Anyone remember August of 2008? It seems like a distant memory, but there are certain times in your life you just don’t forget. One year ago the hip-hop generation was rallying together all over the country, taking the necessary steps to elect our first black President. Hip-Hop’s biggest names were doing free shows, recording songs showing support and getting outright serious about making a difference in the upcoming election. As we know, these efforts worked. We made enough t-shirts, talked up enough friends and bumped “My President is Black” enough times to make an unimaginable impact on the 2008 election.

Here we stand a year later and to the hip-hop generation, Barack Obama may as well not exist. In less than a year we’ve given up all the momentum we gained as a force in politics and have effectively left our boy to fend for himself rather than continue to influence the change our country desperately needs.

Recently, Obama, along with a number of other Democrats in Congress, have been the center of one of the most brutal right wing attacks we’ve ever witnessed. In the fight for health care reform we’ve seen mobs of leftovers from those creepy McCain town hall meetings come together in packs to try to convince the world that Obama’s proposed health care plan is going to turn our country into a Socialist nation. And we’re basically letting these people win.

The fight between the left and the right on the issue stems from Obama’s intention to make proper health care affordable to everyone in the Country.  It kind of sickens me to have to say that there is a debate on this issue at all. Forget all the numbers for a minute and just think of this based on moral principle. Why should the amount of money someone makes dictate their ability to receive health care? What kind of sick fucks would stand over someone and watch them die before they would give that person a few dollars to save their life?

This is why I question why the hip-hop generation is not doing more to support Obama’s policy. It’s no secret that hip-hop music has always had trouble with certain moral issues. At the same time, hip-hop artists have been some of the biggest trendsetters when it comes to philanthropic work. One would think that there are enough of these trendsetters in the hip-hop community who have seen the evils of America’s health care system to want to help the fight on this issue.

Paul Wall may have been on to something quite provocative when he uttered the line “No 401K for a hustler.” While it seems like a simple line, when looking at in context there’s some deep meaning to the concept. For many musicians, industry folks and other entrepreneurs there are no employment benefits. While many make enough money to (barely) survive, the job does not come with a retirement plan, paid vacations or health care coverage. It seems to me that quite a few of these people could really benefit from an affordable health care system. Why isn’t anyone stepping up for the “hustlers”, the entrepreneurs or even the people who work 40+ hours per week and still don’t have access to proper health care? Why is Jay-Z making songs about the Death of Autotune when he could be rapping about the Death of the HMO? I know it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but the point is that the hip-hop community needs to stop sitting on the sidelines during this debate.

The legislation President Obama is trying to pass will benefit us and many future generations to come. When we rallied together to put Obama in office, we all supported the fundamental idea of change. This is exactly what Obama is trying to do and as we expected, the right wing and even members of the Democratic Party are not ready to accept the sort of changes we have asked for. It’s on us to make sure the right voices are heard and we don’t let this issue die as it did during the Clinton administration. Hip-Hop was still in its adolescence the last time the issue of Health Care Reform came around. Hip-Hop culture has since matured into a responsible and powerful adult. Let’s exercise that power and make a difference this time around.

It’s amazing how quickly we’ve gone from a President that refused to take questions while at the White House (except from reporters he planted) to a guy who is willing to talk to just about anybody. I believe we picked a winner folks.

THERE ARE NO MORE ROC-STARS!!!
Maybe the world is balancing out.
Finally the leader of the free world is cooler than any musician/artist.
- The Broke Mogul

This quote was pulled from a funny review of the abomination that Kanye apparently pulled on American Idol this week (which I’ve yet to watch because I want to keep loving Kanye).

I’m not sure who the Broke Mogul is, although his profile says he’s the Music Supervisor for Entourage in which case I think we have a mutual friend, but check out his whole review on the Kanye performance. It had me

http://www.whitehouse.gov/

This was the status for Jacksonville Jaguars Kicker Josh Scobee this week on Yahoo Fantasy Football:

The Associated Press reports some agents of Major League Baseball players are considering asking for more money in signing bonuses due to President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed increase of the top federal income tax rate. Obama proposed increasing the top federal tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent on families making more than $250,000. A free agent making $10 million in 2009 could see a tax increase of $400,000 or more.

