So...Marvel Made Ya'll Love Africa ?

So... Marvel Finally Made Ya’ll Love Africa ?


Min. Paul Scott



You could talk about Nigeria/people used to laugh at ya


Now I take a look/I see USA for Africa ?


Stop the Violence-Boogie Down Productions





Shanequa Jenkins never wanted nothin’ to do with Africa. When her roommates would demand that she turn off Love and Hip Hop so they could watch Hidden Colors, she would just storm out the room calling them “Hotep Hoes” under her breath. So, it shocked her roomies when two hours before the Black Panther premier she was waiting at the front door in a brand new dashiki with matching Red Bottoms and Coach Bag yellin’ “Ya’ll aint ready to go, yet !?”



Not long ago, if you wore a dashiki or African medallion you had to wade through a sea of hecklers sayin’ stuff like , “ Yo ! You tryin’ to join X-Clan or somethin’ ? VAN-GLORIOUS !” Or any time you dared speak about something Afrocentric, cats would roll their eyes and mumble “there he goes with that black stuff again…” But now with the coming of the new Marvel movie, The Black Panther, even the worst Africa haters have caught a severe case of Jungle Fever.



Historically, many African Americans have had a problem with the Motherland. During the days of slavery, many free black folk ,vehemently, opposed the repatriation movement. While some did see it for what it was, a way to rid America of the riff raff, most felt that they did not want to leave a country that they helped build.



During the early 20th Century, although up to 10 million people supported The Honorable Marcus Garvey’s Back to Africa Movement, many people opposed his efforts as they saw his movement as a threat to their vested interests in the American Dream.



Hollywood didn’t help matters much ,either, during this period as the image propagated of the continent was either taken straight outta a Tarzan movie or a Looney Tunes cartoon with a bunch of cannibals circling a big black pot chantin’ “yum, yum eat ‘em up.”



During the late 60’s , there was a beef between members of the Black Panther Party who embraced a Marxist ideology and Dr. Maulana Karenga's Us Organization who practiced cultural nationalism. This ideological disagreement was intensified by the efforts of J. Edgar Hoover and his COINTELPRO program, preventing any fusion of the two ideologies that could have hastened our journey towards Freedom.



Even though some Hip Hop headz praise the “conscious” era of the late 80’s for bringing African awareness to rap and championing the fight against South Africa’s Apartheid regime, truth is, the era barely lasted four years and by 1992 most Hip Hoppers had traded in their dashikis and sandals for West Coast Khakis and Chuck Taylors.



The best dynamic of that period is perhaps captured in Spike Lee’s classic film School Daze , during the scene when Julian aka “Big Brother Almighty” tells Dap, the Pro Black Brotha that he wasn’t from Africa. He was “from Detroit.”





Sadly, that was pretty much the attitude of many African Americans until the last couple of years. Before the commercialized Black Lives Matter Era, in order to find a decent dashiki you would have had to hit the road and head to a city with predominantly black neighborhoods and hunt down an African clothing store in the middle of the ‘hood. But now even white and Asian owned shops have dashikis and African necklaces hanging in their windows.



What is unfortunate is despite all the master teachers that have gone on to the ancestors; Dr. Chancellor Williams , Dr. John Henrik Clarke , Dr. Yosef ben Jochannan and a host of others who sacrificed their lives to try to teach us about our heritage, it took an old white dude who made his fortune courtesy of a white kid in a red and blue onesie swingin; through NYC to finally make us embrace who we are.


Or perhaps it has something to do with the changing times. Maybe Black Panther Mania is not just a fad and will awaken the African genius that lies dormant deep inside of us.




Malcolm X once said that we left “our minds in Africa.” Maybe the hype over the Black Panther movie is an indication that we are finally getting our minds back?





Min. Paul Scott is based in NC. Phone (919) 972-8305  His website is NoWarningShotsFired.com   Follow on Twitter  @NWSF

NWSF Bullet: Merchandising Michael

I will be the first to admit that I like Michael Jackson's music. I've been a fan since the "I Want You Back" days.

However, I have mixed feelings about the new movie coming out tomorrow. I'm not sure that it is an honest attempt to pay tribute to one of the world's greatest entertainers or just a scam for greedy media moguls to recoup some of the money that they lost when Jackson died.

Also, there is the issue of the hypocrisy that folks like Rev. Al Sharpton brought up after The King of Pop's death. Rev. was right, many of the same people who were boo hooin' last July, were hatin' on him the day before he died.

I remember the video channels playing "They Don't Really Care About Us," Jackson's most political song. The same stations probably hadn't played the song since some people criticized the lyrics as "anti-semitic."

A lot of folks hated Jackson's political side that began to surface after the accusations of his having improper relations with children.

Now I wasn't really feelin' all the damage control when he was on the tube talkin' about how proud he was to be a "black African American."

(I wasn't with the OJ Simpson attempt to prove that he was "down with the brothas, either)

But when MJ started calling out the big shots who control the music industry, I was impressed!

