The opening of the 2016 Grammy Awards shows Kendrick Lamar stepping to the stage to receive his award for Rap Album of the Year. While up there, he states his win was a win for real hip-hop. This year Kendrick Lamar received 11 Grammy nominations, just short of Michael Jackson’s historic 12 nominations in a single year for his album Thriller in 1983.

With a total of 20 Grammy nominations since releasing his album good kid, m.A.A.d City, Kendrick is breaking new ground in the hip-hop world. In this year’s Grammy Awards, he led all other artists in nominations, with Taylor Swift and The Weeknd coming closest at only 7 nominations each.

By the end of the night, Lamar racked up 5 Grammy Awards out of his 11 nominations, an impressive total. His nominations were diverse, in that his name appeared almost twice in just about every category. However, Kendrick only ended up winning in the “rap” categories. For example, Kendrick won awards like Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song, Best Rap/ Sung Collaboration, and Best Rap Album. Yet he lost in the other more important general categories he was nominated in like Song of the Year and Album of the Year.

This demonstrates the existence of a “stay in your lane” mentality against hip-hop artists in the Grammys, consistently being snubbed and overlooked even though their genre has been the most popular in music for decades. After heavy criticism from the 2014 and 2015 Grammy’s awarding and nominating blonde pop stars Macklemore and Iggy Azalea in the Best Rap Album category, should we consider Kendrick’s success a victory?

Even when it came to the Best Music Video award, Kendrick Lamar won for his collaboration with Taylor Swift on Bad Blood and not for his own music video for Alright. Along with Kendrick’s achievements comes rightful skepticism of the Grammys true intentions in nominating him for the number of awards they did this year.

In a time where North American society is becoming increasingly aware and critical of the racial climate, with the Black Lives Matter movement gaining ground and expanding its membership, it has become easier for us to call out white dominated institutions and award shows like the Oscars. But whether or not this actually makes any difference for oppressed and exploited peoples in North America is a different question that we must consider.

This year, the Oscars were heavily criticized by the public for the lack of people of colour in their awards categories, and it could be said that the Grammys have taken notice of the backlash and put forth their best attempt at distancing themselves from any similar criticisms. As a result, the Grammy Awards outdid themselves to fill the gap in diversity, musically and racially, by throwing Kendrick Lamar into every category they could. But as we have seen time and time again, that does not mean they will allow the black hip-hop act to win the most prestigious prizes the night has to offer.

Yet the content of Kendrick’s album To Pimp a Butterfly is significant as it comes at a time where police brutality and racism towards blacks in America has become extremely visible. He addresses these issues as well as the systemic challenges of being black in America, black dysfunction, “hood politics”, spiritual yearning and many other topics in his lyrics. It is a concept album filled with jazz, blues and soul samples and honest, uncomfortable content.

During the Grammys, Kendrick stepped to the stage and delivered one of the most powerful Grammy performances in recent memory. Chained and suited in a blue jail uniform, Kendrick aligns himself with several other black men positioned in prison cells and raps a medley of his aggressive album cut “The Blacker the Berry” and hit single “Alright” and another never before heard song.

Kendrick’s performance for the 2016 Grammys

He screamed lyrics like “I know you’re evil, you want to terminate my culture” and “I want you to know I’m a proud monkey…you vandalize my perception but can’t take style from me” in front of a clapping crowd that has undoubtedly participated in appropriating black culture.

Kendrick’s conscious way of framing black identity is refreshing in today’s hip-hop realm and speaks to American racial issues as well as is a major reference point for the #blacklivesmatter movement. Kendrick not only became a strong voice for oppressed black communities in music but has done so in the largest ways possible; selling platinum albums, topping billboard charts and most recently and impressively, racking up an unprecedented number of Grammy nominations this year. His commercial success represents huge wins for the genre of hip-hop, but it’s going to take a lot more than going platinum to make the change that Kendrick raps about in his music.

By: Arthiga Arumansan

We go to school to learn right?

