CDBurns

Talib is one of the Conscious emcees so it makes perfect sense that he was interviewed in Ferguson during the marches. I'm just looking at the idea that he wrote that lyric and then decides to lend his voice to a movement. This is the problem with these guys taking the mantle of activist. They want to be more than just an emcee, but they also want to show that they are apolitical since they think this shows how far removed from the system they are. It's a very flawed way of approaching the system and breaking it down. I had a long Facebook convo with a guy today and yesterday who was panning the upcoming film Selma because it is produced by Harpo Studios and he had a problem with 12 Years and The Butler. This guy is of the hip hop generation, my generation and yours Troy. I explained that the story of Selma has been all but wiped from the history books and that in popular culture only the group U2 has created a song in the last 20 years about Bloody Sunday. I also explained that the sister who is the director Ava Duvernay is one of the most important new directors in film and that she has done more to promote Black cinema in her short time with her AFFRM movement. She has created art and that this will be her first major film release and that talking it down before it comes out is not fair. More important, Facebook is now being indexed by Google and utilized in searches. This means that a person looking for info will now have Facebook conversations as a potential source. I stated all of these things because while those of us that consider ourselves conscious do a great disservice by not fully analyzing the situation. Talib created that lyric over ten years ago, on a song called the Beautiful Struggle. it's a beautifully composed song with thoughtful lyrics, but in today's climate those words undercut his ability to successfully convey his position in Ferguson. It also may have unfortunately created a situation where the people following his lead may have, just maybe, chose to listen to the direction of his opinion in music. He is definitely an artist with a lot to say, but his own voice betrayed the people who wanted to fight for... which tells us that the generation before us has done a very poor job of preparing the next generation to understand the struggle.

The poetry thing was with a college course, lol. I did a slightly different approach with high school students though. Interestingly enough, poetry actually provides the perfect access into literature and strengthens the common core better than anything that literature could do. The only book that really does use this method is Cane by Toomer. The book utilizes every aspect of literature in it's disjointed narrative. Like you said that's a different conversation. I can't wait to hear what you think about the Digital nation video. As far as the net giving us what we want, which is in turn what is profitable, I think that's a chicken or the egg conversation. If you give the people good stuff they don't have a choice but to watch it. ,The problem is they don't give us the good stuff. Well they do, but we don't watch it.

My wife and I went to the polls last week and walked straight in and voted. No line at all... nothing. The people working the tables were three old White women taking the information to get your card and the people assisting with the completion and acceptance of the card back were three old black women. The neighborhood I'm in is about 80% Black so those were the people "not" voting. When we got back to the car we just kind of sighed and said, we did the best that we could do. I then went on a rant about fixing the only thing I had control over; my inner circle. If I can make my children aware of the importance of being socially, politically, educationally and business aware then I've corrected steering on my family ship. When I write or put my information out there that I believe, I am also effecting change. This is the best that I can do in a society of apathetic people who are so afraid to ruffle feathers and try anything new that they remain inconsequential. Black folks only participate in the popular mediums. They do online surveys for Beyonce's dress or Olivia Pope's choice in men. They vote for the best color of the latest Jordan because for them those things matter and they can discuss and feel involved. But it's not even disenfranchisement that has caused our current lack of political involvement. It's simply the lack of the entertainment value in politics. At least White people use their entertainment (Fox News) to stimulate their political and social activity. They may not know jackshit about what they are voting for, but they do know how to follow the lead of their on air personalities. Our on air personalities who could at least get people out there to vote and be involved in a "hot" topic are non-existent. Right now we can't even use entertainment to keep Black folks aware. At least James Brown stood for something, Trey Songz, Maxwell, Jill Scott, our new entertainers do nothing to be a part of the political dialogue. The only people who could say something in entertainment and possibly be heard (rappers) make songs with lyrics that say, "I don't fuck with politics, I don't even follow it," but they are in Ferguson fighting for rights (Talib Kweli said the lyric above). Talk about poor guidance.

