The N-Word: History’s Master of Illusion
EDITORIAL – THE N-WORD: HISTORY’S MASTER OF ILLUSION
Bump Beef. Where’s The Battle???
BUMP BEEF. WHERE’S THE BATTLE?
“She Get It From Her Mama”: Why I’m So Hip-Hop
A REFLECTION ON HOW ONE MOTHER HELPED CRAFT A LIFELONG HIP-HOP KID
Knockout Nation: Butch Lewis’ Spectacular Homegoing Service
Wilmington, Del. – “The Crew” had all assembled at Ronald E. “Butch” Lewis’ casket to pay their final respects – as TV’s Judge Joe Mathis described them, “40 Black men he connected over the years.” Lewis’ coveted “Crew” included actor Denzel Washington, actor/director Robert Townsend, comedian Michael Colyer, actor Leon, actor/comedian Darryl “Chill” Mitchell, Morehouse College President Robert M. Franklin, retired boxer Michael Spinks, singer Keith Washington, Great Debaters actor/nephew Stephen Rider, and many more Black men of stature and note. “Butch Lewis was the glue,” Rev. Al Sharpton, the eulogist of the hour, reiterated like many who paid tribute to the legendary boxing promoter, entrepreneur, and music label owner at his August 1 funeral. Referring to the Noah and the ark story in Genesis 7, Sharpton said, “Butch said his gift was to take things that didn’t seem like they belonged together, and put them together. ‘The Crew’ exemplified that.” Lewis’ was a homegoing service fit for a dignitary – so large, in fact, that it had to be held at the Chase Center on the Riverfront, the largest venue in the state of Delaware, with a viewing that started just after dawn. The celebration of life wasn’t for a politician, world leader, or Nobel Prize winner. It was for Lewis, who was known in VIP circles far and wide, yet was still considered a common man to the people in his home communities. Just as they had weeks earlier for his 65th birthday celebration, the important people came out again, to laugh, cry, and remember Lewis, who died suddenly on July 23 of natural causes at his home in Bethany Beach, Del. They all remarked that Lewis must have known he didn’t have long to live, and as Colyer said, planned a “pretranstional celebration.” They all talked about him living out the “dash” between his birth and death with hard work and passion. The incomparable Stevie Wonder was there this time, treating Lewis’ family to the one wish he hadn’t received on his birthday – a performance from Wonder himself, who roused the crowd immediately with his soulful rendition of “The Lord’s Prayer.” He followed with classics like “Overjoyed,” “Isn’t She Lovely,” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered [I’m Yours],” inviting audience participation in typical Stevie fashion. For this party of a different kind, the list of stars who came to pay tribute read like a Hollywood’s Who’s Who list, including retired boxers Muhammad Ali, Larry Hazzard, Mike Tyson, and Tommy Hearns. From the multimedia and literary world there was Radio One’s Cathy Hughes, BET’s Debra Lee and Bob Johnson, ESPN’s Keith “Clink” Scales, former Universal Motown president Sylvia Rhone, and author/scholar Michael Eric Dyson. Actors, athletes, and musicians came from far and wide – to name a few: Lynn Whitfield, Tim and Daphne Reid, and director John Singleton; producer Kedar Massenberg; former NBA player Magic Johnson and wife Cookie, former NBA player Charles Smith, and Five Heartbeats actor Michael Wright. Politicians such as Kweisi Mfume, Del. Governor Jack Markell, and former Congressman Mike Castle were there, too. There were also droves of regular people there – from Lewis’ nearby hometowns of Chester, Pa., and Woodbury, NJ., and from his longtime state of residence, Delaware. In Delaware, the boxing promoter had settled into a well-known rock star life at the beach, where he often played host to close friends like Denzel Washington and sometimes Michael Jordan. Lewis hadn’t needed to work in years – his payday from the classic, 90-second Tyson-Spinks fight in 1993 alone had made him a rich man. But he kept working – and networking – amassing relationships in industries far beyond boxing and sports. In his eulogy, Sharpton shared a funny story about his efforts to bring Lewis onboard his “anti N-word” campaign some years ago. Lewis, who asked if he could just write a check for the cause, wasn’t about to make the ultimate sacrifice, remarking to Sharpton, “N*gga please.” A few years later, when Lewis wanted him to cross a swamp to meet with and bless an Indian tribe in Florida, an N-word reformed Sharpton simply replied, “N*gga please.” The mourners laughed, at the joke and possibly at the irony of the unlikely friendship. Lewis was remembered as a man known for heavy cussing and Crown Royal, but who had a special, personal way with everyone he knew. “People need to mind they daggone business,” said Pastor Darrell Freeman who officiated the service. “People think they know people. He was saved…thankfully, man looks on the outside, but God looks on the inside.” The lobby outside his massive funeral was filled with photos – of Lewis with James Brown, several U.S. Presidents, icons like Quincy Jones, family and friends, and every great name known to boxing from at least the past half century. Whatever Lewis had done, he had done something right.
