Academy award-winning actor and singer Billy Porter takes us on a journey through time to explore the more obscure political actions that have changed the course of LGBTQIA+ history. Before that fateful day at Stonewall in 1969, there were nearly 50 years worth of queer political actions that took place but today, they are still overlooked when regarding modern history and civil rights movements.
Atlanta rapper Michael Santiago Render, known professionally as Killer Mike, released his sixth album this month. It’s called R.A.P. Music. The album’s title isn’t about hip-hop, per se, but refers to an acronym tweeted by another Georgian, a critic named Maurice Garland, two years ago. “He just put it up randomly: ‘Rap music is supposed to be Rebellious African People,’ ” Killer Mike told Morning Edition. “I said, ‘Yo, i’m naming my next album that.’ “
“First of all, all humanity is from Africa, and i think we’ve been trained to put color on it. But, in terms of the black people who were directly descended from Africa and brought here a few hundred years ago, that voice began in the fields as wailing, which turned into gospel. Gospel got secular and turned into blues, and blues got faster and became rock ‘n’ roll and became funk and became soul and R&B. What’s more American than young people speaking their mind over things they had to create over pots and pans and electronically because music was taken out of schools? What’s more American than making something out of nothing? What’s more gospel than rap music?”
Read the remainder of the NPR article here: https://www.npr.org/2012/06/19/155308252/killer-mike-on-ronald-reagan-and-raising-daughters
