America's Most Livable City? | New Video by Jasiri X

from Jasiri X:

"America's Most Livable City" highlights the city of Pittsburgh's recent honor, despite according to the U.S. Census Bureau, having the highest rate of poverty among working age Black people in the United States. This is the Pittsburgh they don't show when your watching the Steelers, the REAL Pittsburgh.

To see more footage of these poor undeserved communities and the Black Men stepping up to provide solutions go to to view our series, "Is Pittsburgh America's Most Livable City?"

LYRICS

Welcome to America's Most Livable City

Please ignore the invisibles with me

See Pittsburgh rebuilt it's economy

But we still lead the Nation in black poverty

Welcome to America's Most Livable City

Just ignore the invisibles with me

And state ya business, cause here the place ya living

depends on ya race and privilege

They call it Clipsburgh Pistolvania

Where block dictators will launch missiles to bang ya

Where hot metal come whistling out the chamber

To maim ya twisting you like wrestlemania

And what's crazier the bishop wont pray for ya

Ya families so poor they can't even afford a crate for ya

And in them skyscrapers Brah they can't wait for us

To move out the hood so they can take it lace it up

Transit cuts a brother can't even take the bus

This is the ugly truth no need to make it up

Then some magazine comes along and places us

As most livable in the USA what?

Say what? Guess they didn't survey us

Cause life is cut shorter than razors where they raise us

Judges are racists and quick to hang us

And police taze us until we never wake up

Welcome to America's Most Livable City

Please ignore the invisibles with me

See Pittsburgh rebuilt it's economy

But we still lead the Nation in black poverty

Welcome to America's Most Livable City

Just ignore the invisibles with me

And state ya business, cause here the place ya living

depends on ya race and privilege

And downtown it's a bunch of new buildings

Glass and steel cathedrals the cost a few million

They make billions to treat a dudes illness

With medicine and pharmaceuticals so who's dealing

But the schools are failing screw children

Just make sure the office has a see through ceiling

Pitt University and CMU killin

classes cost thousands I don't see you fill em

How we gonna get a job in biotechnology

if all we ever learn is survival psychology

and why we so poor if yall revived the economy

but we don't get nothing besides and apology

Tear down the projects and put up a target

then build new homes so they can stimulate the market

But move us out the neighborhood so we can never harvest

the only thing we guaranteed in Pittsburgh is charges

Welcome to America's Most Livable City

Please ignore the invisibles with me

See Pittsburgh rebuilt it's economy

But we still lead the Nation in black poverty

Welcome to America's Most Livable City

Just ignore the invisibles with me

And state ya business, cause here the place ya living

depends on ya race and privilege

'Three Little Girls'--a New Video by Jasiri X

from Jasiri X

For Woman's History Month we wanted to shed light on how violent this society is especially towards woman and girls. "Three Little Girls" tells the stories of the senseless murders of Christina Taylor Green who was killed during the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Brisenia Flores who was gunned down by anti-immigrant militia intent on starting a race war, and Aiyana Jones who shot to death while asleep in her home, by the Detroit Police Department, while they were filming a reality TV show.

I realize these are sad stories, but how can we not be moved to action by the cold-blooded killings of innocent little girls? We have to begin to take an unflinching look at a culture that continues to glorify guns, bombs, and war and sees violence and aggression as the only solutions to its problems.

Written by Jasiri X and featuring 10 year old Hadiyah Yates, "Three Little Girls" was produced by GM3 and directed by Paradise Gray.


LYRICS

Verse 1
Born on 911
In that dark time as a blessing
A face of hope like she was a sign from the heavens
Kindness and reverence
She grew into a scholar kid
Became class president with a love for politics
Only nine and wants to find where the congress is
Meet her representative
Get involved with the processes
That morning she was so hyper
wanted to meet Ms Giffords by just like her
even though she was young she was much wiser
Until that automatic weapon was just fired.
People falling from getting hit
He kept shooting cause his gun had an extended clip like it had no end to it
And of the victims hit she was the youngest
The mother of her own child she'll never become it
The value for life just plummets
In this sick society that deserves judgment
Rest in peace youngin

Verse 2
A little girl with her mommy and daddy
on her knees saying a prayer thanking God for her family
so happy her whole life ahead of her
But outside her door was a hoard of vicious predators
Racists sycophants with hatred for immigrants
Got with other militias and called them selves the minutemen
We know where they got drugs and cash lets go get it then
knock knock the little girl wonders whose visiting
They never found drugs but they was of brown blood
So they cock back and fired round after round of slugs
The little girl saw her families bodies on the rug
And cried what did we do why did you come to kill us
he raised up his gun and shot her twice in the face
cause she was only nine but wasn't the right race
and that's the reason that we didn't see it in the media
so even in death discrimination still reaches her.

