I love me some old school hip hop and understand that rappers are artists who are (right or wrong) reflecting their opinions of their surroundings—like Edgar Degas, David Allan Coe, Picasso, Toby Keith, Richard Wagner and D.W. Griffith. Griffith’s pro-Klan film Birth of a Nation was the first movie shown in the White House (Woodrow Wilson of Augusta, Georgia was the president.)
Common, the softest rapper in the world, shouldn’t go to the White House because of his usual views but actress Gwyneth Paltrow recently rapped from the Straight Out of Compton album. In her movie Country Strong, Paltrow sang, “swinging on some wild cat..bumpin old school rap,” on the track “Shake That Thing.” Did old girl just say “bumpin.” You must be rather hood-knowledgeable to say bumpin in its proper context. I submit that Gwyneth is actually harder than poetry-read, vegan Common. Come on, we know that Common tried to rap hard to no avail. He is like the son of De La Soul.
Paltrow was actually doing the song Gangsta Gangsta, which is one of the hardest hits in rap history. Two other hard songs are N.W.A’s “F the Police” from the same cd “When I finish there is going to be a blood bath of cops dying in L.A.” and N.W.A. alum Ice Cube’s “Really Doe” which had the spine-chilling lyric “Just like Waco, I can take four ATF to they death.” Gangsta, Gangsta even has a Nancy Reagan reference with the line “We don’t just say no…we’re too busy saying yeahhh.”
In the 90s, I met Cube at the 100th anniversary of the National Medical Association gala and he is my generation’s poet laureate but some of these lines are too much. At the same time, Ice Cube predicted an uprising because the police in their part of L.A. were different from the nice officers in my hometown. In Gangsta, Ice Cube rapped “Do I look like a m.f. role model.” At the time he didn’t and I appreciated his frankness but now Cube is an example of going from the hood to fatherhood. Have you notice that old rappers move their kids to the suburbs because the thug life is nothing to glorify.
People change and grow over time. Today, Ice Cube is one of America’s dads with his movies and T.V. production. If Common shouldn’t be at the White House, Gwyneth Paltrow should never go and I should never go again because I have broken bread with the late Senator Stom Thurmond; he said he like my tie. This is all six degrees of silliness; artists will be artists and I personally hang with more police officers than rappers.
NWA: Gangsta (strongest warning)
Project Logic Ga 
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