Rap Music

RBG Street Scholars Think Tank's Purpose:
This Educational Program and Research Project is Dedicated to Further Building the Hip Hop--Black Liberation Movement Connection by Integrating Conscious Digital Edutainment with A Scholarly Self Directed Learning Environment.

N.B. June 3, 2007: From this point forward all post in the article /group blog section without thumbnails will be delete by the editor/RBG Street Scholar. This is because such posts compromise the formating of the zine. Furthermore, we refuse to get side tracked with eurocentric rap/pop culture. So, if posts don't jell with the RBG Movement / Rap Genre and the academic nature of the zine,again, they will be deleted. This is not a democracy, but an educational research project; and as such we intend to stay on point regarding our edutainment mission, goals and objectives. Please don't allow the title to make you get it twisted, the full title is RBG Hip Hop/Conscious Rap Music Wikizine.
Anyone who has a problem with this please start your own zine, it's free.
Asante(Thank You) for your contributions.

This Zine is a Hip Hop / Rap Music guide with photos,audio, videos, links, feeds, news, comments, group blog and forum. Special focus on Hip Hop History, Underground /Indie and the Positive and Socio-politically Conscious Rap Genre / Artists, RBG Style; along with links and extensions to each of the integral aspects of hip hop culture. Including Knowledge, DJing, MCing, Break Dancing and Graffiti.
Please take some time to browse.Your contributions are welcome and encouraged if you're looking for a scholarly, and at the same time entertaining, place to expose your work and help build a comprehensive multi-media resource for others to learn from. It's what we make it--a project in evolution and always under construction.The more of us that have something to share on the subject contribute, the better this resource will be for those wanting to do research.

"Of All The Disciplines Of Study, History Is Best Qualified To Reward All Research". Thus, let's commence the discourse with a brief historical overview.

The Political Origins of Hip-hop:

> Historically poetry/ rap/ spoken word, literature and music have been combine to play a pivotal role in black progress and power, rebellion, revolt and revolution.

Political Rap Started With the Afrikan Talking Drum.

> Because of the perceived potential of talking drums to "speak" in a tongue unknown to slave masters / traders and thus to incite rebellion, in 1838 these and other drums were banned from use by Africans in the United States.

> H “Rap” Brown, known to many of the 1960's/70's Civil Rights and Black Power Movements as the original master rapper. Rap, a given nickname, comes from his being such an eloquent speaker he would be rappin. For more see Dr. Errol Henderson on Black Nationalism and Rap Music and our Hip Hop Audio History.

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Hip-hop's first presidential candidate, Jared Ball

Written by RBGStreetScholar on

From: Davey D

Date: Aug 6, 2007 12:36 PM

Well folks looks like we don't have to hope and pray that Barack or Hillary or anyone sees and embraces our issues. We have someone who has put their hat into the arena. While folks are trying to sort out who they should nominate, we should definitely get behind one of our own. Major props to Jared Ball. If folks aren't familiar with Ball and his work check out Freemix Radio.

Davey D

Statement of Candidacy for the Green Party Nomination for President

Greetings,

My name is Jared Ball and I am currently running for the Green Party’s presidential nomination. I have accepted an invitation to do this for several reasons. First among them are the horrendous and entirely unacceptable conditions of a majority of the people of this nation and world. To best address those conditions a new party is needed, a new style of politics is needed and we are developing just that kind of campaign. While looking to bring something new we are also looking to do so on the basis of some old and forgotten (or suppressed) politics. First among them are those of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. whose genuine goals have long been forcibly hidden beneath the frozen and isolated description of a dream. But 2008 being the 40th anniversary of his assassination demands that we run such a campaign on the basis of King’s truly revolutionary positions of calling for radical political organization around an end to systems which reproduce white supremacy, militarism and gross inequalities in wealth and access to society’s benefits. That campaign is here.

I have long been disillusioned with electoral politics and since 1992 only voted for members of the Green Party or those whose unaffiliated status necessitated that I write them onto the ballot. I joined the DC Statehood/Green Party several years ago specifically because it was the only electoral political party overtly, as clear by name, in favor of statehood for those colonized in the nation’s capitol and a broader platform which speaks to the continuing needs of a majority of the nation and world. I am not running to further bolster the mythology of the vote as panacea. I am not running for simple symbolism. I am running because the true majority of women, the poor, Black, Latino and Indigenous people need organization, need a place to cohere and the Green Party is the structure with the expressed platform that can provide just that kind of liberated space and I am the candidate that can properly articulate such a need. The party’s freedom from corporate dominance, its commitment to social justice and redistribution of society’s wealth and service and its call for diversity are far more substantive that those false claims of such made with varying degree by other parties. It is time to build a genuine populist party, one built on the proper politics of those who, like Kwame Ture once made clear, are no longer willing to accept the lesser of evil because, “we will not vote for evil, period.”

To that end we are developing a campaign which seeks to break convention by centering attention and focus on culture, those most oppressed and those who have long since given up on the vote and are looking for a new politics and new organizations. We are working with “the mayor of DC hip-hop” Head-Roc and others to provide a hip-hop and progressive artist tour which will reach out to the Indigenous, Black, Latino and poor communities who will help us develop new bases of support for the Green Party. This style of campaign will be brash and powerful representing the necessarily unorthodox politics we need and which are represented best by the Green Party. We are not targeting Democrats, Republicans or others to “steal” votes. We are not engaged in an effort to upset one or another major party candidacy as we do not see either as being able to legitimately represent the needs of the true majority and, therefore, see no reason to assist in the sabotage or ascendance of one or the other. And while we are not expecting to “win” the presidency we are expecting to help build a party to build community, society and a new world.

We are looking to build the original and genuine Rainbow Coalition of Fred Hampton, a coalition that breaks racial barriers and fosters unity along real material needs as opposed to the empty rhetoric of hate and division. Success in this case will be additional membership for the Green Party from the tens of millions of eligible but dormant voters. Success will be in demonstrating the difference of the party through the radical difference in our presentation and campaign approach. Voting or not voting are actions which by themselves, while equally political, are also equally insufficient for change. Real change can only come from organization on the basis of a truly radical platform such as offered by the Green Party. This is why I am running.

For more information, visit voxunion.com where video of my initial statement of candidacy can be found along with future campaign updates and methods of contact. Thank you for your time and support. Your party and politics are here. As Fred Hampton said, to you I say peace, if you are willing to fight for it.

Jared A. Ball

Brief Biographical Background

I am a member of the DC Statehood/Green Party, an assistant professor of communications studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD., an independent journalist, a radio host with WPFW 89.3 FM in Pacifica Radio Washington, DC and founder of FreeMix Radio: The Original Mixtape Radio Show – a freely distributed monthly hip-hop mixtape dedicated to the practice of emancipatory journalism. Most importantly I am a husband and a father of two. I am a navy veteran who served during Desert Shield/Desert Storm, a graduate of Frostburg State University with a degree in history, a graduate of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University with a masters degree in Africana Studies and a graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park where I earned a doctorate in journalism and media studies. I have been a bartender, pizza delivery man and a high-school teacher in DC’s public school system before settling in at Morgan State University. I am the son of a European-descended Jewish woman and an African-descended Black man whose politics, class (caste) and commitment to human rights has made me intimately aware of the social forces at play maintaining the kinds of gross inequality and oppression which continues to be the basis of most human interaction and which must be dealt with systemically before we can expect any better a society or world. Most importantly, I am husband to a powerful and dynamic woman from Panama and father to our two children. In short, my background and politics while diverse are unified in a belonging and commitment to Black, Latin, Indigenous and oppressed communities whose justice must be made central if this country is to improve.

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