To become the big firemen we told our mothers

and the doctors that cared for the others

To learn about the world and what the amazing things it held

To grow our minds to think out side the box and the lines

To show that we are capable of excellence and beyond

And not what people said

to put us down

But why is it so hard now..?

Why is it so hard to get up these days

To detach from the lazy bed we laid

To do your homework and not get distracted

From social media that fed our curious minds about other peoples lives

That had nothing to do with mine

We started to call school stupid when other kids would die to sit in a desk and study about the old times

Because it didn’t become about learning anymore

it became about the marks

The big tests that we all look forward to get back

The exams we stayed up studying

Tryna memorize words one day before that wouldn’t be remembered

The notes we saw when you look up to the ceiling tryna think of the answers we got taught in december

Thats what started to matter..

We started to live for marks that showed up on thin sheets

that meant everything to parents

That grew their children to meet

To meet their expectations

That they thought their child didn’t receive

So they pressured their child to achieve.

This pressure never helped..

I wanna go back to the time when everything i learned amazed me

Not tired me

To the time when bedtime was at 8

But didnt sleep till ten

because I was too content

To when everything I learned only made me smarter

Not to learn how to memorize it in an hour

To when we were independent and didnt rely on people to bring in their papers

To when everything the teacher said became inspiring and something i felt proud to remember

But now

When we grew older..

Our bright goal to become a doctor has just became a thought to look back and remember.

Arthiga Arumansan

Against the anglicization and exotification

Of a body and a struggle

You don’t even have the syllables to comprehend.

My name is a form of resistance

Because my mother named me for my Homeland.

She named me to belong no matter where my feet would find me.

My name is a form of resistance

Because I was blessed in birth

To embody an oral history kissed to my forehead like a prayer

Joining Air and Earth to Flesh and Blood.

My name is a form of resistance

Because it means hope and aspiration in Sanskrit

across the Crimson scars you have left

on the faces of those who have tried to Rise.

My name is a form of resistance so

just because you cannot pronounce it

Does not give you the right to dismiss it or erase it

And then make me feel like suddenly it doesn’t fit.

Because I respond to my name,

Battle cries, I take charge in my name.

I am blessed unlike those who don’t need a face and story

To ground them to a history they see everywhere

I am visible in my name

So no, I don’t have a nickname.

For I will not shorten or adjust even a bit of myself

To fit the capacity you have to stomach Me.

And my nine letters can spell

more defiance, more passion, more fire

than you will ever be able to extinguish.

My name is a form of resistance

because I was named for a purpose.

And like all things that have a purpose,

I will not rest until mine on this earth is fulfilled.

So I will tell my stories,

I will them for they need to be heard,

And I invite pride to come into the hearts

Of those who wait submerged

For my name is a form of resistance.

And in it, I am empowered,

Loud, and clear.

Aakanksha John

Aakanksha John

        he was shot to death twenty-six years ago.

        so many moons it has been. but still he does

        not believe himself to be dead.

        he could never die.

        he would never die.

        how invincible are the boys these days.

        so when the shots rang

        out over hot summer

        west side streets   

        he was sure it

        must have

        been a

        mistake.

        and if a small crowd gathered to

        watch his blood-drenched body

        turn the hot & dirty dark concrete

        a crimson red, he never would have

        known – for he was already        

        high up in the hills – four

        legs bounding – walking

        between worlds,

        scouring the

        dry earth for

        medicine.

Shono

Scarborough’s very own Abel Tesfaye—or The Weeknd as he is more popularly known—has made conscious choices of the new direction of his career. The goal is simple, as he states in a New York Times article, to become the biggest pop star on the planet.

The Weeknd sings in representation of the underground youth culture, where casual sex and drug experimentation are mainstays. Within the last year he has achieved unprecedented levels of commercial success, having dominated the airwaves with a handful of No.1 Billboard records, a certified Gold No.1 album and another sold out North American arena tour. His new album, “Beauty Behind the Madness”—the first project released after his delve into the mainstream “pop” world—shows us if the subject matter he’s relayed through his music previously has remained true.