Verse 3
Little Aiyana Jones chillin in her father's home
In Detroit Michigan playing toys with her sisters and
doing all the things that make you wish you were a kid again
before you understood what a violet world that were living in
all played out sleeping on the same couch
that she did every night when they turn the lights out
But outside the house they had cameras and mic out
Reality TV brutality for a fee
The first 48 hours on A & E
where a officer can play a celebrity
distracted by all the action they chose the wrong house
flash grenade through the window went crash on the couch
Aiyana's on fire now flames getting wider now
the first officer through the door pulls out and fired down
shot through the neck bleed to death she's expired now
I pray she's resting on higher ground
we love you

'Left of Black': Episode #26 featuring Professor Ebony Utley and Jasiri X

Left of Black #26
w/ Ebony Utley and Jasiri X
March 21, 2011

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype by Professor Ebony Utley, who examines the proliferation of religious conspiracy theories about prominent hip-hop artists. Later Neal is joined by activist and hip-hop artist Jasiri X, in wide ranging conversation about socially conscious hip-hop in the age of Social Media.

***

→Ebony Utley, an assistant professor of Communication Studies at California State University, Long Beach author of the forthcoming book Rap and Religion: Understanding The Gangsta’s God (Praeger 2012) as well as the co-editor of Hip Hop’s Languages of Love (2009). She has published in several journals including Black Women Gender & Families, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, The Western Journal of Black Studies, and Women and Language. Follow her on Twitter @U_Experience.

→ Jasiri X is a Pittsburgh based hip-hop artist, activist and entrepreneur, who burst on the national and international Hip-Hop scene with the controversial “Free the Jena 6″ which was named “Hip-hop Political Song of the Year,” and won “Single of the Year” at the Pittsburgh Hip-Hop Awards. His recent videos include “What if the Tea Party was Black?,” “American Workers Vs Multi-Billionaires,” and “Wandering Strangers.” Follow him on Twitter @Jasiri_X

***

Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

"Wandering Strangers": Jasiri X Speaks Back to Peter King (video)

from Jasiri X

With Rep. Peter King holding hearings on "Muslim Radicalization", and American Muslims being screamed at and harassed while attending a fundraiser for battered women, can Muslims safely live and pray in the United States of America?

Our new video "Wandering Strangers" raise questions about who's a terrorist, and why people seem to forget freedom of religion is a constitutional right. Wandering Strangers was produced by Kreid and directed by Paradise Gray

LYRICS

And I too shed tears on 9-11
asking God why looking for the signs in heaven
But let me remind the reverend
When it came to lynching the Christian knights were behind the weapons
When burning crosses in the nighttime were present
In the name of Jesus we were terrorized no question
Our hurt is the witness but we aint hate the church or religion
We put the blame on the person who did it you should search for forgiveness
this verse for the critics you're totally wrong
why did Thomas Jefferson have a Holy Qur'an
when you mention radicals why is it only Islam
wasn't Timothy McVeigh OK with a bomb
didn't the government fund Saddam
and the Taliban in Afghanistan before it was Obama's Vietnam
didn't ya forefathers come to these shores and waters
to escape persecution religious wars and slaughter
and wrote the Constitution will you ignore the authors
without freedom of religion then do you see us as citizens
burning Qur'ans just leads to more division
ain't that what the terrorist wanted which sides really winning

Imagine being denied a place to pray
in America where your just trying to make a way
Is this the land of the free I think it's safe to say
we coming face to face with hate today
wasted racists make it seem like Islam's the enemy
callin Obama a Muslim want him gone like Kennedy
wasn't love thy neighbor how Jesus formed his ministry
but I don't qualify cause I'm the wrong identity
say good bye integrity and so long dignity
They say it's not religion just the mosque vicinity
to Ground Zero
then dishonor the 1st responders by denying em health care is that how you crown heroes
this is the way truth sounds in ya earlobe
stop listening to those Fox clowns and weirdos
how you gonna justify vilifying and hating
when the funder of the Kingdom foundation owns ya station
and if it's about freedom what are we really debating
if we all brothers and sisters why aren't we relating
they say it's about respect then call us terrorists
Nazis, jihadists, but never Americans