It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. ~Frederick Douglass
Give thanks Lupe! For hitting it on the nail. I applaud this young man for his creativity and stance on making songs his way. I totally love how he used mainstream hip hop (hip pop) as fuel, to knowingly create a conversation piece. It's overdue. When you have Lil Wayne and Rick Ross and countless others, juggling the use of the B-word; it balances out the clever way Lupe chose to flip it. As a parent of a precocious girl-child, that is "malleable" like he said, I have my work cut out for me. The kids are getting negative messages from every direction these days. I have to share this video with her! We talk all the time about music. She likes all kinds, I am never surprised. I mean this is the kid who went to her first Baaba Maal concert at 15 months!
She has only recently been able to listen to mainstream radio, only because she had her own radio in her room. Each night I changed the channel to WCLK and WRFG, when she would try to go to bed with tunes playing. That changed too when I blew the speaker out trying to experiment, anyhoo...she doesn't listen to the radio anymore. So she is stuck again with singing the songs from last year unless we go somewhere, or to someone else's house and she is privy to a moment of radio freedom!
Now school is back in session and she will have an opportunity to hear other kids sing the latest songs, she hasn't heard before. Eventually she will recognize the song when(if) she actually gets a chance to hear it. This is where the intervention takes place, inquiry as to where she heard it, who was singing it? What cuss words is she leaving out? What are they saying? What does it mean when they say that? Do you know what that is? Do you want to know? Explain it to me, please? Why are they singing that at school anyway? Are they playing the radio at school? Oh yeah this is the inquisition around here. That's why it's so timely for Lupe's video/song to re-ignite parents into being more active in monitoring their kids. If we're not having the conversations and asking the right questions NOW, we will be doing alot of damage control later. Lupe is not the only fire starter out there, but I appreciate him for starting this fire!
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Remember:
They have their own paths, yet we have to sometimes be Ogun and make sure the way is clear for them.
And also remember this about our children:
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