Breakin' 2 Chainz: Why Do Smart Rappers Make Dumb Raps ?

Breakin’ 2 Chainz:
Why Do Smart Rappers Make Dumb Raps?

TRUTH Minista Paul Scott


“Sophisticated ignorance/write my curses in cursive”
Otis-Kanye West and Jay Z

When the controversial rap superstar , “2 Shackles” granted an interview to an investigative journalist at the New Jersey Times he agreed that it would be no holds barred. When the reporter grilled him on everything from his recent baby mama drama to his beefs with rival rappers he addressed each question without flinching. Even when she pulled out a copy of the mugshot from his most recent arrest, he just smiled and autographed it for her. But when she asked him about the allegations that he had an extremely high IQ and graduated from college ,magna cum laude, he stormed out of the office knockin’ over chairs and mumblin’ something about “birthdays and big booty guhs.....”

If you go strictly by what you hear on the radio ,nowadays, you would swear that Hip Hop was made up of people with low IQ’s and short attention spans. The music that once prided itself on being the “Black CNN” now sounds more like a pornographic version of Sesame Street. Sad thing is that some of today’s rappers are ,actually ,intelligent. Now, I’m not claimin’ that they are rocket scientists but they aren’t the bumblin’ buffoons, that you here on the radio, either.

So the question becomes, why do the smartest rappers make the dumbest raps?

Malcolm X once said the difference between a clown and a wise man is “the clown never imitates the wise man but the wise man can imitate the clown.” However, on a three minute song on the radio, it’s kinda hard to tell. the difference.

Case in point is the hottest rapper in the game right now, 2 Chainz. Some may find it hard to believe that the rapper who gave us such songs as “Birthday Song” and “No Lie” is actually Tauheed Epps , a gifted high school student who , in 1996, got an athletic scholarship to play basketball at Alabama State University . Thus , putting him in the company of such , athletic ,scholar entertainers as Paul Robeson. However, it would be easier to find your favorite rapper's Illuminati membership card than it would be to find an actual record of 2 Chainz’s academic prowess. So the story goes that he was either an academic genius who graduated in three years with honors or a college dropout who only attended a couple of semesters at an institution of higher learning. However, the fact remains that he is far more intelligent than the music that he makes. If you ever listen to a n interview when 2 Chainz briefly breaks out of character and reverts back to Tauheed Epps , you can tell that you're not dealing with a dummy.

So why the charade?

One can make the argument that the rappers of today were not the first to make dumb music. Back in Hip Hop’s early years , there were songs by The Rappin’ Duke and Bobby Jimmy and the Critters. But raps by artists like Biz Markie were seen for what they were ; commedy. The songs were just an occasional break from the more lyrically complex Hip Hop of the time. No no one in his right mind wanted to hear “Pickin’ Boogers” all day, everyday on the radio. But today the airwaves are flooded with mentally challenged music that has dumbed down the culture.

The defenders of commercial rap are always quick to point out how Hip Hop is the most influential art form to ever grace the planet and how it has impacted countries around the world ,socially and economically. However, when you hit them with a socio-economic analysis of the music, they accuse you of “thinking too deep” and all of a sudden the great culture of Hip Hop becomes merely “entertainment for kids”, like some Saturday morning cartoon. But the critique must be done.

If we break down the meaning of “2 Chainz, “ we will see that in order to enslave a people it takes two chains; one physical and one mental. Of the two, the most powerful is the mental chain as taught by scholars such as Dr. Na’im Akbar, author of the book, Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery.  Because even when the physical chain around the wrist is broken, the mental chain around the brain remains.

The emancipation from mental slavery has always been the hardest task for those trying to free a people. who have been, as the scripture teaches, “destroyed for a lack of knowledge.” This is made more difficult when those who “reject knowledge” and dumb themselves down are portrayed to the youth as models of success.

