Cobb

After reading your comments and thoughts about the world surrounding you, you seem to be colorblind. As a person of color, I've been through may ordeals in my life but not often do I find a person like you bashing about everyone else, however praising yourself as being better than others? I'm confused, you talk smack about other ethnicity (minorities), but not your own as well as the white race. Why not talk about shit about "Eminem" for coming-up into hip-hop world, isn't that "black" thing. Why not talk shiet about J Lo for using the term "nigga" in her song, she's not black. Also, she didn't deserve to play the a part in the movie "Selena" because she wasn't even Mexican begin with. Why not talk shit about Oprah? She's more white than Bill Clinton was ever black!
Anyway, my point to all this is that you really have to open up your head and be glad that people of color are making a change in the media as well as society.

I don't talk much about pop culture at all. When I did, it was about Arsenio Hall vs Bill Cosby back in the mid and late 80s. I used to get into hellified conversations about Spike Lee and what blackfolks ought to do, but I gave that all up around 93, when I read a book called Drylongso. This was about 4 years after I dissed my former buppie colleagues for wearing perms and not going nappy. So I swung the other way from my corporate look and feel and went underground really calling the black middle class on all kinds of stuff. But as I said, I got over myself on all that by the time I was 34 or so eight years ago.

So my criticisms are generally more political than cultural, and I've noticed that I don't talk much about black culture as I used to. I'm just accustomed to being highbrow about it all - very much like Stanley Crouch, Wynton Marsalis and Albert Murray. I'm too old to care about JLo or Puffy. Most of my family is pretty educated so they don't either. I must say, however, that I got into it pretty deep about "Monster's Ball". I hope the next time something like that comes up, a lot of blackfolks will show up at Cobb and discuss it. (My angle was that Halle Berry is no Angela Bassett, and what do you expect from miss 'BAPS'?)

I think hiphop is mostly dead, and won't be reborn until it deals with the blues and country music. The best hiphop is acid jazz anyway, because real musicians still make music after all the money is gone. If you took the money out of hiphop 95% of it would disappear overnight - that's because it's not art, it's commerce.

I like Eminem for the same reason I like Rage Against the Machine, Ice Cube and DMX. It's loud angry shit, and sometimes that's just the right music. But that's only occasional. I think Eminem is legit, and he's keeping it real. So what?

Culturally, I'm the kind of brother who would love hearing a great jazz quartet or stage play. But I am much more inclined to talk about black literature than anything else. Even so, I spent a whole lot of energy dissing Terry McMillan a lifetime ago. You tell me where black people are discussing black literature online, and I'll go. But Oprah? Please.

I'm not colorblind politically, just constitutionally. I think multicultural pluralism and ethnic politics are real and must be dealt with, but I don't believe in separate rights for groups.

Am I better than others? Probably. Am I uppity? Hell yeah. Nevertheless, it's not about me.

Again, my job here is all about representing the Old School from a personal perspective. I'm trying to get black thinkers, like college professors and writers over at Vision Circle. That's more formal.