If You Can Ignore The Music That Makes Everyone In the Club Want To Hit the Floor Together...

Then, here's just some of the "dangerous" messages in the Rap Top 10 Today...

Top Ten Rap Songs at Billboard This Week

1) This is Why I’m Hot, Mims

(unity?)

I represent New York…
I got it on ma back…
I love the Dirty, Dirty
Cause niggas show me love
The ladies start to bounce
As soon as I hit the club
But in the Midwest
They love to take it slow
So when I hit the HI
watch you get it on the floor
And if you needed it hyphy
I take it to the Bay
Frisco to Sac-town
They do it everyday
Compton to Hollywood
As soon as I hit L.A.

2) I’m a Flirt, R Kelly or Bow Wow

(playfulness?)

A dog on the prawl when im walkin through the mall
If I could man I would probably flirt wit all of yall

3) Outa My System, Bow Wow featuring T-Pain

(a yearning for monogamy?)

I still got a lot of pain
I ain't dealt wit it all
I been running round with other chicks,
I'm single and they loving it,
I'm liking it
but I just want
the one that I was in love with.


4) Two Step, Unk

(the fun of dancing?)

See We Goin Form A Line
And We Goin Step It Right
Now Step It To The Left Girl
You Know You Dynomite
Now Have Some Good Times
I See You Got It Right

5) Rock Yo Hips, Crime Mob

(female rappers Diamond and Princess saying it's fun to feel sexy?)

Seductively, moving my body
Now watch me rock my hips
Take a sip of that goose
I'm looking good and living lavish

6) Pop, Lock and Drop It, Huey

(really good dancers are fun to watch?)

At first i thought i was trippin
But my vision gettin clearer
You moving that thang around
as if you practice in da mirra
She doin a new dance
What the next man said
I'm like naw
she just pop locking on a headstand

7) Throw some Ds, Rich Boy

(I take pride in my car?)

Up in your hood I'm the one that you wanna be
Haters wish they could feel the wood in my '83
Ridin' with no tint so the motherfuckers know it's me

8) Go Getta, Young Jeezy

(relativity?)

We Live Life On Da Edge Like There's No Tomorrow
They Grind Hard Like There's No Today

9) I Tried, Bone Thugs-and-Harmony featuring Akon

(struggle and frustration?)

I just don't know but I be out here fightin demons
and It's like the curse that I can't shake this part of Cleveland
and Lord, would you help me?
And stop this pain I keep inflictin on my family (family)
Hustlin and gamblin, drinkin' and scramblin'
And losin sight of what I supposed to be handlin'
It's hard to manage cause every days a challenge
and man I'm slippin
can't lose my balance
and tryin not to panic


10) Party Like A Rock Star, Shop Boyz

(hmm....black/white unity, playfulness, a sense of humor?)

party like a rockstar
do it wit da black and da white
like a cop car
whoop, whoop,whoop,wha,whoop
me and my band,
man on the yacht relaxin
gettin a tan man

WHILE THE RAP BASHERS MARSHAL THEIR FORCES.....

While Jason Whitlock and Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey begin to use Don Imus as a political football to blame rap music for our society's evils....

While bi-partisan culture warriors and comrades Hillary Clinton and Sam Brownback rush to get in on the action....

While everyone who talks about the culture in this way continues to ignore the reality of the hip hop/R&B charts where the strongest women's voices anywhere in our mainstream culture--talking 'bout Mary J. Blige, Beyonce, Ciara, Shakira, Jennifer Hudson, Keisha Cole, Kelly Rowland, Eve and the young women in Crime Mob for starters--are more than holding their own as they always have in the rap era thank-you-very-much.....

Here are some women's voices that need to be heard, with the message that shows why all the rest of this matters--

April 15, 2007

Home to New Orleans

To the Editor:

An April 10 news article praises Edward J. Blakely, the executive director of New Orleans’s Office of Recovery Management, for having a “clinical, outsider’s eye” when in fact his eye is blind to the human rights of New Orleanians displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

According to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, people forced to flee their communities as a result of a natural disaster are “internally displaced persons” who have the human right to return to their communities.

In your article, Dr. Blakely pointedly denounces the right of return, describes New Orleanians as “buffoons” whose culture is rife with racism, and hopes that “new Americans” will replace New Orleanians trapped outside the city.

History has shown that violating the human rights of a group of people begins with disparaging their character, expressing contempt for their culture and portraying them as unworthy of the places they live.

Dr. Blakely’s recovery agenda denigrates the humanity of people struggling to find a way home to New Orleans.

Monique Harden Nathalie Walker

New Orleans, April 11, 2007

The writers are co-directors of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights.