It seems with Ludacris making songs to “support” Barack Obama and most recently Fat Joe talking bad about Daddy Yankee’s endorsement of John McCain, everyone in hip hop has something to say about the current presidential elections. So I decided to start a new feature for HN, “Rappers on Politics”. We’ll be giving you words straight out of the mouths of yours favorite hip hop celebrities and we’ll break them down and see if what we can get out them.

First up is Jermaine Dupri who was recently did a blog on the Huffington Post talking about the people who felt Barack Obama’s Democratic Nomination acceptance speech did not pay enough tribute to Martin Luther King Jr…

Exactly why was Obama supposed to be giving everyone a history lesson in his speech when the whole point was to talk about the future? What he said was exactly what he needed to say to introduce himself to apolitical folks like me and get us fired up and ready to make a change. It was his job to lay out the plan that will bring America into the 21st century, and that’s what he did.

I want to know where we’re going and how we’re going to get there, not where we’ve already been. It’s his actions that carry the torch for MLK, not some boring tribute to the past that other people expect him to make. That’s the kind of bullshit that old people who’ve been here forever get stuck on. They’re missing the point. They’re forgetting that when they followed Martin Luther King they were young themselves. They were looking ahead, not backwards.

Now I could say something mean about JD. I could joke about how he looks like a chiuaua or how he held on to those braids and beads way after his scalp had started to let them go. However I’ll save that for another time and just say JD actually makes a pretty good point. I had just seen a video yesterday with Cornell West saying Barack didn’t tribute MLK enough. Though I too would have liked more of a tribute, we can’t forget that that speech was never meant to pay honor to MLK, it was for Barack to introduce himself to the nation and accept his party’s nomination.

Cornell West and Julianne Malveaux on the Tavis Smiley show

What do you guys think?

[Huffington Post]