I completely agree with everything you've said. In regard to research being skewed it all relates to the NSA and the fact that most people are conspiracy theorists. People tend to avoid things that they "think" can be monitored. Since this is the case they will discuss the most ignorant stuff in the world on Facebook, but very rarely approach serious topics for fear that the "man" can track them. I'm sure you know what I mean. It only stands to reason that if the discussion is an analysis of the Snowden issue, people are not going to talk about it on Facebook. Besides that, it's not sensational enough. We should definitely be able to benefit from Black points of business, but the reality is we have to go where we think people are shopping. I can only use shoes as a point of reference. As many people that have bought from my Amazon store, I can't get them to buy directly from my site. It's like pulling teeth. People are brainwashed into believing there is safety in Amazon and Ebay as opposed to the individually owned websites. It's crazy. I can have a 300 dollar shoe on my site for 250 with free shipping and people will still buy it from Amazon. Hey I'm a lurker so you know you're right in that regard and that Facebook article I wrote proves it. People will share and like things and the only way we know is if we check our stats.

I somewhat agree with you, but the research is skewed... then again what research isn't? Social media does allow for a lot of debate and it is quite active with people posting links and responding when it is an issue they are passionate about. This is so much the case that I've often hidden people to avoid being drawn into a lengthy back and forth on Facebook with people who are simply ranting and want to be heard, but are not open to a solid debate. I think your best point is definitely the fact that it is fleeting. This is the problem with social media. It is lightning fast and continues moving along and conversations are eventually lost within a day or two as the next new "like" or "share" is posted. This is why I really liked your suggestions a while back in regard to using Disqus where your responses can be cataloged and supported with stats and you can build an audience through responding. I think the message board is taking a hit primarily because people don't have the ability to write nuanced or informed long responses. This goes back to your "stupid" post as well. I'm definitely realizing the benefits of actively blogging in regard to building my writing career and with the addition of Disqus and my interaction on various websites, Spreecast, youtube, etc my site is indeed developing a nice amount of traffic. My decision to begin building reviews around my Amazon Associates account is also paying for a tank of gas each month. I guess ultimately everything runs its course, and the message board is becoming a lost treasure. I do appreciate all of your efforts though and I am making a real effort to participate. I only wish others would do something similar. That would be the difference maker. Those who are already aware help, but there have to be new converts from lurkers to writers. Is that a call to arms? Yep... come on lurkers share the page on your blogs and let's rebuild those web chains from the 90s.

That's exactly what that digital nation video is addressing Troy. You have to watch that. What that video explains is how people are not able to actually write papers anymore. Because I watched that video, I adjusted my teaching methods. This didn't take much for me because I have always taught in chunks because it's easier to build writers in this way. What I also did was allowed technology to be an active feature of the classroom, only after reading aloud and delving into various texts. This created a reward based system. These methods were not fully accepted by older teachers, but the younger teachers attempted to copy, but because they had gone through "teaching credential" programs they were automatons. When I say that the kids are gaining ground in other ways, it has to be pulled out of them. In a 9th grade English course I taught, we read Romeo and Juliet aloud. We then created our own scripts. The best script we took and shot a film that the students had to edit and present to the school using a variety of software. The experience overall was very good and those students also had to write 2 to 3 page papers on Romeo & Juliet using MLA format. I state all of this to say that the students are not dumber, they simply aren't being reached in a way that is both entertaining and educating. The teacher, the overworked, underpaid, teacher has to become an entertainer and technological wonder in the classroom. They also have to stand up and read aloud and kill off the independent reading crap. Students get excited over literature when it has something that connects them. One of my favorite poems to teach is John Donne's "Garden of Love". Why? Because I draw pictures on the board and turn the garden into a triangle shape (pubic hair) and make the path to the garden the split between a woman's legs and then draw curves for the outside of the park as we are reading and discussing the poem (this is at the college level). I then draw a gate at the point of the triangle and barbs and when I'm done drawing there is always a gasp because everyone can see what it is and then they can make a connection to sex in the poetry. Everyone puts their phones down on this and this allows me to move into Shakespeare's sonnets and we have great conversations. Once again though, I didn't go to a teaching credential program. I actually studied writing so I have a passion for it. Which leads me back to teachers who don't love their subject matter and who aren't creative educators. How can you expect to keep the attention of students when you simply don't know enough about the material? We want better readers but we won't put linguists in the schools and we don't require English teachers to take creative writing courses. You have teachers teaching Old English or Victorian Lit and they know what an iamb is BARELY!!!! and they know nothing about dactyls, trochees, and spondees. They can barely tell you what the repetition of vowel sounds is called. So how can we blame a distracted student when the teacher, even old ones, don't really know what they are teaching? Social media is just another distraction, but the blame of dumber people lies solely in the people who are educating. (Now I feel bad about selling shoes and quitting teaching, lol)

