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The Rap Crap Treason Act
- Pearl Jr.
Los Angeles, California Sep 07, 2006: I often patronize a hip Los Angeles barbershop to get my 12-year-old son a haircut. Even though they have been cutting my son’s hair for the past 4 years, recently I noticed a quietness, calmness, and maturity to this all Black-owned and all Black- employed business that featured only Black men working their trade of meticulously lining, cropping and trimming the heads of Black males of every age.
The big TV screens that are usually fixed on Black Entertainment Television (BET) have been turned off. The music that played in the background no longer featured any hip-hop songs, only soul and R&B music from the 70’s and 80’s. So, I decided to ask if the TV was broken? The 28 year-old barbershop owner answered, “No, we just decided to make a change”. I went on to ask about the new music playing in the overhead speakers. He responded, “we have lots of children and young males coming into this shop and realized hip-hop music was being used as a tool to destroy and we aren’t participating in our own destruction anymore”. I immediately got out of my seat, walked up to him and gave him the biggest hug. Then I looked into the depths of his eyes and told him, “I’m so proud of you!” He replied, “the responsibility for saving ourselves is up to us and the videos on BET are continuously disrespecting and devaluing Black women and teaches Black males that THUG LIFE equates to manhood”. He further explained, it teaches our children not to fear prison life. He looked down and shook his head in a disappointing manner.
Getting the vibe that he didn’t want to entice a big conversation about social issues in his shop due to not knowing what type of dissention would be invoked by such a powerful stance, I knew it was time to cut the conversation and sit back down. At that moment, I had this feeling of hope that has been missing for the past 20 years.
These barbers aren’t old men, these are men in their 20’s and early 30’s. I felt the most exciting feeling that young people, especially Black men are realizing the depictive lie in hip hop music. Rap crap is just another form of racism that is meant to keep a foot on the neck of the Black race, except this reformed tool of racism is elevated to attack the mental souls of, especially, Black people.
Music has always been the soulful essence of African people. The drumbeat was a form of communication and singing in the cotton and tobacco fields made the long and harsh days of slavery only bearable, enabling the field slave to live to an average age of 28. Slaves were simply worked to death, but singing Negro spirituals gave those left to live another day, hope for a better tomorrow.
Today’s lyrics in hip hop music adds more degradation towards the promise made in the Declaration of Independence, which states that every citizen is “created equal
(dah!), they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . . . that whenever any form of government (FCC allows these destructive messages) becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it . . . as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” Under the current tremendously troubling circumstances outlined below, I’m announcing the enactment of THE RAP CRAP TREASON ACT to abolish negative lyrics that are targeting the Black race towards voluntary genocide.
Ever since NWA (Niggaz with Attitude) busted on the national scene in the late 1980’s, their lyrics were aimed at exposing the dramatic unjust conditions of ghetto life in Compton, California performed in a language that was familiar to most Black people living in the
innercity. The once acclaimed rap lyrics claiming injustice was a new form of empowerment and enlightenment has since been twisted around to being utilized as the newest method to keep the Black race so far behind the White race that catching up is a seemingly impossible task.
In the history of the world, there has never been a group of people who have developed more creative musical styles than Black people: Spirituals, Blues, Jazz, Soul, Rhythm and Blues, Disco, and the ever popular Motown sound that named their acts uplifting names such as the Miracles, the
Marvellettes, the Supremes, the 4 tops, etc. have all retired into the depths of being archaic to today’s dysfunctional youth.
The biggest improvement of the Black race was directly after the civil rights movement from 1965 to 1985. We had Willie Mays breaking Babe Ruth’s all time homerun record. We had Michael Jackson selling more albums than the Beatles and Elvis Presley. We had Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan changing the way basketball was played by adding sensational acrobatic moves. We had Mike Tyson being the youngest man to ever be crowned the heavyweight champion. We had Oprah Winfrey smash Phil Donahue’s ratings and begin a new trend of talk shows. We had Bill Cosby crossing over to having the #1 show on TV for several seasons. Damn, we were winning and then the enactment of the RAP CRAP TREASON ACT went into full effect and all that was won is now lost and distorted into making one Nigger rich to hurt millions of unsuspecting Black people.
Today, since Russell Simmons sold Def Jam Records, Jay Z sold Roc-a-fella, P. Diddy sold Bad Boy, and Bob Johnson sold BET, we don’t own any major entities of Black music and that includes distribution that dictates what gets sold in retail stores which is connected to what gets played on radio stations.
To add insult to injury, our most successful high profile celebrities call themselves low value and corrupting names like 50 cent,
Ludicris, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Bow Wow, Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot, and Juvenile. Other subsidiary labels owned by the major 5 media companies that control 85% of what we see, hear, and read name their record labels Murder, Inc., Bad Boy, Death Row, and Ruthless Records. What kind of negative mind altering racist
bullsh*t is that?
The RAP CRAP TREASON ACT denounces these most intoxicating beats that can make even Barbara Bush want to bob her head to these funky tracks, but in reality songs and lyrics like, “Bitch better have my money”, “Bitches Ain’t Shit”, “F*ck your parents”, “Ten Crack Commandments”, “A Nigga With a Gun” and “Serial
Killa” have all contributed to the downward spiraling of the Black race.
