Roger Porter

April 11, 2011            

At this very moment that I am writing this blog I am 29 years old. Not that there is anything wrong with that. In fact I am truly blessed to have made it this far when so many people have been lost along the way. In addition to that I’ve accomplished quite a few things  in my life that make me very proud. For the most part, however, I’m still trying to figure everything out. I’m trying to determine how I can impact the world in the most positive way and feed my family at the same time. And on the most basic level I’m still trying to figure out me.

That’s why I find it to be so astonishing that someone as great as Fred Hampton was killed at the age of 20. It’s hard to believe that he could do so much for his people and rise through the ranks of the Black Panther Party all before he was able to legally have a drink. In a similar vein Assata Shakur was only 25 when she was involved in that infamous shootout with police on the New Jersey turnpike. In only 25 years she managed to become one of Black America’s most important revolutionaries. Assata fought everyday for what she believed in and is still struggling for equal rights in Cuba to this very day.

My admiration for these two  prophets, as well as countless others, is ineffable. To be so young and to have so much clarity is really rare. At 20 years old I was so lost and at 25 I was just coming out of my youthful stupor. It is only now at the age of 29 that I genuinely feel as though I’m headed in the right direction. Therefore on this day I salute Sista Assata Shakur and Chairman Fred Hampton for being so strong and so wise so early on in their lives, and I thank them because I know they did it for me.

Roger Porter

April 9, 2011

I was watching an old school Bell, Biv, Devoe video posted by a friend on facebook when I noticed a familiar face wearing a sexy dress with a bass guitar in her hand. I looked a little closer and realized it was none other than the respected actress Ms. Nia Long. This was the video for Do Me Baby which came out in 1990, almost a year before she was introduced to the world in the film Boyz in the Hood.

Nia Long of course is not the only one. Both Jada Pinkett-Smith and Vivica A. Fox starred in music videos before making the leap to the silver screen as well, which compels me to pose the question “Whatever happened to actresses being able to use music video’s as a vehicle for their burgeoning careers?” I don’t know exactly when but at some point all women in music videos became “video hoes” destined to be nothing more than big bootied strippers for the rest of their days. I mean could you imagine any of the girls in Nelly’s Tip Drill video or Buffy the Body playing a supporting role in the next Tyler Perry movie?

It’s kind of sad actually because I’m sure every woman who dances in a video is not turning tricks in the back of a strip club or making pornos for a little extra money. For all we know some of them could be world-class thespians who graduated from Julliard and are trying to pay back their student loans. It doesn’t matter anymore though because the stigma now associated with dancing in a video is way too strong. It’s like a trap that young women can’t seem to get out of these days.

As if breaking into the industry wasn’t hard enough already. It’s really unfortunate.

April 7, 2011

Crazy things happen when you don’t have cable. I was just flipping through the few basic channels that my TV receives when I caught a rhythm, so of course I stopped flipping and listened. It was a local station that plays videos from all over the African diaspora late at night. And the image on my screen was that of slender, brown-skinned gentleman, with curly hair that goes by the name of K’naan.

The beat that he rhymed and sang over was pretty catchy and his lyrics were somewhat profound, but what really caught my attention was the name of his album. It was called The Dusty Foot Philosopher. It’s such an incredibly humble image reminiscent of the barefoot servant. When I read it on the screen it made me wonder what happened to our humility here in the United States. What kind of inner-confidence does K’naan–a Somali born Canadian MC– possess that all of my favorite American born hip-hop artist have lost? Because, honestly, I can’t see the most righteous American rapper giving his album such a bold title and expecting it to sell. Why is that? I mean shouldn’t we expect our artist to be humbletruthsayers and not extravagant egomaniacs? Or maybe it can never be that simple.

On a personal level I am extremely ambivalent towards materialism. I am opposed to ostentatious displays of wealth through jewelry and fancy cars but at the same time I just spent $117 dollars on some tennis shoes that I don’t need yesterday. That’s pretty far removed from being either a barefoot servant or a dustyfoot philosopher. Or sometimes I’ll go through a phase where I’m deep in my craft  of creative writing and I’ll wear old worn out jeans everyday and refuse to shave or cut my hair, but then I’ll take my daughter to the mall and let her get whatever she wants. Is that not the same thing?  Is that not evidence of me being just as blinded by capitalism as the man who raps about his Bently or the woman who sings about her designer handbag? It seems like I have the same mentality as they do it’s just that they have more money to burn.