A few articles about the digital chunk syndrome: http://techliberation.com/2010/02/03/som-thoughts-on-pbs-digital-nation-documentary/ http://losangeleslink.blogspot.com/2010/02/digital-nation-on-pbs.html This is the discussion I was addressing about education in the social media age. It's a must watch show if you can find it. I'm still writing and doing research on the ineffectiveness of Facebook to prove a point. Which is bit off topic but here it is and it is following suit with what I've known and what Troy has been preaching about social media. http://www.cbpublish.com/business-why-you-shouldnt-worry-about-your-likes/ I'm in the middle of launching my new apparel for my running shoe company so my interaction is sparse here, but I try to check in from time to time. I'm also going to finally begin working on being a writer again so I spend a lot of my time on CBP. I bring this up because I want to explain why I haven't been dropping in. Troy is right that we are getting dumber, but I still have to say that in a lot of ways kids are getting smarter in regard to technology. I guess the teacher in me has to find a light somewhere. But the realist in me has pulled my kids out of school and we homeschool our children now, which speaks volumes about what I really think. It's a difficult thing to admit, but the reality is that we are getting dumber and it is by choice. But our dialogue here is what has to be done to help change thing. If we interact with one person we have done our jobs and that is the only way real change occurs anyway.

I do realize that people are getting dumber, but I also see a lot of creativity in a lot of kids now that wasn't there. I guess I'm looking at the total picture in relation to me, as I said, and I'm witnessing a lot of people who are accomplishing some pretty cool things. Now granted a lot of it is in fashion and design, but nonetheless things are happening. I can give examples. I had a student who helped me shoot a movie when I was teaching high school. All of the teachers there were saying the same things that you are saying in regard to social media and kids being dumber. I tend to think the kids and adults are waiting on better instructors. This kid with his classmates, wrote a script, then using editing tools they created a short film which is something I don't think our generation could have done or even would have attempted to do. Are they dumber possibly, but stats never tell the full story. Are the teachers worse? In my head yes. I'm not special or gifted, but I'm connected (was connected as an educator) so I was able to pull things out of my students that other teachers couldn't. But that's not the fault of social media. I've talked before about digital chunks in writing and that students now can't write without checking Facebook. This is not going to change. It is the evolution of our society, but I don't blame social media, I adjust and teach in a way that models the choppiness they are used to, and then I can create longer blocks of attention over time. Where you see stupidity is where I see a kid like Nick Conyers who parlayed social media into a viable source of income shooting video for people here in Memphis. While it is true that those platforms would have existed without social media, we all would have had to pay to play in some form to get people to our places of choice so that they could find us. The only thing different now is that social media outlets are garnering all of our money, but honestly some people are better off and some people aren't. Overall, I've never really had a lot of success as a writer, but I never, never really gave it the time it deserved and that's on me. I've already started planning out a strategy and we will definitely be able to tell if social media works in regard to books. I wrote some really strong articles about Facebook and it's ability to really garner business for small business people, but I recently wrote another report that almost contradicted everything I said negative about it. That's the way these things are. We see a rise in the amount of dumb things people promote because that's what is placed in front of us. It has always taken people going beyond to find information. We just have to take the time and go beyond a lot more now. In regard to the lending crisis, that had zero to do with social media. That had everything to do with greed and lack of knowledge by first generation homeowners. The system used ignorance to capitalize. The system has always done this. Our job as parents/educators is to tell the next generation how to be smarter and better and I have to be honest, we are not doing a very good job of educating the next generation and that's on us. You can't dumb down people when people actually take the time to share information as opposed to not sharing. I can only use a variety of examples to explain what I'm saying based on my experiences. We both know this is not a simple thing. But Black people have to learn how to share and support and that is something we have never been very good at.

