Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

Young Jeezy & The Power of Words

No disrespect to Young Jeezy, but he’s been spinning like a Korean b-boy this past week after jumping in the presidential cypher in this month’s cover story.

Jeezy raised eyebrows when he told Benjamin Meadows-Ingram:

“No disrespect to my man Barack, but I f**ked with John McCain. He greeted me like a god.”

But by yesterday, the rapper had issued a press release and a video saying that no, he in fact supports Obama.

(You think I could have ever written something like I just did back when MC Eiht was first saying, “Geeeeeeeaaaahh”? When you have to show you’re gangsta by saying you vote and you vote Democratic and you vote Black and you quote Aristotle to support that, something big has just happened.)

Jeezy says that the whole episode taught him “the power of words.” I wish he had thought about that when he was writing his lyrics for “Love In This Club”.

But now that he’s moved beyond bagging groceries, he had some profound thoughts on the elections in his MTV interview:

“..my mama is about to have surgery that I gotta pay for out of my pocket because she can’t get insurance. I don’t really feel McCain. It ain’t just because Barack is Black; he can make change. Just like Bush equals recession, Barack equals progression. I really feel that, all bullsh– aside. He’s gotta come in and keep it right.”

Which goes to what many of us have been saying all along: if folks felt free to rap more about what they actually think, rather than what they think they need to in order to get money (to pay for health insurance and other sh*t), it’d be a different world right now.

Jeezy says he’ll be putting up a song called “My President Is Black” on his website the Monday after July 4th.

Me? My head is still spinning.

posted by Jeff Chang @ 8:36 am | 0 Comments

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