Rapper is no ‘healer’
Virginia Tech has put together a “healing” concert Thursday for its students who have returned after last school year’s massacre there. The Dave Matthews Band will be performing, along with a rapper called Nas.
If the Virginia Tech administration had done some background checking on Nas, they would have found a gun conviction. Had they listened to his music, they would hear the lyrics about shooting people, killing people, and the lyrics “Kill! Kill! Kill!” and the audience responds “Murder! Murder! Murder!”
Someone tell me what is wrong with this picture?
Tracey L. Fanning, Thornton
My, my, my. Tracey are you a racist? Do you not understand that "Rap" muzic is soothing and healthy.
It is just an outlet for those poor disenfranchised youth from the inner city. A way for them to express thier uneasiness on how bad the man is still keeping the African down.
Rap muzic is the rich expression of youth and those who are unable to get ahead in life. It comes from the heart and the soul. A life experiance of how things are in reality.
Well thats what they say on MTV anyways.
Posted by on September 3, 2007 04:32 AManonymouse asked:
"My, my, my. Tracey are you a racist?"
and then went on to make it clear that he/she/it is...
Tracy, you were spoon-fed that bullsh*t by Bill O'Reilly, who wouldn't know a rap song if it hit him with a loufa, just like the joker in the above post.
Posted by on September 3, 2007 08:52 AMSo, why do you have such a problem with this? If this is what the kids who attend that school like, the music selection should please them, not conservative commentators.
8:52 is right, O'Reilly and John Gibson regularly engage in a shtick (especially the latter) wherein they posit that there's no societal problem that can't be traced back to rap music.
Personally, I've never liked rap music and find its populairty baffling, but I don't see it as any sort of threat or something that can be proven to provoke violence.
The letter writer tries to shock by quoting lyrics from this Nas fella and describing how he advocates shooting and murder. Well, it just came to mind about another popular artist who sings one song in which he gives a detailed account of shooting his wife, and even another in which he describes killing a man merely to watch him die. This performer was also known for dressing entirely in black and even had a famed performance at a prison.
Yes, it's Johnny Cash. I guess we're lucky he passed on a few years ago. His bloodlust nearly poisoned our youth and brought down our society! (sarcasm).
Posted by Jeff on September 3, 2007 10:39 AMJeff, love what you wrote about Johnny Cash. I always wondered how the public could adore him so much after that "shot a man in Reno" line.
Maybe kids blow off some steam at those concerts. Maybe that is a good outlet.
Posted by Sharon B. on September 3, 2007 11:35 AMThe school paper wrote an editorial against having Nas at the concert. Most students and family members of the dead students ,think it is wrong to have him there.
The Virginia Tech administration should have the guts to pull this moron from the concert.
They didn't even have the brains between them to shut the campus down when the first shootings started. They have blood on their hands and are smearing it in the faces of the family members who lost loved ones that day.
Nas is gangsta rap, not rap or hip-hop.
Posted by Can I get an AMEN! on September 3, 2007 12:42 PMA school wide survey was done about having Nas do a concert. The findings showed that an overwhelming majority of the students. Close to 70% did not want or think Nas should perform at the school. It is not a matter of being rap, a black man, or anything racist. It was a matter of taste. The majority spoke and said that Nas was for this performance tasteless in choice.
Posted by on September 3, 2007 03:53 PMSharon B. 11:35-
Slow down there little lady,
You must not know that you are bashing one of the all time biggest lefties of country music.Your fellow dems loved him.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/rev2006-01-13hh.html
Is your view of him now that of a courageous man who overcame his personal demons and was the voice of the poor and oppressed?
Posted by Get Real on September 3, 2007 04:53 PMGet Real, 4:53 p.m.
Ease up there, pardner,
I didn't see Sharon B. as bashing Johnny Cash; I see her as making an interesting point about how when music is judged by such objective standards as the content of the lyrics, one sees that it's really not that objective after all.
I read your article, in which the author seemed to portray Johnny Cash as a leftist hero (hence the biopic "Walk the Line." Damn you, liberal Hollywood!) but counterbalances it by showing Merle Haggard as a similar figure to the right. Sooooo, I'll see your portrayal of Johnny Cash as "one of the all time biggest lefties of country music" and raise you a refutation of the great Merle Haggard as a hero of the right:
Here are two quotes from an interview with Haggard in the September issue of Esquire magazine:
"They've left the redwoods up alongside the highway so we'll think they're all there. But go up in an airplane and you'll see that they've clear-cut everything behind"
"They got laws for the white man and laws for the black man - we all know that."
Gasp! Environmentalism! Race relations! Oh, Merle, when did ya' become such a left-wing loon!?
Posted by Jeff on September 3, 2007 07:59 PMCan I get an AMEN! said:
"Nas is gangsta rap, not rap or hip-hop."
Why is that, specifically?
Posted by on September 3, 2007 08:00 PM