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Hello all. Not sure where to post a general greeting so I'm just getting in where I fit in. I've had an account since last year and had intentions of joining the party then but got sidetracked by the fascination/horror of the election season. I also was in the process of preparing to exit the restaurant business of which I've been involved with for many years. I'm happy to talk about that and whatever else. Just don't ask me to cook. (Although I make potato salad you can trust.) Congratulations on a great community and I look forward to participating.

Sure. The last ten and a half years I operated a quick-service neighborhood restaurant, which we opened when our children were both very young - under three years old. Long story short the demands of a 7 day a week operation, scarcity of good help (no matter how much you pay them) and desire to reclaim our weekends and family time outweighed the money and quasi-fame of restaurant ownership. For now, anyway. We also owned/operated a catering business some years back before the kids came along and were in and out of W-2 gigs so we've been on both sides. I still and will always push for entrepreneurship! Freedom! Whatever business category one pursues I recommend a THOROUGH amount of planning and soul searching. And here's the trick: Never go in with an attitude of "Will it work?" Will I have enough customers/clients/contracts? Your attitude MUST be, "How will I handle all the damn business I'll be getting?" And that's the ONLY attitude you should have. Generally things will work out... All the above was the subject of my book/blog "Restaurant Winners" (shameless plug).

PRETTY MUCH.

Yes! @Troy that's what @Cynique and I have both touched upon. It's about access to experiences... and I've not shied away from the underbelly of Black culture. But I must admit - when I started crafting my response to @Educate2Empower I remembered the difference between those who idolize musicians and those who are entertained by them -and the difference is access to other experiences... Both Cynique and I are veteran journalist - in that vocation you don't have the luxury to remain in a bubble - And I got stories - these are tame... But besides working with at-risk children when I was only 16 years old... I've interviewed child prostitutes (male and female) who shared a day in their life with me. These were in-depth stories for sweeps (Nielsen ratings month) because we wanted the most viewers. (Now you understand why I left broadcast news to go work for a nonprofit that would help these children) But I digress. And just like Cynique wrote, those female emcees imitated them - not the other way around. Again, what we experience, paints our world and colors our perspective. So, if Cardi B has influence over certain members of the black community - it's because she's mirroring a subculture of the community. She's familiar persona. Maybe the target of our rage shouldn’t be directed at SONY but those who patronize the children working the streets ... Get rid of the pedophiles; and we remove the child prostitute's market. Then the Cardi B's of the world will be foreign to the subculture as they are to me and those like me. .

Hello!!! I just finished this book "Transitioning from employee to entrepreneur" - Do you feel comfortable sharing your experience of exiting your business? If yes, please share. Thank you.

I'm the WTF kinda person too... Right now - just in this moment because it will most likely change, is this - I get the we were born in sin part of the scriptures. Humans are cursed with thinking too damn much. We are so curious ; that our curiosity is killing us and everything around us. I checked out pictures of capybara and realized that most animals, reptiles, birds, et al are social creatures. When they see us humans they' probably say "RUN, the upright- 4-leggeds" are crazy AF...." I agree, @Cynique, when I shut off my "why" tape - life is filled with wonder and surprise - just this morning I went out with my pooch - and I saw a bird against the dark skies and the bird (bat) was illuminated.. I betcha you he or his kind never sought to find out why he glows in the dark - they never experimented on him... and said this could come in handy when we try to prolong life even though we will die.. He was just chill probably saying in response "Really, I glow you don't say." as he flapped his wings to get away.

