Hip Hop Headines - Fear of a (relevant) Black Planet

Underground hip hop doesn't lack people who want to MC, and despite its lack of widespread commercial appeal it has a strong base in young people.
But underground hip hop doesn't have enough new things to talk about.
We've all heard it before, and before that, and before that.
The stereotypical underground hip hop song is a lot like the stereotypical blog post: Both require a literary touch, a healthy ego, and both tend to be autobiographical, which means they can both end up sounding like a narcissistic person blathering about what they did yesterday.

What if hip hop MCs decided to rap about the news?
This has already worked out well for Akrobatic, who does a sports wrap up on the Boston radio station Jam'n 94.5. Listen to one of his more famous and (at the time) timely raps, and decide if the hip hop medium wouldn't work to distribute other forms of information.
Here's Akro on the current Celtic's team, now in the NBA Finals.

Empty threat

Occasionally on my way home from work I tune into WRKO's Michelle McPhee, partly because I like her outrage on behalf of perceived wrongdoing and partly to learn how the moderate right wing is thinking. McPhee's rhetoric is far from the hate mongers (Jay Severin and Michael Savage for instance) who share time slots on the channel, so she is usually bearable to listen to. But other times, she can be willfully blind to all the evidence against her point, and clearly just trying to press her agenda for making John McCain the next president. Sometimes it seems she shills as hard for McCain as other radio hosts shill for a show's sponsored vinyl-siding vendor or window replacement company.

Tonight she dredged up the ghost of Jeremiah Wright, yet again. McPhee's attempt to keep the ex-pastor in Obama's ex-church relevant felt as fresh and newsworthy as last week's potato salad. But I suppose he makes good radio with his years-old over-the-top sermons. And I expect her and other McCain supporters to bring him up again and again as the November election nears. He's a perfect villain for voters who treat any criticism of this country as blasphemy or treason. (And also those who choose their candidate based on a lapel pin.) But what's Wright got to do with Obama now?

Obama left the church. It's over. And by November that Jeremiah Wright potato salad is going to be well past its expiration date. The more the Republicans try to bring back the ghost of Rev. Wright, the more accountable they will have to be for the skeletons in McCain's closet.