The streets are buzzing about the recent revelation that the daughter of actor Lawrence Fishburne is set to be a porn star…I know many of us like to make jokes and will pass harsh judgment on such a decision. Like comedian Chris Rock noted in one of his jokes, if your daughter grows up and starts hitting the pole, you failed as a parent. With that as a running commentary, one can only imagine what Fishbourne is thinking or feeling. The thought of our loved ones getting fucked is not an image we like to have in our minds although many of us have no problem hosting such sordid thoughts on someone else’s daughter. This is just one of many glaring contradictions we as a society hold.
The fact that porn is a multi-billion dollar a year industry speaks volumes. Go to any corporate owned hotel, turn on your TV and porn is available for a fee. Turn on any corporate backed cable system and porn is available for a fee. My point being is that as much as we all are laughing at Montana Fishburne aka Chippy D going into porn and lamenting the feelings of her dad, Lawrence, there’s still a lot of us sons and daughters, mothers and fathers who routinely indulge by purchasing and at the very least watching…
In terms of contradictions if we’re concerned about young women being forced into this industry and being exploited etc or young people getting the wrong idea on how to make a quick buck, one might ask when was the last time one of us insisted that ‘legit’ institutions not make these ‘products of exploitation’ so readily available? Sex sells. It’s always sold and many of us are the consumers directly and indirectly. What are we doing to add to or take away from those sales?
What caught my attention with Montana was her citing Kim Kadashian as the model for success. She noted, “I’ve watched how successful Kim Kardashian became and I think a lot of it was due to the release of her sex tape.” In the middle of the worse recession of any of our lifetimes, Kim seems to have more money than many of us combined and do the degree that making money selling sex or simply doing a reality show vs teaching kids on how to be the next great problem solver to our collective woes is more of a harsh commentary on all of us than it is Montana or her dad especially if we find ourselves watching her tape when it comes out later this month
Congratulations to long time Bay Area artist E-A Ski who just won the International Prestigious Award 13th Okanogan International Film Festival in Canada. More than 130 films were submitted. His short film ‘No Problem‘ which is a throw back to the long form music videos ala Michael Jackson‘s Thriller, features his good friend and esteemed actor Danny Glover. The song and video are from Mr Ski’s upcoming album ‘Fifth of Skithoven‘ and also features Richmond, Cali rapper Locksmith who many of us know for his legendary battles on MTV and Eastwood of IMGMI Films. Mr Ski and his crew noted they were happy to be recognized by Canada and look foward to coming back..
While Ski was making noise in Canada some other Bay Area rappers just finsished touring up there. Props to Souls of Mischief who made noise and introduced the Canucks to Oakland Freestyle King Mistah FAB.
As for E-A-Ski’s film award, he joins the ranks of other Bay Area Hip Hoppers who have been making noise with recent films. A few months back Oakland’s Piper from the group Flipsyde won Best Screenplay Award at the Tribeca Film Festival. Also well known Bay Area writer Mark Skillz and the production crew Lincoln Leopard won several awards including Best Short Documentary for the Hip Hop film ‘White Lines and the Fever’ at SxSW, Tribeca and the Seattle International Film Festivall..
All in all its great to see so many folks from the Bay making noise in the areas of film.
(AllHipHop News) Hip-Hop star Wyclef Jean will announce his bid for the President of Haiti, a source has confirmed with AllHipHop.com exclusively.
Sources close to Wyclef confirmed with AllHipHop.com that the rapper will announce his bid for the country’s highest office next Thursday, on August 5th.
The 37-year-old was born in Haiti, but immigrated to the United States at the age of 9-years-old, when he landed in Brooklyn, before settling in South Orange, New Jersey.
As a member of The Fugees and as a solo artist, Wyclef has sold millions of records, in addition to collaborating with artists like Paul Simon, Gloria Estefen, Destiny’s Child, Carlos Santana and others.
The rapper sprung into action on January 12th, when his native land was leveled by a 7.0 earthquake that left 300,000 people dead over a million others displaced.
Even prior to the earthquake, Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti organization raised funds for the country, but after the deadly earthquake, the rapper helped raise over $10 million dollars in less than three months.
The rapper will make his official announcement just two days prior to the country’s August 7th deadline to submit his plan for running for President.
Analysts are predicting that Wyclef Jean will easily win the race with his financial connections, influence among the Haitian youth and his political influence around the world.
The news of his candidacy has stoked fears in opponents planning to run for the head office in November.
“I think if Wyclef is allowed to run he will have a straight victory,” political leader and former presidential candidate Himmler Rebu told Reuters yesterday.
Jean, who maintained his status as a citizen of Haiti, was in the country yesterday, where he was preparing for his upcoming campaign.
The rapper/musician also has political clout in the country.
His uncle, Raymond Alcide Joseph, has been the Haitian ambassador to the United States since 2005 and helped Wyclef’s drive to raise money and relief aid for victims of the massive earthquake.
The Haitian rapper Wyclef Jean is contemplating a run for the presidency of Haiti. I liken this to the selection of Ronald Reagan in 1980, a popular entertainer who was a puppet of the right wing power brokers of this country.
Wyclef Jean has supported the military coups against the duly-elected (first with 67% and 2nd with 90% of the vote) Jean-Bertrand Aristide, affectionately called Titid by the Haitian masses and members of Fanmi Lavalas, the party that first drafted the liberation-theologean to run for President. For more on Haitians’ love of Aristide and their ongoing demands for his return, watch this short video. Even though it’s in French, there’s no problem understanding the message:
According to The Huffington Post, “The singer has been active in recent years in raising money through his Yele Haiti Foundation. The organization was widely criticized for alleged financial irregularities after the Jan. 12 quake, when scrutiny revealed it had paid Jean to perform at fundraising events and bought advertising air time from a television station he co-owns.
