misrepresented" by the magazine.

"'Gangsta rap' was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other," Keys was quoted as saying. "'Gangsta rap' didn't exist."

According to the Associated Press, Keys issued a statement later saying that her comments were "misrepresented" and that she isn't a "conspiracy theorist" or "a racist."

"We stand by our story," Blender spokeswoman Kate Cafaro told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Regardless of Keys' explanation, 50 Cent wasn't too thrilled with the comment.

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Alicia Keys (TheShowBuzz/Bulent Bas)
"I don't like Alicia Keys no more though … the same reason why I said that I don't like Oprah Winfrey," 50 Cent toldThe Showbuzz. "I'm prejudice(d). I don't like people who don't like me. If you don't like the content that I write because of my experiences; I am being who I am when I am writing it. I fall into that 'label' as far as you considering artists creating 'Gangsta music,' we fall into that.

"If she don't like that, (then) I don't like that classical music s--- she be doing. At some point she's playing some s--- that don't relate to me. … We listen to it and try to figure out why people actually enjoy it. I am trying to enjoy it. That statement changes my perception of Alicia Keys totally. But the magazine is standing behind it, which means they probably have a tape of her in conversation saying it. It's just not really a bright comment anyway."

A multiplatinum artist ("Get Rich or Die Tryin" and "The Massacre") and business mogul, 50 Cent made a fortune from using rap to share his story of growing up hustling in the streets since the age of twelve.

He believes that hip-hop as an art form is often misjudged.

"I think hip-hop is so competitive, that the competitive nature, the art form makes it a competition," 50 Cent said. "I don't think that a lot of people who judge hip-hop actually enjoy it as an art form. They aren't into it enough to understand what they are listening to and they just hear disrespectful lyrics going back and forth and just say 'oh they're fighting' … so it's got to be negative if it's fighting. To just make reference to what hip-hop was from the very beginning was just two artists battling. Battling turned into beefing after Biggie and Tupac passed because unfortunately that turned into real incidents in the street."

50 Cent, who knows this way of life firsthand, said his mother (who was a cocaine dealer) was killed when he was 8 years old.

"Those things happen in that kind of lifestyle," he said.

50 Cent said that his "reference of nice things died with her." His grandparents, who took him in, had nine children, which meant finances were strained and times were tough.

Although 50 Cent was successful, Columbia Records let him go after he was shot 9 times on May 24, 2000. The rapper was in his car outside of his grandmother's house in South Jamaica, Queens when a gunman pulled up and shot him at close range while he was sitting in the car. He was shot in the hands, legs, chest, hip and left cheek.

He managed to redeem himself in the music biz once he healed and stopped hustling. He may be scarred, but he seems unscathed by the incident today.

"When you get shot, you just get up and go back to doing what you were doing and music was what I was doing," 50 Cent said.

[Djedi Maaur]

Great! she went to Kemet (Egypt) and found herself. Wonderful. 50cent needs to find himself because the real Gangstars are Sicilian and Italian and they don't wear G-unit sneakers!

Killing your brother and destroying communities worldwide is not an art. Its just F*u*c*k*ed up!

[Djedi Maaur]

Gangstar rap is so wussy. Real black men are builders.

[j]

“If Malcolm or Huey had the outlets our musicians have today, it’d be global. I have to figure out a way to do it myself.”
Alicia Keys- “Alicia Keys Unlocked”
Blender Magazine-May 2008 edition

Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1964 book, “Why We Can Not Wait”

When I saw Jay-Z, the biggest artist in Hip-Hop, could put out a record dissing NBA basketball player Deshawn Stevenson two days after the Sean Bell verdict, but yet could not put out even a statement on the case, I said enough.

Hip-Hop music and culture is an often criticized, highly stereotyped art form and cultural movement. Gangsters; ignorant; selfish; destroying the Black community; perpetuators of the word “Nigga;” and vulgar, incendiary rebels without a cause—these are among the many charges routinely hurled. And typically in the dead center of the attack are Black and Latino youth; and more specifically, the Black and Latino young man.

