moment of silence

1947 - 2005



"Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over."
- octavia butler

whus fa dinnuh?

As a kid growing up, what we had for dinner was more than food. It told a story. It gave deep insights about the state of the household. After a while, it became so predictable that just by smelling what we were having for dinner, you knew whether times were good, bad, whether new money was coming in the door, or even someone in the family had just died. Each meal articulate something very specific, and even as a young kid, I quickly learned to decipher the language of our household meals.

BAKED HAM - My folks weren't big ham eaters. So if you smelled ham, somebody was dead, straight up! What followed was an impromtu haircut, a lot of cleaning up, and tons of phone calls to the house. We were either about to have a lot of company, or go to someone's house who already did. We had a few deaths in the family as a kid, and the smell that sticks out to me is ham with pineapples and cheap beers.

BREAKFAST FOR DINNER - Breakfast for dinner meant there were absolutely ZERO groceries in the house. You know that sad sight of opening up the fridge and seeing the back of that mofo. We all know it! So to play it off, my moms would fry some eggs and bologna, bake some biscuits and it would be on. We'd all sit down to the table, passing the jelly for our biscuits, as we washed it down with Pepsi.

SUNDAY DINNER - Sunday dinner was the shit. But the cool thing about it at my house was, it wasn't only served on Sunday. Any time my mother was off from work, I can remember walking home from school and time we stepped onto our street, we could smell the food just oozing out the house. My moms got down on her off days. You could smell fried chicken, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, collard greans, and all kind of other goodies in the air. If you smelled a Sunday dinner, and it wasn't Sunday, my mother was really relaxed, which translated into her going way over the top to please the family.

SUNDAY DINNER ON FRIDAY - A Sunday dinner on Friday meant important guests were coming in from out of town. Either our grandparents or someone they were trying to show off for.

MIKEY D's - At my crib, McDonalds was reward food. I hated going to the doctors as a kid, and since I had asthma real bad when I was younger, that was all the damn time. Mickey D's came after a visit to the doctor's or dentist's office. You leave the doctor's office mad, lips poked out, arm sore from the shot dude just gave you, and fifteen minutes later, you had a shit eating grin on your face as you stuffed a cheeseburger down your throat followed by the cold chaser that was always orange drink!

CHILLI AND HOT DOGS - Chilli and hot dogs meant the first cold Saturday of the winter had arrived. We usually ate off it two to three days.

SALMON CROQUETS - This was one of my favorite meals, but my old man hated it! So if you smelled salmon croquettes, with white rice and gravy, the old man was out of town on business. It also meant I got the lion's share of the dinner. This meal made me feel like a man. So what I was eight. I'd even slide over into his chair to complete the effect!

BAKED BEANS & HOT DOGS - If I smelled this shit, moms was out of town and pops was cooking. To this day, my old man is no chef. In fact, besides some really bad scrambled eggs, this is the only meal I ever saw him cook up as a kid. Sometimes my mother would go out of town for a funeral or something and the rest of us would stay home. Each time, my sister and myself were fed large plates of my old man's specialty. Oh yeah, he had the nerve to serve it up with Ritz crackers on the side. Like it went together or something. We always complained when he cooked it, but I secretly didn't mind the taste at all.

SPAGHETTI OR LASAGNA - This was my mother's way of saying "I will not be cooking for the next three or four days, so eat up." My mother made the biggest pots of spaghetti, and the biggest pans of lasagna. We'd eat on it forever, and never got mad about it cause it was so good.

VIENNA SAUSAGES, POTTED MEAT, & SPAM - Believe it or not, there was a time in my childhood when I cheered when this stuff was served up. If you could get past that nasty ass yellowish meat jelly that hung over the meat like a dark cloud, it was smooth sailing. My folks pushed this on us when they had to go out, and they didn'ty want us messing with the stove. So it was a big box of Premium white crackers and all the canned meat we could eat.

PINTO BEANS & RICE - My pops is a souther dude who don't give a damn about meat, but he loves beans. So this meal meant my old man had to go out of town on business for a while. So moms usually blessed him with one of his favorites.

NECK BONES & BUTTER BEANS - This one meant my old man was just getting back in town from a business trip, and moms wanted to greet him right. If you've never had the pleasure of sucking on a neckbone, consider yourself lucky. It's all kind of weird juice and white stuff that comes out of them bones. At the time it was good. (Now you can understand why I stopped eating pork in '91)

CUBE STEAK & BAKED POTATOS - This was our "let's celebrate" meal. It usually meant some new money had come into the house. A promotion or something like that. We always ate a salad with it. And this was one of the few times we ever had desert with our meal. My folks didn't do desert. Desert for us was usually Jello with fruit cut up in it. But when we had cube steak and potatos, there was usually an apple pie sitting on the stove to go with it.

