Interesting Reading | Obama & Hip Hop Rountable Discussion

I'm getting old when professors up in the university are writing books about hip hop and discussing it's impact on current events. I remember when it was an underground dance party in New York. But, I have to thank poet, scholar and writer, Kyle Dargan for his fascinating journal, Post No Ills.

Recently, he conducted an E-Roundtable entitled Sucka-Free Democracy: Hip Hop's Potential Response To An Obama Presidency. The participants include Adam Bradley, R. Scott Heath, Natalie Hopkinson, Natalie Y. Moore, and Mark Anthony Neal. All of the participants are scholars who specialize in Black popular culture. In this roundtable, they discuss the hip hop generation as it relates to expectations of leaders, governance and hip hop's traditional critique of the establishment. (Did I just write hip hop and traditional in the same sentence? Dang, I'm old.) I very much appreciated R Scott Heath's closing comments.

Excerpt from: "Obama has never claimed to be a King (though Lil Wayne does, basically), and he is not a preacher proper. And King never aspired to be an Obama, which is to say that he never ran for senator or president. They are two different, extremely charismatic individuals being syndicated to practically discrete audiences."