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Hip Hop CDs
Straight Outta Compton (Priority, 1988)
/
Ghetto
Music: The Blueprint Of Hip Hop (Jive, 1989) /
Get Rich Or Die Tryin’
– Soundtrack (2005)
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* * * *
50 Cent CDs
Get Rich Or Die Tryin'
/
The Massacre /
Guess Who's Back /
Power of the Dollar
* * * * * Books on Rap &
Hip Hop
Todd Boyd,
The
New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop
(2003) /
Sharif Responds to Todd
Boyd /
Is Hip
Hop Really Dead?
Brian Cross,
It's Not About a Salary... Rap, Race and Resistance in Los
Angeles: Rap, Race, and Resistance in Los Angeles (1993)
Tricia Rose,
Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America
(1994)
Russell A. Porter, Spectacular
Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism
(1995)
Bakari Kitwana,
The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the
Crisis in African American Culture
(2003)
Imani
Perry,
Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (2004)
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* * * *
Congresswoman Comes Down on Dumb-Ass Dubya
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Considered by many to be one
of the most powerful women in American
politics today, Maxine Waters has gained a
reputation as a fearless advocate for women,
children, people of color and the poor. The
outspoken Congresswoman was just re-elected
to her ninth term in the House of
Representatives by her constituents in the
35th District of California, comprised of
communities located in South Central Los
Angeles, Westchester, Playa Del Ray,
Gardena, Hawthorne, Inglewood and
Lawndale.
A former Chair of the
Congressional Black Caucus, Maxine was born
in St. Louis, Missouri, one of 13 children
reared by a single mother. At the tender age
of 13, she began working in factories and
segregated restaurants. After moving to Los
Angeles, she was employed in the garment
industry and then by the telephone company.
But she later attended
California State University in L.A., where
she would earn a Bachelor of Arts degree
before embarking on a career in public
service which began as a teacher and a
volunteer coordinator in the Head Start
program. Throughout her 29 years of public
service, Maxine Waters has been on the
cutting edge, tackling difficult and often
controversial issues. She has combined her
strong legislative and public policy acumen
and high visibility in Democratic Party
activities with an unusual ability to do
grassroots organizing.
Even prior to her election to
the House of Representatives in 1990,
Congresswoman Waters had already attracted
national attention for her no-nonsense,
no-holds-barred style of politics. During 14
years in the California State Assembly, she
rose to the powerful position of Democratic
Caucus Chair. She was responsible for some
of the boldest legislation California has
ever seen: the largest divestment of state
pension funds from South Africa; landmark
affirmative action legislation; the nation’s
first statewide Child Abuse Prevention
Training Program; the prohibition of police
strip searches for nonviolent misdemeanors;
and the introduction of the nation’s first
plant closure law.
Congresswoman Waters is the
founding member and chairperson of the ‘Out
of Iraq’ Congressional Caucus, established
to generate debate about the war in Iraq and
the Administration’s justifications for the
decision to go to war, and to urge the
return of US service members to their
families as soon as possible. She is married
to Sidney Williams, the former U.S.
Ambassador to the Commonwealth of the
Bahamas. She is the mother of two adult
children, Edward and Karen, and has two
grandchildren.
Praised by the younger
generation for her support and interest in
their concerns, she was the only politician
participating in a recent Symposium entitled
Hip-Hop in a Post 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina
America, staged at Princeton University,
which is where this interview was conducted. |
KW:
When I think of rap music, Congress is probably the last
thing that comes to mind. Where do you think that you as
a Congresswoman can work constructively with the hip-hop
community?
MW:
I’m hoping to get the hip-hop community more involved
with public policy makers, so that they could begin to
influence the thinking of older and mainstream people.
They can contribute tremendously in terms of dealing
with the setting of public policy that really determines
where this country is headed and how it’s going to get
there. For instance, the FCC is having meetings all
around the country. They were in L.A., and I was there
taking them on about consolidation in the media, with
the L.A. Times which is owned by the Tribune Company,
along with WGN in Chicago, and 27 other TV stations,
etcetera, etcetera. Now, wouldn’t it have been wonderful
if the hip-hop community had been there with me and
others who were prepared to take on the FCC?
KW:
Do you really think by patiently waiting for a turn to
testify they would be respected at an FCC hearing like a
ranking member of Congress?
MW:
Not in the same fashion, because if you conform to the
outline of the Establishment at these hearings, those
people who get to sit at the front of the room to be
heard are there because they’re an elected official or
the head of this or that organization, or what have you.
The hip-hop community has to walk into the room as one,
fill up the whole room, and say “I was invited but I’m
here. I intend to speak. Yaw’l gonna’ let me speak? I‘ve
got something to say!” All I’m saying is you’ve got to
change the way things are handled, or you’re not going
to have an influence.
KW:
When Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, referred
to President as the devil, Harlem Congressman Charles
Rangel immediately defended Bush, despite his handling
of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War. Do you think that
this sort of response might be why the hip-hop
generation feels unrepresented by black politicians?
MW:
After Hugo spoke at the U.N., what you basically saw
were politicians rolling out to say “It’s not the right
thing to say.” Or “How could he say such a terrible
thing?” I know that a lot of people in the hip-hop
community were upset and asking, “Why do those
politicians do that?” But on the other hand, I didn’t
see a group of people from the hip-hop activist
community call a press conference or put together a
rally, and say, “Here’s how we interpret what Chavez was
doing.”
KW:
I think many folks feel that Kanye West came closer to
expressing their feelings about Bush than the
Congressman.
MW:
Maybe it was an in-artful description of how he felt
about the President, but I think we missed an important
moment. That was an opportunity that should have been
seized upon for some serious discussion about what’s
wrong with the public policies of this Administration.
KW:
What do you think about the President’s rationalization
of ignoring the Geneva Conventions as Constitutional
under the Patriot Act?
MW:
It’s undermining all of what we stand for. We can’t talk
about the Constitution and not understand the danger to
the democracy that is being presented at this time,
given what they’re talking about, with the enemy
combatants and the loss of habeas corpus. How can you
know the Constitution, how can you be quiet, when
democracy is crumbling before your very eyes, if you
aren’t dealing with this issue? We need to deal with
whatever’s going on now that’s changing the world and
creating the kind of hatred that will not allow you to
be an international person, because people don’t want to
see you in other countries, understanding you as an
occupier, and as an abuser.
KW:
What do you think of all the tax dollars squandered on
Iraq?
MW:
We’ve spent $400 billion between Iraq and Afghanistan.
That amounts to a couple of billion dollars a week. I
stood on the floor of congress begging trying to get
just one billion to fight HIV and AIDS to be able to
fund all the outreach programs. But we’re at a time when
very smart people have been allowing this dumb-ass
President of the United States to do as he pleases.
KW:
Are you sure you want to characterize him that way?
MW:
Let the media take that and make something of it. But
I’m not going to be like Kanye and the rest. I’m not
backing off. I said it, and I mean it! The policies that
have developed around Iraq and Afghanistan are
ridiculous and outrageous and everybody should be
protesting. The President has not only lied about why
he’s there, but over 3,000 soldiers, men and women, are
dead. For what? There were no weapons of mass
destruction. You have over 20,000 young men and women
seriously injured. Lost their legs, or their arms, eyes
lost, brains shot out.
They’re over at Walter
Reed Hospital trying to figure out how they’re simply
going to be able to see another day.
posted 16 November 2006 |
