those who agree with you? it really weakens the reader's confidence in what you are saying when you need to ally yourself to those who seem to agree rather than having your belief and sticking to it in spite of who else parrots a similar view.

BTW, as a black man, I have to say that you don't speak for all black men, or all intelligent black men, or all self-aware black men or all conscientious black men. not that you said that literally, but your arguments imply that you are part of some vanguard. you are not. and the quicker you start thinking for yourself and realizing that rhetoric is meaningless to a self-determined human being you may start having more compelling dialogues instead. i sure hope the white people who you come into contact with don't get fooled into believing that those of us who reject mainstream values all end up embracing some dogmatic belief system that makes us feel important relative to someone else's unimportance.

from the 95 who supposedly have no clue...peace and earned wisdom,

h20
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if hip hop ever dies...it will be the day that all of us who fell in love with a new sound that was like nothing we ever heard before and kept being amazed as it grew and changed and morphed stop wanting to be challenged...it will be the day we make a bunch of unbreakable rules and accept it all as hip hop cannon, and the next musical form will have to born of a rebellion against all you reactionaries who wouldn't let it grow and change because your "love" was really obsession and you held on so tight that you choked her. it will be the day that young kids don't want to hear about hip hop anymore because they still listen with their hearts...in reality hip hop won't really be dead anyway, she will just have to undergo another name change like she always has...word to miles and dizzy. - kacy wilson