Ryan Leslie: The Rapper?
Jaheim, Musiq Soulchild, and Tank – some rappers just seem to fit better with rappers than others. Then, there’s Grammy-nominated Ryan Leslie. The Harvard-educated music man, Ryan Leslie, originally from Washington, D.C., has been known over the years for his Hip-Hop flavored anthems such “Diamond Girl” and “Addicted” with Cassie. The fact that he plays the piano and has an Ivy League educational background may have lumped him into a certain lane with his R&B peers. Still, Leslie says fans should get ready to see him in a whole new light – as a rapper. MC-ing isn’t new to the crooner, he says – it just hasn’t had its turn in the sun. AllHipHop.com interviewed Ryan Leslie as he prepares for a special “Black Music Month” performance on June 15 at the 14th Street Apple Store in New York, and later, Tunisia, North Africa on a goodwill mission. He also dropped us his Top 5 Dead or Alive before signing off: AllHipHop.com: Hi Ryan, how are you? Ryan: I’m good, Seandra. Thanks so much for having me at 11:30 on a Monday morning! I’m actually going to be talking to London and Paris coming up so…they’re six hours ahead of me, so I’ve been up since about 6 already. AllHipHop.com: Oh my goodness. Well you did a good job performing at [Hot97] Summer Jam recently, a super quick job, but good. Ryan: Thank you very much. AllHipHop.com: Was it your first time at Summer Jam? Ryan: Well, that was the longest I’ve ever been on stage at Summer Jam. I came out with Jim Jones and Dipset in 2009. I made a record with Jim Jones called “Precious.” AllHipHop.com: Right, ok. Well, I want to backtrack a little bit, and just talk a little bit about your background real quick for anybody who’s been living under a rock for the past few years and doesn’t know a lot about you. The thing that always stood out about you for me was your musicianship. You play the piano, you know, and you’re not just a guy who walked into the studio without some training. So tell me about your early music years. Ryan: Well, I come from a musical family. My parents are both musicians. My father, his main instrument was the trumpet, and he still plays from time to time, and my mother’s main instrument is the piano. She still plays and loves it to death. So it was just only natural that me and my sister would be drawn to music as a way to express ourselves and as a way to just have a bond with the family, I mean, we would sing together and it was a really big part of my childhood, and you know, my parents are Salvation Army officers so we didn’t really have the money to have formal training. I mean they tried to pick and choose what they could afford to send us to in terms of education, education and extracurriculars. So my father really, you know, he wanted me to go to karate school (laughs)… AllHipHop.com: You said karate? [laughter] Ryan: Yeah. Japanese karate. And my mother, who’s actually half Chinese, her cousin in Canada actually ran a karate school so there were many summers that they would just have me go up to Canada to train. And my sister was actually the one who got the piano lessons. I was so jealous. But what I would do is I would take her piano books, or take my mother’s piano books, you know, and I taught myself all of the musical proficiency that I have today. And you know that’s not to say I didn’t have an environment to practice in because the Salvation Army has a really rich musical tradition, so I was in band camp for a week out of a year or something like that. Really a lot of the musicanship and my ability to play instruments just comes from my own curiosity and approach to learning which was “hey, if I can’t take classes I’ll teach myself.” AllHipHop.com: Right. You have a pretty impressive educational background, too, that people might not know about. What did you study when you were in college? Ryan: Well, I actually went to went to…I concentrated in…I majored in Government at Harvard with a concentration in Economics (Macroeconomics) and Political Science. AllHipHop.com: But the music, I guess, rose to the surface as what you really felt your passion was. Is that it? Ryan: Absolutely. Absolutely. AllHipHop.com: Ok. So I want to ask you about the new album “Les is More” and first I want to ask you to explain the title. Why is less more? Ryan: Why is less more? Well less is actually a play on my name, L-e-s, and in a lot of my productions or when I’ve actually mentioned my tag in songs that I produce or I’m a part of, I use the shortened version of my name RLES and so this album’s title is actually that everyone’s always toyed with when they hear my nickname RLES. “Oh RLES is more. You should do an album like that.” And at this juncture in my career, I really, really feel strongly about sharing more of myself, and what I mean by that is I feel like there are so many other dimensions to me that I really haven’t shared as an artist to this point, and one of the most probably obvious changes from everything you’ve heard from me is that this album is a Rap album so to actually go from being a Grammy-nominated contemporary R&B artist to deciding his next album is going to be a Rap album may catch some people off guard. But I’ve been rapping ever since I was a teenager and actually you know that’s because my sister always had the beautiful voice in the family, and I just always had an affinity for Rap as a medium of expressing myself. So I […]