When the announcement was made on Tuesday night that Ohio had been called as a victory for Barack Obama, I was overwhelmed with emotion not only because it assured an Obama victory, but because of the work that went in to shifting the political landscape of the state over the past four years.

The Ohio victory made me think back to 2004, when I was a college student at Ohio University attempting to use hip-hop’s power to drive people to the polls.

One idea that I implemented was The Ohio Battleground Mixtape. The concept was to gather politically charged material from hip-hop artists from all corners of Ohio and compile them into an official mixtape that was distributed online using Soundclick. I wanted to create an awareness both in Ohio and out-of-state of the issues on the minds of voters in Ohio within our hip-hop community- hoping that the message and concept may carry to other battleground states.

The project did not make a lot of noise upon release.

The lack of financing for a physical release was a major problem in getting exposure back then, which is a little strange to say now, but in 2004 it was a difficult task to rely simply on the internet for distribution of a free mixtape.

There was also a clear lack of organization between all the progressive groups working on the 2004 Election, which made forming the alliances needed to properly publicize this sort of project impossible. It was quite a contrast to the Obama campaign of 2008, which will be analyzed by scholars for hundreds of years. Instead, we had a million people running around working for way too many PAC’s- which were all under-funded and lacked a unified message besides “Go vote.” and “We hate George Bush.”

Looking back on the project now, I like to think that what I was doing at the time was setting the table to make history in 2008.

I took the results of the 2004 race hard because of the time I put into organizing voters in Ohio, only to have the State deliver a second term for George Bush. I questioned whether or not the minority vote, the youth vote or any other combination of voters could ever be strong enough to compete with the organization and financing of the Republican Party.

I knew changes were needed within the Democratic Party, but felt as though my euphoric vision of the party running a candidate myself and my peers could relate to was absurd. I blamed the party for alienating youth and minority voters by running weak candidates.

In a paper written for a Political Science class immediately after the Election of 2004 I made the following statement:

The young liberals need to seek out a candidate that is able to appeal to a broad spectrum of the voting population, while still focusing on youth based initiatives such as the cost of higher education and employment. We need to find a candidate that can defy the odds and win some of the Southern states that have traditionally voted Republican. Many will say this a battle we cannot win, but I believe that a candidate truly exists that embodies the values our generation is looking for, but this person has not stepped up and made their intentions clear of leading the Democratic Party into the future at this point in time.

If our generation is serious about putting “our guy” in office in 2008, the process needs to start now. The last thing most young people want to talk about now is politics, but this is also the most critical time to start to build a stronger movement in 2008. These same people who were so inspired to “Rock the Vote” or “Vote or Die” need to sit down together and figure out a strategy for building and shaping our own candidate for the next election. Somewhere buried inside the U.S. Congress, hiding in a State’s government or somewhere else in America’s political landscape there are suitable candidates for the Democratic Party that can be legitimate contenders in the next election if given the right support by our generation. We need to seek these people out and make them run for President.

I think when I wrote this I had Obama in mind because he was someone I had recently become familiar with. The final track of the Ohio Battleground Mixtape was not a hip-hop track from an Ohio artist. Instead, I decided to conclude the project with a speech that had inspired me during the 2004 Democratic National Convention from a little-known candidate for the U.S. Senate by the name of Barack Obama. I was memorized by the speech, the message that was being conveyed and mostly the amount of hope I felt from listening to this man talk and felt that his words, and not Kerry’s, would inspire more people to get involved in the 2004 campaign.

In under four years we have taken a hold of the Democratic Party and have put “our guy” in the White House. We organized, we dedicated ourselves and we showed up at the polls on Election Day.

This should serve as a reminder of how hard we worked to accomplish this goal and also as a blueprint for success in future elections. There’s no turning back now. We can’t blame the politicians for holding us back anymore because WE run the political landscape in America now and the only way that changes is if we give it back!

Below is the Ohio Battleground Mixtape 2004 in it’s entirety:

Nice cover making this a 2nd Amendment story. DON’T GO TO FLORIDA BARACK!!!