Ludacris: Paint the White House Black

Two politically-inclined rappers give their 2 cents on the candidate who is likely to be the next American Commander-in-Chief, Barack Obama. Ludacris video "Politics (Obama Is Here)" at top and Nas video "Black President" on bottom.

Tecktonik Craze

Yelle - Je Veux Te Voir


These videos are examples of an embryonic form of dance music called Tecktonik, which is also alternatively known as electro-dance, tck, and hardstyle. Predominantly evolved in Paris, the dance form has also been influenced by various types of electronic music being produced in Brussels and Amsterdam, as well as New Rave music (Cansei de Ser Sexy, MIA, Hot Chip), with the fashion mainly taking off with all types of neon in London. It's got a futuristic punk sensibility with heavily hip-hop overtones.

Yelle - Je Veux Te Voir (Remix)


The neon color schemes and attitude that Yelle takes on are quite similar to those of MIA (who needs to visit Mumbai sometime soon by the way - or, for that matter, any New Raver who stays popping, locking, vogueing, and wacking will do).

Yelle - A Cause des Garcons


These dance moves are relatively simple, but the style is killer. Not sure that I could pull of these hipster fashions any more than I could several years back when I first caught wind of hipsternation. But, all that needs to be said is that the Tecktonik movement is on.

Black Gold Magic=Blue Magic

What used to be greenback magic is no longer. Jay-Z now has incorporated a plain and simple truth into his post-retirement MO. Flossing a phat wad of 500 Euro notes, he too realizes what most truly astute financial gurus acknowledged long ago. The dollar's supremacy as the world's top foreign reserve currency is fast fading. In his Blue Magic video, Jay-Z reiterates a truth that I revealed one year ago after having read a fabulous book called Petrodollar Warfare, which had typically been labeled as a collection of conspiracy theories.

The slippage in the value of the dollar has been long awaited in many economic circles. Due to irresponsible tax cuts pushed through by the Bush administration and due to a fiscally reckless war machine, America is pissing away its financial health. We used to be a sound fiscal entity with a decent credit rating. W has done a far worse job than even the average American (with horrendously bad judgment in the credit department) would do. While the debt may eventually be easier to pay off, and while the sinking dollar may help out the gargantuan trade deficit, it will serve ultimately to decrease the overall standard of living in the US because it diminishes our capacity to purchase goods produced in other countries. Since demand for dollars is a huge part of why the US indeed has such a high standard of living in the first place, this whole mess is irreversible. The vicious cycle is unleashed.

Petrodollars in decline
There are voices on the geopolitical circuit demanding that oil no longer simply be denominated in dollars. Iran and Venezuela are leading this anti-petrodollar charge. Ultimately, pricing oil with a basket of currencies would tremendously decrease the demand for dollars, pushing the currency even further into the ground. Reserve banks throughout the world now believe that holding a basket of currencies will best insulate them from the risk associated with putting all their pennies/centimes in one basket. While I know whom to blame for horrendous fiscal mismanagement in my country, I, along with every other American who relies on the strength of the dollar to sustain purchasing power, will suffer the harsh consequences. The oil companies, on the other hand, are laughing at Blue Magic all the way to the bank.

MTV Arabia
For his part, Jay-Z deserves some air time on MTV's new Arabic language channel, which just went on the air this past weekend! Audiences in the Middle East will better understand the extent to which cultural norms reflect geopolitical truths. Jay-Z may be no Ben Bernanke, but his dough stacks speak far louder than any Fed Chairman's voicebox.

Ghetto Town Flavor

B-Boy of G-Town is comin' up outta the hood.

His hood is called Shuafat Camp, a sprawling refugee camp located on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The camp is surrounded by the eight-meter high concrete separation barrier. Even though all of the camp's inhabitants possess Jerusalem ID cards (since their homes fall within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem), they must pass through an ominous Israeli checkpoint to enter the Holy City.

This be G-Town. Ghetto Town. The hip-hop consortium named after a village of chaos. A hamlet of disorder. A zone of utter misery. And an oasis of pride.

The group is trailblazing because although there have been a few Palestinian rappers, there have never been Palestinian Arabic-language rappers who explicitly repped Jerusalem. These folks have Jerusalem coursing thru their veins.

Some of the members of G-Town, namely its leader B-Boy (Mohammed al-Mughrabi), have twice been rendered refugees. The Arab-Israeli conflict goes in cycles, and the first two pinnacles of conflict in 48 and 67 dislodged the al-Mughrabis from their homes both times. First they fled from their native village of Lod in central Israel/Palestine, which had been slated to become part of the Arab state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan. Due to the family's partial Moroccan heritage, they relocated to the Moroccan quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, where a sizable number of Moroccans lived just steps away from the Western Wall.

