I still have very little to say (publicly). I am just not feeling happy about hip hop right now...... so it will be a lil bit longer before I resume my regular posting. Mama always said "if you have nothing good to say - don't say nothing at all"

Lately, I've been doing a lot of soul searching (personal, professional and spiritual) and when I emerge from this moment of silence, I will be armed with a new game plan and looking for people who share a similar passion for life and love. I am so happy to be alive - are you?

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In the absense of anything more profound to say....I want to share something with all of you. While I wholeheartedly beg to differ, the comments to follow make it hard to for me to speak up with any real conviction <----- so much of what is said is sad and true.

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I want to believe that a black person wrote this in an effort to make people get angry enough to want to make a personal change, but 9 times out of 10 it was not. It was prolly written by an anonymous Baltimorean Craigslist poster. All the racist Marylanders seem to congregate there. Don't believe me? Check this out for yourself (most days the threads are down right shocking. Look for titles like "You wanna know what's wrong with Baltimore" or "Baltimore Blacks" or "Baltimore Crime")......but before you do that - first read the following:

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Peep Game:

A Friend of mine just sent this to me.

BLACK PEOPLE, PLEASE, READ & HEED.

POIGNANT. The sad thing about this article is that the essence of it is true. The truth hurts. I just hope this sets more Black people in motion towards making real progress. Chris Rock, a Black comedian, even joked that Blacks don't read.

For those of you who did not hear it on the radio, this is the article Dee Lee was reading this morning on a New York radio station. This is a heavy piece and and Caucasian wrote it.

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THEY ARE STILL OUR SLAVES We can continue to reap profits from the Blacks without the effort of physical slavery. Look at the current methods of containment that they use on themselves: IGNORANCE, GREED, and SELFISHNESS.

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Their IGNORANCE is the primary weapon of containment. A great man once said, "The best way to hide something from Black people is to put it in a book." We now live in the Information Age. They have gained the opportunity to read any book on any subject through the efforts of their fight for freedom, yet they refuse to read. There are numerous books readily available at Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com, not to mention their own Black Bookstores that provide solid blueprints to reach economic equality (which should have been their fight all along), but few read consistently, if at all.

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GREED is another powerful weapon of containment. Blacks, since the abolition of slavery, have had large amounts of money at their disposal. Last year they spent 10 billion dollars during Christmas, out of their 450 billion dollars in total yearly income (2.22%). Any of us can use them as our target market, for any business venture we care to dream up, no matter how outlandish, they will buy into it. Being primarily a consumer people, they function totally by greed. They continually want more, with little thought for saving or investing. They would rather buy some new sneaker than invest in starting a business. Some even neglect their children to have the latest Tommy or FUBU, And they still think that having a Mercedes, and a big house gives them "Status" or that they have achieved their Dream. They are fools! The vast majority of their people are still in poverty because their greed holds them back from collectively making better communities.With the help of BET, and the rest of their black media that often broadcasts destructive images into their own homes, we will continue to see huge profits like those of Tommy and Nike. (Tommy Hilfiger has even jeered them, saying he doesn't want their money, and look at how the fools spend more with him than ever before!). They'll continue to show off to each other while we build solid communities with the profits from our businesses we market to them.

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SELFISHNESS, ingrained in their minds through slavery, is one of the major ways we can continue to contain them. One of their own, Dubois said that there was an innate division in their culture. A "Talented Tenth" he called it. He was correct in his deduction that there are segments of their culture that has achieved some "form" of success. However, that segment missed the fullness of his work. They didn't read that the "Talented Tenth" was then responsible to aid The Non-Talented Ninety Percent in achieving a better life. Instead, that segment has created another class, a Buppie class that looks down on their people or aids them in a condescending manner. They will never achieve what we have. Their selfishness does not allow them to be able to work together on any project or endeavor of substance. When they do get together, their selfishness lets their egos get in the way of their goal. Their so-called help organizations seem to only want to promote their name without making any real change in their community.They are content to sit in conferences and conventions in our hotels, and talk about what they will do, while they award plaques to the best speakers, not to the best doers. Is there no end to their selfishness? They steadfastly refuse to see that TOGETHER EACH ACHIEVES MORE (TEAM) They do not understand that they are no better than each other because of what they own, as a matter of fact, most of those Buppies are but one or two pay checks away from poverty. All of which is under the control of our pens in our offices and our rooms. Yes, we will continue to contain them as long as they refuse to read, continue to buy anything they want, and keep thinking they are "helping" their communities by paying dues to organizations which do little other than hold lavish conventions in our hotels. By the way, don't worry about any of them reading this letter, remember, THEY DON'T READ!!!! (Prove them wrong. Please pass this on! After Reading it..)

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Wake up: How we conduct ourselves within the Hip Hop community just shines a light on the issues that assult our community as a whole. Until we make the world around us a more inspiring place, hip hop will continue to die a painfully slow and agonizing death.

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check me out on MYSPACE @ www.myspace.com/clove or www.myspace.com/itsbaltimorebaby