It’s Tricia. Dr. Rose If You’re Nasty

My god I think I love this woman.

I read Dr. Tricia Rose’s first book, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, a couple years out of high school and it was one of the first pieces of critical text to really make the hard connections between Hip Hop, black inner city culture, technology and social justice.

Judging from this video , recorded at the Columbia College a few months back, it looks like Dr. Rose is still dropping jewels on the sometimes staid halls of academia.  Here she discusses the idea of a post racial America in the time of President B-Rock.

Props to The Black Report for the link.

Filed under: Activism, Authors, Books, Hip Hop, Politics

B-Rock the Vote!

Alright we all love Obama, and rappers far and wide have been throwing their support behind the future Mr. President for the last year, but this video is officially the best Hip Hop for Obama video ever. Really. EVER.

Created by Keith From Up The Block, a comedian and actor out of Philly, the vid jacks George Kranz’s Din Daa Daa and flips the fuck out of it with B-Rock Obama, Illery Clinton and crew in an all out B-Boy battle with McPain and his folk. There are nods to Beat Street, Purple Rain and early Hip Hop culture all throughout this piece and dude’s BRRRAACK beat boxing is friggin’ genius.

And for all you newbies, here’s the original song and the clip that made it famous. From Breakin 2 Electric Boogalo:

Filed under: Activism, Hip Hop, Politics , Barack Obama, Hip Hop, Keith From Up The Block

Ron Dellums Endorses Clinton

Clinton: Act Like Americans

 People  |   Kwan Booth  |  October 1, 2007 at 6: 53 PM

From Novometro.com

Mayor Dellums officially endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton’s bid for president Monday afternoon and she returned the favor by naming Mr. Dellums Chair of her campaign’s National Urban Policy Committee.

The announcement was made at Laney College Student Center shortly after the two toured the campus together. Mr. Dellums said the decision to endorse Ms. Clinton was made “after an exhaustive review of everyone’s global agenda,” and that he was impressed by Ms. Clinton’s understanding of the problems facing the nation’s cities.

“Oakland is sitting on top of a 100-year-old collapsing infrastructure,” he told the crowd of hundreds of supporters and students, predicting that the public-private partnership he envisioned under Clinton’s presidency would be one of the “greatest public works projects in modern history.” 

Click to read more.

Filed under: News, Oakland, Politics , Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Oakland, President, Ron Dellums