For all the racially-tinged hatred disseminated from the narrow-minded faction of the political right, or the equally narrow, grossly misinformed analysis of the Black conservative cohort (the John McWhorter’s and Stanley Crouch’s among others), there has been an identical amount of advocacy and support for Hip-Hop. Whether it be from religious, political, academic, or grassroots sectors, people like Kevin Powell, Rosa Clemente, James Braxton Peterson, David Kirkland, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, Trica Rose, Joan Morgan and numerous others have articulately, comprehensively, and thoughtfully commented on the full spectrum of the music and culture. They have ardently and courageously defended it’s legitimacy to legions of Americans who see it as a one-dimensional, hedonistic, pesticide in America culture.

But now is the time for mainstream Hip-Hop to stand-up and defend the same community of folks who help create it, support it, and maintain it.

The claim of “We’re just rappers” and the like is no longer valid.

In a music and a culture that is heavily populated and controlled by young Black and Latino men who many times laud themselves as being the authentic voice of an urban Black experience that while is extremely harsh, vulgar, self-indulgent, and misogynistic but yet claims to be “real”—it is time to talk about this realness.

It is time to speak on a how the United States makes up less then 5% of the world’s population, yet has almost 25% of the world prison’s inmates. AND 1/9TH OF THOSE ARE YOUNG BLACK MEN.

During the 2000 and 2004 Presidential Elections we have seen Black votes be treated as if they were meaningless in Georgia, Florida, and Ohio. We have seen increasing attempts to demonize our largely Black African and Latin American immigrant population without understanding how our state-endorsed, government-supported, private- corporate sector’s role in globalization is helping to profit from and perpetuate, not address, this issue.

We have seen how the lives of Blacks in New Orleans, Mississippi, and Alabama were not primary but secondary concerns in the face and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina—and how we still have no national agenda to address the displaced peoples or comprehensively rebuilt their cities. We are in the mist of seeing historically Black sections of cities like Chicago, Flint, Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, and Trenton suffering through staggering high school dropout rates (and correspondingly, significantly low high school graduation rates) and economic stagnation.

We have seen how the NYPD could stop the Bushwick 32 from going to a friend’s funeral. And now we see how no amount of bullets to an unarmed man warrants excessive force by the New York City Police Department…again.

Now we need mainstream Hip-Hop to talk about it. They need to tell America how they see it.

While R&B superstar Alicia Keys has come under great scrutiny for her comments about “Gangster Rap” in the May 2008 issue of Blender Magazine, the most profound statement she said has been lost. Keys talks about the women empowerment anthems of Aretha Franklin and the soulful, yet explicitly political songs of Marvin Gaye as being examples of the power music holds: the ability to impact society. She goes on to express how she wants her music to bridge the politically & musical gap in an effort to raise awareness on important societal issues.

It is in this spirit that I call out the most talented and successful Hip-Hop artist of our society to rise. Brothers and sisters are being killed, disrespected, and belittled to the point where many now are saying our lives are meaningless.

This is directed at your “favorite rapper” and your “favorite rapper’s favorite rapper.” It is a call to go against the inclination towards profit-driven commercialism and mass media appeal. It is a call to step away from the “music is just fun,” “music as a way to escape reality,” “we’re artist, not politicians,” explanations. It is a call in the mold of Dr. King and many Black leaders of the past to look beyond your image or your bank account and into the heart and soul of our society; to look at injustice and stand against it. It is a call to use our largest communication and cultural medium to talk about the pressing issues of our community right now. It’s time to break from our regularly scheduled programming, because our community is in a state of emergency.

It is not a call for the adults of Bakari Kitwana’s Hip-Hop Generation, or the activist of our past movements, or the Hip-Hop artist of today that are “underground” but making music in the “backpacker,” “conscious MC” tradition. This is a call for the biggest of Hip-Hop’s stars to stand up and say something. It is time to answer the call. Our people can not wait any longer.

We need our Hip-Hop stars to stand up beyond being artist, but as responsible men and women that are needed. Because right now, it’s bigger than Hip-Hop.

Michael Partis

my.rawkus.com/profile/ForeThought

[e-mail]

myspace.com/hiphopthought

michaelpartis.blogspot.com/

[j]

www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhJ5onv7O1S214X674