Q-KING - Back home in St. Louis, there used to be this spot on Kingshighway called BBQ KING. Man it was good. My barber shop was in the vicinity, so after I got my shag trimmed up and lined, (yeah fool, I had a shag growing up, like 82-83) my pops would stop at a pay phone to get my mother and siter's order, and it was always right over to Q-KING's. My favorite was the hot link sandwhich with that white ass Wonder bread with barbeque sauce poured over it until it just melted in your mouth.

PIZZA - If we were eating pizza at my house, throw some confetti in the air and pop open a grape soda, IT'S PAY DAY. Each pay day like clock work, we ate pizza. In other words, every other friday we were eating pizza. Sometimes we ordered it, sometimes we went out to get it. But the mood was always vibrant and happy when pizza was served up.

FRIED BOLOGNA OR GRILLED CHEESE - I grew up in a house were food was always plentiful. So when we started eating too many grilled cheese sandwhiches or fried bologna and crackers back to back, you kinda knew, somebody must be broke.

FEND FO' YA'SELF - Fend for yourself was my mother's "pissed at the world" meal. This was served when my mom, an overworked school teacher, got home tired as hell, and me and my sister had messed the house up real bad. The demand was simple, "clean up the damn house and fend fo' ya'self". If pops was in town, he'd bail us out with White Castles. If he was out on work, we usually ate cereal, and always got in trouble later for "eating up all the breakfast food". Oh well, you gotta eat.

So there it is. And I know I'm not the only one. I'm sure the food served up at your crib as a child held hidden messages too. And if you think back hard enough, you might even remember a few. One luv.

matches made in heaven

What if Harriet Tubman and Nat Turner were buddies? And Medgar, Malcolm, and Martin had joined forces to save black America? Luckily Miles and Coltrane played together. Luther and Anita Baker just never got along. In '92, the Dream Team showed us how it's turns out when it's done right. Bobby and Whitney? We all know that's just wrong. At least there's Will and Jada. Go back to '84, can you imagine Prince and Michael Jackson on the same song? Gamble and Huff stayed together, why not didn't Snoop and Dre? Or Rufus and Chaka Khan? Would Brian McKnight have made Take 6 better? James Brown once fired Rick James from his band, imagine that. You'd have thought Stevie and Ray Charles would have been great friends. Kinda like Reaganomics and crack. Magic had Kareem. What if Jordan had Hakeem? If Carl Lewis and Flo Jo had a child, it'd win every race by a mile. Imagine if the real kings of comedy could have shared the same stage, Pryor, Murphy, Rock, and Chapelle. Would a Deathrow Record reunion today, be more heaven or hell? We still long for Pac and Big. Is there anybody you could pair Jimmy with that would have made him seem more special? Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston never made up. Nas and Jay did, and that's big. Imagine Eric Dickerson or Barry Sanders with Emmit Smith's line. Or Garvey with Oprah's dough. What if the world was ready for a Black Jesus and a black pope, a match made in heaven fa sho!

T4TD: Instead of divide and conquer, let's just conquer, together. Peace.

superman

superman
by hardCore

if i could
i'd dump my darkest secrets
in your lap

just to watch your eyes BULGE and POP
wide open

with surprise, with disappointment , with resentment

as you slowly changed the way you look
and think
of me

but deep down
i've always known

i was never the brotha
you thought you knew

i was the brotha
you wanted to know

when you didn't know nothing
when you wanted to know everything
when you needed to know something
or someone

when you needed a hard laugh
a dry place to cry
a tight hug
an ear

i became that brotha for you
strong
and perfect

i put forth the best of me and hid the rest
now the years are swelling inside my chest

YES!

there is more to me

there are insecurities, regrets, indiscretions
weaknesses
unhappiness
loneliness, evil
sensitivity

even cowardice thinking

feelings i'm dying to share with you
feelings i never wanted to conceal from you
feelings i always wanted to reveal to you
but i can't

cause you never really wanted to know me

you?

you only wanted to know... Superman

© 2002 3rd Eye Open Publishing

hip hop mortality

"I'll probably get shot". The whole room of 90 some odd students turned towards us in horror in that lecture hall. It was my sophomore year of college. And my entire sociology class was staring at me, and the only other brotha in the room, like they couldn't believe their ears. What were we discussing? Mortality rates and lifestyle. The professor asked us, if we died tomorrow, how did we see ourselves going out. I watched about 70% of that white classroom confess they saw themselves going out in an automobile accident. The other 29% said heart attack, cancer, or some other unspecified health complication. The last two people in the class also happened to be the only blacks in the class. Both male, both hip hoppers. Our answer? We both said the same thing. "I'll probably get shot".

