Free Republic

If we valued black art, Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer would have been for literature. When will the education system wake up to black creativity? I can’t help thinking that the Pulitzer prize committee missed a trick in their award to the rapper Kendrick Lamar this week. If they had given him the Pulitzer for literature rather than for music it would have elevated his artform and sent a message that would have resonated around the world: that rap is a legitimate form of poetry and should be put on a par with, and treated with the same deference as, Shakespeare and...

(Screen Shot: TV One)Snoop Dogg after his performance at the 33rd Stellar Gospel Music Awards, March 30 2018.Snoop Dogg released his first a gospel album Bible Of Love last month and many Christians have voiced their concerns and skepticism, given his history, but the award-winning rapper clapped back at his critics at the 33rd Stellar Gospel Music Awards.With over two decades in the music industry, Snoop Dogg (whose real name is Calvin Broadus) has been popular among Gen Xers and millennials. But he also has an alarming history of crime and sexual exploitation. In a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone he bragged...

CONWAY, S.C. – Police say a South Carolina man charged with sexual assault of his nephew's girlfriend was beaten by the relative, who won't be charged in the incident. Fifty-two-year-old William Mattson of Conway is charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct. Local media outlets report that a judge denied him bond Saturday. Mattson was arrested New Year's Day. Authorities say Mattson's nephew told them he came home and found his girlfriend and uncle in bed together. The nephew said the woman was naked, and Mattson was clothed. The man said he beat Mattson until he was out of the house....

A lieutenant in the Dallas Police Department who goes by the name “Lucille Baller” when she promotes herself as a recording artist promises to shoot anyone who messes with her in a rap song that was posted on her website. “Don’t push Ms. Lucy because you won’t like the consequences,” Dallas Police Lt. Regina Smith raps on the recording. “Mess with me or I will shoot a [expletive] cuz Lucille Baller, she been to hell and back.” Smith, who oversees burglary and theft detectives at the Southwest and Northwest patrol investigative units, will likely face an internal affairs investigation over...

Russell Simmons recently unleashed a broadside against the NRA in the wake of the tragic Aurora shooting. In that tirade, Simmons went full-bore against the Second Amendment: “[T]he NRA has been successful at blocking attempts to pass reasonable legislation that would require background checks at gun-shows (currently there are none), as well as blocking people on the terror watch list and those who are mentally unstable from obtaining guns and putting an end to the sale of accessories like 100 round drums. They are also the group behind the "Stand Your Ground" law that George Zimmerman claims protects him from...

You wouldn’t know it from the role he plays as kindly “mentor” to the promising young musical talent vying to be the next “American Idol,” but Jimmy Iovine has done as much to coarsen our popular culture as anyone on the planet. His biography boasts that the 59-year-old music producer has worked with such acclaimed acts as John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and U2. What it doesn’t say is that Iovine almost singlehandedly brought so-called “gangsta rap” from the outer fringes of the music industry – where it belonged – to right smack dab...

I bin hittin' the greens Gittin' down in the polls I bin scopin' the scenes Reassessin' my goals There's some drama over there Momar pissed off the French 'cause he ain't playin' fair Gonna be his monkey wrench Busta cap in the air Ratatatatat Busta cap in the air Blangblangblangbababalbang Busta billion dollar Heat seakin' sea-to-air pilot-freakin' cap Ain't gonna take no more crap From m'man Farrakhan's posse-punk Moamar.

NEW YORK (AP) _ Young Jeezy may seem like an unlikely political commentator, given his status as a gangsta rapper. But on his new CD, "The Recession," he talks about more than just hustling, putting in his two cents about the economy, struggling times and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. The platinum-selling, Atlanta-based rapper is broadening his subject matter as he also tries to appeal to a wider audience. So far, it seems he's achieving that goal: He appeared on Usher's No. 1 hit, "Love in This Club," and got a boost when Michael Phelps gave him props in Beijing,...

A British court has overruled the government's decision to deny Snoop Dogg a visa after he was involved in an airport lounge brawl in 2006. The Guardian newspaper says a panel of immigration judges has rejected an attempt by Britain's Home Office to keep the 36-year-old U.S. rapper out of the country. A lower court ruled in January that Snoop hadn't started or been responsible for any public disorder. Police arrested Snoop and five members of his entourage after a brawl at British Airways' VIP lounge at London's Heathrow airport. The rapper, whose real name is Cordozar Calvin Broadus, was...

NEW YORK — There's another side to Alicia Keys: conspiracy theorist. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter tells Blender magazine: "'Gangsta rap' was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other. 'Gangsta rap' didn't exist." Keys, 27, said she's read several Black Panther autobiographies and wears a gold AK-47 pendant around her neck "to symbolize strength, power and killing 'em dead," according to an interview in the magazine's May issue, on newsstands Tuesday. Another of her theories: The bicoastal feud between slain rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. was fueled "by the government and the media, to stop another great black...

