What do Denzel and Lupe have in Common?

So its Christmas. The gifts have been unwrapped.
Dinner has been consumed.

Its time to graze on over to the movies.

The choice apparent was The Great Debaters.

It made sense seeing as it was THE Black holiday movie.

I walked out of their feeling proud, angry, sad and inspired.

But doesn't good art do that?

That movie was like a mainline injection of Black
post reconstruction racial uplift directly into the main vain.

I mean, the lynching scene, Denzel's authoritarian disposition
and the youthful exuberance and cautious optimism exhibited by
the Wiley Colllege debate time was palpable.

Both The Cool and The Great Debater is rooted in
Black Post Reconstruction melancholy.

Wait, thats not fair to Lupe.

Lupe is a rapper's rapper.

"I believe the game moves in cycles and I believe there will be another wave of superstars to move the game forward. If I had to name one person, I would have to say Lupe. He is making the most creative, different new music. It's fresh". ~Jay Z

See SJ set the stage for the The Cool morphing
into my unofficial soundtrack for the Great Debators on Christmas Eve.
It was playing in the whip when he picked me
up from the airport.

Not the most romantic music y'all.

But back to the comparison.

Both of them are egregiously heavy handed.

Both are dark and introspective.

Both turn the mirror on Black folks.

The hook on Dumb it Down is heavy like the sorrow
on a Black mommas heart after burying her second
teenage son.

You've been shedding too much light Lu (Dumb it down)
You make'em wanna do right Lu (Dumb it down)
They're getting self-esteem Lu (Dumb it down)
These girls are trying to be queens Lu (Dumb it down)
They're trying to graduate from school Lu (Dumb it down)
They're starting to think that smart is cool Lu (Dumb it down)
They're trying to get up out the hood Lu (Dumb it down)
I'll tell you what you should do (Dumb it down)

In listening to his music you wonder,
why is dude so serious?

But DON'T we like to party and bullsh*t a lot?
Doesn't the majority of our music reflect that?

And if that is the case, isn't Lupe entitled to say
let it do what it do and go hard, Malcolm, Huey and Martin
till the wheels fall off?

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Where do you fall on the rap as art continuum?
Is Lupe being heavy handed or self righteous even?
Is he just being a grown Black man speaking REAL TALK?

You seen The Great Debaters? What did you think?

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