The Weeknd’s first glimpse of real Billboard success brought about by “Love  Me Harder”, a duet alongside Ariana Grande peaking at No.7 earlier this year on the Hot 100 list, initiated the employment of super-producer Max Martin. Having written and/ or produced hits after hits past and presently for just about every mega star in the music business, Martin became the go-to in Abel’s mainstream recipe. The hazy, dark sound The Weeknd has embodied over the years by singing of sexual encounters, an inability to love and drug experimentation was at the mercy of reconfiguration and to my pleasant surprise, has mostly remained in tact.

The album opens with “Real Life”, a song where Tesfaye’s first verse sings, “I’ll be the same, never changed for nothin’”, his earliest attempt at comforting fans in worry of any betrayal to the content of his music. The song continues with lyrics, “I heard love is a risk worth taking, I wouldn’t know, never been that boy” expressing the aversion of romantic emotional attachment that has been consistently voiced in his music.

The first quarter of the album includes songs like “Often” and “The Hills”, each Billboard hits on their own standings, but play to The Weeknd’s traditionally dark, less-love more-sex musical vocation especially with their production and lyrical content.

There is a noteworthy crack in the cement, content-wise, that follows these consistent kinds of records with track 6 on the album called “Acquainted”. This song describes his growing feelings for a woman as he sings, “nobody got me feeling this way”, and even affectionately croons “babe” several times; to the oldest fans’ understanding, a phrase that has noticeably never been said in his music before. Simultaneously, he attempts to mute his own feelings by using the emotionless term “acquainted” throughout the song and in the title to characterize the relationship. This track speaks to the kind of tension Abel must be experiencing in his love life that are symbolically representative of his changes in the direction of his career.

During an interview with the New York Times, when asked if he was “in love”, he replied: “I don’t know, to be honest with you…it’s no, it’s yes, it’s maybe. It’s [the album] about me being who I am and stepping out of my comfort zone to try to feel something besides what I’ve been feeling the past four years.” He is trying to maintain the essence of his music and avoid sacrifices artistically while at the same time embarking on this typically sacrificial voyage to the top of the industry.

Whether or not the polishing up of his mainstream appeal and growing feelings for a woman are completely coincidental events in his life is a matter of debate, but in this song there are definite impressions of them in the music, and sonically, this isn’t a bad thing.

The album continues with a flush of recognizable Billboard hits, providing a substantial amount of the commercial safety of the album but still possessing the darker themes typically expected. For example, “Can’t Feel My Face”, a major summer smash with an upbeat vibe, still seems to possess the drug references notable in The Weeknd’s music. Singing, “And I know she’ll be the death of me, at least we’ll both be numb, And she’ll always get the best of me, the worst is yet to come”, Abel personifies a drug addiction to a beautiful woman and how he feels when he is with her; trickery to the mainstream radio. 

The choice of features are also appreciable, with the likes of Kanye West, Labrinth, Lana Del Rey, and Ed Sheeran all making appearances on this album. What I can say about the selection of features is that they are a collection of characters that mesh well with the dark, self-depressive world The Weeknd has created for himself and represent the favours he is now able to cash in due to his growing star.

Another notable album cut is track 10 entitled “In The Night”. Co-written and produced by Max Martin, this song is spookily Michael Jackson-esque with an electric feel, showcasing The Weeknd’s vocals on a swing-style beat. He stories a young girl’s fall into prostitution and loss of innocence, singing, “in the night she’s dancing to relieve the pain…she was young and she was forced to be a woman”. This record is Abel’s most effective example of his new ability to store all of his familiar subject matter into a neater, much more commercially friendly package in the same way iconic hits like “Dirty Diana” and “Billie Jean” were presented to the world.

Abel’s musical developments with this LP are subtle ones; he takes steps in the right direction towards becoming a full-fledged “pop” star but remains loyal to his distinct, eerie R&B sound. Thematically, the album contains much of the same content matter as his previously acclaimed mixtapes but are packaged in a tighter, neater arrangement this time around.  This album is built for radio, from the song lengths to the new friendliness of his choruses (or even the mere existence of choruses this time) to the chords he now sings over in comparison to his typically foggy production style. But what is most relieving is Abel refrains from jeopardizing the quality of the music; and so, with a sigh, the “Madness” comes to an end.

