Your Black Brothers: Hip-Hop Star VIGALANTEE: More Than A Rapper…

VIGALANTEE: Hunting for Souls
By: Tolu Olorunda
Staff Writer – YourBlackWorld.com

Vigalantee (born Roger Suggs) is no stranger to the underground Hip-Hop scene. Born in Chicago, Vigalantee has always been a fan of Hip-Hop – though a critic, when necessary. In addition to his musical career, Vigalantee is also an arduous community-organizer and activist, whose youth program is touching many young lives across the city of Kansas. As the name suggests, Vigalantee is hunting for more than nice beats or dope rhymes. As a young man, trapped in between the perils of inter-racial animosity and intra-racial hostility, Vigalantee knows how critical it is for young Black kids to find worthy role-models in the communities that shape their destinies.

Vigalantee grew up in Chicago, and experienced, firsthand, the much-referenced tales of gang warfare. Concerned with the emotional toll this reality wreaks on a child, his mother sent him to a relative’s home in Georgia. Vigalantee describes this as the unraveling of another “extreme” living condition [...]

More At Your Black Brothers

Your Black Education: The Gift of Canibus: Hip-Hop and Anti-Intellectualism

The Gift of Canibus: Hip-Hop and Anti-Intellectualism

By: Tolu Olorunda

Staff Writer – YourBlackWorld.com

“History is a weapon being used against us/

Humanity has been abused before but few remember/

… Turn the radio and TV off, think for a second/

Technology is a blessing but it’s also a weapon/

A weapon of mass destruction giving global instructions/

Teaching us how to hate but does it in a way that we love it/

Take my beloved rap music, erase the beat/

Consumers act like they’re afraid of intelligent speech/”

- Hip-Hop artist and philosopher, Canibus, in One Ought Not To Think.

Canibus, like the herbal supplement, Cannabis, is as subjective to the user, as the value of Hip-Hop music is to the listener. In the course of this essay, I, a Canibus fan/student, seek to make a case for the artist otherwise known as Germaine Williams. Though a marginalized figure, Canibus is an Emcee; an artist; a lyrical scientist; a philosopher; an educator; a history lesson, and an infinite source of inspiration to those wrestling with dominant forms of anti-intellectualism being wielded against music lovers. I personally believe Canibus to be a rare mineral resource in an industry engulfed with misogyny, homoeroticism, opulence, hollowness, illiteracy, and cronyism. Since 1996, Canibus has struggled to keep Hip-Hop’s demons at bay. But, truth be told, that struggle remains a contentious one, even till this day. To be sure, Canibus is not a name fluttered on the lips of Black and Brown kids; but perhaps this reality further reinforces my claim, that his wit, perspicacity and voluminous vocabulary is perceived more as a threat, than an accomplishment, in the Hip-Hop realm of existence. Canibus teaches us in – perhaps his most lucid track to date – Poet Laureate II, that Hip-Hop music’s demise lies in its inability to grapple with the ongoing battle being waged between the quest for power, and a declining zeal for poetically-inspired rhymes [...]

More At Your Black Education