The tragic number of young lives we continue to lose in hip hop makes me wonder, are there any parallels between the lifestyle, and the mortality rate of our peers? The easy answer is yes. We've all seen what happens when hip hop turns violent. And no, I'm not talking Pac, Big, and Jam Master Jay stories. I'm talking about our countless peers who were cut down in the prime of their lives. I'm talking about all those people who live in those sad stories spoken softly at small gatherings when people bring up their names while reminiscing. Although they may have never picked up a mic or scratched a record, they were hip hoppers. They wore the gear, blasted the sounds, and lived the lyrics--and other hip hoppers, who lived the culture too, gunned them down. Gun violence has devastated hip hop. But so has the drug trade. We always hear about the overglorified drug dealer, but the reality is, for every dealer shot dead on the streets, there are three or four young homeless junkies dying slow in an alley somewhere. And nobody's gonna tag a wall for them. Nobody wears R.I.P. tee shirts for crack heads, but those people are as much a part of the culture as anybody. It's just they belong to that unspoken part that's often overlooked.

As a lifestyle, hip hop has always been about excess. The biggest chain. The most money. The most girls. The most expensive cars. Who could smoke the most weed. Or drink the most liquor. But all this excess is having a tremendous affect on our mortality. Case in point, the same excessive, wild, adulterous lifestyle Eazy E glorified in his lyrics, eventually led to his untimely death. And he's not alone. African Americans below the age of 25 continue to be the group with the largest growth rate of HIV infections. But it makes sense. Simply listen to the songs we digest, or the images we see in all the hip hop videos. It's sex sex sex. Not protected or monogamous sex-- just sex. Now think about alcohol and cigarettes. I love going out to local hip hop venues to check out the shows and what not. But one of the things I hate is all the cigarette and weed smoke in the venues. Hip hoppers are smoking their asses off. And at this point, alcohol is a hip hop staple. But it's not the alcohol or cigarettes alone that I fear. It's hip hop's excessive way in which we consume things. Hip hoppers don't want to have A joint. They want the biggest bag of weed. It's not cool to have A drink or two. It's all about who can drink who under the table and be the last man standing. With all this excess, I can easily foresee a time, when many of our most loved hip hoppers will succumb to lung and throat cancer. As well as kidney and liver disease, at an epidemic-like rate. Is it really that much of a stretch to imagine Snoop Dogg with lung cancer? Or any of our Hennessey guzzling emcees with liver failure? Well for every famous person who we loose, they'll be thousands of non famous hip hoppers succumbing to the exact same lifestyle.

Don't let me paint a hopeless picture. I've seen hip hop's finest sell their chiseled bodies to the hip hop nation causing many to watch calories and exercise. Also seeing emcees drink water on stage has created a huge push for youngsters to consume more water, which is a great thing. But make no mistake, overall, the hip hop lifestyle can take quite a toll on ones health. Gun toting, fast food, drugs, insufficient rest, excessive drinking, smoking, and casual sex, are all playing a part in what seems to be an ever lowering hip hop mortality rate. Just a few days ago, we lost legendary producer, and Detroit icon, Jay Dee. Mind you, Jay Dilla died of lupus, which is a serious disease that is unrelated to how we live as hip hoppers. Yet, it serves as a reminder of how fragile we all are, without abusing our bodies. So just imagine, how much more susceptible we become to various health risks, when we do everything in excess. It's time we all begin to embrace the notion of growing old, because too many of us have been bright flashes in the night that burned out far too quickly. In '06, visit a doctor, wear condoms, drink less, smoke less, and please, leave your guns at home. We can either grow old together as a hip hop nation, or we can continue to live like we want to die tomorrow. Ultimately, the choice is yours.