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

On October 29, 2014, Sportchek in a partnership with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (the Raptors owners) launched an advertising and publicity campaign called #MyNorth asking Torontonians to share stories about local basketball culture in the various Toronto ‘hoods. The campaign builds off of Drake’s re-branding of the Toronto Raptors earlier this year, with his #WeTheNorth campaign, which included an intelligent and extremely well-produced television advertisement featuring basketball courts largely located in social housing projects throughout Toronto.

The #MyNorth campaign seeks to implement the ideas developed in the initial Raptors re-brand marketing that centered around attempting to get people who identify with the local basketball culture to begin to associate this culture with the Raptors themselves.  Torontonians have never really identified the Raptors as somehow defining or even influencing the local basketball culture, unlike some basketball meccas like New York with the Knicks and Chicago with the Bulls where local basketball cultures are strongly influenced by their NBA teams.  In New York, the Knicks are almost considered to be part of the city’s identity and history, much like the Yankees.

While the new #WeTheNorth campaign is attempting to develop a similar identification with the Raptors in Toronto basketball culture, the campaign has made some surprising mistakes in understanding the very nature of basketball culture and how this culture is viewed by those who participate in it.

Bathurst Heights basketball courts built on the surface of old tennis courts in 2004 with a donation of $20,000 from Nike in honour of Phil Dixon. It say a lot about the #MyNorth campaign that it is being launched in the winter when all outdoor courts are frozen as in this picture. It is clearly scheduled to coincide with the start of the NBA season as well as the high school basketball season.

These mistakes are surprising only because of how savvy the initial Raptors rebrand of #WeTheNorth was, with it being obvious to many that Drake’s knowledge of Toronto’s culture and geography, having grown up in Toronto’s west end in Vaughan and Oakwood and Forest Hill, was the factor that led to the success of the initial campaign and its relatability to Torontonians. Some of the mistakes of the #MyNorth campaign would suggest a lesser degree of creative control from Drake or really anyone who understands basketball culture or geography in Toronto.

Thus far, the new campaign features billboards, several television advertisements as well as the Twitter hashtag itself, which has apparently received little use by actual Torontonians.  Mostly it’s been used to post scores of Raptors wins by Sportchek employees as well as several video ads telling local basketball stories. For example, a video was posted that told the story of a former Toronto high school player named Denham Brown who scored 111 points in his last high-school game in 2001 before going on to play for the University of Connecticut. Another ad tells the story of Phil Dixon, a former Bathurst Heights basketball star in the late 1980s, who was pegged to be a star in the NBA but never played a game at that level due to an injury early in his college career.

There is another video advertisement being used by #MyNorth that talks about the campaign in general and attempts to get the general concept across, and has a very similar message to the videos focused on Dixon and Brown, focusing on individual stars on high-school teams and Toronto’s ‘hoods as producers of potential basketball stars who may be one of the few to make it from rags-to-riches and become superstars or ‘heroes’, as the video openly states.

The problem with all of these videos is that they fail to actually talk about the basketball culture of any of the ‘hoods they are supposedly focused on.  They instead tell stories about individual stars in the context of their school-based careers and their school-based teams and not their ‘hoods recreational basketball history and the broader basketball culture in which they honed their skills and style growing up.

The video about Phil Dixon, the former Bathurst Heights star, produced for #MyNorth doesn’t even mention the existence of Lawrence Heights once, though the public basketball courts at Bathurst Heights (now John Polanyi Collegiate Institute) are generally recognized as some of the most interesting in Toronto in terms of the diversity of ages, abilities and ethnicities of players to play there over the years, as well as the sometimes surprisingly high quality of games to be played on these fairly dusty and poorly maintained recreational courts that were actually rebuilt nearly a decade ago with money from the Raptors and Nike in honour of Dixon himself. A lot of the culture around these courts comes out of Lawrence Heights, with youth who use the courts generally feeling that they belong to those who live in Lawrence Heights and the surrounding areas.