Dear brothers (do you mind if I call you brothers?), Have you heard about the movement to ticket and fine people - meaning, people like you - for wearing sagging, underwear-revealing pants? It started in a small Louisiana town, where you can now get up to six months in jail and a $500 fine for exposing your undergarments. Proposals have since popped up from Atlanta to Baltimore to Trenton, and last week even in Yonkers. It's only a matter of time before some enterprising City Council member puts it on the table here in New York. And in every city,...

The generation-long swim in a musical sewer may experience a mild sanitization thanks to the imprudent use of black gangsta-rap by a 66-year old, pasty-faced white guy from Westport, Conn. The Associated Press reports that in the wake of the Don Imus flap, such superstar rappers as Chamillionare, Master P, Talib Kweli, and popular 17-year-old newcomer Sean Kingston aim for heavy airplay without the filth. Hopefully, they’ll get it. Before the rhythmic idiosyncrasy known as gangsta-rap infested our cultural arena, composers purposed to soothe, entertain and energize the human spirit. “I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive...

Not Welcome Down Under April 27, 2007 Snoop Dogg has been refused entry into Australia because of his extensive criminal record, the immigration minister said yesterday. Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Cordozar Calvin Broadus Jr., was due to fly into Sydney this week to co-host the MTV Australia Video Music Awards. Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said Snoop Dogg's visa was canceled because he had failed to pass the country's strict character test, which takes criminal convictions into account. “He doesn't seem the sort of bloke we want in this country,” Andrews told Sydney's Macquarie Radio. Snoop Dogg has 28...

"Wrong place at the wrong time." Who knew the wrong place to be on New Year's Eve was at a party welcoming in the new year? Who knew the wrong time to be murdered was now – when people are so callous about death that it's almost as if we're asking the victim, "Just what did you do to get yourself murdered?" There are many words to describe the senseless killing of Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams. Unfortunate. Heartbreaking. Sad. But here's the one word we can't use in describing such a death: Unexpected. Over the past 12 months, three...

Middle age has been disturbing for people of the baby-boomer rock-and-roll generation, waiting with dread for the day when Mick Jagger wanders on stage with a walker. Rock music of the Rolling Stones vintage is now in danger of being seen as Muzak for retirees. You can certainly hear it at the supermarket. Rap music and the hip-hop culture is about 25 years younger than rock, and believe it or not, it’s happening there, too. Today’s children are now beginning to look askance at their parents for liking "old school" rap rather than today’s truly toxic stuff. The Washington Post...

An 8-year-old boy accused of sexually assaulting a second-grade classmate last week at a St. Paul elementary school now faces expulsion. The incident happened on the playground at Four Seasons A+ Elementary, which holds classes year round, as students waited for buses just before the end of the day July 24. The boy is believed to have approached an 8-year-old girl on a slide, forced her to kiss his private parts and then simulated sex on her, according to school district officials and members of the girl's family. The slide was enclosed by a tube, making it impossible for the...

IN the last few years, it has seemed that perhaps America's long-buried history of blackface is being allowed to peek out of the closet. Bob Dylan named his most recent studio album "Love and Theft," after Eric Lott's landmark 1993 study of the form; and in his curious 2003 film, "Masked and Anonymous," Dylan even got Ed Harris to "black up" for a scene. Spike Lee also explored the subject in "Bamboozled," and competing biographies of Stepin Fetchit joined "Where Dead Voices Gather," Nick Tosches' meditation on the minstrel superstar Emmett Miller, on bookshelves. "Old Dan Tucker," the opening track...

I just finished reading Bernard Goldberg's 100 110 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is #37). What a great book. I read it twice.I don't agree with everything he wrote, but I sure found out a lot about some really poisonous people in our country who are doing all they can to screw up our great country. Any suggestions as to whom any of you might add? I would add San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsome for his breaking of state law and allowing homosexuals to get married in San Francisco.

DETROIT - Obie Trice was shot early Saturday while driving on a city highway, police said. Trice, a Detroit native and protege of Eminem, was on the Lodge Freeway at about 1:10 a.m. when his vehicle was shot at by someone in another car, said Michigan State Police Sgt. Mario Gonzales. Trice managed to continue driving and exited the freeway in the suburb of Southfield, where his girlfriend, who also was in the vehicle, flagged down police, Gonzales said. The girlfriend wasn't wounded. He was taken to Providence Hospital, where he was treated and released, said hospital spokesman Brian Taylor....

The TV show Dallas helped overthrow Ceausescu. Now gangsta rap and pop culture are driving out corrupt post-Soviet thugs.Mr. Benea, regrettably, is not in. Yes, our 12 p.m. interview was on the calendar, and certainly he appreciates that it was a hot three-hour train trip from the Romanian capital city of Bucharest to Slobozia, a forgettable little transit town halfway to the Black Sea. But Mr. Benea is, um, at an important meeting. Very busy man. The lobby of the Hermes Land Hotel is as deserted as the set of a long-canceled television show. The parking lot outside does not...