By Odeisel

A few months ago we sat down with Boot Camp and Duck Down’s own General Steele, half of the legendary duo Smiff N Wessun and discussed a variety of topics.  This particular segment speaks not only to the coming Father’s Day, but also on our responsibility as men in the community.  Short and sweet, see a side of a real emcee that you haven’t seen yet.  Salute

-OD

Planet Ill: Let’s talk about Black manhood

General Steele: A lot of us don’t really know what manhood is. And we never really admit it until we’re around some real men. Then you can open up a forum and start being real. I don’t want to make it sound like a cliché when I say real, but I know some cats that just…they’ll just never make it man.

How do you break through? How do you communicate? Hip-Hop is dope. I had an individual come to me one time, while I was on stage. He just gave me five and said thank you. He was going through some things with his lady during a time; that she was sick or something. He was feeling a little helpless at the time and he said thank you.  And I had no idea that my rhymes and my contribution to the culture influenced him that way.

As a man I had to say, “Hey, I’m speaking to dudes!”  I’m not only speaking to fans, you know, these are people. These are guys; these are young men. So now you get hit with that other question; that role model question, you already know. So yeah, we are role models. We’re all role models, man.

Shaft was a role model. Superfly was a role model. The Spook who sat by the door is a role model. Malcolm X is a role model, Tupac is a role model. It’s all about who you model yourself after. You have a lot of men who are LOST, and unfortunately, Hip-Hop has a lot to do with that. We be messing up a lot of things. We have to take responsibility.

Everybody don’t have to say the same raps. Let’s try not to trick the people. Especially the men. And when the men ain’t being men, it’s kinda hard for the women to be women. No disrespect to the women out there, the booty clappers and all that, Entertainment Weekly or whatever.  But we got babies out there. I really don’t want to see you dancing in the club or practicing and your child is [right there].  It’s kinda like wow, and it’s going to make it easier to make laws against us to take our freedom of speech away, and as men, we gotta stand up.

Big up to Kevin Powell, cause he’s always having forums to open up mentorships and Floyd Patterson as well. He’s opening up a forum to speak about autism, another thing that plagues us. A lot of cats can’t read. They will never tell you until they are like 40 years old, until they gotta go sign something and can’t figure out why they taxes are messed up, and they can’t get the money that they was owed. But that’s real. We teach each other through this thing.

I learned about JoAnne Chesimard through Chuck D. JoAnne Chesimard is right there on my wall so if you hear about it in the news right now on CNN how they trying to do things [Editor’s note Joanne Chesimard is Assata Shakur not Angela Davis.  Long day homies. My bad] in Cuba right now, JoAnne Chesimard, that’s who that is. I learned about her through Hip-Hop.  It wasn’t in my schools, and I couldn’t find that out there.  And even Malcolm X. So we’re gonna tell the children that Kanye West got that beat from Stevie Wonder. Do you know who Stevie Wonder is, boys and girls?  Google Stevie Wonder, and look at HIS catalogue.

Planet Ill: What does that status as role model leave you with as far as responsibility:

General Steele:  Just do your part. Go talk to some kids in the hood, nahmean? Keep them out of that stupid s**t out there. Because rap breeds a lot of ignorance too, so we have to play our part. We are role models. Big Up to those rappers that be taking care of the community; taking care of the hood, spending money in the hood. I’m not gonna name any names, you know who you are. Salute.

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