There has often been a degree of hostility among area youth to anyone from Keele and Eglinton, the centre of another distinct urban youth culture that is also connected to particular basketball courts located at a nearby recreation center. While both of these somewhat distinct recreational basketball cultures are located partially around a high school, this does not mean that these teams are central to these cultures.  Rather, there is an overall recreational basketball culture around the student populations of these high schools that goes way beyond the actual team and is sometimes almost unrelated. While some people do occasionally play basketball in both areas, this is quite rare, partially for the reasons mentioned above.

In the above analysis of these localized basketball cultures I did not once mention North York or York, the respective old Metro Toronto municipalities in which the two areas are located. However, the #MyNorth campaign bases itself off of these old municipal-legal divisions of Metro Toronto rather than actual neighbourhoods. They effectively call all of North York, Scarborough and old Toronto ‘neighbourhoods’ despite the fact that they all contain many distinct neighbourhoods with very different basketball cultures that have little in common with each other and basically no relations or overlap. It is unknown why they did this, though it seems that this was done solely because the campaign was designed by people who know very little about Toronto basketball culture or Toronto in general, and just looked at a map of the old Metro Toronto municipal divisions. It is this particular flaw of the campaign that would suggest that Drake has had very little creative control or even oversight in it.

Another reason for their choice of the old metro divisions may be their privileging of school basketball teams, with these divisions making somewhat more sense when it comes to high-school basketball competition between schools than actual basketball culture as a whole. There are, of course, larger problems with their centering of basketball culture in school basketball teams, which in my own experience, at Northern Secondary School involved major contradictions between the players and an old, white, racist and classist coach whom the players suspected of playing games with the line-up based on racial competition between the black and white players. The are are also many good players who never even try out for their high school teams, don’t have good enough grades to play or drop out of high school altogether.

Despite the failings of #MyNorth, they are doing some interesting things that warrant our attention. They claim to be making basketball culture documentaries on each of the ‘neighbourhoods’ of Toronto and doing area-specific clothing launches, with all of this supposedly being based on input from local residents who actually know basketball culture. While we can already see that they probably won’t do this very effectively and we know that they are only doing it to make a buck at the end of the day, there is something interesting about their ‘engagement’ with the community that warrants further investigation.

Their campaign involves a strategy that is called community engagement or public participation in the corporate and government world, which resembles a kind of caricature of some of the strategies organizers have developed to organize communities. These strategies generally involve going to people where they are, understanding their issues, consciousness and stories, and then coming back to them with some kind of plan, political program or project based on this and continuing the process.

Of course, #MyNorth will only end up selling people branded merchandise with a slightly more local flavour, not giving people a plan to improve local conditions or get them involved in changing the hoods and larger society that they live in. That corporate institutions have developed such strategies and are trying to implement them is part of the ongoing battle for Toronto and its neighbourhoods.

Michael grew up playing on several courts in the area before the Bathurst Heights courts were built, though many of them have been rebuilt and relocated or closed to the public, specifically one at a private hebrew school that is now secured by high fences and a complex alarm system. He is one of a small number of people to still play basketball on outdoor public courts in his 20’s, and has put in a lot of hours playing at the Bathurst Heights courts since 2004. He has probably seen three ‘generations’ of court regulars come and go in this time. 

He looks straight into the broken night sky and whispers almost silently “there are prophets on every corner. They come alive when flares light up the night. There are prophets in every suburb. They find their voice when police hurl death sentences into megaphones. There are prophets in every tragedy. They present themselves at the exact place where the guns of white power empty themselves into the darkness.”

