All Too Common…

Keeping it real at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue…in a true, Obama/Soetaro sorta way. Mebbes Harry Reid ‘suggested’ wink, wink, Common to the White Hut…to make HIS Cowboy Poetry Festival seem all the more…festive.

Tonight…Wednesday, May 11, 2011…the ‘rapper’ Common (oh…wow…that’s a cleavah stage name…it was shortened from Common Sense) will be reading ‘works’ from his ‘poetry/rap/meal ticket’ body of musings at the White House.

Now, the mix of pop culture and the political has always occurred…but its the irony of this unCommon invite that has caused some authentic ‘keeping it real’ controversy.

Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr., aka, Common, was born March 13, 1972 to educator mom Dr. Mahila Ann Hines and from ABA basketball player turned youth counselor turned NBA coach (Chicago Bulls staff), Lonnie Rashid Lynn. His was an atypical, for the rap world, upbringing. A professional mother, a successful (though divorced) father. So upper middle class was his upbringing that he ‘worshipped’ at the uber upwardly mobile Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. (Audible gasps!!!) That is the same church that Barry Soetaro frequented. Do we see a pattern here? Given some of Common’s ‘rhymes’ he must have paid a little more attention to the Pastor…Jeremiah Wright.

Common has written some ‘troublesome’ lyrics…like his pal fellow ‘I had a well financed, stable, happy childhood, so I better rebel with a record deal and drop the ‘N’ word every chance I get’ Kanye West some of them revolve around George W. Bush:

“With that happening, why they messing with Saddam?

Burn a Bush cos’ for peace he no push no button

Killing over oil and grease

no weapons of destruction

How can we follow a leader when this a corrupt one”

Okay…a little more dymanic than West’s ‘George Bush hates Black people’ but same old, same old.

Young Mr. Lynn also seems to have an affinity for cop killers:

“Tell the law, my Uzi weighs a ton

I walk like a warrior,

from them I won’t run . . .

Use your mind and nine-power, get the government touch

Them boys chat-chat on how him pop gun

I got the black strap to make the cops run

They watching me, I’m watching them”

At least Common didn’t give a shout out to Mumia…as well…he is soooo over done. Its good to ‘find’ ones ‘own’ cop killer cause celeb…(his is Joanne Chesmard, a member of the Black Liberation Army, convicted in 1977 of the first degree murder of a state trooper and sentenced to life in prison. In November 1979, Chesmard escaped from prison….she probably has ALL his cds).

So this is what amounts to poetry night at America’s house?

Somewhere in Nevada, a Cowboy sits…trying to ‘rhyme’ racial quotas, entitlement programs and ‘WTF did I go wrong?’

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