The NOIS Message Extends Beyond Sports

Just wanted to take a quick moment to allow our cherished readers the opportunity to understand just how far reaching the NOIS movement that they support truly is.

The influence of our righteous teachings is taking on the look of an undeniable grass roots movement. While we have chosen our vessel of outreach to be that of sports to conduct our mission; clearly others have been reading our message and are now confident in using their celebrity to reach audiences even beyond our own formidable voice.

To wit: Alicia Keys.

Alicia Keys, 27, said she's read several Black Panther autobiographies and wears a gold AK-47 pendant around her neck "to symbolize strength, power and killing 'em dead.

While we aren't 'Black Panthers', we do undestand that a misinformed, mainstream AP wire writer can make an error. And while this is a blog, in a way, it is an autobiography of the NOIS movement.

We don't advocate violence of physicality, but we do condone the appreciable symbolism of Keys' AK-47. We advocate violently attacking the intellectual status quo and institutionalized closed mindedness that attempts to shackle our brilliance and artistry. A brilliance and artistry shared and appreciated by Keys.

"`Gangsta rap' was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other. `Gangsta rap' didn't exist."

Think about this statement.

Certainly, it falls in line with much of what we profess here at NOIS. That the mainstream media is but a weapon aimed at the Negro by the establishment. The Negro is sighted in, the trigger is pulled...and center mass is often hit squarely. The damage has been great and the casualties have been many. But, all in all, though much blood has been lost, the soul of the Negro has not been extinguished.

And, as long as artist-philosophers like Keys are able to get the message out, the movement survives.

"the bicoastal feud between slain rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. was fueled "by the government and the media, to stop another great black leader from existing.""

Indeed. What better way for the establishment to rid itself of great Negro minds than to turn them on each other. To pour kerosene on the fire. To ensure that these young up and coming leaders of the Negro community felt disrespected and threatened by each other. And, to ensure that weapons were readily available to them on the streets.

And, out of the poetry of the streets. Out of the attentive and sensitive stories told about the plight of the American Negro in the American ghetto. Out of the emotion. Out of the heartbreak. Out of the shame. Out of the sunshine. Out of the rain. Gangsta Rap!

Thrust onto us by the media. A term used to shackle the underclass. A descriptor meant to wholly castrate the message of the artist. Meant to take attention away from the poetry and the message of the struggle for self betterment and unity.

Our government built monuments in this country. Monuments designed to commemorate the horrid treatment of a group of people in Europe. They called it a 'holocaust'. People were tattooed with ID numbers. Labelled. Identified as different, and systematically they were processed for destruction. And the world remembers them and vows not to allow it to happen again. To happen anywhere.

But it is happening. Alicia Keys sees it happening. She sees a generation of people labelled and lined up for destruction. And she speaks out. Loudly.

Two potentially great leaders. Gunned down in their primes. Labelled as victims of their own creation. But gangsta rap wasn't their creation. It was created for them. It was created to terminate them.

It didn't exist. It doesn't exist. It can't exist.

Reality is what exists. And gangsta rap isn't reality. It is a made up term designed with a two fold purpose:

i. to contrive a criminal association in the minds of society between the poverty and the struggle that the artists communicate and the artist himself. By demonizing the artistic movement, the mainstream media effectively demonized the artist. Turning poets into inmates. And turning poverty and lack of opportunity into crime.

ii. to saddle the artists with what would become unmanageable personas. Treat a man like an animal. Tell him he is an animal. And he will become an animal. Or criminal. Then lock him up.

As Keys clearly insinuates, the mainstream would have us all believe that Negro poets are violent and carry weapons. But, Keys cleverly turns the tables on this: She has her AK pendent. But it doesn't symbolize the crime or violence the mainstream has forced on the movement. Her AK symbolizes her mind!

Certainly, a powerful mind is something that threatens White America.

And, certainly, a Negro with a powerful mind is something that the mainstream media makes sure sounds foreign to White America:

"Keys' AK-47 jewelry came as a surprise to her [white] mother, who is quoted as telling Blender: "She wears what? That doesn't sound like Alicia."

Yet another instance of proof positive that White America has no interest in understanding the Negro.

But the day will come.

For, we believe, Alicia Keys' mother can change.


Obama '08.