@Educate2Empower I don't know much about you so I don't want to assume anything. If I get it wrong, charge it to my responding to your words. First, as one who has traveled the world, and not just the tourist parts either, globally, people recognize Hip Hop as entertainment. Most young people, globally and here at home, support Hip Hop because, as @Cynique mentioned, it's edgy. As for Hip Hop or emcees dictating our individual style via corporate whims; I was born and raised in New York, the fashion runway of the world; reported news in the Ohio Valley, where I lived for 10 years; moved to Illinois and worked in Chicago, where most of our work was in the predominately black neighborhoods; and my next job there, took me all over the world. I can say, with full confidence, no one dressed like they were spitting rhymes in a video or on stage. Well, I went to a few concerts in Chicago, and there's a segment of the black culture that dress like Superfly of the 70s but that was the extent of the costuming. The rest of the world and even most of us here in America separate entertainment from daily life. If we mimic any type of dress, it's what we see our peers wear. It's a tribal thing. Now, when you speak of "collectively", I'm not sure what you mean. Collectively, most us work to make our lives better and better for our children. Individually, we seek to contribute to the world what we ourselves desire. Good, bad or indifferent - we give what we desire. It is clear, you represent the world you live and I represent the world I live in. I hadn't noticed Cardi B before Troy posted here in the forum. My daughters never mentioned her. They are too busy making their mark. So, it's not an age thing, either. For the record, Cardi B is contractor of corporate America. She's not employed by a record company therefore, she is not a representative of corporate America. She represents herself. Just because she's black doesn't make her an influencer of black women either. Corporate America, Starbucks, specifically, just named Rosalind Brewer, (former CEO of Sam's Club) as their COO ... She's a graduate of Spelman College, a college for women, (mostly black women) She is CORPORATE AMERICA... And she definitely no one's fool. Ms. Brewer provides a pleasing image for Corporate America. Or did you not notice her? Here's the crux; my daughters are millennials; and none of them listen to the radio. In fact, most millennials don't listen to the radio... when African Americans listen to music Nielsen's stats indicate it looks like this AFRICAN-AMERICANS' MUSICAL PREFERENCES Blacks demonstrate a strong preference for the genres of music they helped to create and have been closely associated with for decades. But hell, millennials don't even buy music. They stream their music. I stream music! If the group/audience you're dealing with is under the spell of corporate media; chances are Cardi b is the least of their problems. Maybe they don't have access to the outside world. If so, the tragedy is they're left behind. There are many organizations, such as YWCA, Boys and Girls Club, local libraries and individuals to help folks get out of the proverbial cave. Getting access to outside world for those left behind is one goal I think most of us can get behind, collectively.

We differIn simpler terms, existentialism is a philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility. The belief is that people are searching to find out who and what they are throughout life as they make choices based on their experiences, beliefs, and outlook.

@E. Marie LambertYou're overlooking TV. There are all kinds of programs aired on it, showing black people in roles that aren't negative. You're one of these self-appointed reformers who think blacks should be monolithic, tailored to an image you want to dictate. The black community is and always will be diverse and unique . We are not clay, waiting to be molded by do-gooders or pawns invented by white corporations. We are originals who are imitated just as much as we emulate. The hip-hop/rap nation spawned by urban innercities is what it is; an edgy, ghetto-fabulous sub culture, and all the lecturing in the world is not going to make it miraculously vanish. Plus, you act as though rebel elements don't exist in other ethnicities. Outcasts of every stripe make up the crazy quilt of society. That's what reality is all about in an imperfect world. You dismiss what Mel says because it's incompatible with your agenda. But what she claims does have substance inasmuch as she speaks from experience. You are apparently on a mission, and good luck in your goals couched in the tired ol patented rhetoric that has never materialized because the black race is too fluid. But the cream does rise to the top; that's the best you can hope for. Meanwhile, this elder will continue to use the word "nigga" as I see fit. I offer no apology for something I've been doin all my life, just like I've been listening to your empty "formula for success" for at least 65 years. 'Even believed in it once. But, - press on and pardon me if I've become jaded.

A lot of interesting POVs here but based on our (Educate2Empower) monitoring of the entertainment industry over the past 15+ years, it's clear that those in power WANT the image of Blacks to be just as it is today. No empowerment on a global scale. We look like fools overall. Yes, many in the entertainment industry as artists appear to be making money. But what are most doing with it and encouraging others to do with it? You got - spend, spend, spend. Very little push to build our communities, our schools, our entrepreneurial ventures, our businesses, etc. The industry's promotion of Cardi B types is BY DESIGN because that's the language that keeps Black women weak ("money moves" like how she's spitting it, mean very little in the big picture, especially with all the F, B, N, P, H words she's using all throughout the song). Do you really think Blacks in general - and Black women in particular - are coming through with an image of educated, powerful, and empowered with that song?!? We're not - we're not supposed to - and that's BY DESIGN! @Mel Hopkins talks about the success of Black women and some of it is true but if we can't COLLECTIVELY (with group power) get a better image out there, then what power is there really? Are our schools flourishing with all of these women she speaks of doing their thing? Are our Black kids getting a "helluva" education out here with all of these people who are doing their thing (or shall I say "making money moves")? Let's deal with what and how we're doing COLLECTIVELY? Right now, the record industry, including the companies that control what gets radio airplay, are the ones who are basically dictating what image gets out. The Cardi Bs, Jay-Zs, Kanyes, Rick Rosses, Lil Waynes, Drakes, etc. are all BY DESIGN because they represent no threat to the establishment with the music they put out and that's ALLOWED to go global. Really tune into what the lyrics are saying. The E2E video posted in this thread ("The N-Word's Multi-Layered Power Structure") touches on it. Unfortunately, we have our elders such as @Cynique blowing up the n-word too and that's been part of the problem with the global escalation of this derogatory racial slur. Whose advantage does it work to ultimately to have Black folks being programmed while running around calling ourselves Ns all day, everyday and jamming to it at parties, walking down the street with Beats headphones, while driving, etc.? Certainly not ours. Anyhow, how we progress COLLECTIVELY and what we gain COLLECTIVELY is what matters. One group of us doing well and a handful of entertainers making money (or "money moves") will NEVER make a successful group of people who are empowered and really running things within their communities. We've got a ways to go but if we really pulled it all together and stopped standing for/defending nonsense, then it would take no time to re-route things where it's heading to COLLECTIVE success.

