Alicia Keys Pulls Back On The Crazy

April 16, 2008 · Print This Article

Alicia keys had told Blender that the government was behind gangsta rap and, in conjunction with the media, killed the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac.

New York (CMR) - Alicia Keys came home from vacation to find the celebrity peanut gallery known as the internet had crowned her the second coming of Loony Hill. Alicia had told Blender that the government was behind gangsta rap and, in conjunction with the media, killed the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac. She’s not retracting her statements, but the nuances of what she said were lost in publication. So she called Ryan Seacrest on Tuesday to “clarify some statements.”

“The term gangsta rap was so over-sloganized during that time,” she told Ryan. “It was so over-sloganized in so many ways that ordinary people, as well as the government, could have really done so much more to really obliterate and eradicate the things that were going on in the communities at that time that forced the artists to discuss and talk about so strongly what they saw, what they lived with every day.”

So it wasn’t that Bill Clinton had worked out the tune for “Hypnotize” on his sax so much as the government did nothing to keep the rough neighbourhoods that Biggie was writing about from getting rougher, hence the so-called “gangsta” subject matter.

Similarly, the government didn’t directly murder Biggie and Tupac. Of course they didn’t–Tupac’s still alive! (Just kidding.) (Not really.) It was more a situation where the media would write about the kingpin rappers in a way that pitted them against each other. Things were blown out of proportion, egos were bruised, and we wound up with two dead rappers. “When other people are telling the story, and two grown men, as in Pac and Biggie, I don’t feel they were really able to tell each other what they meant,” Alicia said. “Instead, it came through other people.” It’s kind of like with Lauren and Heidi on The Hills, minus the drive-bys.

Alicia, we’re sorry our faith in you was shaken! Listening to her on Ryan Seacrest, she sounded so intelligent and thoughtful that it seemed all the more preposterous that she would believe Clinton’s goons were waiting for Tupac outside the MGM Grand in September ‘96 as part of a deliberate conspiracy to stunt the growth of a powerful black cultural movement. She’s got lots of brave, brainy things to say. In fact, we’re thinking Affleck/Keys might not be a bad Democratic ticket.

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