Run-DMC is often referred to as "The Beatles of Rap/Hip-Hop". I love the music of the Beatles. I love the music of Paul McCartney and Wings even more. But, I adored Run-DMC. They reign eternally in a rebel artistic class by themselves....

"A Day in the Life" is my favorite Beatles song. I've been listening to it a lot lately... It's sad and haunting melody and somber lyrics perfectly capture and ironically heal the ongoing depression that I battle daily. It is the daily news that I find increasingly depressing...

Music is the soundtrack of our lives. Run-DMC played on during my final undergraduate year as a 20 year old senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I was also a founder and the general manager at college radio station WBML: "Where Black Music Lives"...I hosted a weekly radio show and I was a house DJ at a campus nightclub called "The White Horse Inn"... The first time I ever heard Run-DMC, it was 1983. Their first single, "It's Like That" became a profound anthem for my encroaching exit from academia into the real world. Jam Master Jay was the star of the group to me, as my idol on those turntables...

I will always revere Run-DMC because they never called me or my sisters "Bitches and Ho's"...because they rapped about life rather than cars and jewelry and sex... because all three band members wed gorgeous Black women and created beautiful Black children....because their music made me feel glorious during glory days.

Jam Master Jay's death is more than another tragic celebrity incident. It is the untimely death of a musical and cultural icon. It is yet another act of a cowardly gunman who will never murder a single valid enemy of African people as he has murdered this brother that we adore. It is yet another example of the consummate lack of honor that has come to define criminality in our increasingly criminal world.  Jam Master Jay was an afrocentric activist who never left the 'hood, never stopped mentoring to others, and never stopped loving his African self or his own African people.

I pray to God constantly. I pray for righteousness, truth, peace, and retribution. Primarily, I pray for Love. I pray for global self love, Black love, human love, and a soulmate. I truly believe that people who love themselves love others. They are not killers, haters, and gangsters...At my worst, I feel hopeless and lost. At my best, I feel numb and defiant. Usually, I just feel that the secret of my joy has become a whispered fantasy.

My soul is weary. Weary with the senseless violence that dominates the world today...weary with lies and evil that have become sports...weary with the loneliness of decency and honesty...weary with the guns, deaths, and wars that are like religions to gangsta rappers and the GOP...weary with President Select Shrub (aka George W. Bush) and his violent Repulikkkan posse's mindless attacks upon America and Iraq...weary with ignorant gaybashers who blaspheme God as they vainly attempt to assign divine power to their own demonic hatreds...weary with the ugliness of the world eclipsing the beauty within it...

Currently, I live in a city that literally bores me to tears. It is a vapid and regressive city that will never be ready for my rebel radio shows. I am blessed with a great post as an instructor and I travel often on business. I am too busy to travel for pleasure as often as needed. I miss Oakland, California so much that it hurts. I will soon return to Atlanta, Georgia to resume my radio career and earn a PHD. Someday soon, I will return to Oakland as a professor. Until then,  I am just trying to hang on...I meditate, exercise, read....and wait for the next depressing news headline. 

So, I escape the pain and chaos with my eclectic musical therapists, including: Jill Scott, Earl Klugh, Nancy Wilson, Leroy Hutson, George Benson, Eric Benet, Angie Stone, Ray Charles, Adina Howard, Efua, Dinah Washington, Chaka Khan, Zap Mama, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Aretha Franklin, Betty Carter, Carmen McCrae, The Brand New Heavies, Burning Spear, Steel Pulse, Mutabaruka, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Sister Carol, Calypso Rose, Donnell Jones, The Family Stand, