Rapper Talib Kweli
ONUMBA.COM, USA – That wise missive was from veteran conscious rapper Talib Kweli to Instagram.
And the truth Kweli was caviling about and accusing Instagran of hiding from the people is that the Confederate flag represents racial hate.
Count Talib Kweli, count Public Enemy (no longer active), count Anita Woodley, count Brother Ali and perhaps a bevy of others, and you are probably looking at the very extent of my love for rap, at least, the kind that I hear today.
I just don’t care for it.
And please understand me. It is not the beat. It is not the creativity. It is not the culture. And it is certainly not the subject matter of the lyrics. No, none of that. Rather, it is the smorgasbord of vulgarities loaded in the lyrics you hear in most raps songs today.
It is just a bit much.
It would really be nice if these rappers would rap about love, or even love making without being overly raw about it. It’s not cool.
My message to rappers: Please be sensitive to the moral upkeep of your community, and be mindful of the real possibility that when your grown up fans are listening to your songs, a lot of times, they do so in the car where their children are also soaking in all that junk.
And parents, you more than the rappers, really need to be mindful of that. Turn that culch off when you have minors with you, in the car or at home.
The other side of the conundrum, however, is that conscious rappers like Talib Kweli are often discouraged from speaking the truth all the way, whether in songs or elsewhere.
Just recently Kweli fired off an Instagram rant denouncing the confederate flag, a lingering issue recently resurrected after a racist White man Dylann Roof went inside a historic Black church and unleashed his ferocious hate, mowing down nine people to death, including 41-year old Pastor and South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney.
Instagram instantly pulled Kweli’s message down, doing it faster than you can say ‘No way Kweli.”
The Confederate States, as you know, wanted to maintain slavery in the south, because in the munificent view of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, and his phalanx of racist friends, slavery was good for Black people.
The Confederate States of America (CSA), as you know, was the renegade government established in 1861 by 11 southern states that seceded from the United States of America (USA), triggering the brutal civil war that ended with the union triumph in 1865.
All of which leads to this really unhinging situation. It massively boggles the mind, to say the very least, that only in the United States is it possible to allow a defeated secessionist cabal, or phalangeal parts of it, to openly fly their flag in public buildings and elsewhere, foolishly and irrationally claiming that it is a symbol of southern pride in honor of the legacy of the confederacy and salute for the soldiers who died in what was clearly a bigoted, atavistic and anachronistic effort.
The confederate states are: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee.
The states of Missouri and Kentucky, if you will, offered their much needed tacit and moral support.
