Lupe Fiasco Pushes Against the Machine with Lyrics, Sweat and Tears

Of course people would argue that Lupe Fiasco's tearful interview explaining the continual violence, gross disenfranchisement and hopelessness in his hometown of West Side Chicago should be the very reason why he should vote.

On the contrary, it has provided the impetus for him to be vocal about not voting and seeing it useless for the average person whose interests are never served.

Lupe's perspective, in truth, is the reason why black and brown youth are ever so turned off about the voting process 4 years since they largely participated in the 2008 presidential elections.

Though they say politics are local, the youth were reined into the national election, thus staying mis-educated about the issues on the local level. There is a difference between casting a ballot and being politically active; however, most "activists" were not interested in that part of the equation. You see, mentoring youth and their activists so that they can understand the importance of localized political engagement would only mess up Sharpton's time at the salon to get his edges retouched.

As a result, local politics remained the same---completely failing and disregarding the same population that was mobilized to vote for them.

Nonetheless, this reality also pushes Lupe to be politically engaged in his music and beyond.

Lupe who  is currently providing, free, healthy food during Ramadan, articulates the contradictions and ironies he sees in US policies and social order. Lupe's latest single, "Freedom Ain't Free" provides insight into the conundrum, corporate exploitation and chaos that the average young person navigates in the midst of profiling, unemployment, and streamlined resources to be a productive citizen.

I agree with Lupe when he states in his latest single, "America’s a big motherfuckin’ garbageman." And as he says in the interview, this system has eaten and thrown away many of his peers. The brilliant and provocative emcee who also attended and supported Occupy Wall Street pointed out in this interview that some of cats on his block are either imprisoned or dead, haunting him today as harsh testaments that black and brown Chicago communities and blighted and burning.

The MTV interview showed a previous Lupe interview when he first came out six years prior. He was a hood kid who used skating as a way to balance his life. When he went to the other side of town, the place he called home, he described is displeasure with the high levels of disenfranchisement that his community endures.

The two frames are juxtaposed realities that the average inner city youth lives. On one hand, we are entrenched with visuals and realities of social-political-cultural implosion from Brooklyn to Oakland , but on the other hand, we live a parallel to an alternative life of the hipster movement, a commercialized, and fresh-faced Justin Bieber-esk campaign that borrows heavily from our culture, minus the poverty and prison records.

And that is how a lot of us youth live, even if we have made it, we must all go home. Even if we are second and third generation "middle and upper class" black people, we all have family members who are struggling. And while Lupe enjoys the lightness he feels in his career choice, his travels, and his evolution as a human, he wears the weight of his people on his shoulders.

Though Pete Rock is pissed that Lupe took his legendary beat that was used in "They Reminisce Over You (TROY)," a song that memorializes friend Trouble T, he is simply the pot calling the kettle black since he stole it from Tom Scott and the California's Dreamer's song "Today".

Love the lyrics in Lupe's shit. Rip it brother on both ends.

Profound line
Crucifixes, racism and the land grab/Katrina, Fema trailers, human body sand bags

Another dope line
Say that we should protest/Just to arrested/That goes against all my hustling ethics/A bunch jail niggas say its highly ineffective

Speaking truth line

Down at the Lakota Sioux casino/A whole culture boiled down to given you Pokeno

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Elect Jay Electronica for Rerouting the Money Back to Slaves

Jay Electronica learned well from his baby mama Erykah Badu on how to find'em, fuck'em and hav'em dressing weird in about 9 months then leavin'em in a dizzy, singing songs and writing checks.

Karma used to be a bitch, now its a black man wearing a Yamaka in the middle of Kwanzaa.

Ahh, its nothing like the sweet revenge from some voodoo boudin (a fat delicious sausage native to Louisiana) to fuck up the banking monopoly that has been carefully planned by elite, blue blood European families for the last 2,000.

It's like Toussaint L'Overture, Gullah Jack and Marcus Garvey are bouncing with great delight while somewhere in a lavish flat in central London, the spirit of Marie Laveau is congratulating the conjuring, sensual ways of her son, New Orleans born Jay Electronica

Thank you, thank you, thank you Jay Electronica, I approve your penis.

You see most rappers get shot or start some silly beef with other economically irrelevant rappers for street credit. Or the fuck an irrelevant, broke, money-hungry bitch like Kim Kardashian.