moment of silence

R.I.P. Jay Dee

a letter to aaron

aaron,

i've been reading the boondocks comic strip for a minute now, and for the most part, it's been consistently funny, edgy, political, and thought provoking. i've found myself emailing my favorite ones to friends, and i've noticed my friends emailing theirs. there is something beautiful about the small confinements of your animated strip that allows you to push our buttons, and remind us of ourselves, or those we know, without being too preachy or intrusive. but what i've learned from watching your boondocks series on adult swim is, it's all about dosage. whereas the comic strip feels like a shot glass of reality, harsh but easily digestible, the series often makes me feels like i'm being hosed down with "nigga" and "nigga-isms". even THAT would be okay IF there was a point to it all. if i knew what was meant to be funny, and what was meant to be serious. but that ever elusive sharp angle is what i'm missing. there's simply no point to it at all.

it's obvious you are a huge fan of the chapelle show. unfortunately you haven't quite figured out there's a method to dave's madness. mind you, dave has a few sketches, like the whole Lil Jon bit, that have only one purpose, to be funny. but for the most part, his sketches are designed to do one specific thing--turn racial stereotypes on their head, exposing them for what they really are.... ridiculous! your shows on the other hand seem to be all over the place. i could take "the itis" as being satirical. but MLK cursing seems edgy just for the sake of being so. i could even dig out an underlying message in the r. kelly episode. but granpa and the prostitute? a nigga moment? nabbing oprah? come on son. hearing "nigga" a thousand times EACH AND EVERY episode is not shocking, thought provoking, or genius. if you had made one episode where all everyone said was nigga, that would have made the point very strongly that we overuse the word, it would have been talked about, it would have been edgy, and you could have moved forward. instead, by over using it every week, you come off like a dude on some "pre-trip-to-africa" richard pryor renaissance sh*t, or some "post-cosby-rant" sympathizer. either way it's wack. let it go and move on.



instead of writing you off, for now, i'll continue to consider you smart and talented, just confused. maybe the change in medium has been overwhelming for you to figure out. maybe you're still searching for that balance. or maybe, this half an hour format with music and full dialogue has simply exposed you for who you really are. a dude who understands a comic strip, but has yet to understand the RESPONSIBILITY that comes with sending something as powerful as television, out to millions of people. once you put those images out there, they don't belong to you anymore. they belong to the people. and since most of those people are white, forgive me for being terrified and ashamed when all you keep giving them is "nigga" and "nigga-isms". i started off watching the show as a fan of the comic strip. now i watch the show, waiting for you to get it right, the whole time cringing, while you get it wrong.

peace.

p.s. can anybody authentically explore the best and worst parts of black culture, exposing our truths, making us laugh at ourselves, without selling us out? it's a great question. and aaron, i think, it can be done successfully. i think chris rock does it well for one. the key is balance. the "nigga" sh*t is real, show that. but show it in reference to the positive sh*t. that's just as real. make people feel it's being done out of love, to make us all better, not in some condescending tone that makes us question your motives. i'll be watching you. we'll all be watching you. good music, nice illustration, and the n-word does not a good show make. the show needs a definitive perspective. get one and holla black!

v.i.p. mentality

Bad traffic. Check! Long lines. Check! Celebrities. Check! Velvet ropes, guest lists, champagne, hotties, and mo' hotties. Check check check check check! Yes, all the familiar symptoms of being a host city for one of the premiere events of the year, Superbowl XL, were apparent this past weekend in Detroit. Hollyweird showed up, and brought that ugly fool I can't stand with it. The ever nagging, name dropping, V.I.P. mentality.

V.I.P. mentality is a concept Americans know far too well. It's rooted in a need to be exclusive, or shall I say, segregated. For years the gatekeepers in this country have felt a need to keep certain folk out. Over the short history of this country, those people who were kept out could all be categorized under one name. NIGGUZ! Black nigguz. Po nigguz. Mexican, Indian, Asian, Jewish nigguz. Hell, even po white trash nigguz. And those people doing the gate keeping have largely fell under a different category. RICH WHITE PEOPLE. But oh how times have changed. The gatekeepers are still rich white people, but they're also rich blacks, jews, asians, latinos, etc. Money rules everything around US. And so does fame. Before the gatekeepers were ONLY interested in keeping us out of their neighborhoods, schools, and corporate institutions. Now, get this, they'll actually let us in some of those places. At least a few of us. But the places they really keep us out are their events and parties. Rich people only want to be around other rich people. Famous people want to be around other famous people. And since the rich are often famous, and vice versa, the rich and famous hang exclusively. Meanwhile, the gatekeepers either charge an appalling amount of money for access, or they need credentials that let them instantly know you are somehow connected to somebody rich, somebody famous, or an organization that caters to those people.