I tend to think that we all are really kind of failing to realize that there have always been suckers and people have always been duped. The only difference now is that we are able to see more people than ever who fail, or are foolish because of social media. I don't know if anything has really changed as much as had a light shined onto it. We can see everything now and whether it is real or fake, it's available. The net has both empowered and diminished. When Troy states that how marginalized people have become in a short amount of time, I say that people have become empowered. Those who are able to navigate social media are capable of accomplishing things they never could have had social media and certain forms of media didn't exist. I'm generalizing here, but I am basically using myself as an example. I have yet to promote my work as a writer. I recently redesigned my website and made a call for writers through social media and the response was not bad at all. I actually increased my website traffic in one month from 200 uniques to over a thousand without really posting much on the site at all until the final week of the month. I have also utilized Kickstarter (a form of social media) to jumpstart my shoe company. (Which would not exist without me utilizing social media and other tools). I think it's all in the way we approach it. The Black Business collective on Facebook that I joined has been able to list 184 Black owned businesses. When I joined this collective I actually sold shoes to black people. Up until this point I could honestly count on both hands the amount of Blacks who bought a shoe from a non athlete owned Black company named ARCH. More white people bought my shoes than Blacks. The same happened with Kickstarter, of the backers I had, 80% were White. I guess I write all of this to disagree with you Troy. Social Media has only revealed the stupidity that was already there. Do I think people are getting dumber? Not really because those same people can do ridiculously amazing things with technical devices. They may not be able to write code, but they are doing other things that are impressive with their phones. Are they doing things they would have never done without social media? Yes people have become emboldened in both negative and positive ways. I guess it's all in how you look at it all.

Just to throw this in on the comic strip part, there are a lot of young Black artists who are publishing and creating some very good work. A couple to check out are: Mike Archie: http://perfectman.wordpress.com/ Quinn McGowan: http://www.quinnproart.com/comic-book.html Are two I recently discovered through a Black Business connection on Facebook. There are others attached to these two, but I see something from them daily. In regard to newspapers we have the Tri State Defender, locally, and to be honest I very rarely read our major newspaper or the Defender. I'm focused on developing my brand since my contract with my agent ends this month. I've been very focused on this and my shoe company for the last few months.

There was a shirt line about 10 years ago called Eracism and it had a pencil on the shirt. That was a very short lived but noble thing. Like you said, all of these things are temporary fixes. Until Blacks begin to understand the power of their dollars and use them wisely, nothing will change, nothing.

Men don't hit women. There isn't a discussion to have. If you have to hit her, you don't need to be with her. There is never a time to hit a woman. I may discipline my daughter, but that is a cause and effect situation and it is parent to child. I measure my response to her and allow her to understand why she may get her butt popped, but it occurs very rarely simply because the threat is there. This is not to say I control her or I am placing some type of control on her, it's simply that as a parent discipline takes many forms. While people argue against it, sometimes the threat of a good butt pop leads to a better behaved child. While this doesn't have anything to do with the Rice case, I can see how people will say that butt pops may create in a child's mind something that they carry for life which tells them that being hit is okay. I beg to differ. Once she gets to a certain age of development she will be able to decipher and make conscious decisions and understand that there are consequences that can't be measured by something physical that could have very serious effects. So, with that said, I go back to adults and men hitting women... it just shouldn't happen, ever. On the nude selfies, pictures are meant to be seen and shared. If you take a pic you have to know that it will be seen. It's like writing poetry, eventually someone is going to read it.

Artists today, don't make any money unless they are signed to a major label and sell huge numbers. The only way that musicians, artists, writers, any person creating makes money is by getting out and hustling. I think there is one truly successful recording artist that controls every aspect of their music and more people should follow their format. That group is Foreign Exchange (Nicolay and Phonte - who was a rapper in Little Brother...). FE+ is one of my favorite groups. They are not under a major umbrella. They own their own imprint and are releasing artists like Eric Roberson, Zo!, and others under this imprint. Oh, another artist who has taken control of his own destiny is Talib Kweli and his Javonti Media. Most artists that have labels, don't really have labels. They have deals with the larger companies and receive dividends. Interestingly enough, the artists are not the people uploading their music to Google so they are not even earning the ad revenue from the posts like you just listed above. The person who posted is earning money on the artist. It's crazy when you analyze it. I know this is going to come from left field and make you say what else is he doing... but I produced a single last year with a rapper in San Diego. I put the money behind it, paid for the video, paid for the production, the beat, and the contract with Tunecore. I actually allowed the artist to keep all publishing. Before doing all of this, I made him take down all of his FREE music from Facebook, Soundcloud and any other place he had music. My goal was to release the song and then track the growth. Unfortunately, I fell on financial hard times and had to pull the funding. The artist, immediately put all of the free stuff back up and the song is not being downloaded because he failed to at least try to follow through on the marketing plan I'd put in place before pulling funding. I honestly think the marketing plan would have worked. Here is that song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmsuucRCz9Q I made this point to state that musical artists have bought into the idea that they have to put songs out there for free to make it. They have no understanding of signing up with BMI or a catalog company and submitting their catalog so that when they submit it to iTunes or Amazon to sell that it can be also licensed out to Pandora or other streaming radio stations who are all currently working on how to pay artists per play on streaming radio. The more material artists give away, the less likely people are to buy it, except when it's a trendy item that everybody just has to have. What artists need to do is use a Tunecore or similar program to get their music on every platform, remove all of their free stuff, unless it's their own website or youtube or soundcloud that can be monetized. They can then place the listener in a position to buy the free stuff that they hear. Unfortunately so many artist feel that they will get a break because of their performances they don't understand how to capitalize on what they do. If you make music, you should make it available for purchase before giving it all away. By the way Glasper, like Jose James, and Gregory Porter are constantly touring. That's how they make their money.

