(Akiit.com) One morning while riding in my car I decided to venture away from my regular News programming on the radio and turned to one of our local Hip Hop and R&B stations. It wasn’t long before the commercial for some debt creating pay-day loan went off and my ears, mind, and soul was being violated by rapper lil’ Wayne’s song ‘Lollipop.’ As I listened in disgust to the monotony of his lyrics (similar to many I had heard in some contemporary rap songs today) about how some women wanted to ‘lick the rapper’ amongst other things, my eyes began to tear up from those degrading and humiliating lyrics.

Keeping in mind that I am in no way picking on any one rapper, I began to think about all of the African American women who fall subject to those words and gobble them up as a ‘way to behave.’ Pardon the pun. And then I thought back to the glorious African American women like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Nzingha, Yaa Asante, and Mary McLeod Bethune. I turned my thoughts to these women and I wonder. I wonder if our fore-mentioned female ancestors are watching us from the other side in utter disgust and humiliation. I wonder if they cry for us. I wonder if their spirits cringe and fall to their knees in agony as they watch their descendants fall into a deeper pit of sexual promiscuity, self imposed inferiority and hatred, and total miseducation. I wonder if Harriet Tubman feels like all 19 of her potentially deadly trips were traveled completely in vain. I wonder if Sojourner Truth still feels like a ‘woman’.

I wonder if Mary McLeod Bethune still believes in the power of knowledge and education being put into action as a form of liberation and progress. I wonder if Nzingha and Yaa Asantewa would still feel like mighty warrior Queens who believe in the power of women’s leadership strong enough to defeat the deadliest of opponents. Maybe. Maybe not. Are not African American women worthy of marriage, community, and family life no matter what their educational, social, or economic status may be? Are we not befitting of praise and uplifting, adoration and hope; rather than being the modern day sex toys degraded and mistreated in the very same manner that our ancestors were treated by white males?
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(Akiit.com) You’ve heard of resume inflation? You’ve heard of people who lie about having Ph.D.s or Ivy League pedigrees in order to get ahead?

The world of thug culture has its own perverse equivalent, in which middle-class men with minor legal transgressions exaggerate their bad behavior, claiming to be hard-core degenerates to impress youngsters looking for outlaw role models. In this destructive environment, the more violent and predatory you are, the more heroic you seem.

That helps to explain why a metro Atlanta hip-hop star known as Akon wove a tall tale of malevolence and criminality, claiming to have spent three years in prison for running a “notorious car theft operation,” a story he’s been telling for years. In fact, he has apparently never served hard prison time. The Smoking Gun Web site recently exposed Akon as a thug wannabe, a “James Frey with … an American Music Award.”

American popular culture has always had a tendency to romanticize hoodlums, whether Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde or Tony Soprano. But the hip-hop world’s celebration of savage violence, educational failure and misogyny has been one of the worst influences on American youth, especially black youth, in decades. If you want to ruin a nation, a society or an ethnic group, persuade its members that the highest form of achievement is committing crimes.

Even before the 1980s, when gangsta rap oozed out of downtrodden black neighborhoods, too many black men were marginalized — unlettered, unemployed, imprisoned. They were already the victims of a fratricidal cycle of violence. They were already disproportionately fathers in absentia, divorced from the lives of their children, providing neither material support nor moral guidance.

Indeed, the baggy britches that are now de rigueur in hip-hop circles grew out of jail rituals. When men are arrested, their belts are confiscated, so their trousers tend to droop. It’s from that unfortunate facet of ghetto life that the ubiquitous sagging pants were launched.
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(Akiit.com) Washington DC — Determined to stop the entertainment industry from portraying negative images of black men and women, the “Enough is Enough!” Campaign will hold its first rally and demonstration at the Washington DC residence of Debra L. Lee, Chairman and CEO, Black Entertainment Television Networks.

The demonstration will take place this Saturday, September 15th, at 1:00 p.m.

A press conference will be held at the site of the rally, 2800 McGill Terrace, NW, Washington, DC at 2:00 p.m.

Community leaders are fed up with derogatory media images of black men and women. People of conscience and concern are encouraged to come out in support of this effort.

The global marketing of negative images and stereotypes has created an environment in which portrayals of black men as “pimps, players, gangsters, thugs, drug dealers, etc…,” and black women as “strippers, whores, and objects for sexual exploitation” are becoming mainstream, acceptable images in the American popular imagination.
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(Akiit.com) I have been attending live stageshows of my favorite artists since 1991, & I must say I was thoroughly impressed by many of them. Some were good, some were great, & some were impeccable. That’s how I’ll describe the most recent performance I’ve visioned to date - impeccable. Thursday September 22nd, at BB Kings in Downtown NYC, it was none other than a celebration of the birthday of the epitome of lyrical macks to ever bless the mic….. ladies & gentlemen, the John Shaft of HIPHOP: BIG DADDY KANE.

For those of you who’ve never had the luxury of seeing the God live & consider yourselves lovers of HIPHOP, true HIPHOP, you are doing yourselves a supreme injustice.As does his fellow icon KRS ONE, Big Daddy Kane definitely has the blueprint for achieving an outstanding live performance, as well as a cerebral smithereening studio recording.
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(Akiit.com) Before there even was a Biggie Smalls in existence, I remember another fat genius emcee from Brooklyn by the name of Chubb Rock. Not only was Chubb Rock a cerebral wordsmith, but he also knew how to make us rush to the dance floor with fanatical hits such as “Treat Me Right” & “Ya Bad Chubbs“. To take diversity a horizon further, he even saluted a smorgasbord of HipHop veterans in his astonishing “Regiments of the Steel“. This is the personification of a classic Hip Hop artist-one who has originality, dexterity, dance heavy tracks, & thought provoking subject matter. In other words, one who possesses a significant quantity of intelligence. The Chubbster was not only all of the above, but he was witty as all out doors! And this lyrical locomotive had a vocabulary that would surprise many an anti-rap critic.

This is what was going on in HipHop music in 1988: Microphone Celebrities (MCs) had substance in abundance, who also knew how to have fun with it without degradation of their own community. I must give astronomical love for being intellectuals on the mic to: Melle Mel, T La Rock, L.L. Cool J, KRS-1, Kool Moe D, Rakim, Chuck D & Ultra Magnetic MCs. These brothers were undeniable proto-types for what I call “HipHop Intelligence“. The highly potent vocabulary usage and versatility of topics by those artists let the world know that HipHop music wasn’t all about a bunch of partying fools who just spoke jibberish throughout their recording sessions. You also had King Asiatic Nobody’s Equal {better known as Big Daddy Kane} who displayed the rawness of rhyme-ability to maximum capacity. Even to this day, the charismatic icon still is able to create that outstandingly complex, yet in-your-face simplistic mystical very artistical emcee rhyme we can all enjoy listening to.
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