You, my brother, on the other hand, moulded yourself into a black mambo and went straight for the jugular of oppression. After biting a rich bitch, you gently stroked it to death by wooing a Rothschild with some Zydeco funk from your slave drawers.

Kate Rothschild and Ben Goldsmith

A Rothschild? In my Denzel Washington's voice on Training Day, "Myyyy nigga!"

Easily you disrupted another 500 years of an economic monopoly by banking families that are the financiers of poverty, the funders of all world wars, and basically, the backers of a destabilized globe.

The torrid love affair between Kate Rothschild and Jay Electronica have the UK rethinking about allowing all these damn Mandingos into London for the Summer Olympics.

Kate Rothschild may come from scumbags who raped folks like the ancestors of Electronica, but you see, true gentlemen get the panties willingly. And I can attest, my grandfather laid them down too in Louisiana.

I mean if Electronica, the son of folk who cut sugarcane and barely got out of the projects to escape Katrina, can capture the heart of a high bred like Kate, the "true British" have no idea what they have signed up for when the rest of the descendants of slaves and colonized Africans land onto the Queen's soil.

I think I have an uncle that can re-route the Queen too, all for a good cause. Fuck niggas in Paris, it's them niggas in London you gotta watch. While Hovah and Yeezy are licking ass and doing these crazy masonic rituals to plow through rundown chicks like Beyonce and Amber rose, you, Electronica are replenishing the black and brown wealth that sits under the true throne.

You see, there was a reason why I always loved Erykah Badu. She taught you well.

Oh by way, Jay Electronica's music is the shit. And Jay, bring your ass back to the US before they lynch you until you'll only be some mere evidence in the rap game like "Exhibit C".

Thick Black Noodle in the Shaghai Soup: How China Deals with the Black "Other"

The face of one brown-skinned young lady named Lou Jing has the whole country of China uncomfortably dealing with its narrow, and in some cases, racist perceptions of citizenship towards black Chinese.

The non-porcelain skinned Chinese Goodess has trumped China's race card and exposed a nasty little secret that they are glad happened after the Olympics. They don't like black noodles being dipped in Chinese soup.

Shangai native, Lou Jing who has a Chinese mother and African-American father recently appeared on an idol talent show in the country. When she claimed that she was Chinese, born and bred in the hot East Asian metropolis, all hell broke loose.

People were surprised that this black woman who was deemed "Halle Berry of the East" could speak perfect Mandarin and Shanghainese. At first, she was a jewel, then the ghetto grapevine happened.

The Internet came alive with Chinese citizens claiming that she was not Chinese. Some hurdled nasty rumors about her mother having an extramarital affair with an "African Devil," and producing a bastard child.

In response, Jing and her mother announced that the father was not African, but African-American, the relationship between the parents was consensual, and he has been an active parent upon finding out his paternity.

Now, Chinese folk who are trying to diffuse the comment, are saying that it wasn't about her being black, but about her mother having an affair and having a baby as a result. Uhhh, yeah right. How convenient is that excuse. It just so happens that the father's blackness is important in mentioning.

This hot and controversial issue stirs up a lot of dirty secrets that the Beijing Olympic committee hid very well in 2008. China is very xenophobic and incredibly racist when it comes to black people.

There were some news reports that talked about Chinese government's racial profiling against its small, but visible African residents. It was reported that many of them were harassed, fined and even jailed before the Olympics in an effort to clean up the streets.

But it gets better. Several African-American athletes reported hostile and blatant harassment that seemed based on race during the Olympics.

This incident is remniscent of my trips to Korea. At the time, I was part of a group of African-American teens who were visiting the country. We were at a museum and I overheard a child squeal in delight to his teacher, "Look at the monkeys!"

While there, I heard stories of Koreans warning families to keep their women away from the black soldiers during the Korean War. Propaganda was spewed telling the Korean people that blacks were devils and grew tails at night.

Interestingly, it was okay for white soldiers to indulge, but the chocolate ones, oh hell no.

But did that stop the fucking? Of course not. Resultantly, babies were born. On my trip to Korea it was explained to me that bi-racial children, and in particular black Koreans, were outcasts and often lived around dump sites and the poorest areas of the country.

Lou Jing's popularity not only raises issues of race, and race around sexuality, but also citizenship. She changes the face of China, who prides in porcelain complexions, even though a significant amount of their population in the South are brown and dark brown people with broad features.

Below Jing busts a hip-hop flow to show her skills. She know she a sister!