Thank you for the compliment and I'm changing my initials! LOL. Just kidding. I think like minded people always share something in common outside of the mental ability to verbally joust without frustration. You're ability to inspire dialogue is a treasure and something you should package and send to all students in high school and college (and adults but that is another topic). Like I said, this type of lengthy debate may happen on Facebook, but this is one of the best transfers of information I've been involved in a long time. I thank you for that. I have always aligned rap/Hip-Hop with the Black vernacular and scatting is in the tradition of Black Vernacular which began with songs like "We raise de wheat" and old songs in that vein. Basically field songs that were 'broken' up due to the work being done, that later were sung in meetings with humming replacing the drums. While no one else gives scatting that reference point, I was working on a Hip-Hop book and I used a variety of Negro Spirituals to make my point about how some words mimicked sounds since the instruments were taken away. I drew a connection to beat boxing as well. Anyway, I think the ability of Mel Torme and others who imitated instruments in scatting is amazing and very similar to rappers spitting off the top of the dome. It's freestyle at its finest. It's amazing how Mel Torme acknowledged Ella in this song. Can we say that Mel is the original blue eye soul singer?

Now that we can agree on altogether. Good music is good music. That's how you move through a conversation. This could have never happened on Facebook... I had to say that, lol.

I would consider it Hip-Hop/spoken word which on the surface appears to be the same, but definitely is not. Poetry/Spoken word often has meter and cadence but unlike Hip-Hop the musical qualities of the voice are not the same. Which is why I always classify anything vocally set to music as ... music :-) I now realize what Cynique was saying in regard to marginalization. I took that a different way until you two used marginalized in a sense of access. What I do like is that you both have created an opportunity to stress how important Hip-Hop is to other genres. Your introduction to Nina Simone took a lifetime, a kid who listens to Common has already been introduced to Nina Simone and has purchased an album because of this: And that is why I take this discussion so seriously. By discounting rap as not being music, you close the channels of analyzing the artform and introducing students to other forms of music. While we know that all forms of music have been removed from schools (this is why we homeschool our children and they actually take music at a college), Hip-Hop provides an opportunity no other music does, it allows for the introduction to artists who would have been forgotten. The problem lies in another discussion, the control of Hip-Hop by the mainstream and corporate America. Kids are not getting the intros from Common or Guru (RIP). They are being fed streams of what Cynique was saying, babbling bullshit. They are not buying albums by Robert Glasper who is one of the best Jazz artists of our time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=---lgL1khi0 They aren't picking up Esperanza Spalding. These Hip-hop raised jazz artists are there, but not in the mainstream.

I do get where you are coming from though. If a singer sings acapella there are notes. If a rapper raps acapella, there aren't any notes. When they do rap with musical quality and notes that can be assigned it is singing, not rapping. I get that. That is a technical thing that can't be argued, but I've never seen where people separate the music from whatever is happening with the frontperson. When a band plays, it's a band whether the frontperson is rapping or singing. I get so passionate because rap/hip-hop is the only genre in music where people go out of their way to ignore the live band and instrumentation behind the frontperson.

