Alright, Dr. Juan Luther King Vandross! :p This is fantastic! “Captain African-America” is classic.

Al Sharpton showing up where there was a camera?? I don’t believe it, he’s such a shy guy. (He also looks like he’s dropped a lot of weight, is he sick?)
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For at least one good reason I’m no expert on “Black America”, but that has never stopped me before, so here we go again…
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While I agree that music that glorifies violence IS the major part of the problem, I have to wonder how much of it also has to do with the emasculation of the black male by the media and (presumably) the black community?
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For example: we went through the “grandma phase” where we were told that the only thing that was going to save “black America” was the old black grandmas.
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Then there was the “powerful black woman” phase, where we were told that the only thing that was going to save “black America” was the hip, sassy black woman.
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In these and other cases we (once again) are painted an image in which the black man is incapable of controlling his own destiny; that without grandma (or the sassy wife/girlfriend), the average black man would rapidly degrade into the gang-banging pimp-daddy image that is so often used to re-enforce the grandma/sassy-gf theories.
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Here at Highbrid, we have a (seemingly) successful company being owned and managed by black men. In Washington, we have a black man running the free world.
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Are there problems? Sure. But how are we/you supposed to solve the social ills without first empowering men with the recognition that they are in control of their own fate?
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If you take ANY man, black white red or yellow, and convince him that he has no control, no hope and no future; you will rapidly see him act like a man who has no control, no hope and no future.
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As Henry Ford said: If you believe you can, or you believe you can’t, you are entirely correct.
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Or, as Chris Rock said: there has to be more than just the big piece of chicken.

And while we’re at it….
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You guys have contact in the musical world… why don’t you write a decent hip-hop or rap song about making a fortune in the legitimate world?
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Maybe something like this: two friends growing up next door, one choose the thug life, the other chooses education and capitalism. At 30 years old, one is rich and dead on the street, the other is rich and living in a mansion with the wife and kids.
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Who knows, if the song is good enough you could raise a generation of rich black capitalists.
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To steal the line from “Field of Dreams”…. If you write it, they will come.

Brothers are on it!
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The sad fact is that many of our young people live in a world where the only way that things work is with a gun. In a way, it makes things equal. That is why they have to have one. Hell, we created this environment for them (not you and I personally, you know what I’m saying?!) many of us grown people only know how to resolve our issues with violence. The lack of positive role models (not on T.V.) in their lives and craving but not having the nice things in life leads to 13 year olds carrying guns and slinging dope. It’s crazy, man! and it seems as though things just keep getting worse. Someone asked me once why I spent so much time doing community work. My answer was that I’m not worried about my kids harming someone else. They’re being raised by a strong, loving father (and mother). I’m worried about my neighbors’ kids doing something to one of mine, so I’m trying to prevent it.

I think that T.I. has seen the error in his ways and I can appreciate him for that but it is hard to ignore the opportunistic move. The whole reality show, according to him, was not for his community service but because he wanted to do it for self, that remains to be proven but I’ll take his word for it. depending on the media to highlight any event where rappers are doing something good instead of causing scandal is like finding money on the street, it rarely happens. and it really sucks because there are a lot of hip hop artists out here like the lupe’s and the luda’s that do work for charity but they hardly get the shine unless of course it is a slow news day on the local news channel.
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on another note, not to bring it to parents but I must for the sake of getting it off my chest. Parents need to stop letting the TV raise their children and start speaking to them about real issues. A lot of parents think that kids don’t know any better and can’t tell the good from the bad at their age unless it is insignificant. The admiration for guns and power came by way of movies and TV acted out by white men. You ask any person from the hood or rapper for that matter what their favorite movie is they will say Scarface, Goodfellas, or the Godfather thats where a part of the inspiration comes from. And it really irks me when people expect rappers to be role models. When they decided to be rappers they didn’t do it in hopes of being role models, the parental advisory sticker is not on the cover as a design.