MF GALAXY

CJSR FM88 www.cjsr.com 6 PM Mountain Time The hip hop legend Nas has said hip hop is dead. Many fans would disagree, but for different reasons. Some would point to the record sales of platinum and multi-platinum performers such as 50 Cent and Eminem as proof of the genre’s vitality. Yet hip hop sales have been falling, or actually plumme ting. According to music industry statistics compiled by Nielsen SoundScan, hip hop sales have declined more than those of the industry at large: almost 47 percent since the year 2000. Apparently the fans who shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars have become satiated with years of the materialistic idiocy of “playa” rhymes and the sociopathic, KKK-sponsored fantasies of gangsta rap. But with those fans having moved onto other genres, have they left hip hop’s bloated and bullet-ridden corpse in the street? And how did hip hop move from being a diverse, ranging series of styles in the mid 1980s to one led by a dynamically politic...

Mark Anthony Neal writes on Pete Rock & CL Smooth's "They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)": "Me and my boy, Frank Jr., have been listening to hip-hop since about 1978. Though we were clearly of the moment--first generation hip-hop heads with requisite ghetto passports--we were always out of step with the hip-hop moment. Much of that had to do with our general demeanors as cerebral nerds (legendary Strat-o-Matic players) and with the old men we called our fathers (Frank Sr. and AC), who instilled in us just too much respect for the Jazz, Blues and Gospel Quartets of their youth to ever think that any one form of music surpassed another. It was all a continuum. "So, while we rocked our Run-DMC/Miami Vice gear until it was well past cliché (you know, Kangols, shell-top Adidas, dark sport jackets and pastel t-shirts) and were the first in line when It Takes a Nation of Millions hit stores, it was never as if hip-hop's fascination with the hyper-pre...

Recently remade the acquaintance of Oni, the Haitian Sensation courtesy of her Facebook search. Sister rocked the mic back in 1991 T.O. at Young Poets of the Revolution, produced and directed by Br. Adisa S. Oji, AKA The Teacher. I performed at YPOTR too, and again in 1992.

cjsr.com CJSR FM-88 6 – 7 pm Mountain Time From time to time, media personalities in the West discuss the difficulties faced b y Afrikan countries in achieving economic, social and political stability and prosperity. Sometimes ordinary citizens tackle the same issue. What’s all too common is the notion, conveyed overtly or covertly, that the agonies faced by the continent are entirely homegrown. That if Afrikans would only stop complaining and blaming European civilisation, they could achieve much more than they have. Indeed, such sentiments were made recently by no less than French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who went so far as to say that calls for Afrika to resume its historical greatness are useless, since according to him, no such greatness ever existed, because “Africans have never really entered history.” It’s terrifying to know that a man of such stunning depths of ignorance controls one of the world’s most powerful militaries and a stockpile of hundred...

cjsr.com CJSR FM-88 6 – 7 pm Mountain Time From time to time, media personalities in the West discuss the difficulties faced by Afrikan countries in achieving economic, social and political stability and prosperity. Sometimes ordinary citizens tackle the same issue. What’s all too common is the notion, conveyed overtly or covertly, that the agonies faced by the continent are entirely homegrown. That if Afrikans would only stop complaining and blaming European civilisation, they could achieve much more than they have. Indeed, such sentiments were made recently by no less than French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who went so far as to say that calls for Afrika to resume its historical greatness are useless, since according to him, no such greatness ever existed, because “Africans have never really entered history.” It’s terrifying to know that a man of such stunning depths of ignorance controls one of the world’s most powerful militaries and a stockpile of hundreds of nuc...