And god knows on nights like these, there is no sleep to be found amidst the chaos of a young boy’s mind. But he holds himself pure, he has been here before, seen this cycle on cynical repeat for far too many lifetimes. He wanders out into the summer night and curls up beneath an oak tree in his backyard. He presses the palms of his feet and hands into the burnt summer grass, asking for any reminder that life still lives here. He feels the roots dig into his back. Images of Malcolm and Barack and the Unnamed Ever-present Face of Whiteness fall through his mind, all men, all with a cold gaze fixed on their face. Their appearance is punctuated by the steady rhythm of 7 bullets. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. They play on constant loop in his mind, like a sinister track that he could never quite get out of his vision even if his life depended on it. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. These explosions set the pace for a crooked dance to which amerikkka marches onward, forever. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. Forever, at least in their eyes, as the conquest is never finished. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. Nevermind, in another world these bullets could be nothing else but seven pristine wake up calls, clear reminders of the places we were never supposed to go. But not here, not in this world, not in these suburbs, these rude interruptions serve no such clarifying purpose. Young boy, wide eyes, searching in the dark, he knows that bullets like these will fall as silently as toxic snow on the pale sleeping ears where old money rests, just down the street.

The young boy drifts into a temporary sleep, the type where nothing is reconciled but at least his mind is permitted some freedom to roam outside of this physical world. He awakens just as the morning begins to show its first signs of itself. He jumps, forever cautious of the light. He remembers that the ways in which the bright artificial rays will come to reveal his body have nothing to do with neither justice nor consent. He pulls himself up from the ground, moving with the precision of a soldier and intention of a god. His gaze cuts through the known, insisting that those who meet his eyes are ready to dive into a different world. He feels larger than life, fleetingly ready to take on a people that seemed so intent on his own extermination. And finally, he lets the shots of 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 fade from his mind as he turns out onto the main intersection in front of his house.

Before him there is a peculiar silence that speaks like muffled screams. He is here, at the uneasy resting place that occurs between battles. However, there is nothing to signify an end to the war. The world stretches out in front of him, kept warm by the towering streetlights. The police are gone and the protesters have taken refuge in the early morning.

He stares straight past the concrete, and whispers almost silently “there are prophets on every corner. They come alive when flares light up the night. There are prophets in every suburb. They find their voice when police hurl death sentences into megaphones. There are prophets in every tragedy. They present themselves at the exact place where the guns of white power empty themselves into the darkness.”

Jeff Tanaka is a writer, spoken word artist and storyteller and works for the Asian Arts Freedom School in Toronto.

Since 2004, over 2500 people have been killed in Pakistan by drone missile strikes by the U.S. Another 50, 000 have been killed by the Pakistan military or insurgent forces and millions have been displaced in the decade long ‘War on Terror.’

Karim Khan interviewed in Wounds of Waziristan. Photo: Socialist Worker.org

The documentary Wounds of Waziristan, directed by journalist Madiha Tahir, was screened this past May to conclude a two-day conference organized by the Pakistan Conference Committee, Tanqeed United South Asians at York (USAY), Pakistan Development Fund – University of Toronto. The film was shown to an audience eager to discover the truth behind the deceptions of imperialist Western media concerning contemporary Pakistan.

Wounds of Waziristan highlights the stories of people in Waziristan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) after the US began its worldwide “War on Terror,” with its ‘air policing’ as a key instrument major of its war and major cause of loss to affected communities.

The stories recounted in the film are heartbreaking, as family members recount people of all ages who have been killed and whose stories are mostly untold.

“Journalist, Noor Behram, started collecting pictures of those martyred to document their deaths.” A photo of the Bismullah Family orphans. Photo: MotherboardTVtumbler

There has been a complete media blackout on this war. There is no coverage of survivors or families of the dead. Tahir sees this “a dehumanization of the population.” Instead, what we get in the mainstream media are discussions of precision military tactics being upheld to rid the state of ‘terrorists’, . One article that we came across in the Asian News, (Vol 19) alluded to a ‘full-scale operation due to the ‘lawlessness’ in North Waziristan,’ supported by the Prime Minister Sharif.