Now, I have mixed feeling about Kanye West, who spoke up for the Black victims of Hurricane Katrina by stating that “Bush doesn’t care about Black people” and had a religious #1 pop hit called “Jesus Walks”. But his dual personality is similar to the 1970’s Black exploitation characters that promoted the local drug dealer to also be the same person who urged youth to stay in school, parallels with Kanye’s album titles, “College Drop-out” and “ Late Registration”. To understand my point fully, one must comprehend this to be a complete smear to his parent’s accomplishments. Kanye’s mother is a college professor and his father holds a Master’s degree.
Just this year, the high school drop out rate for Black students is a whooping 50% and Historically Black Colleges and scholarships for Blacks are being left unclaimed without the enough students to take advantage of these much needed services. After all young people are bribed to believe that since Kanye didn’t finish college and he is rich and famous, so why learn anything academically, I can be just like him. What Kanye isn’t promoting is that he worked his ass off creating beats and was rejected hundreds of times before getting his break many years after starting to make his dream a reality.
The RAP CRAP TREASON ACT also exposes the damaging trend of chronically misspelling words, such as “izz” (is), “wutt” (what), “tho” (though), “tha” or “da” (the), “wat” (what), “knoe” (know), “shud” (should), “jes” (just), “fa” (for), etc. Judging by the test scores of Blacks, do they really know that these words are spelled wrong, or worse yet, do they care?
I’m not being a complete square who has forgotten the natural rebellious nature of most teens. I haven’t forgotten that we had a secret language that was considered to be cool. In the 1970’s, we used a form of pig
latin, which was similar to Snoop’s language. The difference is that during that time, it was a complete embarrassment not to graduate from high school, and the PSA’s (Public Service Announcement) for the United Negro College Fund told me every time I watched Soul Train, “a mind is a terrible thing to waste”. Nowadays, chronically misspelling words is an indicator of the failing school system and indicative of the power of hip-hop to fraud Black people into believing to be wrong is to be right.
THE RAP CRAP TREASON ACT charges the hip hop industry with the crime of abusing the first amendment’s right to free speech and identifies rap lyrics to be unconstitutional. Rap lyrics yell fire in a crowded theater that has caused pandemonium targeted at a certain group of people who see these studio gangsters as a mirror of themselves, into the danger zone of annihilation.
I further charge rappers with treason due to:
Increasing the prison population of Black males 300% in the just 20 years.
Provoking Black on Black murder rate to being 1,150% higher than White on White homicides.
The declining Black marriage rate and the rising Black divorce rate.
Normalizing the single-parent household.
And damn it, I charge rap artists with faking the diction of a retarded person as something to strive for, when any retarded person would jump at the chance to have a higher IQ. For example, the lazy talk of 50 cent and
T.I. being rewarded for sounding like they have no sense at all, and absolutely no education. This subliminal message tells impressionable and vulnerable youth that you can actually win in life by talking as if they have not one year of education. When in actuality these rap fools are being used to fool us into believing the lie that it doesn’t matter, when everything in the ghetto is getting worse and an half generation of youth doesn’t even have an high school education.
Hell yes, I’m charging them with a crime, but the only punishment in my power is to NOT buy any of their music, NOT watch any of their videos, NOT view any of their movies or TV shows; basically BANKRUPT them out of existence.
Destroying the sell-out is my goal.
And for those who act in OUR BEST INTEREST, we must reward them by purchasing books, music, and watching movies and television shows that promote a positive change for our families and ourselves.
Support those who support us. BUY POSITIVITY and ANNIHILATE NEGATIVITY.
Black people we have much work to do. In my book, “Black Women Need Love, Too! Exposing the Conspiracy to Keep Black Women Without Love” has a chapter called, “If you don’t want a
dawg, then don’t raise one” that puts us in control of our destiny. Change is within our power and influence.
Ladies, there is a way to talk to Black men that will improve our status as the largest group of single women. We need our men to participate like never before. It’s all in my book, “Black Women Need Love, Too” available on
amazon.com. This could be the most important book you ever read. Don’t wait. Order your copy today!
www.BlackWomenNeedLoveToo.com
September
2006
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Her books include a chronology of race development and the historic creation of racism based on indigenous habitats, called "The
Climate: A Perspective Unvisited" a local best seller. "How To Tame A
Dawg" was the book that lead to the manual "Black Women Need Love, too!". Also, Pearl Jr. and her partner, Cecil Holmes produced the 90-minute docu-ality
DVD, "Behind The Scenes at the Michael Jackson Trial". Their company, Elbow Grease Productions was the only Black-owned media credentialed to cover the Michael Jackson Trial.
Pearl said, "I had to calm down, get a hold on my feelings and learn to think with my mind, instead of allowing my emotions to dictate my behavior".
She is a regular radio commentator on KABC talk radio in Los Angeles and owns two online TV shows:
www.MichaelJacksonInsider.com and www.TRUtalk.us
Her life's pursuit is to spread awareness by utilizing all forms of the media to deliver messages that will enhance the lives of African descendants.
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