Real Rap, START SNITCHING….. People need to understand that protecting killers is doing nothing but ensuring your own death, or the death of one of your loved ones. No longer can we sit idly by and watch our people be gunned down!

According to Allhiphop.com
A man who worked security for rapper Busta Rhymes was shot multiple times and found dead in the back of his pickup truck on Wednesday (May 28th), AllHipHop.com has learned.

Police found blood dripping from the backseat of his SUV when they discovered Williams’ body, which was wrapped in a blanket in the backseat of the SUV.
Sources have confirmed with AllHipHop.com that Williams, also known as “Black,” was Rhymes’ bodyguard, although it is unclear if he was working for the rapper as of press time.
Busta Rhymes has been on a tour of Europe and was not in the country at the time of the incident sources told AllHipHop.com.
Williams, who leaves behind two children, reportedly went to Queens to visit his grandmother and ended up missing for almost 24 hours.
Police are still seeking the suspects who committed the murder.
Williams is the second bodyguard employed by Busta Rhymes to be shot dead.
His former bodyguard Israel Ramirez was shot dead on February 5, 2006, outside of a warehouse, where a music video for the remix to Rhymes’ single “Touch It” was being shot
Ramirez, 29, was shot in the chest in front of the building, where as many as 500 people may have witnessed the shooting.

This Just in:

Nas changes controversial album title

May 19, 2008, 01:44 PM | by Simon Vozick-Levinson

Categories: Current Affairs, Music, Music Biz

A representative for Def Jam has confirmed to EW.com that hip-hop artist Nas has made an eleventh-hour decision to change the title of his new album from N—– to simply Nas. The Queens rapper sparked a heated debate last fall when he announced the provocative title for his upcoming ninth record, but last October, Island Def Jam Music Group chair Antonio “L.A.” Reid publicly denied widespread reports that label execs were uncomfortable with his decision. “We stand firmly behind and beside our artists with pride and with pleasure,” Reid told MTV News at the time. “Anything Nas wants to do, I completely stand beside him.”

But in an interview with MTV News last week, Nas suggested that he was facing renewed pressure: “Everybody is trying to stop the title…. Record stores are gonna have a problem in this day and time selling a record with that title. Who knows what’s gonna turn out and be on that title? Who knows what that title will be?” The politically-charged self-titled CD is due in stores July 1. For more of Nas’ thoughts on his new music, check EW’s summer music preview coverage in print on Friday.

Courtesy of:
http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/

As Hov would say POLITICS AS USUAL

Photo courtesy of New York Times

Wear all black on Monday for the injustice verdict in the Sean Bell case Please pass this on to anyone who can receive a text.

I received this text message numerous times throughout the course of the weekend and again I ask “Is wearing all black the new activism”. Has wearing all black taken the place of such notable activism as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I remember back when the Jena 6 movement was thriving and we were all wearing black as a means to show the masses our “black solidarity”. I participated and heard many say that they felt good walking into their corporate offices and seeing other people of color representing the injustice that was being served in Jena. But does our action stop there, does what we wear really signify that an injustice has been done?

So today I woke up and threw on my black shirt and my black Chuck Taylor sneakers in memory of the brother Sean Bell. I walked into my classroom and unlike that glorious Jena day, barely any people of color were wearing all black. What does wearing all black mean anyway; do the people who we want to see our solidarity even know that we are wearing this color to represent the fact that a brother was murdered by the NYPD. That yet again the NYPD walked out of a court of law not guilty of all charges. My own Constitutional Law professor had no idea who Sean Bell was and that this verdict had drastically affected the lives of many people. He was unaware that many young brothers and sisters had taken to the streets and were seeking Justice for the loss of yet another young talented black man. He definitely had no idea why one of his students had on black today; all he wanted to know was if I was familiar with the material that will be on his exam next week.

I checked through my usual news media outlets hoping that I would see something in the headlines about the injustice the Bell family was served this past Friday. Instead, I was inundated with news of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Democrat Primary’s, but there was no sign of any measures that would be taken towards the Bell family finding JUSTICE. And why should their be, a brother is dead and we all go back to our regularly scheduled lives. More concerned with celebrity gossip than the fact that black men can be killed in this country and their murderers receive absolutely no punishment.

The NY Times had a brief article about this issue however, and it largely dealt with the few people who were outraged by the verdict and were protesting in Harlem yesterday. One of the brothers on the bull horn asked “why aren’t more people out here”. The days of marching and blocking traffic for a day or two didn’t work then and they will continue not to work now. All the police do is re-direct the traffic and the protest becomes more of a nuisance than a movement that affects change. So what my generation has come up with as a means of fighting injustice is wearing all black; then we are really fighting institutionalized racism and brutality, we’ll show em!