However, all youth are not going for the okie doke. Recently, the group , Watoto from the Nile ,released a video called , “Letter to Nicki Minaj” which features a powerful scene where “Harriet Tubman” removes the chains from Minaj’s wrists,symbolically meaning that the chains will eventually drop from her brain. (Good luck with that one.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD8JrLFTPSM


It is no accident that the deeper we entered into the information age, the dumber the music became. It was once said that if you want to hide something from a Black man, put it in a book. But today, you don’t even have to take the bus to the library as the information is literally at the tip of your fingers. So, the mental chains had to become reinforced. The music industry has been involved in a “brain drain” where they take our best and brightest artists and turn them into ratchet rappers.

While it may be argued that teenage rappers like Chief Keef are too young to know any better that's no excuse for rappers like 2 Chainz who are old enough to be their fathers. They have made a mockery out of the saying “with age comes wisdom.”

It’s time for us to break the chains. Hip Hop artists must be pressured to stop the musical mumbo jumbo.

Like KRS said on Still # 1
“Many of you are educated/open your mouths and speak...”


TRUTH Minista Paul Scott’s weekly column is “This Ain’t Hip Hop,” a column for intelligent Hip Hop headz. For more information on the No Warning Shots Fired lecture series contact info@nowarningshotsfired.com or visit
NoWarningShotsFired.com Follow Twitter @truthminista

Waka Flocka Flame: Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader ?

Waka Flocka Flame: Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?

Min. Paul Scott



"All my brothers eatin' chicken and watermelon, talk broken English and drug sellin'"

My Philosophy-Boogie Down Productions




Last night, during the premier of the Hip Hop version of "Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader," 24 year old Waka Flocka Flame, went up against nine year old up and coming rapper, Willow Smith. However, the show ended, abruptly when during the introductions, the host asked Flaka how many years he had been rappin'. After counting on his fingers for several seconds, a puzzled Flame stormed off stage, cussin' at the audience and accusing the host of asking him a trick question...

Waka Flocka Flame is, undoubtedly, one of the hottest artists in Hip Hop, right now. You cannot turn on any Hip Hop radio station in the world and not hear one of his songs blastin' through the speakers. However, what is making Waka most famous these days is not his music but his interviews. Grandma used to tell me that it is better to keep silent and be thought a dummy, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Apparently, Flocka didn't get the memo.

On a recent episode of BET's 106 and Park, the host, Terrence J asked him about education and Flame responded by saying that he was going back to school to study "geometry." Later when the other host, Roxie asked him about politics, the boy genius said in classic Captain Caveman fashion "oonga boonga...votin' cool."

What is most disturbing, however, is the follow up interview that he gave on a radio station where he suggested that " Waka Flocka Flame" was just a character that he created in order to relate to the boys in tha hood. So my issue is not really with Juaquin Malphurs, the product of the American mis-educational system, but with his alter ego, Waka Flocka Flame that is being used by the industry to make being dumb, cool. A classic case of "I'm not really an idiot, I just play one on TV..."

The popularity of black folks actin' the fool has its roots in the mid 1800's with the black face minstrel performances. In the book, "Split Image: African Americans in the Mass Media," (Janet Davis and William Barlow) historian William Van Deburg is quoted as saying that in a time when many whites feared slave insurrections "the early slave image offered white audiences a comforting , psychological reassurance." He writes that "such intellectually inferior clowns posed little threat to white hegemony."

Such as it is today with black rappers in black face like Waka Flocka , who, despite all the hood talk are only a threat to the residents of the hood and not the socio-economic well being of those in the suburbs.

What is most disturbing about Waka is that he plays into the hands of those who still believe that black folks are more "Straight Out the Jungle" than "Straight Out of Compton." It must be remembered that barely a hundred years ago, African people were being locked up in monkey cages at zoos and forced to perform for white folks. According to Dr. Harriet Washington in her book, "Medical Apartheid," around 1903, a missionary explorer, Samuel Phillips Lerner, captured Ota Benga, an African "pygmy" and gave him to William Hornaday to put on exhibit in the Bronx Zoo. However, in 2010 they have stopped putting black men in cages but place them on stages.

To hear Malphurs tell it, the Flaka Flame character just represents the collective mentality of young urban males who have been victimized by society and he is only using rap music to express their collective point of view. Anyone who knows anything thing about Hip Hop history will tell you that that is a bunch of bull.

