Digital Media Politics: The Next Level

Powerful? Propaganda? Pointless? Any way you choose to flip it, it does mark a change in promoting candidates. What are your thoughts?

We're all in the Same Gang '08

I thought I'd post a little old skool jammy for you old skool heads and new skool folks who need an education. Props to Chuy Gomez for putting this on his morning show today refreshing my memory of this conscious gem. As violence escalated in Cali, every one from Eazy E to Tone Loc to Hammer to Digital Underground came together with a so sincerious track about stopping the violence. With all the street violence going on in across the country and with the especially volatile black on brown situation in LA, why don't we have a '08 version of All in the Same Gang? It can have a new breed of All Stars, a variety of folks from different backgrounds from Snoop to Immortal Technique....hmmmmh

Like cooked food

A lot of us remain on the move and rarely get a chance to sit down and have a good, solid, homemade meal. Let alone the best best kind, the kind made with love, from a loved one. The flavor in that favorite dish from childhood is something that we love to the point that it touches our hearts in a unique way, yet sometimes we let it fall to the back of our mind until we have the opportunity to try it again. The taste of momma's raisin butter biscuits, cornbread, cobbler, chicken, what have you, there is something innately special about that good home cooked food. And even if we think we appreciate it, there is nothing like the feeling of tasting it after a long hiatus and. As each one of our taste buds is titillated, the receptors in are brain that recall these tastes scream with delight, and we truly realize what we've been missing....

That's how I feel every single time I see Ledisi. She is the answer when the question is asked "What happened to folks who can really saang, not just sing, but saang?" She is satisfaction to the longing for strong artistry, important lyrics, presence, that "it quality" and all things that make me thrive off live performances. Going to see her at Yoshi's last time, I looked forward to it, but it was not until she hit that 1st note that my receptors started tingling and I knew I was truly in for a treat. Her range is amazing and she does it with the ease of Frank Sinatra. he knows how to control the mood and she just knows how to talk with the audience. She can make you feel her without effort. She also knows how to put her emotion into a song deeply you take a piece of her pain, joy, or struggle a way from each song she does. Did I mention she can skat and beatbox simultaneously, yea that too. When she performs it feels like she evokes spirits of Kings, Queens, Warriors, and Slaves...she just has so much soul.

I take something away from each time I see her. When she is on stage, she takes off all pomp and circumstance and pours her soul into a voice trained in jazz, opera, r&b, skat, with a soul as raw as hip hop. She gives a little old school, a little street, a little church. She provides all the ingredients of what a live performance should be, a good homecooked meal.

Thank You

Hello there friends and foes, It's time for a little poetry. I had this on my heart to write so I had to just let the words flow. While writing this I contemplated the relationship between suffering and gratitude in my spiritual life and also how giving thanks to our Creator is something that is often misused and taken for granted. My words are best spoken...so hopefully it still comes through in the reading...peace.

Thank You

I write poetry in the form of prayers because I want to be a man after God’s own heart like David.
So that I may one day speak with the tongues of angels and sing in the key of eternal life in the pitch of peace with the harmony of righteousness.
And my spirit will be flooded with the optimism of having placed my trust in an omnipotent master and my heart will be infused with thanksgiving.
Then my soul will gush with gratitude and I will be able to shout …
“Thanks you my Lord”!,
And NOT just thank you on the 1st and the 15th of each month,
And not just thank you that my boss did not catch me sliding into work ½ an hour late, And not just thank you that the police did not catch my black behind speeding…. in the carpool lane….. by myself,
Not just thank you that this girl did not catch me in the same lie I used last week,
Not just thank you that the preacher finished in time for me to make it home and catch the kickoff during Sunday football,
Not just thank you when I have won my 1st Grammy award for a song whose lyrics of bootyshaking and gunclapping you clearly….. did NOT inspire,
And even not just thank you when my debit card is approved even when I know I don’t even have dust in my checking account.
Let me not JUST limit my thank yous to my food, friends, and family.
Let me not JUST praise you for these things but let my soul overflow with thanks yous when my health is diminished because I will grow closer to you as I rely on you to take each breath and to move each muscle,
And when I have to look into the eye’s of someone I still love and let them go let me still say thank you,
Because some blessings are just for a season, and next season I will receive a greater blessing,
And let me say Thank You when I am in the Lion’s Den,
And the lions have not eaten in weeks,
And love dark meat,
Because I know deliverance is at hand.
Let it be my spirit of thanksgiving that helps me elevate over every struggle so that my relationship with you will not based on what I ask of you but grounded in appreciation for what you have given to me.
Thank You.

