Yesterday should have been declared "David Banner Day" in Jackson, Miss.
Banner, a gangsta rapper, turned the tables on his critics in the media who questioned why the National Black Caucus of State Legislators would honor him at its Youth Congress luncheon.
Banner ripped the MSM for ignoring his Hurricane Katrina relief efforts that raised a million dollars; money that he "brought back to Mississippi."
Mind you, I'm no fan of gangsta rap but I love blues and its double entendres. It's the height of hypocrisy for elders to denounce Banner's lyrics while at the same time get their groove on to the raunchy lyrics of Bobby Rush, another Jackson native.
Banner told a roomful of bright black high school students who whooped and hollered as he walked to the podium:
We are gangsta because the establishment and the situation we live in in Mississippi is gangsta... Critics focus on the lyrics rather than the circumstances in our neighborhoods.
Banner encouraged the kids to "be gangsta about your school work." He pointedly asked his critics:
Where were you when I was passing out boxes standing in water. Where were you? You were not there. Regardless of what people say and do, I'm in the hood...Gangsta rappers are raising your kids because you didn't.
Teach.
