JAY-Z: "I was meeting with Bill Gates last week...He told me about what the world's going to look like in five years, and I got scared."

You know, it's amazing what geniuses have given the world.

No, seriously.

I'm talking about the people that MOVE people, that inspire and entertain them, that enlighten them in an enjoyable way.

We've had a bunch.

As for Jay-Z being a "genius", all I can say is you go from being a broke kid from a broken home in the hopeless and dangerous Marcy Projects of Brooklyn, New York to being worth $300 million, and I dare you not to demand to be called a "genius".

I'm sold.

Besides, as he says:

"I'm like Che Guevara with bling on, I'm complex,
I never meant to have wings on..."

- Jay-Z, "Public Service Announcement/Interlude"

I like it so much I stole the damn thing.

(Paraphrased it.)

Anyway, where's the evidence of this?

Well... while it's tough to resist waxing poetic about the God-MC, and don't worry - just 'cause I'm holdin' his jock don't mean I can't find my own - I think I'll let him spit his own "Moment of Clarity":

"The music business hate me,
Cause the industry ain't make me,
Hustlers and boosters embrace me,
And the music I be makin',
I dumb down for my audience,
And double my dollars,
They criticize me for it,
Yet they all yell "Holla!"

If skills sold,
Truth be told,
I'd probably be,
Lyrically,
Talib Kweli,
Truthfully,
I wanna rhyme like Common Sense,
(But I did five mill')
I ain't been rhymin like Common since,

When your sense got that much in common,
And you been hustlin' since,
Your inception,
F-ck perception:
Go with what makes sense,
Since,
I know, what I'm up against,
We as rappers, must decide,
What's most im-por-tant,

And I can't help the poor,
If I'm one of them,
So I got rich, and gave back,
Now that's the win-win,
So the next time you see the homie,
And his rims that spin,
Just know my mind is workin just like them,
(The rims that is...)"

- Jay-Z, "Moment of Clarity"

Whoa.

Okay, I guess I get it.







Besides he's been shouting out "Moments of Clarity" overshadowed by the "bling" for years. Frankly with one life to live after society had originally given him nothing to live for, and since many of us have a lot to live for and a lot of opportunities and do nothing about it, his approach to getting as much as he can legally and morally was reasonable.

I mean, do you really think the controlled mass media is going to let a politically scarring group like "Public Enemy" blow up again?

While his success speaks for itself, I think Jay-Z also understood way back in the day that we all have business to attend to in our own unique ways as well.

No, not just "gettin' money", serious business.

Change.

Take a look at his first and most thoughtful album - most say his best - "Reasonable Doubt". It was 1996, or ten years ago in the height of the "East/West" feud that the media was so in love with, and besides dropping Marley-esque "be good to your friends" reminders like:

"If every n-gga in your clique is rich, your clique is rugged,
No one will fall, cause everyone will be each other's crutches,
I hope you fools choose to listen, I drop jewels, bust it,
These are the rules I follow in my life, you gotta love it..."

- Jay-Z, "Feelin' It"

He even went further towards squashing the "East/West" beef with a kindred soul - one who's violent and unresolved passing like numerous other "black leaders" probably helped keep Jay-Z from being as overtly "political" as he would've liked:

"I get my fly on, and my drop on, due to write on,
Don't even hate on those who hate me, I got 'Pac on,
Feelin' it, feelin' it, chicken's are ice-grillin' it,
Cops pullin' him over, Jigga react militant..."

- Jay-Z, "Can I Live?"

So even though West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur ("I got 'Pac on" above) was raking East Coast rappers over the coals with vicious diss-cuts like "Hit 'Em Up", like many others Jay-Z backed away and even said he was playing Tupac's music anyway. And, as you can see in the freestyle lyrics (he doesn't "write") he chose to directly follow it, he tried to focus us on other more pressing issues.

He even went further in attacking power and authority on his song "D'Evils", and it's funny, as I scan the various lyrics sites on the internet I'm noticing the chorus is missing from most of the listings, including: sing365.com, lyricsondemand.com, seeklyrics.com, azlyrics.com, and others.

Now, since I haven't asked them I can't begin to figure out what that means, but I'll type them up and let you see for yourself. In fairness, the lyrics are back and forth samples of Snoop Dogg (the "Dear God" part) and another voice saying:

"Dear, God, I wonder can you save me?
Illuminati want my mind, soul, and my body,
Dear, God, I wonder can you save me?
Secret Society, tryin'a keep they' eye on me,

"Dear, God, I wonder can you save me?
Illuminati want my mind, soul, and my body,
Dear, God, I wonder can you save me?
I can't die, I can't die, I can't die... (fade)"

- Jay-Z, chorus from "D'Evils"

Much like Tupac - who even went so far as to call himself "Makaveli: The Don Killuminati", it seems Jay-Z in using this chorus for a song about how society has been infected with evil thoughts and who might be responsible, was trying to say: "Look, I read a book or something, either way, don't worry about it - I said it and I meant it - so just check this stuff out!"