I'm really trying to understand your position here. All people when discussing Hip-Hop the music, use the term Hip-Hop to discuss it. Trust me, I am well versed (obviously) in the four facets (rap, emceeing, turntablism, b-boying) to discuss these all day, but it is much simpler to just say Hip-Hop because I actually make a distinction between rap and Hip-Hop often because I consider rap the songs that have the minstrel aspects you speak of. But how in the world is the younger generation marginalizing Jazz when I've given you several videos that counter that discussion completely. Mos Def's use of Afro-Jazz inspired rhtyhms in Umi Says, and even Miles Davis movement into Hip-Hop with Doo Bop clearly show how the music is accepted by the artists most people love and admire, but it is simply looked down upon by people willing to place a label on all Hip-Hop (rap) as bad. There isn't one bad song that I posted above. Not a single ignorant, outlandish, disrespectful song. The reason I am saying that you have sad it's bad, is because I can only interpret "minstrelcy and babbling" as bad. Yes I do declare a song to be Hip-Hop when an emcee is performing it. Why, because he's an emcee first and when you read any interviews or do any research on those artist the first thing it states is these guys are rappers. An album like Desire by Pharoah Monche (the video Push linked above) makes a real effort to convey empowerment messages in the form of song and emceeing and the album uses live instrumentation as well as samples, but rap can be melodic. How can you say the younger generation marginalizes jazz when, if you want to be serious, which we are, the younger generation is actually bringing jazz to the forefront while the older generation belittles and despises their methods for accessing and learning about the culture (when I say younger I'm talking about rappers like Common, Talib kweli and even Kanye). When you think jazz today the reason a lot of people are aware of be-bop, cool, straight ahead, free jazz is because of Guru's Jazzamatazz series. It is also due to DJs like Madlib reworking the Blue Note catalog to critical praise. As far as your questions about rap or singing just look at the Wyclef video I posted. He's singing primarily, just as Nelly is singing primarily, just as Monche is singing, also the Bone Thugs song is all harmony and singing, but it is rapping and I don't think you can deny that. Scratching/DJing has been incorporated into symphony/orchestra music. Is it based on notes and chords? No, not yet. However there are processes taking place that allow a DJs scratches to be converted to notes and be played by a guitar and turned into musical notation (which means that it is music right?). What you are doing is basically what most people who are not interested in understanding Hip-Hop music. You are creating your own justification for what your opinion is about rap/Hip-Hop regardless of if I post rappers who sing their lyrics. I think the semantics of rappers rap, not sing does not allow for the discussion of a Bone thugs, or Crucial conflict or a Wyclef who often sings their raps. I do get what you are saying, but I think Hip-Hop music (rap) is still in its infancy in regard to music and when it hits 50 years or so people will begin to recognize that it is music even in all of it's mumbling glory.

This one popped into my head last night as another example of Hip-Hop that does nto sound like R&B. It's clearly country and something Nelly continues to do with great success. Wyclef is also an emcee who blurs the line. This is mainly due to his Haitian heritage and ability to incorporate the sound into the music. Here he actually performs Gone Til November with a backing symphony.

While I admire, your motivation and what you are doing, simply responding to you is acknowledgement without my financial support. I would have to see the reason for looking for a donation and I don't see it. Simply stated I run a blog right now among all of the other things I do that would probably blow your mind considering how much I do in a day, lol. But if you are really looking to start a mag or online review journal simply do it. You don't need an investment of financial support, you simply need time. Both Troy and I have dedicated countless hours to publishing and Black Literature on a several fronts. Troy has done this in a greater fashion with his search engine Huria and the AALBC platform. I have published a number of books by other authors and my own books as well. To start an online mag or review or even a print magazine that is bi monthly or monthly or quarterly, all you need is the love of reading and the time to write the reviews. Starting a website requires hosting and you can pay for that for less than 6 bucks per month. Once you have hosting you can sign up for an Affiliate program like the Power List through Mahogany to earn money on books purchased through your website. You can also add Google Adsense or an ad program as well as solicit ads from writers. In essence, an online platform for reviews can be run without an investment of any kind or fundraising unless you just don't have the 6 bucks per month. This is why I didn't invest. Once I read through and got the idea of what you were doing, I felt just dropping money in the bucket wasn't needed. I do hope that you will move forward and I hope that you will garner interest. But I do find it interesting that while I'm a new poster here on AALBC, I have paid for promotion of my books and I have an author's page. I also promote the website on my website and have done so for years. You on the other hand have taken the time for your first post on aalbc to ask for money but you have not stated how you have supported this platform. The interesting thing about Kickstarter is that it works because most of the people who successfully run a campaign have already supported other campaigns on the site. I think that might be the case here.