Wrong, we need a strategic effort on a variety of fronts to fight the injustices that are facing our people. I refuse to believe that we are as lazy as the Civil Rights Guard of Leadership paints us. No we are not lazy at all, we are the internet generation; the text message generation. All of that to say we have the fastest and often most effective modes of communication to get messages across to our peers and move in a organized manner. We have to fight these different injustices on many different fronts. The Judge who rendered the verdict; we have to find out if he was elected or appointed; if elected we make sure that those who are eligible to vote in that district show up in record numbers to relieve him of his position.

Let’s take it back to the boycott days since the loss of revenue is the only thing that makes politicians and businessmen understand that we are angry about something and are seeking some type of remedy. This shouldn’t be hard to do because we are spawning into a recession anyway and people are already strapped for cash. We need to find out exactly what businesses that if we stopped patronizing would affect Michael Bloomberg the fastest. Once those major businesses are affected they will call up their high powered friends ad say “hey we have to do something about this’ its affecting my pocket”! You see when when we start to use our creativity and organize our efforts we begin to fall upon the ears who really create change in our cities. Maybe then the NYPD will stop believing that it is perfectly fine and legal to kill young black men. But if all we are doing is wearing black; trust me the courts, the politicians, the police and definitely the law are not hearing our voices.

We need to tap into the resources in our communities who have the know how and ability to propose legislation for stricter monitoring practices over the police departments who brutalize communities of color. All cops are not the scum who murder and harass people of color so we need to reach out to those who are fed up with their colleagues behavior and off the record find out what we can do to upset their internal situation that will help us make the changes we wish to see. I could write on for days about different measures that we could take however my one voice will not create this change. Our collective voice will not change these scenarios but our collective voices coupled with our strategic collective actions will create this change. In memory of Sean Bell and all of the other forgotten fallen soldiers; please let’s Make It Happen!

ps. I will be at the Black and Male In America Conference the weekend of June 15 - 17 in Brooklyn, NY. I think we all need to be there!

The police are gearing up for what they fear may be a riot tomorrow after the verdict is announced for the three police officers who killed Sean Bell in cold blood. I pray that we are smarter than to riot and destroy our own neighborhoods because of the injustice many expect after seeing similar court’s allow police officers to walk. Let’s pray that Sean Bell’s widow and his children find justice and they do not then we need pro-active solutions to make sure this type of tragedy does not happen again. Peace and Grace be unto you.

Queens Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cooperman will announce his verdict Friday in the trial of three police officers charged in the shooting death of Bell, 23, outside a Jamaica, Queens, strip club in the early hours of Nov. 25, 2006.

Dets. Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora and Marc Cooper have been on trial since Feb. 25 for the shooting, in which two of Bell’s friends, Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, were also wounded and testified against the detectives. Bell and his group had just left his bachelor party at the Club Kalua when the fatal 50-shot encounter with cops happened.

THE LIES
By Ma’at

Fuck this country so hard it bleeds the wealth and prosperity of your forefathers
Inseminate your mind with limitless understanding and watch your seeds grow
The revolution will not come easily but it will come
Over and over again until
New birth
A new age
This county was built with on the foundation of REVOLUTION!!!

Hypocrites!!
Each framer more faced then the last
But at the core of their new country…..
“ We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,…… and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,”
Our being white male slave owners…..
Not there white wives
Not their male nigger slaves
And sure as hell not fucking me
I was good enough to rape
My security taken from me, after my husband was taken from me, my father taken from me, my children taken from me… he took the only thing he knew I still had that he could physically take

Surprise Mother fucker
My spirit is stronger than you can imagine
My back forged with the strength of generations of matriarchs, kings, queens, family, unity
You can not take my legacy
It runs through my veins, my children’s veins, my children’s children’s

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdZx65JDNMI&hl=en]

Congratulations to Ms. Crystle Stewart who was recently crowned Miss USA 2008. I honestly normally would not pay this contest any attention but I was impressed by this young lady’s entrepreneurial mindset.

Crystle Stewart, of Missouri City, Texas, runs a party-planning and motivational speaking company, as well as modeling professionally. Ms. Stewart looks to dedicate her life to international philanthropy. In a society that relegates women’s roles in the media to video girls and scantily clad outfits highlighting all of their assets except their minds, I am happy that this young lady is forward thinking. I pray that she takes this opportunity to continue to network and build her professional possibilities. But also stand as a monument for all women in this country, showcasing her intellect rather than her beauty and empowering young girls to reach beyond the restraints of the images the media offers them.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jzpNUzT8xA&hl=en]

Don’t be afraid to feel as angry or as loving as you can, because when you feel nothing, it’s just death. - Leena Horne

The following post is reflective of the views of a young woman who made a video and posted it on youtube about other women of color. Her youtube profile and views can be found at http://www.youtube.com/user/melosidad1

I think she creates an interesting dialogue and I am curious to see what your reaction will be to this video.  Please feel free to comment and check out an earlier post that I wrote expressing my own views on women of color titled  “Letter to a Young Black Female”. Peace and Love!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tdNxTV9i2c&hl=en]