Now flash-forward to 2006, and I'm buying a copy of The New Yorker Magazine for an article called "The war over Iran" by Seymour Hersh - I love that guy - about how the Pentagon brass were fighting the crazy civilian leadership who want to use nuclear weapons on Iran for no good reason - namely Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. They even had an internal "April Revolution" where the brass stood firm, and many are worried about being "on the wrong side of history" for blowing up the world. So, we have hope, but we still have work to do as long as those crazy neo-cons keep trying, and without public awareness the corporate media will likely "sell" us another war.

But right after that was an article called "Where Hip Hop Lives" about the Hot 97 Radio Station in New York, and in it was a small quote that author Ben McGrath chose to use about Jay-Z dropping by for a live on-air interview with Angie Martinez:

"I was meeting with Bill Gates, telling him about Hot 97 last week," Jay-Z said. "He told me what the world's going to look like in five years and I got scared. He's just extra smart. I don't even want to get into it."

- rapper "Jay-Z", The New Yorker Magazine, July 10 & 17, 2006, page 57

WEBSITE LINK - http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060710fa_fact1

So, there he goes again trying to tell us to wake up, and even slightly whistleblowing on his rich friends - as hundreds of concerned people do every day - including Hollywood producer Aaron Russo with his new documentary "America: From Freedom to Fascism". The ones who do so in detail are relegated to the alternative media, while others who try have to slip comments into the mainstream press or make allegorical movies like "The Matrix" and "V for Vendetta" (The Wachowski Brothers).

Besides, it's not like the "elite" are all equally "evil", some just want to be rich and happy, though perhaps richer and happier than most.

But, some also want to kill and enslave us.

And now, in these days of Billionaire Benefactors getting celebrated in the press - this despite the fact that only the richest two (Gates and Buffett) are the only ones really stepping up out of the record 793 billionaires in the world (Forbes Magazine) - and we don't really see a "plan" for the use of their money, it's good that one of hip hop's finest can sneak in and out of their meetings and parties and tell us non-millionaires what's happening.

After all, when Bill Gates talks about the future to the rest of us, he doesn't sound particularily scary. In fact, he seems to be fairly optimistic.

So: what's he telling Jay-Z that he's not telling us?

And: what's Jay-Z trying to tell us about him?

Whatever it is, I'd like to applaud Jay-Z for his efforts, and encourage him and all of his peers to do for themselves and us by making it big by breaking societies rules without harming anyone - and showing us we can do the same. Hip hop is always the first institution attacked for society's ills, and the last one praised for it's ever-evolving sense of style and freedom - and with that helping us to evolve our own.

I mean, we're all vibing on hip hop.

Even Bill Gates.

And who knows?

If we pay attention, hip hop might just save us all...







Peace by paying attention to the prophets...
BK

______________________

...

Black Krishna Brand

Philosophy - http://blackkrishna.blogspot.com/

Music - http://www.soundclick.com/bands/0/blackkrishna.htm

...


FYI - I have 30 minutes of radioanalysis on the growing prison-industrial complex and the evil elites behind most of this madness streaming on my Music site above.

P.S. Saving The World will never be easier than this - and it could get a heck of a lot harder, so let's get cracking:

1) Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert show us the media is lying and trying to make us dumber ALL the time, so check the Infowars.com and PrisonPlanet.com newswires for why. The send copies of "TerrorStorm: A History of Government Sponsored Terrorism" on DVD or Google Video to everyone - NOW!!!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5948263607579389947

2) See the history of money and how it's used right now to herd us into a police state - "America: From Freedom to Fascism" - and pass it on - NOW!!!

http://www.freedomtofascism.com/

3) Check this out too while you still can!

Congress is pushing a law that would abandon a principle called Network Neutrality that prevents companies from deciding which Web sites you can see based on what site pays them the most -- which means most of us won't be able to afford a website – and pass it on – NOW!!!

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

Recession will be nasty and deep, economist says

Rex Nutting, MarketWatch | August 24 2006

The United States is headed for a recession that will be "much nastier, deeper and more protracted" than the 2001 recession, says Nouriel Roubini, president of Roubini Global Economics.

Writing on his blog on Wednesday, Roubini repeated his call that the U.S. would be in a recession in 2007, arguing that the collapse of housing will bring down the rest of the economy. Read more.

Roubini wrote after the National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday that sales of existing homes fell 4.1% in July, while inventories soared to a 13-year high and prices flattened out year-over-year.

"This is the biggest housing slump in the last four or five decades: every housing indictor is in free fall, including now housing prices," Roubini said. The decline in investment in the housing sector will exceed the drop in investment when the Nasdaq collapsed in 2000 and 2001, he said.

And the impact of the bursting of the bubble will affect every household in America, not just the few people who owned significant shares in technology companies during the dot-com boom, he said. Prices are falling even in the Midwest, which never experienced a bubble, "a scary signal" of how much pain the drop in household wealth could cause.

Roubini is a professor of economics at New York University and was a senior economist in the White House and the Treasury Department in the late 1990s.

His firm focuses largely on global macroeconomics.

[Continued at...]


- INFOWARS: BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND -


SOURCE FOR SOURCES - http://www.infowars.com/articles/economy/recession_will_be_nasty_and_deep.htm