This is Our Country

Read article and watch video before reading this short blog.





I've been delaying writing on this for a minute because I wanted to put the time into really explaining my feelings on it. However, sometimes you just have to let the thing speak for itself. The videos release, and the conflict behind it, have been going on throughout the holiday season with much of the turmoil taking place around the time of Obama's win in Iowa. The video was stunning but not quite surprising. With potentially the 1st African-American President in our midst the fact of there being two Americas still exists; differing Americas where your class and your race determine outcomes. Do not let the potential of a female and African-American President overshadow the struggle of real people, real Americans who are treated as refugees, real Americans treated as if they aren't human. I write this not to be pessimistic but to call attention to urgent realities. Attention to these realities followed up by action and change will make me more optimistic, not just changing faces in the world of politics.

Social Hateworking

So I see this link to you tube on my friend's Gchat status. I watch this hilarious video of a little baby making faces. I mean, who hates cute babies honestly? But I think I asked this question too hastily, because on You Tube there's always haters. And not that "hater" in the "if you don't like my opinion" you are hating type way, but that good ole' KKK brand of hatred. I scrolled down to see some of the comments after this pic and someone called the little baby a piece of s@*! n-word. Pathetic and cowardly? Obviously. Wicked and unecessary? Yeah, that too. All too common on the internet? Definitely. Speaking on You Tube specifically, almost every video I've seen with a black person in it I've seen the n-word or a response to a racist commenter below. I wonder how much hate posts on the internet are a reflection of what many more Americans than most people realize actually believe, or is it a freak-uber-minority of people who dedicate time to spread their ignorance? I mean, really...a baby!

Behind Every Man

Today’s Question: What do you think of the statement, “Behind Every Strong Man is a Strong Woman.” How has it rang true or untrue in your lives? Does this just mean couples or does it also apply to Mothers and Sons? Brothers and Sisters? Fathers and Daughters?

As a discussion point I‘ll share a part of a discussion I’ve had in the past with someone about that statement.

Person A: I think it’s sexist. The positioning of the women “behind the man” although it can be positive relegates them to a position of being weaker than or subordinate to the man.

Kofdilla: Ummh, I can see why you would think that. I see it through different eyes.

Person A: I’m sure you do.

Kofdilla: First, what does it mean to be “behind someone”? If I say, “I have my people behind me”, “Who’s behind me?” or, “Why don’t you get behind me on this?” do I mean that the people I refer to should be subordinate to me. Of course not, I think they should “support me” or have my back. Implicitly if every strong man has a strong woman behind him that means that she is in part the reason why he is strong. To make someone stronger you have to provide strength yourself so the woman is obviously not weak but she is strong. She is his support; she makes him as good as he is, he would be less than without her. Martin Luther King Jr. couldn’t have been MLK without Coretta Scott.

Person A: Then why isn’t it the other way around? Why isn’t it that Behind Every Strong Woman is a Strong Man?

Kofdilla: Well, that wouldn’t make my initial interpretation any less true. And you know what? It says something about the strength of women and the deficiencies in man because your statement, which turns the traditional one on its head, is not widely used.

Person A: A Man needs to be strong on his own, he shouldn’t need his woman to be strong for him or make him strong.

Kofdilla: If a woman is going to be his support, his back bone, then her lack of support diminishes his ability to withstand the weight on his back, but if she strengthens him, even if he is strong he can handle so much more. I don’t need to prove this, I’ve seen men rise and fall by it. If they’re woman, mom tells them they are weak and sorry while they are going through something they have a greater chance of falling than if their actions and words support him as a man.

Person A: If my man is weak, I’m going to tell him he’s weak. I don’t need to baby him, he just needs to man up and handle it.

Kofdilla: I’m happy we’re just friends. Lol ;)