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By David Banner on August 17, 2007 11:03 AM

Stop Attacking The Kids

To all the black â€˜so called leadersâ€™. Al, Oprah, Jesse, etc, etc, etcâ€¦ Iâ€™m saddened by your current direction and current â€˜pet projectsâ€™ you guys have taken under your wing at the expense of Young Black America. As an urban professional living in this crazy world, I dare ask, who are you leading? I listen to what you say, I hear you complain about the youth, and about the direction of our lives, the kids, and where Black America is going and yet I still ask â€“ who are you guys leading? And most importantly, where are we going? Do we know the goal we are trying to reach before we get there? Have we identified our end before articulating our means to an end! Who are you REALLY reaching? Why do you feel the need to attack the young generation for the things we are doing? â€œWHO DID WE LEARN THESE THINGS FROM? We are trying to have fun in the midst of our traumatic circumstances. People are trying to make a living by any means necessary, people are voicing their experiences, people are speaking the truth about situations and honestly the truth hurts and sometimes itâ€™s ugly. If music/hip hop/ rappers are wrong with the language they use, the images they portray in their videos â€“ then come talk to us â€“ I use the term â€˜usâ€™ as a collective because Iâ€™m defending what I have a passion for so this also involves me. Pull us to the side and say â€œhey kids, thatâ€™s not the way to goâ€ and then we can say â€œchange what we see daily so we cansing and rap about the roses and not about the bulletsâ€. We will say, help give us better situations to create better verbal materialâ€. Donâ€™t just go running off to the media to air the dirty laundry of the family and not expect us to fight back in some kind of way. What you are doing is wrong and itâ€™s pissing off a lot of people with less money and camera

time! Young Black Americaâ€™s problem is not Hip Hop or the music, Young Black Americaâ€™s problem is Old White America. In the young black community, there is a growing level of resentment toward the â€˜so called leadersâ€™ because you guys DONâ€™T WANT TO REALLY FIX OUR PROBLEMS. You guys donâ€™t really want to be on our side fighting for better school systems, more after school programs, more money for college funding! Where areyou leaders at when thereâ€™s a need to break down to freshman in college on how not to get caught up with credit cards by singing up for an MBNA card, with high interest rates that eventually screw up your credit and makes it that much harder for you to become a homeowner after you graduate college pending you can find a job in your field after youâ€™ve spent all this money in student loans! Where are those seminars? Dubois had it right when he spoke of the Talented Tenth! Rally around us to help teach us about THIS life! Itâ€™s not our fault that the world is messed up and filled with debauchery. Itâ€™s not our fault that our communities are screwed! The problems in our community should not fall on our lap. And if you begin to hold us accountable for simply our words â€“ then I will begin to hold you accountable for your actions; or lack there of. Right is right and wrong is wrong. You as our leaders should have taken a better approach to gaining the attention of those that you are dissatisfied with and had a conversation with them. You donâ€™t scold your child in public without fair warning!

Al Sharpton: You run around towns and cities speaking words of wanting to better our community by cleaning up the airwaves. You hold rallies in front of radio stations saying turn off the music and clean the airwaves. You want to shut down local stations that are playing urban music when most of these local stations house and employ the same people in your community â€“ the black community. When you visit any station in any city (big or small) playing urban/rap music, the staff is generally black. Now if those stations were to ever shut down â€“ where do those employees go? Al, if you are for the people, where was your rally when the 3 college students were executed in New Jersey by black men. Where is the rally atfor those families and that neighborhood??? I donâ€™t see you out there asking for justice yet that incident happened in a black community. If someone was to rap about â€œhow f**** up black on black crime is and how even if you go to college you arenâ€™t safe on the streets and niggaâ€™s aintâ€™ sâ€”â€ â€“ that kind of tone is offensive to you and you want to stop that! If thatâ€™s the truth, then why are you censoring it? No, you need to stop the crime before it happens so that there is no gangster song about a gangster situation.