Now, imagine Detroit. Poor, black, and working class. We are the very people V.I.P. mentality is designed to keep out. The same clubs we pay ten bucks to hang out at every weekend, charged us $50 to $500 just to get inside. Even more to get into the exclusive V.I.P. The same clubs that never have a V.I.P. area, suddenly had velvet ropes, guest lists, and secret rooms. And the same club owners we know by name, were suddenly big shots with bad vision. They didn't recognize our familiar faces. Only rich ones. Famous ones. While the rich and famous partied inside, I watched the locals pay $50 bucks to dance under cold damp tents outside the club, just so they could feel like they were CLOSE to the action. Luckily, I had access. Friday night, I attended a party hosted by Kanye and John Legend. Saturday night, it was T.O.'s private party. See, I'm used to having to go through this crazy routine in L.A. and New York. This is how they get down 24/7. And thanks to my job, I've become used to gaining entrance to exclusive places in those cities. But Detroit? This is not Detroit's texture. Detroit is realer than this. Better than this. Downer than this. So far removed... from this. Or so I thought.

I guess I learned a valuable lesson this weekend. V.I.P. mentality is not exclusive to certain places. It goes where rich and famous people go. I also learned that although rich and famous people are many different shades and colors now, they still make it their business to keep the nigguz out. I also learned that what they call nigguz, aren't nigguz at all, just people without a lot of money or fame. The sad part is, rather than remembering how bad it feels to be one of the nigguz, some poor kid who didn't get into the party this weekend, will one day be rich. And when he's rich, rather than open the flood gates and let everybody in, he's gonna relish his chance, to throw a big party, invite all his rich and famous friends, and hire security, to keep all the nigguz, out. Damn!

a change gone come

a change gone come
by hardCore

black heaven comforts me
and i smile as the blaring b flat of a warning siren’s solo
announces the uprising

seas of disgruntled revolutionaries flood a forgotten city
fumigating the streets
leaving overturned tanks and cop cars laying on their backs
like dead roaches begging to be swept

angry chants echo off long standing structures

the intensity of these voices vibrating in unity
crumbles concrete prisons into huge sedimentary mounds

a war hungry government is introduced to Karma
and somewhere beneath the city
a nervous president sweats profusely

the crack of dawn is chased down a one way street and surrounded
she whimpers as her pregnant body is penned to the pavement
her legs are grabbed and forced apart
while millions of grubby hands rip into her flesh, inducing labor
forcing her to deliver us now, what we have longed for forever
a Change

but black heaven shatters when day breaks
and i awake to yesterday’s recycled reality
a filth infected today, filled and crammed tight
with the wreaking stench
of the same old tired shit

cityscapes covered by millions of matrix people
who have been reduced to aimlessly pacing back and forth
between two points, work and home

a single mom clocks out after finishing three back to back work shifts
her tired legs collapse onto the cushion of a city bus
while at home alone, her six year old child readies her self for school
eating a breakfast that consists of two Oreo cookies and a bag of Funyuns

the thin line that once separated
cops from criminals, pimps from priests
shrinks to the point of invisibility

homeless people survive the concrete jungle by swinging
from one hand out to the next
forever finding hands, but never the way out they long for

urban decay, once specific to buildings
now affects people, whose abandoned bodies become eye sores
leaving their drug infested remains to await demolition

hospital beds resemble parking meters

television sets resemble hypnotists

and war supporters resemble small children
who still believe in Santa Claus
to them the Middle East is the North Pole
a mythical place, now viewed as the single source of all of the world’s terror

credit cards return us to slavery
so we sharecrop on corporate plantations and join lottery pools
in hopes of eventually acquiring enough money
to buy back our freedom

dysfunction is spread like germs
that go undetected in our water supply
each quenched thirst equals another soul cursed
thus, we are all infected

unemployed people are herded to large fields
to graze on a limited supply of government checks
and as the checks run out, so too do the lives of the people

and with every death
worshipers flood the worlds' pews seeking answers
while presidents and preachers stand in pulpits
pacifying the people with common rhetoric
that timeless cure all that blasts through speakers
in the form of a these four words
“A CHANGE, GONE COME “

so the people, now satisfied, begin to wait
they wait at bus stations and airports
at the top of stairwells and at the bottom of escalators
they wait at the post office and in hotel lobbies
on cell phones and near fax machines
the most fragile elders wait while conversing
over salisbury steak dinners at retirement homes

sun up to sun down, day in and day out
blindly twiddling their thumbs in ignorance
unable to see, that when Change finally does come
it won’t just come from no where
change, gone come, from within

© 2002 3rd Eye Open Publishing