@Troy i still say we are not on the same wave length. Of course i brought up the post office because its work force is such a broad cross section of the black populace. Why wouldn't i inject it into the point i was making about my not being in a bubble when it came to the seamy street life that is a part of the Rap fabric. My exposure to Rap goes back to the Last Poets. i never got deep into it because my taste leans toward other forms of music. In regard to your point, It's never been any secret that rappers sprang from an environment of poverty, or that record companies saw the potential for profit by marketing their "art-imitating-life" music. Bottom line, young people of all races and classes got in sync with the cadence of its spits and the vibe of its rhymes. Why did they do this? Maybe precisely because they were young people. And they were bored with their monotonous lives. Who knows? Time may or not bring change. Do you know for sure everything you say about Kaepernick is authentic? Yes, the media contributed to things rocketing out of proportion. For this i thank them. and i thank him for creating chaos. Because order only benefits the system.

That's because you do not embrace existentialism. "what the fuck" embodies many reactions including one of wonder and surprise.

@TroyWell, once again, we are on different wave lengths.The post office where i was employed during the late 60s up to the mid-90s was where people from all classes worked, and this included, hard-drinkin, drug-takin street people, - sly skeezers and slick playas. To me, Rap, the subject we're discussing, is about the street life and all of its hustle and grit - a spin-off of hip hop and its "keepin it real" credo. It's not about poverty per se. It's about the way people shrewdly dealt with it, the kind of action "street" people are familiar with. Are rap videos about poverty? They appeal to people who live in the inner-cities, because they identify with the tawdry dangerous side of it. And need i remind you that white kids also listened to this music, living vicariously through it. Black college kids listen to it, too, without emulating it. Also running concurrently with Rap's popularity were Prince and Michael Jackson, Sade and Maxwell, Boyz to Men and TLC. This is what the many-faceted music world is about. Record companies making money. Recording artists gaining fame. And the beat goes on... i am not "enamoured" with Kaepernick but I am compatible with what he is protesting. You should know by now how disenchanted i am with amerika and the racism and hypocrisy which that deceptive flag and jive-ass anthem symbolize. Jesse Jackson and Farrakhan are from another era. Their day has passed. i need fresh blood to feed my militancy.