Back in the early 80's during the Reagan Era ,when times were ,arguably, socio-economically worst for black folks, rappers like the Treacherous Three and Funky Four Plus One More , expressed themselves very articulately, despite coming from conditions that were worst than those faced by the multi-millionaire rappers of today. We must ask ourselves why do the rappers of the 80's who were teenagers in the Reagan- Bush Era sound more intelligent than grown men in their 20's and 30's in the age of Obama? Just compare the lyrics of a young Kool Moe D or Grandmaster Caz with the ramblings of Waka Flocka or Gucci Mane. So the "product of my environment" excuse just doesn't fly in the face of facts.

What we have is the mass marketing of ignorance, a classic case of supply and demand. There are people who want to see black buffoonery and an industry more than happy to give it to them in large doses.

As we enter into an era where some people are trying to "turn back the clock" on African American progress, the actions of Waka Flocka Flame cannot be viewed in a political vacuum. In a time when many people want to put us back on the plantation we don't need rappers to supply the lyrical whips to beat us into submission.

So, what should we do? In truth, legitimate illiteracy is a major problem in poor communities. However, these folks should be helped and not exploited on TV. Perhaps there should be some "United Negro College Fund" for rappers to encourage artists like Wacka Flaka to obtain a higher education or develop a Hip Hop Rites of a Passage where more socio- politically conscious rappers take artists such as Flame and mentor them.

If that doesn't work, then it is time for some tough love. Like the old "scared straight" program, stupid rappers need to be "sacred smart" or risk being pulled off stage like KRS One did PM Dawn back in the day by crowds of disgusted black folks who are tired of seeing us portrayed as buffoons.

Either way it goes down, a change must come.

These are critical times for African Americans and we are in the fight of our lives against ignorance. We are at the bottom of the ninth inning; the end of the fourth quarter; down by three points with two seconds on the shot clock. There is a time for subtle diplomacy, but as Waka Flocka Flame said himself, there is also a time to "go hard in the paint."



TRUTH Minista Paul Scott writes for No Warning Shots Fired.com can be reached at info@nowarningshotsfired.com. For more information on Intelligence Over Ignorance lecture series contact info@nowarningshotsfired.com or (919) 451-8283

NWSF Bullet: Books Not Bullets

By now, I'm sure that you have heard about rapper TI getting arrested before the BET Hip Hop Awards, last Saturday. Seems TI or TIP was busted trying to buy some machine guns via his bodyguard.

Not sure why TI needed the extra ammo...

Maybe he was going to avenge the torture of Megan Williams, the sister from W.VA.

Or...Maybe he was going to go down to Jena, Louisiana to bust Mychal Bell out of the slammer...

Naw, in all likelihood, he was just stocking up to prove how gangsta he is just incase Ludacris decides to diss him on his next CD...

While the Black Panther Party "blackenized" Mao Tse Tung's "Politics grows out of the barrel of a gun" ideology, and Malcom X talked about the "Ballot or the Bullet" Hip Hop artists have at least gotten the gun and bullets parts right...

One of America's biggest fears has been that the thugz on the streets would one day become politically minded. What would happen if Snoop Dog woke up one morning and started telling his young homies that CRIP stands for "Community Revolution In Progress" or if The Game started quoting Marcus Garvey and said that the red that the Bloods wear stands for the blood of their African ancestors that was spilled for their FREEDOM?

Would they still have the same access that they do, now to go on TV and promote the genocide of a young black generation?

Probably not. They would probably be reduced to cameo appearences on "Dancing With the Stars."

What is more feared TI with a gun or TI with Robert William's book, "Negroes With Guns?"

Back in the late 80's Public Enemy used to rap aboout "Fightin' the Power", but today's youth have no idea what "the power" is much lest how to fight it....

I can see the "powers that be" sitting back in their war rooms smokin' big cigars and sayin'

"Yeah, let's take the books out tha hood and replace them with guns!"

It is said that a fool and his money are soon parted. So, I guess a similiar saying would be "a fool and a gun will shoot innocent bystanders."

No wonder the school system doesn't teach black children about their history...

Maybe we need to start a "Books not Bullets" Campaign ?