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April 25, 2004
Political Animal
Giving “The Devil” His Due 
But as the real-estate agent was leaving, Maceus kept thinking, What if he is Toto Constant? Maceus knew that in 1994, after the United States overthrew the military regime, Constant, a fugitive from Haitian justice, had been allowed, inexplicably, to slip into the country. Maceus had heard that after Constant had finally been arrested and ordered deported, he had in 1996 mysteriously been released under a secret agreement with the U.S. government—even though the Haitian government had formally requested his extradition and U.S. authorities had found photos of his group’s victims, their bodies mutilated, pasted to the walls of his Port-au-Prince headquarters like trophies. As the man was opening the front door, Maceus’s curiosity overcame him. He asked in Creole, “What’s your family name?”
The man hesitated. “Constant.” Constant is still in the U.S., but FRAPH second man Louis Jodel Chamblain leads a paramilitary force that participated in the overthrow of Aristide earlier this year. The Atlantic Online
April 20, 2004
Music
Rap's Last Tape For a genre that is 25 years old this year, hip hop has little to show for its maturity. While its influence has stretched into the shires and beyond, walk down any megastore hip hop aisle and scowling back at you is a line-up of the same kind of hardmen as a decade ago. Numbers may have burgeoned (there are now believed to be over 100 hip hop millionaires in the world) as has the body count, but the lifestyles, platitudes and contradictions represented by protagonists of the culture have, if anything, grown narrower and more impossible. Repetitive images of material excess and recidivism continue to dominate the commercial rap market, and while production techniques have evolved to become the most sophisticated in pop music, rapping itself – the essence of hip hop culture – has not developed in at least a decade. As the ideas have dried up, celebrities and industry investors have been forced to promote the most sensational aspects of the culture. Even loyal fans are now claiming that hip hop’s message to the disenfranchised is one of confusion and self-destruction. For a musical form that once claimed to offer meaning, and even hope, this must spell the end. Prospect Magazine
April 12, 2004
Music
Rap is Republican! I think Saul Williams said it best when I heard him on the radio a few weeks ago in L.A. "Rap has gone Republican", he said. And, It's true. Early on hip-hop was intended as a counter-culture: underground. Hip-Hop was meant to be a voice for the voiceless. But now? "Hip-Hop" is all about "Gimme mine... look at me... I'm rich... your broke... F you... look at all my fine women.... look at my car... I have the American Dream!". I'm not dissin'.. really... I'm not.... but Jay-Z, Puffy, Nelly and the rest of the pop-rappers do not represent a counter-culture. They don't represent you or me. They represent the system! They need the system, they love the system, they ARE the system! They are doing exactly what America wants them to do. Shuck and jive, tap dance and feed intellectual stagnation and social destruction to our youth. They look controversial but pose no real political influence. Politicians used to be afraid of hip-hop because of the revolutionary messages Public Enemy and BDP and X-Clan had. But nowadays, even Newt Gingrich is "getting Jiggy with it" because rap is no longer a threat. http://www.thermiterecords.com/blogger.html
Political Animal
THE RADICAL: Why do editors keep throwing “The Boondocks” off the funnies page? As a talented young black man who is outspoken in his political convictions, McGruder has grown accustomed to inordinately high expectations. The Green Party called him last year, asking if he might like to run for President. He had to point out that he wasn’t old enough. “I want to do stuff that has a moral center—stuff that I can be proud of,” he continued. “But I’m not trying to be that guy, the political voice of young black America, because then you have to sort of be a responsible grownup, for lack of a better word. And it’s like—you know, Flip Wilson said this, he said, ‘I reserve the right to be a nigger.’ And I absolutely do, at all times.” The New Yorker