What is sad is that the movie will probably make millions more than his come back attempt would have made. To most folks, Mike was a 50 year old has been.


It could be argued that Tupac Shakur would have long been replaced by the Lil Wayne's of the world if he hadn't been killed.

Americans seem to really dig posthumous music.

I guess Notorious BIG was right.

"You're nobody till somebody kills you."

Notoriously Overrated

Notoriously Overrated:
What Was so Big about Biggie Smalls?

Paul Scott




There's a new movie coming out, next month, called "Notorious." It's the story of a black kid who grew up on the mean city streets, became a Black Panther and dedicated his life to stopping police brutality and trying to organize street gangs into a revolutionary political movement. The story ends with him being murdered in his bed by the police as he slept next to his pregnant fiancee.

My bad, that was the Fred Hampton story. Wrong screenplay...

"Notorious" is about the life of a drug dealer turned rapper who released a CD, got into a beef with another rapper and was shot on the streets of LA while leaving an after party. The end.

If you ask any Hip Hop fan who are the greatest rappers of all time, dead or alive, he will, most likely, put Christopher "Notorious BIG" Wallace in the top five. Any omission of "Biggie Smalls" is considered Hip Hop blasphemy. Even highly educated college professors have made a career out of quoting Wallace's lyrics like "The 10 Crack Commandments" as if they were part of some sacred text. Even today, if you go to any Hip Hop clothing store in any city in America you can still buy the T-Shirt of The Notorious BIG with the crown on his head for 20 bucks.

However, as it is with most American icons, we never take a minute to ask, at the end of the day, what was this person's overall contribution to society that made him worthy of the accolades that we bestow upon him, posthumously.

The tragic story of the Notorious BIG is the cornerstone of the Hip Hop catechism and has been the subject of so many books, documentaries and magazine articles that I am not sure how much more light the film "Notorious" can shed on his life. I guess that the movie company, Fox Searchlight, is banking on the possibility that thousands of loyal Hip Hop fans will be willing to put down $8 a head just to pay homage to their dearly departed idol, even in the midst of a major Recession.

But the question remains, what makes a person like Christopher Wallace still relevant a decade after his death when many of our leaders who sacrificed their lives for black people are forgotten soon after their casket drops?

Most Hip Hop heads can run down in their sleep how Wallace sold drugs in Brooklyn, signed with Bad Boy, married Faith Evans and discovered Lil Kim. Who doesn't know about his infamous beef with Tupac Shakur during the mid 90's that had black folks debating who had the best rappers, the East or West Coast, during the same period when right wing conservatives were debating how to take away the few rights that black folks had.

Many of the faithful still get teary eyed when they recall the night that "Big" was murdered, a tragedy that made a black record label owner rich and a whole lot of multi-national white businessmen, richer.

Very few Hip Hop aficionados will debate the fact that many consider Wallace's first release, "Ready to Die," a Hip Hop classic. But one would be hard pressed to find anything even remotely political or intellectually, insightful in any of the lyrics on his CD's where every thing he rapped about could have taken place within a one mile radius of his own block. Besides tales of black on black homicide and suicidal thoughts based on either self hatred or major depression, there is little else to justify any of his work being held in the same light as a " It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" or "The Score."

Talid Kweli once rapped about how we have the uncanny ability to find beauty in the hideous. In the case of Biggie's lyrics, we also try to find depth in the shallow.

Maybe the reason lies within our "mis" educational system. We are trained since elementary school to accept what the text books teach us as the absolute, unadulterated truth. If the book says that Christopher Columbus "discovered" America, then Christopher Columbus discovered America. So as we get older, if a Hip Hop magazine says that Christopher Wallace was the greatest of all time , than Biggie Smalls was the illest. No questions asked.

Perhaps we just have a fascination with death. Especially the deaths of other black folks. I know people who can't start their day without checking the newspaper to see who got shot the night before. We also have the tendency to elevate people in death to levels that they would have never achieved in life.

In ancient Egyptian culture, when a pharaoh died he was worshiped as a god. So when rappers die violently, they are transformed into gods of war, leading their followers on a quest to seek revenge against all those that had beef with them when they were alive.

Holly'hood has also capitalized off of our necrophilia as, for the last 15 years, the plot of black men getting tragically caught up in the streets has been the theme of too many movies to name. No one wants to admit that although they say art imitates life, in the hood , life imitates art as the death of Christopher Wallace only helped to desensitize a generation of young black men to the finality of death. And with the upcoming release of "Notorious," we see that we still have not learned our lesson.

Sadly, although the Notorious BIG became even more famous beyond the grave, for the young brothers who followed in his footsteps, the only fame they received was a 15 second news flash on Channel 9.

Back in the day Kurtis Blow said that there were 8 million stories in the naked city. Unfortunately, most of our stories end the same way . No happily- ever- after. No pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Just black blood being spilled on city streets.

I guess the BIG man was right when he said that "You're nobody till somebody kills you."

