Remember that multiple homocide in Dorchester in December? Execution style in the basement, lots of blood. The victims were members of a local rap group called Graveside, an MP3 of one of thier songs, called "Stomp", was floated for a while. Its not a bad song, especially for a local act — a little violent, but nothing worse than most mainstream rappers these days:

if a n**** talk shit
stomp on that n****,
stomp stomp on that n***
…
n*** that will wile out and make sure i decease all challengers
and imma make it real violent
cause you gotta catch these n*** attention
by leaving him in a pile of blood

Not to get all parental-advisory-warning on you, but The Berklee College of Music is making headlines with their descision to join the Take Back the Music Campaign, an Essence magazine initiative dedicated to redefining hip-hop with more positive social and political messages and less mysoginy.

Teachers acknowledge that some of the ''street grit" of hip-hop could be lost on a college campus…

We don't really know what to make of all of this, since we like hip-hop but aren't really part of the community, so we'll leave it up to you to decide. We are reminded of a quote from the movie Crash, so we'll leave you with that:

It's just black people demeaning other black people, using that word over and over. You ever hear white people callin' each other "honky" all the time? "Hey, honky, how's work?" "Not bad, cracker, we're diversifying!"

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