Tag Archives: Serius Jones

In recent years, every major catastrophe has brought a response from the rap community, a hastily-assembled track that comments on current affairs. The 9/11 attacks brought Wu-Tang Clan’s "Rules." (Around the same time, Sage Francis dropped his classic "Makeshift Patriot.") More recently, last December Papoose answered the Sean Bell police shooting with "50 Shots."

The fierce generational and societal debates surrounding hip-hop music and culture, which is lately reaching a fever pitch, already yielded a brilliant track from Killer Mike last year called "That’s Life." Serius Jones’ recent salvo, "Can’t Stop the Game," doesn’t compare to Mike’s fiery verses. But it does address Don Imus’ recent comments against the University of Virginia, which inadvertently (and some might say unfairly) started all the madness.

"If you think hip-hop is dead, then you got it confused/I know you done got the scoop if you watching the news/Some ugly-ass white dude named Imus just got exposed/Calling young black girls nappy-headed hos/Got caught and trying to blame what we do/Bitching up, like, ‘Well the rappers are saying it, too’/Now all of a sudden the media wants to make us the scapegoat/Yeah, we off the slave ship but we in the same boat," he raps.

"This song speaks on the overall state of Hip Hop," says Serius Jones in a press release. "There are so few representatives speaking on our behalf, so I felt obligated to make a song to blast on those who always try and blame Hip Hop for society’s problems. I feel that Hip Hop is an easy scapegoat for people like Imus who are racist by nature. Oprah definitely has something against rappers. She should be focusing her energy on changing the system which corrupts the youth mentality instead of trying to redirect our art form. The solution is for influential older Black people to listen and understand the youth, instead of trying to attack, ban us and censor our voice. Listen to the voice instead of the words, or you will never understand it."

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