Paul Scott, the Hip Hop TRUTH Minista's blog is http://www.nowarningshotsfired.com/ He can be reached at info@nowarningshotsfired.com (919) 451-8283

Why Black Folks Blast Their Radios

Why Black Folks Blast Their Radio's:
The Silencing of Black Talk
Min. Paul Scott

"My radio believe me/ I like it loud
I'm the man with the box/that can rock a crowd"
I Can't Live Without My Radio- LL Cool J



It's a familiar scene. You're rolling down the street on a peaceful Sunday evening. You stop at a traffic light and the dude in the car next to you is blastin' his music so loud that it rattles your teeth and knocks the Pepsi that you were enjoying right out of your drink holder. While you may wonder how the kid can enjoy playing his radio that loud, in reality it is not for his enjoyment. He's just trying to be heard.

Members of my generation have always played our music loud, from the giant 50 pound boom boxes that we used to lug around on our shoulders in the early 80's to the 10,000 watt boomin' systems that we installed in our jeeps in the early 90's. Although many people assumed that we were just trying to be annoying, like the youth of today we were making a statement.

There is a new movie being released nationally July 27th called "Talk to Me" that chronicles the career of Ralph "Petey" Green who went from being a convict to a populor DC radio and then TV personality that told "tha man" where to stick it during the 60's through the early 80's.

But in 2007, where are the "Petey Green's" who are willing to force America to hear the truth about the trials that Black folks face on a daily basis?

While there are hundreds of white journalists, talk show hosts and other media personalities across the country there only a relative handful of African American opinion makers and yet fewer who comment from an Afrocentric perspective.

In every market you will find at least one white conservative talk show host. The trend really kicked off in the mid 90's as a reaction to Bill Clinton's Democratic Administration when Rush Limbuagh, G Gordon Liddy and others became overnight celebrities. Not to mention the increased popluarity of Right Wing journalists that espoused the values of and spoke unappologetically for white conservative Americans.

But who speaks for Black folks?

While there are a few nationally syndicated talk shows courtesy of Radio One’s Syndication One and a few other companies, it is safe to say that Bill O’Reilly reaches more homes than all the Black commentators combined.

What is especially disturbing is the disappearance of local talk programing. During the 70's, it wasn’t uncommon to have Bro. Righteous Raymond on WBLK giving the 411 on all the issues facing Black America. Even mainstream television stations in urban areas aired the obligatory Saturday night "Soul Sister Sheena’s Soul Sensation."

It must be noted , however, that this was not the result of benevolence on the part of white corporations but a necessary evil in an America that was not even a decade removed from the urban rebellions of the Black Power Era. White America needed someone to interpret the meaning of the sounds the African war drums still reverberating through the hoods. They just figured it was better to have Black folks express their rage over the airwaves where it could be monitored and regulated by advertising dollars instead of having Black folks hold clandestine meeting in the back of barbershops orchestrating ways to "get whitey." But as the white paranoia of some great bloody uprising subsided, so did their need for black programming.

During the 90's, the post LA Rebellion multi cultural movement gave rise to a "universalism" that made all racial issues colorless. Also, one cannot forget the impact of FCC deregulations that allowed corporations to monopolize media markets and allowed public affairs programing to be almost totally eradicated.

Perhaps the main cause of the demise of Black public affairs programming was the fear of the infinite possibilities of Black Talk by those in power (ie rich white folks) to the change social and political landscape of America.

This is best exemplified by the Right's hatred of Hip Hop. Contrary to popular belief, the first attacks on Hip Hop were not leveled against the "gangsta rappers" but the overtly political rap of Public Enemy and Sister Souljah and during that period, full time gangsta's and part time revolutionaries Tupac Shakur, Ice T and Ice Cube. If given a choice most Right Wingers would choose the nonpolitical rap of Cam'ron instead of the problack politics of Dead Prez, anyday.

What has scared the pants off of white America is the potential for Black Talk to galvanize the masses of Black people toward social action whether deliberate or accidental as was the case when the Magnificent Montague catch phrase "Burn Baby Burn," unintentionally, became the battle cry of the 1965 Watts Rebellion.

I am sure that the success of the heavily attended 2006 mostly Latino , Immigration Reform Protests which were made possible largely because of Spanish speaking radio disc jockey's did not escape the watchful eyes of the media gatekeepers whose worst fears would be realized if black Hip Hop DJ's followed the Latino's lead and used the airwaves to politicize their listeners.

We need another Petey Green today, someone to push the envelope, to shake things up a bit. But we cannot expect him to descend from the towers of ABC, CBS or even the local commercial radio station.

The next media messiah will arrive via the new technology of internet radio, pod casts and blogs. Someone who demands to be heard. Just like the guy in the car next to you blastin' his radio.

To borrow the theme from "Talk to Me":

"You can't stop a man with something to say."

Min. Paul Scott is a writer and activist. His blog is http://www.nowarningshotsfired.com
He can be reached at (919) 451-8283 info@nowarningshotsfired.com