@TroyYou assume i don't know about the hood and what's going on in the clubs. I don't live in a bubble because, unlike you, i've always been interested in learning a little bit about a lot of things and over the years i've been in circumstances to do this. i grew up in what was the black neighborhood of a white town that was a true cross section of the country at large. I associated with just as many rough kids as refined ones. i was never a snob because i had a taste for what was edgy. i worked at the Post Office for almost 30 years. So don't tell me i don't know about common black people. When my husband was away serving in the Air Force, i lived down the street from an American Legion hall, a raunchy little hole in the wall that couldn't have been more typical of nitty gritty black night life. Amid a bevy of circulating hoochie mamas, I'd sit at the bar smoking Pall Malls and let "down-to-earth" niggas buy me drinks and engage me in interesting conversations before i observed my curfew and made my way back home to my empty bed. Even to this day, i will occasionally venture out with my daughter to a hot spot, just to observe the scene. I've mentioned that i had a 22-year old grandson killed in a drive-by because he got too intrigued with the street life. i may have mentioned that i have another Porshe-driving grandson who is a music producer making big bucks supplying beats for rappers, as well as background music for commercials. One of my granddaughters just entered the University of Indiana on a scholarship. Another one, who is gay, works as a sheriff's deputy. i talk all the time about my ghetto, lil Wayne-loving grandson who keeps me abreast of what's going on in Baby Mama/Baby Daddy land.( And, yes, Pioneer, he's the one who introduced me to the word "thot".) And then there are my children: one son who is preacher, another who is a weed-smoking, book-reading working class stud, the youngest one a comic book publisher. There's my upwardly mobile account exec daughter, my adventurous older one who relies on Jesus to keep her safe. i also have a niece who is a TV anchor woman in Chicago, a nephew who was a feature editor of EBONY magazine. You name it. My life is full of diversity! ( And , yes, I also watch TMZ to get the lowdown on the entertainment scene, a program which enjoys the reputation of being very reliable in its sources and rumor debunking.) So don't blow me off as living in a bubble when you tune out everything about the music scene except what you want to believe. Before you started mansplaining this aspect, i said that music reflects what trending in the black clubs, stating further that artists pick up on this and transform it into music. That's what goes on in with rap music, which is just one venue in the spectrum of black music. You seem unable to get past the idea that just as the black community is not monolithic in its values and life style, neither is black music. Not every young black person is mesmerized by Rap. Many are able to like this music without living it. Rap is what it is. it's not going anywhere. And the millennial discretionary black and bi-racial children of the black middleclass will expediently follow in their parents' footsteps, while the black underclass will continue to enjoy themselves, twerking down at the club between dodging bullets. Get out of your bubble and deal with this. And oh, yes, there is currently a revival of natural hair styles trending in black culture. Is this something the white corporate world is dictating? Obviously you and i will never agree on Colin Kaepernick so it should come as no surprise that i reject your POV about him just as you dismiss mine. Back in the 1960s, the Vietnam war inspired anti-establishment protests by the counter-culture community of hippies, college students and white liberals, and a lot of this was provoked by the profiteering of the military industrial complex as well as American hegemony Bending the knee is about exposing the intrinsic racism in patriotism, a ubiquitous racism that exists in the slave trade of the NFL and NBA, as well as police brutality with its undertones of white supremacy. They're all a part of the same matrix. So there is a difference in what the bending the knee demonstration has ripped the lid off of. It's a black thing. And the great silent white majority can't abide niggas messin' with their beloved striped flag with its ugly checkered history. If nothing else emerges from demonstrations by those who 45 calls "sonofabitches', it will become clear that their lives don't matter, and black folks just have to learn to live with this, and sometimes die because of it.

@Troy Are your daughters influenced by Nicki Minaj and Cardi B? None of the young women in my family are. Believe it or not there are millions of black women who can separate fantasy from reality. They can watch and enjoy these performers without emulating them in their day to day lives. Of course many others do, but they know how to be "thots" on their own. They're who the entertainers are emulating. This rhetoric that you and Pioneer are dispensing is the same ol-same ol people have been spouting since the 1980 videos with half naked booty-shakin background dancers. Everybody knows that record companies are manipulative and mostly concerned about their bottom lines But i still think black tastes are geared to rather than dictated by corporations, who just give fans what they already like and what is trending in black clubs. @Pioneer1Most young sistas don't relate to white "Becky's" like Taylor Swift because she just isn't their cup of tea.They, instead, prefer artists like Alicia Keyes and Rihanna and Jennifer Hudson, who represent a different genre and have huge followings. Furthermore, white Katie Perry and Miley Cyrus' performances and lyrics are very edgy, vulgar and anything but wholesome. Or, are black girls anymore corrupted than the white teen-aged girls texting nudies of themselves to their high school boyfriends. I don't know why an old lady like me has to remind you guys that this is 2017. BTW, Troy, no surprise that i don't think Colin Kaepernick's protest is a "fiasco". It has opened up a whole can of worms and ripped the lid off of white America's blind loyalty to a flag that is "exclusive" rather than "inclusive". Kaepernick's original protest against police brutality cannot be separated from all of the other issues that have arisen because they are all at the root of racism in a country whose flag does not represent justice and equality for all. Just ask Puerto Rico! The knee-bending is, of course, dividing the country, but it time for the boat to be rocked and for the chips to fall where they may. And what's so bad about the NFL being put on the hot seat? This organization where 90 percent of the players are black gladiators who have been bought, sold, and traded like chattel, - highly paid employees entertaining white spectators, but never allowed a stake in the ownership ranks. Neither the NFL or NBA deserve to be protected or exonerated. Well, this board is back to business as usual. Conflicting opinions.

No redeeming value in Cardi B's ode to herself, braggin' 'bout bling bought with tainted wealth, lookin for validation and hoping to impress, unable to conceal what caused her distress in the past life vows of a determined gonna-be filled with the dreams of a strivin wanna-be. No matter how much she repeats her chant, her hollow victory is a pathetic rant, a yearning to be crowed by fame when all that awaits is her turn in a game where playas win at being lame.