Change I don’t want to hear anymore

I never thought I'd find myself saying this, but these rappers have gotta stop incorporating so much political content into their music. I just don't know how much more of it I can take.

Granted, the problem is not so much that there's too many rappers trying to kick knowledge. Nah, I'm sure market forces will prevent that from ever becoming an issue. It's just that the shit these guys are kicking is so retarded, I figure we'd all be better off if they'd just stuck to rapping about selling drugs, and about how so many of the women in our community are bitches and hoes.

Barack Obama, for example, wouldn't have to sweat another situation like the one a few weeks ago, where Ludacris, the guy who wrote such hit songs as "Youse a Ho," and "I Got Hoes in Different Area Codes," decided to let the world in on his views on this year's presidential election. And wouldn't you know, they turned out to be pretty damn ignorant.

That being said, what's worse, the fact that Ludacris couldn't write a worthwhile political rap if he wanted to (consider this a dare, Luda, if you're reading this), or the fact that you actually had people in the hip-hop community warning rappers not to be too vocal in their support for Barack Obama, lest they scare off too many of his cracka-ass cracka supporters?

Is that what's hot in the streets these days, tiptoeing around Whitey?

God, I'm depressed.

Fortunately, no one gives a rat's ass what you say about the likes of the Rev. Al "Mr. Do" Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Otherwise, who knows what kinds of bullshit media scandals might have erupted by now, given how often the two of them have been mentioned in rap songs this year.

Obviously, the vast majority of white people wouldn't have given a rat's ass about anyone attacking the two of them to begin with, let alone once people began to realize the extortion racket they've been running, at which point I'm sure the remaining bit of the white community that was still riding with them decided to cut their losses.

The hip-hop community's beef with the two of them is a much more recent development, I think mostly having to do with Al Sharpton, in particular, always having some shit to say about rap music. As if he's really gonna fix what's wrong with the black community by cleaning up the lyrics on, say, the new Lil Wayne album. Hence Lil Wayne's bizarre, sizzurp-fueled tirade against Mr. Do on Tha Carter III, the year's most popular rap album so far.

As far as I know, Jesse Jackson hasn't been as strident in criticizing rap music, and I'm assuming that's because he knows better than to get on somebody for some shit that they said, given some of the shit that he's said over the years. Any time you have a person who's had multiple instances of accidentally being recording saying some wild, outlandish shit, you have to wonder what kind of shit they've said that didn't get recorded.

I mean, this is guy a who, while in the room with members of the press (though he wasn't aware he was being recorded), referred to New York as Hymie Town, and threatened to cut Barack Obama's nuts off. In real life, he's probably way more vulgar than any of these rappers. He's even got an outside kid by one of his jumpoffs.

You'd think that a guy like that might be able to find some common ground with the hip-hop community. Unfortunately, though, Jesse Jackson made the mistake of dissing hip-hop's golden boy, Barack Obama. The guy who's gonna lead us all to the promised land by sheer virtue of his being somewhat black. And obviously, if the hip-hop community is willing to sacrifice whatever remaining bit of edginess it had left to get this guy in office, they're not gonna stand for motherfucking Jesse Jackson talking shit about him.

Never mind that Jesse Jackson may have actually had a point.

Hence the Game taking several shots at Jesse on shitty new album, LAX. Which would've been fine, if he'd actually bothered to back his shit up with any kind of reasoning. But of course he didn't. Take for example the line in one of his songs that goes (and I'm paraphrasing, because I'm not listening to that shit again), "Fuck Jesse Jackson, cuz it ain't about race now." Oh, really?

That's funny, because I can hardly think of a racial disparity in this country that doesn't exist today more or less to the same extent that it always has. I don't have the stats right in front of me (I'm sure TPAR does), but I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that black unemployment is still way higher than white unemployment, that black people still go to jail way more often than white people for committing the same exact crime, and that black people get turned down for home loans way more often than white people with the same exact credit history. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

And yet, any time you see Barack Obama delivering an address to a primarily black audience, the only thing you hear him talking about is how black men need to do a better job of taking care of their kids. As if buying your kid a new pair of shoes is gonna fix the subprime crisis. I'm pretty sure that's what Jesse Jackson was talking about. And he was right.

The Game was at least fortunate enough, though, to have had his new shit sandwich hit the Internets at roughly the same time as Young Jeezy's. Which has had the effect of making the Game look not nearly as idiotic by comparison. Whereas the Game was just a little bit off in his analysis, I'm seriously beginning to wonder if Young Jeezy isn't retarded. His "My President Is Black" could very well be the dumbest political rap song possible.

But who knows. There's still a while until the election.