The historically important Moroccan (Mughrabi) quarter settled hundreds of pilgrims from North Africa. After the Arab Legion decimated the adjacent Jewish Quarter in 1948, refugees flooded into the fully Arab-controlled Old City.

B-Boy's family was among those who moved to the neighborhood. However, their relative contentment under Jordanian occupation was short lived. Upon the Israeli conquest of the Old City during 1967's Six Day War, demolition crews destroyed the Moroccan quarter. In revenge for the 1948 Jordanian destruction of the synagogues and homes of the Jewish Quarter, the Israelis summarily wrecked the Moroccan Quarter upon their assumption of Old City control.

The stated purpose of the demolition was to make way for a plaza in front of Judaism's holiest spot, the Wailing Wall. The result was a remodeled section of the Jewish Quarter and fresh refugee status for hundreds of families. B-Boy's family was among them, and this was the 2nd time his family became refugees of the conflict.



This time, they relocated to Shuafat Camp, east of the Shuafat neighborhood in the northern suburbs of Jerusalem. The camp settled thousands of Arab refugees, who all became Israeli residents with prized blue Jerusalem ID cards.

B-Boy was born at the start of the 1st Intifada in 1987, when refugee camps throughout Palestine erupted in a paroxysm of stone-throwing. The camp has always been notoriously lawless, destitute, and neglected. Upon construction of the separation barrier at the height of the 2nd Intifada in 2003, Israeli authorities decided to separate Shuafat Camp from Jerusalem, forcing residents to enter the city via Shuafat checkpoint. Israel wanted nothing to do with this bastion of clan violence and perennial balagan.

The 7th of 8 kids in the al-Mughrabi family, B-Boy has perhaps come to terms with the reality of his living situation. His camp is patrolled by neither Israeli nor Palestinian security forces because Israel proper is protected from the camp by the separation barrier, and Israel does not wish for Palestinian police to provide security in a camp nominally located within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. A number of family-based clans control the camp.

CNN put together a clever report several months ago in which B-Boy was interviewed. The report focuses on the drug addiction and violence that have become unmanageable in Shuafat Camp.

B-Boy is a refugee twice over and is thus as Palestinian as they come. Yet, B-Boy goes to art school in the Musrara neighborhood of Jerusalem, a section of the city that straddles the line between East and West and was in fact No Man's Land between 48 and 67. B-Boy is a fluent speaker of Hebrew and English. Therefore, his outlook is global and far more open than one might expect. He does not limit his worldview to the dingy gutters of his native camp. His imagination stretches beyond the nightly rat-tat-tat and merciless gangbusters that run rampant in Shuafat Camp.

In addition to his burgeoning career as a hip-hop practitioner and his multimedia studies, B-Boy runs a recreation center for youth in the basement of his apartment bloc. He coaches ambitious young campers in the basics of Capoiera and always manages to thrive in his ghetto town, which locals sometimes refer jokingly to as "Chicago Camp."

The 20 year-old emerging artist represents for his community of almost 30,000 desperate souls, where the unemployment rate hovers around 50%.

G-Town has put on rap shows all over Israel and Palestine. The group's concerts inspire Arab the nascent hip-hop spirit from within the belly of Palestine.

The hip-hoppers were recently featured on the soundtrack of a documentary film about drugs in the mixed city of Lod, which was screened at Jerusalem's Cinemateque on July 12th. They also performed at a Jerusalem-area festival that marked the 40th Anniversary of the Israeli presence in the West Bank, where they were decidedly the most thuggin' of all the performers.

"We wake up and eat humus, but they wake up and eat Cornflakes," said B-Boy, referring to the difference between Shuafat neighborhood and Shuafat Camp. B-Boy said that the Stop Snitching mentality pervades in the camp and that most Palestinians from outside the camp harbor ill will towards Shuafat Camp residents, who are generally perceived as uneducated criminals.


Though B-Boy was schooled on Tupac and Eminem from an early age, he took his formal schooling much more seriously than his peers. Most of his friends never finished high school, but B-Boy devoured both his schoolwork and an endless quantity of rap education ranging from American pop to Arab rap groups such as Dam from Lod and MWR from Akko.

"Those guys just talk about Israel and drugs, but I wanted to rap about Jerusalem," said B-Boy. "The situation here is much worse than elsewhere."