The Toronto film screening was a huge success, building on discussions centred on the impact of imperialism and military attacks on the people in Pakistan. The panel included speakers, Saadia Toor, Aasim Sajjad Akhtar and Syed Azeem, who shed further light on drones and US imperialism in Pakistan.

Madiha Tahir also spoke about the tendency of media to either view Pakistan as a security state, in need of military intervention or as a charity case, for example, after natural disasters. Tahir also connected the ways Pakistan is discussed in the media back to the colonization of the region, reminding us how the people who were once viewed as savages are now known as ‘militants’ and ‘terrorists,’ dehumanizing the victims and justifying imperialism’s need for expansion in Tribal areas.

“Wounds” projects US drone strikes in Waziristan onto a map of filmmakers’, Madiha’s, home state, New Jersey; depicting the years 2009-present in the increase in drone attacks on Waziristan during the Obama years. Photo : Geographic Imaginations blog

One of the event’s speakers, Syed Azeem, told BASICS that: “Only those classes which are excluded in this structure, can stop drones.” Azeem is a member of the Campaign Against Drones in Pakistan (CADiP), which is an anti-imperialist and pro-people group of Pakistanis in Toronto who are working against drone attacks and war in Pakistan and Afghanistan. CADiP emerged after the realization that there were no human rights organizations in Canada that have called for an end to drone attacks.

“For CADiP…the key is not to start with dichotomies that already exist, but to talk to the people. This is our start: to build solidarity amongst those classes which are excluded,” Azeem told BASICS. “The nature of imperialism is very much internal to the state of Pakistan.”

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar added” “This is not a [question of] pick[ing] and choos[ing] between empire and the Taliban. That is a false binary that we need to move beyond. Until that consensus develops, in some ways, we’re missing the point…we cannot expect the solution to come from the very same people [who] are causing the problem.”

“There is a complicity among segments of progressives with imperialism. And this is not limited to the question of the use of military force.”

The film can be viewed online at DailyMotion.com.

A clip from the film. Saddam holds up a picture of his niece that was killed, along with his sister-in-law, after a drone attack on his home in 2010. Photo: Reformancers.com

Written for the founding of street voices magazine

We live in the modern day world of cellphones, wikipedia, and social media

Sexual messages are sexually transmitted like gonorrhoea to our subconscious

The masses are asleep to reality like we’re unconscious

The voices of the streets will be the alarm clock, its time to wake up!

To the government’s cover ups, and I’m not talking about make up

I’m talking about 911, Khadafi, and the Federal Reserve

Do you own research I`ve been educated since I have been kicked to the curb

Street smarts, I gotta degree in the Street Life

Learned how to read people, and right hand hooks to people who didn’t speak right

We’re hungry for support like a child that doesn’t eat right

Control the food distribution, then how do they expect us to eat right?

Wrong truths mixed with white lies

Has the media looking misty like the night sky

I’m just trying clear it up, I’m sure of y’all are wondering if the right guy

Whether I’m the right or the wrong one

Just know Street Voices means revolution in the long run

In the race to change the world it’s a long run

Running out of time that’s a scary thought

We just trying to run Canada like we’re Terry Fox

Because the only people that run it right now are white how?

When we live in the most multicultural city right now

I’m raising the voices of the streets because they want us pipe down

So fuck peace and love, I’m ready to fight now

Only time I turn my left cheek is too look over my shoulder

Because in the streets if you don’t watch your back, your life could be over

So now we’re done trying to compromise, I’m crossing the boarder

Just know if you take my life your taking a soldier

For those of you that are conservative, you probably can’t wait till this is over

But for those that can relate, were taking this over

Cause they don’t really care about us, that’s what Michael Jackson said

Cardiac arrest now Michael Jacksons dead

Speaking of arrest, I’m trying to avoid the feds

Because when you want to change the world, they want your head

But I`m still going to keep doing what I do, because I ain’t got no choices

And if I die, ill live forever through STREET VOICES!

Joel Zola is a founder of Street Voices, a youth-led, quarterly magazine that aims to unite youth in the shelter system. Street Voices emerged in part from the support of the School of People’s Journalism put together by BASICS Community News Service.