Let’s be clear, Wyclef’s uncle is the Haitian Ambassador to the U.S., and they’re both cozy with the self-appointed czar of Haiti, Bill Clinton, whose plans for Haiti are to make it a neo-colony for cheap labor in U.S. factories and a reconstructed tourist industry. Wyclef is the perfect puppet. The Haitian elite and its U.S./U.N. sponsors are counting on his appeal to young people to derail the movement to return Aristide. I doubt it will succeed. In fact, I believe most Haitians will not buy this bullshit at all.
Ghosts of Cite Soleil plays like a manipulative music video, featuring music by Haitian rapper Wyclef Jean, also the executive producer, who supported the coup and pushed the State Department line among the conscious hip-hop community and progressive celebrities in Hollywood. This contrasts to the principled stand of Danny Glover, Ruby Dee and her late, great husband Ossie Davis. You can almost hear the violins behind Chamblain, as he talks about his return to Haiti, but the music becomes dissonant and menacing behind Aristide…
The director is Danish, not German, but Ghosts of Cite Soleil makes heroes of the made-in-Washington leaders of Haiti’s 2004 coup in a manner reminiscent of Leni Riefenstahl’s adoration for Adolf Hitler in her famous film from the 1930’s, Triumph of the Will. It builds a web of lies – lies of omission and lies of commission – into the “Big Lie” – a stylized, decontextualized, post-modern, sexy/violent piece of propaganda disguised as a documentary, full of guns but signifying nothing.
Ghosts of Cite Soleil claims to reveal the intimate personal lives of two gangsters who are brothers, Bily and 2Pac, in the deprived Cite Soleil neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. When introducing them to several foreign journalists, filmmaker Kevin Pina (Harvest of Hope, Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits) made the following comment, “Billy and I had a falling out over the question of his accepting money from foreign journalists to hype this question of Aristide and gangsters. The more they paid the more outlandish became his claims . . .”
The director, Asger Leth, would have us believe the majority of people of Cite Soleil don’t support President Aristide, and that those who do are forced to do so by armed gangsters. He ignores the fact that massive pro-Aristide demonstrations have taken place in Cite Soliel repeatedly since the coup. In one scene, a Cite Soleil crowd shouts, “Five full years, Five full years.” Leth translates, but does not explain the significance – the people want Aristide back to finish his full five-year term.
The film doesn’t tell us that “Opposition leaders” Andy Apaid and Charles Henry Baker are also sweatshop owners who hate Aristide because he wanted to raise the minimum wage and make them pay taxes, which the rich don’t do in Haiti.
Jean Betrand Aristide
We’re told President Aristide left voluntarily – no mention of his kidnapping by the US military and his ongoing banishment from the continent. We see jubilant crowds of Aristide opponents waving as the coup makers drive into town, giving the impression most Haitians supported the coup. We don’t see the US, French, and Canadian soldiers guarding the route and making the entrance possible. We don’t learn that Port-au-Prince was totally defended the day of Aristide’s kidnapping, and the coup leaders would never have been able to take it over militarily. Instead Uncle Sam came to the rescue.
We’re not told that Louis Jodel Chamblain worked with the Duvalier dictatorship’s brutal militia, the Tonton Macoutes, in the 1980s; that following a military coup against Aristide in 1991, he was the “operations guy” for the FRAPH paramilitary death squad, accused of murdering uncounted numbers of Aristide supporters and introducing gang rape into Haiti as a military weapon.
We’re not told that Guy Phillipe is a former Haitian police chief who was trained by US Special Forces in Ecuador in the early 1990s, or that the US embassy admitted that Phillipe was involved in the transhipment of narcotics, one of the key sources of funds for paramilitary attacks on the poor in Haiti. He says the man he most admires is former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Leth portrays both of these men as credible spokespersons, not gangsters.
Where did the weapons of the coup-makers come from? Who organized and trained them? Who spent tens of millions of dollars to create an “opposition movement” in Haiti? The United States is the real ghost in this film – it simply does not exist, except for its official version of events, scripted by George W. Bush, which Ghosts of Cite Soleil follows scrupulously.
Ghosts of Cite Soleil plays like a manipulative music video, featuring music by Haitian rapper Wyclef Jean, also the executive producer, who supported the coup and pushed the State Department line among the conscious hip-hop community and progressive celebrities in Hollywood. This contrasts to the principled stand of Danny Glover, Ruby Dee and her late, great husband Ossie Davis. You can almost hear the violins behind Chamblain, as he talks about his return to Haiti, but the music becomes dissonant and menacing behind Aristide or behind 2Pac an
The streets are buzzing about the recent revelation that the daughter of actor Lawrence Fishburne is set to be a porn star…I know many of us like to make jokes and will pass harsh judgment on such a decision. Like comedian Chris Rock noted in one of his jokes, if your daughter grows up and starts hitting the pole, you failed as a parent. With that as a running commentary, one can only imagine what Fishbourne is thinking or feeling. The thought of our loved ones getting fucked is not an image we like to have in our minds although many of us have no problem hosting such sordid thoughts on someone else’s daughter. This is just one of many glaring contradictions we as a society hold.
Davey D's Hip Hop Corner 