As a guy that recently ran a Kickstarter, I have to say that clicking your link and visiting that page is a tough sell. I know that you used Kickstarter"like", but I think it would be better to use Kickstarter. it is very difficult to get people to your website, although I just went there right now. It is equally as hard to get people to donate to something that has a "like" quality but is not a verifiable method of crowdfunding. Don't swim upstream. I would go to Kickstarter or Indiegogo since they are tied in with Amazon and Paypal and people already have a level of comfort with those platforms. They are also considered more "on the level". I've tried using the different crowd sourcing platforms before but I wasn't successful until I ran a Kickstarter. Good luck.

Oh I would be wrong if I didn't add Mos Def to this list with Umi Says and Casa Bey (which was on the Ecstatic and album he played a variety of instruments on and performed on Austin City Limits):

I don't find Cynique's commentary hostile at all. I think we are having a fantastic debate and it's forcing me to dig in the crates a bit. As far as are there albums that are Hip-Hop that don't contain rapping. There are a lot of them out there. I would consider Madlib's reworking of the Blue Note Catalog as one of these. I would also say that while people lump Erykha Badu in with Neosoul she is and was actually an emcee first and when you listen to Baduizm you are listening to a Wisdom "Drop Knowledge". In English that means that Badu is or was a 5% which makes her connection to Hip-Hop very evident although she is singing. This is why I say that you can't really place Hip-Hop into a box and not consider it music. Here on this video is the Pharcyde with their song Runnin, and throughout the song they are actually singing the hook in harmony. To further reinforce this I would like to add that Queen Latifah on the album Black Reign actually sang the lyrics to Winki's Theme - an ode to her brother, a police officer, who died in a motorcycle crash on the bike she gave him. Which brings up an issue that I often express to people who place labels on Hip-Hop. Rappers can often do what musicians or singers do, but singers can't do what emcees do. They can, but they aren't very good at it although with practice, just like singing, a singer can emcee and vice versa. So I guess if the songs appear on Hip-Hop albums then it can be classified as Hip-Hop by default right? This also kind of moves me to a discussion on Bone Thugs n Harmony. This group made it a point to use harmony in their emceeing and the songs were complex melodic rhythms which flies directly in the face of the comment that emcees don't sing. With The Roots (the band on the Jimmy Fallon show) you have a group that plays all of its own instruments. Which means they are musicians first, and they represent the Hip-Hop culture better than anything you could listen to. But they can also jam out with the best rock band or r n b band in the world. This song shows Black Thought the emcee actually singing as well as rapping which happens often. This song is called Silent Treatment. To go back to the question about whether there are forms of Hip-Hop that don't include rapping, there is no finer example than the instrumentals and albums made by DJs who are mixing and using the turntable as an instrument. While most would argue that DJs don't play music, what they do is a skill that is refined and studied like any instrument. I guess it doesn't play notes, but emcees have been featured in compositions at the Kennedy Center which has begun to change the way people view DJs and Hip-Hop. Black Coffee, an African DJ, actually did a complete set with an orchestra. This is a perfect example of how Hip-Hop can bridge the gap and allow access into classical music. Consider Lauryn Hill's Miseducation album. That is probably consider one of the dopest Hip-Hop albums of all time and it contains Lauryn being an emcee as well as a singer. Hip-Hop is a musical artform that blurs the lines of artistry and has to be considered music. Think about it, the last jazz album that Miles Davis made was Doo Bop. It's fusion, but it is definitely a Hip-Hop album. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hoPqFiH6sg I'm still working on the playlist but some of these songs would be on that playlist so that should excuse me if I don't post it. Especially this last one that should feel like it was made it 60s. Pharoah Monche's Push. He sings the entire first verse and doesn't rap until the end. It's a perfect example of how musical Hip-Hop is.

That's an idea, and something that I've learned to take advantage of with Amazon Associates. I think I've got a pretty good ear and I listen to a little of everything so I can work on that. This Kickstarter and the new office space is pulling me away from a lot right now though so I will get on it.

I get it, I'm just standing up for my generation of music. I will put together a list and it will probably surprise you Cynique. I'm actually getting a lot busier now so this may take a second. Hip-Hop is a culture consisting of 4 facets and the music is a part of that so my use of Hip-Hop is speaking towards the music. I'm going to get to work on that list because I think it may open a lot of eyes in regard to how diverse Hip-Hop really is.