I was watching some TV news channel or the other last week, and they were talking about what desperate straits were in as far as unemployment. Theres no question the shit has hit the fan and many people are in a dire position that no one could have contemplated only a few months ago.  

to remind me, in retrospect, that we didn’t know how good we had it in the early 1990s. The Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall had crumbled, leaving post-Cold War America without a real international threat; terror ism was a vague concept involving bad things that happened somewhere else.   

As a casual listener of Hip- Hop since the late ‘90’s, a few things have resonated with me. Way back then, homo sexual artists were either non existent, totally closeted and/or intimidated. Then there appeared staunch anti-gay resolves in many artists’ public personas and lyrics, such as early Eminem, Ja Rule, DMX and Common.