But once again the truth is never that simple. I would be remissed for not giving myself credit for at least trying to be a more humble person. In the end, however, I do wonder whether or not that will be enough. I don’t know but then again that’s not for me to decide.

Roger Porter

April 6, 2011

                Anyone who has listened to a hip-hop radio station in the past 3 years knows that Lil Wayne, without a shadow of a doubt, is the biggest thing in rap music. Considering his gift at creating outstanding metaphors and analogies along with his brilliance at playing on words (“Real g’s move in silence like lasagna”) I don’t disagree with Wayne being at the top of the food chain, however, I do wish that he had some competition. And I do believe that Andre 3000 is the only human being on the planet with the lyrical prowess to make hip-hop just a little less Wayne-centric. I figure diversity can only be a good thing.

                With that being said I’m just wondering when Andre 3000 is going to come out with a solo album. I generally do not get too excited over rap albums these days but if Dre dropped an album I swear to god I would camp out over night in front of the record store like a Star Wars fan for that joint. A few days ago I was thinking about the Speaker Box/Love Below double album by Outkast that came out in 2003 and it dawned on me that to this day I have never listened to Speaker Box disc in its entirety. I mean who wants to listen to regular rap songs when you have Dre covering “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music and doing duets with Norah Jones. Not to mention dropping dope lines like; “15 – love/ fit like glove/ Description is like 15 doves/ In a Jacuzzi catching the holy ghost/ Making one woozy in the head and comatose, agreed?” What! I’m just saying, if Wayne proclaims himself to be a Martian then Andre 3000 is from a small planet on an undiscovered galaxy that has a name which no human being can pronounce.

               The truth is that no one has pushed the boundaries of hip-hop further than Andre 3000 and as much as I appreciate the guest appearances ever so often, Andre has got to come out with a solo album.

               So where are you Dre, the game needs you.  

Roger Porter

The recession is staying in the house on the weekend because you don’t have enough money to go out with your friends. Even if they agree to pay the cover charge then you still can’t afford to have a drink so what’s the point? 

And if your friends agree to buy you drinks in addition to paying your cover, then you  would still rather stay home because you feel as though having to depend on someone else to provide for you all night would be the equivalent of having your pride publicly mutilated.

Speaking of pride, behind the more than one million lost jobs, pride has to be the most significant casualty of the current economic collapse.

For it is very difficult to be proud while explaining to your six-year-old daughter why she can no longer be in gymnastics, why she can’t have a jumper at her birthday party and why you can’t take her to the movie theater. It seems that pride, like full time work, is a thing of the past. Right now full time work sounds like one of those long lost things that the old folks speak so highly of – like listening to a championship boxing match broadcast live on the radio.

Last Labor Day, President Obama spoke candidly about the recession. He spoke directly to the masses of unemployed Americans when he said, among other things, that when you lose your job you lose “a sense of purpose.” It was a great speech and he appeared to be as genuine as any politician can possibly be, but somewhere along the way he lost me.

I applaud the President for trying to empathize, but he can’t. It’s just that simple.

I think it is impossible for not only the President, but for the majority of Americans who are gainfully employed to understand what it’s like to have an education that is virtually useless because there are no jobs. And to spend your whole life avoiding every pitfall the ghetto has to offer, earn a Master’s degree and not only be broke, but be worse than broke because you’ve accrued a massive amount of debt – $45,000 to be specific – and I never thought that I would feel like such an idiot for going to school.    

There is a stack of bills on my dining room table. Often times I can pay them in a timely manner, but sometimes I can’t. I look at them and they make me drowsy. I yawn into my hand and smell my own breath, which serves as a rather rancid reminder that I haven’t been to the dentist in more than five years. One of my friends tells me that there is a dental school in the city that cleans teeth for cheap, but unfortunately for me, cheap is too expensive. When it comes to a dentist, I can only afford free.

There are millions of Americans who are struggling just like me, most of whom have it far worse than I do, and I suppose that should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. It only makes me feel more dejected as I wonder will the economy improve or will the hope of a country be the next casualty of this ghastly recession.