Oprah: You recently you held a town hall meeting dedicating 2 days of talk to have an open forum about the â€œNappy Headed Hoâ€ comment from Imus. Everyone had their 2cents to say and yet the people that needed to REALLY be there were not at all on your panel of â€˜expertsâ€™. The questions all were about â€œwhy use the word ho or b**** or nigga etcâ€ yet the rappers in question ala Nelly, Snoop, Ludacris werenâ€™t anywhere present on your panel. In my eyes you had all the wrong people on there representing and speaking on behalf of other people. Common is great but heâ€™s not gangsta. If you had a problem with the true content of rap songs then where were those that do that kind of rap

100%? You want to talk about change, and about having us not call women in rap songs â€œbitchesâ€ and â€œhoesâ€ but one thing I noted, you had all men on your panel of executives. Russell is wonderful but heâ€™s not the Zenith when it comes to new school rappers or their new school mentality. Kevin Liles is great but what happened to Sylvia Rhone the head of the label that Nelly is signed to, or Kathy Hughes the head of Radio One or Deborah Lee the head of BET. If the problem really was about women and the â€œbitch, hoâ€ term being used, where were those ladies to speak on their stance on this issue! They are the ones with the ultimate say pulling all the strings and yet they werenâ€™t dully noted as absent from your panel! Oprah you are suppose to protect us, I can find more harm being done to the black community by the movies and sponsors you promote than any rap song.

Just like your son or daughter, niece or nephewâ€¦ rappers are just kids growing into their own. They arenâ€™t always right, but they arenâ€™t always wrong either. If our path is misguided, then help us get back on the right road. Iâ€™m young, Iâ€™m black, and Iâ€™m a hard worker. Iâ€™m from the hood where motherâ€™s leave their kids in the hands of strangers and never look back, Iâ€™ve been with killers, dope dealers, b******, church folk, grandparents, bad parenting from good parents, pushers, junkies, robbers, middleclass workers, but thatâ€™s the life Iâ€™vebeen around. Gunshots and church hymns usually go hand in hand in most neighborhoods. The grim reality for a lot of kids out there living alone is that life is harsh and cold; kids grow up faster than they want to because they are forced too! Kids are growing up in situations that are f***** up. So the songs we listen to mirror the things we see, the things we dream about and the fantasies we have! Donâ€™t change the songs I listen to, change the circumstance from which it comes fromâ€”then the situation will be better!

Growing up in this world of hip hop itâ€™s disheartening to see our â€˜so called leadersâ€™ leave us out to dry. Fine you donâ€™t like what we say. Fine disagree with our choice of topics; however, the things we talk about arenâ€™t new. We didnâ€™t invent the term pimps, pushers, hoes, tricks, doobies, niggaâ€™s and gangstaâ€™s. Hip Hop didnâ€™t create that. Those words were left here for us to use by you guys, your generation. This life we are continuing to live was handed to us by the people before us who didnâ€™t do much to clean it up. There may never be a time that we agree on anything, but there is always room for change. As a family â€“ we will agree to disagree but itâ€™s the synergy in which we do it. If you are on one extreme tangent, and Iâ€™m on another, we will never meet eye to eye. At the same time, I will not allow you to bash, yell, condemn, and have a condescending tone on my source of refugee and happiness. As you leaders call out the hip hop community saying that we are wrong for what we do and how we do it, I am CALLING EACH OF YOU OUT saying you are wrong for what you are doing to us. How dare you guys not call Nelly, Snoop, Lil Wayne, David Banner, Jim Jones, Akon, Rick Ross, Fabulous, 50 cent, Young Buck, Bun B, Too Short and say lets talk this through. Do you even know who ANY of these people are??????? You are so disconnected from us that we donâ€™t even look at you for guidance. If you really want to change something, start by changing your dialogue. Donâ€™t talk at us, talk to us!

-DAVID BANNER

By BUCCS on August 17, 2007 2:36 PM

DAMN THAT WAS TOO TOO REAL I TOTALLY AGREE WITH DAVID BANNER 1000 ERCENT.

By MS HUNNY B on August 17, 2007 4:48 PM

I AM BEHIND HIM TOO! ALL THE RAPPERS NEED TO GET ON THE BANDWAGON TOO!

By NNL on August 18, 2007 3:09 AM

David Banner note was nice it was also long but it had some good points in it. Lloyd Performance was nice I like the suit he had on. Plies and T-Pain was alright so was Richboy.

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By rahsaan on September 5, 2007 3:23 PM

Banner's comments were o.k. The show was awful. I can not believe they are airing this crap on t.v....

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