Ode to Clear Channel

Morning drive radio dribble
Only further serves to cripple
Bombastic beats
And a 100 thousand watts of clear crystal
Mind numbing lyrics
That often belittle
Served up by mistral DJ’s on their Thizzell

What started as a drizzle
Has now exploded
Into a tsunami
Of radio foolishness
Modern day Amos and Andy’s
At their masters behest
Further the conquest
Cuz- if it’s said on Joyner or Baisden
Who among us will second guess?

In the 80’s we hailed BET as a critical success
Sleeping on the threat
As they poisoned the minds of our brightest and best
Only to learn it was just a test
Have it said on the “black” media, the Negro Wikipedia
And the rest of them follow like sheep
Furthering their propensity for self induced sleep
Like Pavlov’s dogs
Slumbering minds tend to repeat
Self fulfilling doctrines of doom and defeat

What we have failed to peep
Is how completely they’ve captured our behavior and tendencies
30 minutes in the morning
Thousands of heads bobbing to the same lower vibrational frequencies
Fulfilling negative prophesies
Downloading streams of hypocrisy
Whether is a belief in a Negro version of the blond and blue Theology
Or that now a man of color is in the white house
How we must imbibe from the cup of democracy
Yet the inner city atrocities
Mount at an alarming rate
And thousands of black children
Are primed
For generational insignificance
As parents, teachers and care givers
Are not able to rinse
Minds filled with ghetto garbage

We may as well prepare more young men to be targets
As Pac said
Teardrops and closed caskets
Become habits formed
Funerals and prison sentences become the norm
When POTUS speaks on that – if ever?
Do you hear much alarm?
Evoking the words of Marvin Paul Gaye
What’s going on?
I’m still blown any by the angst that surrounded the Jenna six
And the canonization of Michael Dwayne Vick
But I should know by now
When it comes to rationalizing plain black foolishness
We tend to pour it on thick
But forget
Those folks behind the mics are often tricks
What they spit
Sounds like we need to startin something
But it aint like we talking bout
Malcolm, Rosa, Harriet or Martin

So to borrow a slam I used in high school
I beg your ugly pardon
I walk down the street and see people starvin
Carvin
An existence out of the bleakest of circumstances
But we don’t give a fuck
As long as we can master the stanky leg
And the electric slide
And get choked off that good let me ride
We are happy to ignore generational suicide
What disguise as black pride
Takes us deeper in to complacency and assimilation
Pay attention! Don’t sleep on the sponsors of your favorite radio station
That’s how you peep the game of major corporations
It doesn’t take a whole lot of education
To see how others profit
From our inability to stop our self hatin

But I must give credit where credit is due
They may not have saw hip hop coming
With its latent power to reach masses
Give a neo soul voice to the lower classes
But they got up to speed hella fast
And when they did
They found way finance an ugly violent bastard
And they knew – they knew
If given the juice
The so called black media would blast it

So from every hood from BK to south central
It would be central
To create the illusion of black radio
Silliness in the same vein
As Moe Larry and Curly Joe
No longer did you have to be masters like mos def, and Talib with hella flow

Just get a dope beat
And call your women bitches and hoes
Your joint gonna be in Majic’s rotation
But what amazes me is to hear the sista’s rationalization
Well it’s good to dance to - I just ignore the lyrics

Are you sick?
We can’t have it both ways in 2009
We should be primed
To go to a much higher level
Not bow homage to
To the musiq of the devil
And then become bedeviled on why our children are confused
As long as we play by the enemies rules
Our schools will be battlegrounds and our neighborhoods killing fields
Kids emulating lil Wayne and TI
Hoping for record deals
Hoping their skills will get them paid
Parents seeing dollar signs
Become afraid
To emphasize higher learning
And development of self
So they become modern day strange fruit
With no roots
Banging in
Red and blue in communities that mimic Beirut

As Michael said
We need to look in the man in the mirror
If we are honest
Then it will become clearer
That we have become removed far from the greatness of the Nile
Or those who marched to freedom through hundreds of unforgiving miles
But, at least we have
Clear channel beats
And presidential smiles
Which overshadow the denial
As media madness dominates the radio dial
Sleepin on the genius of brothers like Bilal
Wack ass lyrics infecting another lost child
Another day another trial
And thanks to Clear Channel -

Another segment of black folks gone wild