{"id":5090,"date":"2013-11-21T11:53:31","date_gmt":"2013-11-21T17:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orijinculture.com\/community\/?p=5090"},"modified":"2014-09-02T09:03:33","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T15:03:33","slug":"african-american-hip-hop-artist-dont-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/african-american-hip-hop-artist-dont-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Nas on ‘Why Some African-Americans don’t go to Africa?’"},"content":{"rendered":"

African American hip hop artist Nas, responded to a question in 2008: Why don’t African-American Hip-hop artist\u00a0perform in\u00a0Africa. His response is one that we all need to pay close attention to in order to move forward and united.<\/p>\n

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<\/iframe><\/p>\n“Let’s go straight to it. People are scared, there’s horror stories about Africa that\u00a0is out of the world…there’s horror stories that scared people from going to Africa before hip-hop was around”, Nas.<\/p>\nDoes this stigma of fear about going to Africa still exist amongst many African-Americans and the African Diaspora?<\/p>\nThere was a time\u00a0when we all believed almost everything\u00a0 we heard through the\u00a0media. We can agree that the old media such as newspaper and\u00a0TV\u00a0played a major role in polluting our minds with\u00a0stereotypes and fear that has separated us for years. But with the existence of social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, one can only make an assumption that the fear and negative perception that has\u00a0kept many African-Americans from going to Africa would have been reduced by far, but is that REALLY so?<\/p>\nMillions of pictures, music and videos are uploaded on the internet daily by individuals living in Africa, exposing the other side of Africa\u00a0which is beautiful and welcoming. However the horror images are\u00a0still embedded in the memories of many African-descendants living in the diaspora. This got me thinking about\u00a0\u00a0how much damage this had caused inside us African American? We have a serious problem at hand, a psychological battle which continuous to haunt us and separate\u00a0us Africans and African-Americans\u00a0 regardless of \u00a0how much\u00a0we try to get close to each other.\u00a0 A battle that\u00a0we have not\u00a0come out triumphant yet,\u00a0a battle we have to uproots from the bottom up.\u00a0\u00a0Just us Nas clearly\u00a0stated “one thing about us African-Americans and Africans,we do not communicate ,we don’t talk,\u00a0we do not see a reason to talk”<\/em><\/p>\n“Africans don’t like African-Americans at all, they look down upon us, they got their own little racial names for us”<\/em> this strong statement\u00a0is\u00a0\u00a0commonly\u00a0stated among many of us African-Americans even to the unknown individual who has not come in contact with an African living in Africa. Ironically when it comes to us Africans living in America,\u00a0\u00a0a similar statement is visible: “African-Americans dont like Africans, they look down upon\u00a0Africans\u00a0 and call us all sorts of names”.\u00a0\u00a0Sometimes it does feel\u00a0as if \u00a0we of African descent are still cursed with slavery; Slavery of the mind, slavery of separation from each other, slavery with the idea that we are better than the other brother or sister.\u00a0We are lost and need to remind ourselves that\u00a0WE ARE ONE PEOPLE, ONE FAMILY, from ONE AFRICA, plain and simple. It is time we come together to acknowledge each other and help develop each other. No one is going to do that right for us but ourselves.<\/p>\nAfrican-Americans need to start seeing Africa as home and make it an effort to visit Africa, preferably\u00a0with an African friend and not just as a tourist to\u00a0overcome the fear and feel at home.\u00a0Africans living abroad need to make it an effort to be more open and engaging outside their communities as their actions also represent Africans living in Africa. However, I will be clear about this, Africa is a huge continent and not a country and people have various cultures and beliefs so we can not judge a whole continent or even a country based on an experience with another. Every year I have made it an effort to take someone home with me to Ghana-Africa so that they can experience what they never knew,”Home”. I dare you that when you come to Africa not as a tourist you will leave Africa knowing in your heart that you have a home and a \u00a0family in Africa.<\/p>\nIt was very pleasing to hear Nas say that outside his music career he went to Africa for his birthday.\u00a0African-American\u00a0artists that come to Africa spend a day or two\u00a0ought to try and stay a bit longer to explore home. The make money fast,\u00a0\u00a0strictly business, no connection with the motherland, peace out and bounce mentality\u00a0upsets me because they are the voice that we the people listen to and follow. And if the voice can’t see then what can it say.\u00a0For the\u00a0entertainers\u00a0that take full advantage of their trip to Africa and\u00a0stay longer, tend to be those that get touched to do more such as Isaiah Washington, Ludarcris, Alicia Keys, 50cents and Jayz.<\/p>\nIn an\u00a0ideal world, every individual would have an opportunity to visit African and make their own\u00a0judgement on the\u00a0continent. Unfortunately, this isn’t the world we live in and the majority of individuals based their perception of\u00a0Africa from what they see and listen from the\u00a0media. It’s time\u00a0for the\u00a0media\u00a0to take responsibility, speak the truth\u00a0and for individuals to educate themselves to know the difference between true\u00a0reality and what is not.<\/p>\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/c9VQye6P8k0\" width=\"635\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"African American hip hop artist Nas, responded to a question in 2008: Why don’t African-American Hip-hop artist\u00a0perform in\u00a0Africa. His response is one that we all <a class=\"moretag signature-animation\" href=\"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/african-american-hip-hop-artist-dont-africa\/\">CONTINUE READING<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2172],"tags":[52,4556,3479,4555,2259,4557],"class_list":["post-5090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-underground-news","tag-africa-unite","tag-african-americans","tag-culture","tag-hiip-hop","tag-nas","tag-separation"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-content\/uploads\/nas.jpeg3-1280x960.jpg?wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5090"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5142,"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5090\/revisions\/5142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orijinculture.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}