Title: Changes
Artist: Tupac
Album: Greatest Hits

I’ve been listening to some (older, late 90’s) hip hop lately.  It’s not a genre I typically listen to—I really don’t like any of the current music out there.  I’ve found that the evolution of hip hop as gone really really awry.  Sure, there was always a misogynist/sexist, materialistic, egotistical quality about it and many songs I’ve listened to advocate a lifestyle I couldn’t necessarily agree with (alcohol, drugs, sex, guns/violence, etc).  Nowadays, I am told by a few co-workers, there are songs out there about… cheeseburgers?!

But, I already appreciated some of Tupac’s songs because, although, yes, some were misogynistic, egotistical, materialistic, etc, etc, a few of them actually had meaning as he rapped about the struggles he faced in society as an African-American.

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Anyway, when Obama won the election, I thought of Tupac and the line in this song, “We ain’t ready, to see a black President.”

Regarding this video of Obama on Letterman about Jimmy Carter’s statement, I was a little disappointed (but have to say that I only suspected there wasn’t any other way to answer it “correctly” from Obama’s point of view—as someone on the Bill Maher show said, “Americans don’t like being called racists.”) that Obama was so easy to dismiss the racist sentiments of this country.  Certainly, racism still exists in this country!

For black people, the clear benefit of Obama is that he is quietly exposing an ancient hatred that has simmered in this country for decades. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of us grew tired of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, mostly because they presented easy foils for Limbaugh-land. Moreover, again rightly or wrongly, they were used to define all of us. …

But Barack Obama, bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just, will not dance. He tells kids to study–and they seethe. He accepts an apology for an immature act of rudeness–and they go hysterical. He takes his wife out for a date–and their veins bulge. His humanity, his ordinary blackness, is killing them. Dig the audio of his response to Kanye West–the way he says, “He’s a jackass.” He sounds like one of my brothers. And that’s the point, because that’s what he is. Barack Obama refuses to be their nigger. And it’s driving them crazy.

(Via)

It’s sad that 10+ years later, how much further we have yet to go from what Tupac was rapping about.