Image from www.rapbasement.com

 While the jury is still out on Kanye West’s statement that he is the “most influential artist” around today, it goes without saying that he is one of the most talked about artist-celebrities out there and has been for sometime.

Unfortunately however, the conversations provoked by his music and especially his statements, gets more confused and hollow by the year. How did this happen?

Born in Atlanta, Kanye West moved to Chicago at the age of three. His father, Ray West, is a former Black Panther and photojournalist at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution; while his mother, Dr. Donda C. (Williams) West, became the Chair of the English Department at Chicago State University before retiring to become her son’s manager.

In the late 1990s Kanye started producing for local acts in Chicago, but got his break by producing beats for artists from the Roc-a-fella label and in particular, Jay-Z’s The Blueprint. Kanye also had considerable underground recognition as a producer through his work with Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, and fellow Chicago native, Common.

A few years later, after years of trying to get recognition as an MC, Kanye made his mark on hip hop, releasing The College Dropout to critical acclaim and commercial success. The album went triple platinum in the US, and received 10 Grammy nominations. Kanye’s humour and sincerity broke with the bravado and flash that was dominating hip hop at the time through the likes of 50-cent and others. The album also contained social commentary that, while lacking the clarity of acts like Dead Prez, was very rare for a commercially successful hip hop artist at the time.

Kanye also featured on Def Poetry Jam and the Dave Chappelle show, and was generally recognized as being within the ‘conscious’ element of hip hop, despite his success. Kanye appeared in Dave Chappelle’s Block Party movie, which not only brought a number of conscious artists together, but also gave a prominent platform to Fred Hampton Jr, the son of murdered Black Panther Fred Hampton and the chair of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee (POCC).

It’s rumoured that Hampton was also influential on Kanye’s scathing attack on George Bush during the Hurricane Katrina television fundraiser, where he spontaneously stated that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”.

Since then, beyond his continued musical success West began to move into other business areas. Aside from his GOOD Record label, West owns a chain of Fatburger restaurants in the Chicago area through his KW Foods LLC, as well as a line of athletic shoes for Nike called Air Yeezy, another shoe line with Louis Vuitton, as well as other lines of shoes and clothes. Currently Kanye’s net worth is estimated at $100 million.

In 2013, Kanye released Yeezus to mixed reaction not only due to its different musical direction but also because of its lyrical content. Not surprisingly, as Kanye’s wealth has soared, his social criticisms have become more confused and convoluted, as seen in numerous interviews in 2013. On the popular Breakfast Club show on NY’s POWER 105.1, Kanye was directly questioned on the shift in his message:

Charlemagne da God: “Why do talk so much about money nowadays, man? I used to look at you, like, as a real revolutionary. You know real revolutionaries didn’t need money to change the world? Malcolm X wasn’t rich. Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn’t rich”.

Kanye: “Cause you need product. You need to own something to have a voice…”

While Kanye continues to speak about racism and corporate control, his reference points have shifted. The old Kanye saw racism as the government keeping black people poor, including how the police “harass and arrest us.” He saw corporate control in the manufacturing of consumerism, preying on people’s insecurities while ravishing places like Sierra Leone for their resources.

The $100 million Kanye sees racism as the scandalization of his relationship to a white woman (although Kim Kardashian has Armenian background), or his inability to be ‘taken seriously’ by the fashion and clothing industry. He sees corporate control in that he is not being let into the circle.

So who is to blame for this? Is it Jay-Z, Russell Simmons and the black bourgeoisie in the US? Can a popular artist be a millionaire and stay true to a social message?

With his recognition and talent, Kanye has the potential to be a modern-day Bob Dylan or Marvin Gaye – a popular artist capable of reaching a large section of the people while speaking honestly about what’s happening in the world and on the streets. In a different era, it’s conceivable that Kanye could have taken direction from the Black Panthers or even something of a broader political, social movement. But without such a movement, it is likely that we will lose many more talented artists and voices to the logic and ideology of the capitalist ruling class.