He continues, "Not many people knew about American rap just a few years ago. Some kids could write poetry and other could sing. But no one had flow. I wanted to build a hip-hop city, a sort of culture factory with breakdancing, graffiti, etc. I wanted to teach rap to everyone in Shuafat Camp."

B-Boy says that previously he could never get respect, being from what he alternatively calls Gangsta Camp, Gangsta Town, and Ghetto Town.

Having released G-Town's first album in January 2007, B-Boy is poised to blow up. Subject matter on his tracks range from mothers and relationships to peace and humanitarianism.

"I don't like politics, but life is political," said B-Boy, who believes that Hamas probably takes better care of the common folk than Fatah, who many camp residents blame for years of neglect. Regardless, he's not too interested in the minutiae of Middle Eastern politics. B-Boy jokes about having been chased off by Israeli cops for throwing a concert on Salahdin Street in the Old City. Even so, B-Boy seems intent on sticking to a wholesome path towards refugee glory and redemption.

Since G-Town's tracks are generally in Arabic, it's difficult to comment on the lyrics. Yet, one English hook stands out from the rest.

On a track titled "One not Two," G-Town relates: "Life is so.../ Been living it once, not twice / Sing with us this song / We all live in one world, not two worlds."



B-Boy is enthusiastic about linking up with other musicians in Israel/Palestine. "I don't care for Subliminal's politics, but his music is good. Maybe we can make a song together one day if we meet up via David Broza, who recently brought us into the scene. Either way, we've got many years ahead of us in this rap game."

RIP Saddam Hussein

One of the most reviled men in recent history is now dead. His once-dignified existence has been rapidly terminated by Iraqi executioners just prior to the start of the Muslim holiday Eid and just before the end of the Gregorian calendar year. James Brown, Gerald Ford, and Saddam Hussein all dead in one week. That's a helluva dead cast of characters in such a short period of time. I'm more in mourning for Mr. Brown than either of the other two folks, but I've definitely spent some time pondering the implications of the passings of all three famous gentlemen.

The death of a political leader is most certainly welcomed by people who suffered under his yoke. Saddam directly caused the deaths of upwards of one hundred thousand people, although George W. Bush could now be said to have commanded military campaigns that have resulted in even more murders. Yet, Bush's murders are not of his own countrymen, so perhaps that is more palatable for people to swallow. The club of murderous gentlemen has swelled its ranks in the past century, with the advance of arms technologies that make swift killing a facile task. The great paradox of modern life is the simultaneous development of medical technologies that prolong life and of potent weapons that are capable of cutting short an immensely high number of lives. The modern availability of guns, bombs, and the exponentially increasing population densities have led to deathly conflicts in parts of the world that never possibly could have been this violent prior to the arrival of killing tools. We now have tools that facilitate living and tools that facilitate dying.


Over time philosophers and poets have suggested that nearly omnipotent entities were dead in order to call attention to their ephemerality or incipient demise. When Nietzsche proclaimed that God was dead, he meant that this was true merely due to the perception that people no longer feared him and thus his existence was not so relevant. Nas has declared the death of hip-hop due to similar causes. Folks don't lend credence to the power of hip-hop and have instead ushered in its decline. But, the question begs itself: are such proclamations indicative of the desire on the part of these proclaimers to kill or conversely to revitalize the entities that whose survival they lament.

God certainly isn't yet dead, since upwards of 90% of Americans believe in him. The deity's credit rating may have been downgraded through the years, but his existence is still honored by countless mortals. Similarly, hip-hop appears not to have disappeared, even if its quality has been degraded since its golden age in the mid-90s. Hip-hop glory has been eroded, no doubt. But as a creed and arbiter of cultural moeurs, this mammoth is far from deceased.

On the other hand, Saddam the paranoid totalitarian dictator has kicked the bucket. His New Year has been ruined by masked Iraqi executioners. Leagues of Shiites and Kurds are ecstatic. Gerald Ford is also dead and gone. As a result of this American Presidential death, we have a federal day of remembrance on Tuesday with no mail service and closed financial markets. I wonder if Iraq will honor its felled leader with a similar day of mourning and closures. All I know is that James Brown contributed more joy and funkiness to the world than either of these political clowns. His funeral procession involved four darling white horses, an ivory white carriage, and a 24-karat gold coffin. This is a man's man's world, for sure, and these dead men are being commiserated the world over. However, it's no longer just dead white men that we commemorate. I'm fairly certain that Saddam won't be resurrected anytime soon, but we can expect hip-hop to rise from the dead sometime around Easter. I got my Limewire prepped for that revival.