Roger Porter

April 4, 2011

     It’s a gorgeous day today. I realized that as I was driving from block to block on my way back from work. I saw lots of people standing outside and I saw children spraying one another with a water hose in someone’s front lawn— it’s not yet hot enough for people to begin cracking open the fire hydrants but I’m sure that will be coming in a few months. As I continued down the boulevard I saw a drug addicted prostitute yelling at another woman who drank alcohol out of a brown paper bag. I have no idea what they were arguing about but as I watched them while stopped at a red light I thought to myself; “I really love my hood.”

     Now that’s not to say that I love my own oppression or I love to see ignorance manifest itself in daily life (I definitely felt sad that those two women had lost their way). But it is to say that I love my people. I like to be around good humble folks who aren’t afraid to show their joy or express their pain. I like those hot sunny days when everybody seems to be outside as if Keyshia Cole was shooting a video for her new single.

     I like the openness. I like to see a mother doing her daughter’s hair on the front porch while scrawny little boys have a water balloon fight with their shirts off in the middle of the street. I like the carefree attitude that enables a group of young ladies to dance in the middle of the sidewalk when a car passes by slappin their favorite song.

      On a warm spring day the hood transcends all statistics. The hood is alive, the hood is vibrant, and the hood is well. It is on these days especially, that I love my hood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkGY5EzA-h4

     Roger Porter

April 2, 2011

     So for the past year or so I’ve been experiencing a dilemma.  Basically I’ve been hit pretty hard by the recession and on top of that American involvement in the Libyan war really pisses me off. I’m really not sure how this country can afford to fight 3 wars at one time while so many people are unemployed but honestly that’s not my dilemma. My dilemma is that as a black person it is becoming increasingly difficult to not “go bad” on our first black president.

       Ok hold on just a minute before you try to take away my black card. In November 2008 I was just as excited as everyone else. As a matter of fact when Obama was elected it marked the first time I had ever voted for a winner in a presidential election (I voted for Gore, then Edwards respectively). And I know that Obama inherited a country that was in economic shambles due to his mentally ill predecessor George W. but at the same time I feel like there are some things that he could be doing just a little bit better. Things like releasing the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay like he said he would and being more diplomatic when dealing with other countries instead of just continuing to blow things up.

        And…damn see here’s the part where the dilemma sets in because as a young African-American it almost seems sinful to share the opinions of republicans and conservatives however, it’s kind of hard not to when you’re overeducated and underemployed (an MFA in Creative Writing? What was I thinking? Smh). I mean if I can’t blame my problems on the president then who am I supposed to blame–myself?…Hell no!

       I’m just saying being radical was a lot easier when the president was a white man. It was a lot easier blaming the idiots in the white house back in the day when there actually was an idiot in the white house. Now often times when I hear people question the direction in which this country is headed I have the subconscious urge to actually defend the president which, at least for this black man, feels awkward as hell. Everything is all backwards now. I don’t know if I’ll be able to take this until 2016 but then what am I supposed to do vote for a white republican?

       Damn, what a dilemma.   

     Roger Porter

April 1, 2011

      I suppose if I were a more positive person I would think it’s a good thing that the civil unrest in the Ivory Coast dueto president Laurent Gbagbo’s refusal to cede power looks to be nearing an end, but of course I’m not that kind of guy. I think it’s pretty rediculous that so many people (some put the figure at over 1,000 since November) have been allowed to die without international intervention because of the stubborness of one mortal man. 

      Could you imagine how much global concern and vitriolic rhetoric something like this would have stirred up had it happened in Isreal or Palestine? Oh and let’s not forget the recent confirmation of that the United States government has been secretly supporting the Libyan rebels as they attempt to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi for at least 3 weeks now. And the media gave us all the footage they possibly could concerning the uprisings in Egypt a few months ago, just as they do the current situation in Libya.

       So one may ask what makes America and all the other Western powers get involved in Kosovo but not Rwanda? What makes them so concerned about the latest skirmish on the gaza strip but not about mass murder in Darfur? Why is NATO carrying out strategic military strikes in Libya but only sending letters of stern disapproval to the power drunk Laurent Gbagbo? Well, as I alluded to in a previous blog, maybe because the Ivory Coast exports mass amounts of cocoa and not oil  (And although we have been characterized as a rather obese nation, we’re not quite willing to justify a war over chocolate). Or perhaps, and I may be going out on a limb here, it’s because the people of the Ivory Coast–just like the people of Rwanda and the Sudan–are undeniably and unquestionably black. And America has an over 500 year history of appathy toward the human rights of those who of the darkest hue. I won’t go much deeper into it right now, I mean I’d hate to turn this blog into a real essay, but I will end with the lyrics of a blues song that may be older than America itself; “If you white, then you alright/ If you brown, well stick around/ But if YOU black, If YOU black, If YOU black get back, get back, get back!”

For more information click the link:

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20110401/f38b7322-48d5-4018-a463-61aed5b5d4a0

Roger Porter

I’m 17 years old and it’s a Saturday night.

I’m driving my mother’s 1994 blue Honda Accord with two of my friends in the back seat. We’re about to get on the freeway to check out this party when we see two of our other friends riding in the opposite direction. So we both pull over and because I haven’t seen the other two guys since they dropped out of school, we have a little reunion on the side of the street.

We laugh, clown a little and try to figure out where we want to go. Everything is all good; the weather is warm, the women are out and it’s just a care-free atmosphere. Then we all stop talking as we notice a police car pull up behind us.

“Hey is everything alright?” One of the cops asks us, not out of concern, but to put us on the defensive.

We tell him “yeah” like, of course everything is OK why wouldn’t it be?

“Whose car is this?”

“That’s my mother’s car,” I respond quick and agitated.

“Hey don’t get an attitude with me bro. I’ll have everybody here lying face down with their hands behind their backs.”

Then another squad car pulls up and as I stare at the officer who is doing all the talking and is now a few steps away from me and I experience an epiphany. It felt like that moment represented a perfect culmination of my teenage experience — it was as if my ethnic identity had now become perfectly clear.

When I was 13, I remember walking home from school one day and having a black woman around my mother’s age, with huge burning eyes, ask me if I had any rocks to sell her. By the time we were 15, everybody asked us for dope; Mexicans, White people and black folks as well. They would ask me, my cousin and our friends for drugs while we walked home from football practice with our pads on like that was our one purpose on Earth. 

And when we went to the corner store on E. 15th, down the street from my cousin’s house, to get some Now & Laters or some Funions or Donald Duck orange juice, the old Korean lady would shout “Philly Blunt?” as she held two cigars up, one in each hand, behind the cash register. And we would have to tell her, just like we told all the dope fiends, “NO!”

So now there are like five cops gathered around us and I suddenly understand that I, along with my friends, are now fully-grown monsters. I mean if criminality had a color then it was the same complexion as us. If criminality had features then it would look exactly like our reflections in the mirror. If criminality had a dress code then it would wear its pants, shirt and shoes exactly like we did.

“I got a report about a fight … is there any fighting going on here?”

“Naw, no fighting.”

“Can I see your drivers license?”

I show it to him and he looks at it with a flashlight because apparently he needs to analyze every letter and every number. When he’s done, he tells us to have a good night and both of the squad cars speed off to their next confrontation.

My friends and I stay there for a few minutes and try as hard as we can to regroup. But needless to say, we find it to be impossible.

3/28/11

Roger Porter           

         What ever happened to Master P? I saw his son Lil Romeo on a commercial for “Dancing with the Stars” the other day and I was deeply saddened. It almost completely ruined my day to see the heir to the once mighty No Limit Empire ballroom dancing on a show for B rate celebrities. It sounds crazy now but by the time I got to high school I thought the dynasty would never crumble. Boy was I wrong.

            It’s hard to imagine a man that was once so “Bout It, Bout It” disappear from the scene the way Master P did. Not after being at a house party the summer of the 9^th grade and watching everybody go ballistic when “How you Do Dat Dere” came on, not after coming home on the bus after a varsity football game in the 10^th grade listening to that Ghetto Dope album on a boom box and hearing the whole bus scream “Pass me them thangs! Let’s Get em!” in unison. Ahhh, my No Limit memories are endless. Back then I never would have believed that the dream team of Mystical, Snoop Dogg, C-Murda, and Master P would ever be disassembled but I guess things change. And in the end even a gold plated tank isn’t indestructible.

            Thanks for the memories P. The late 90’s wouldn’t have been the same without you.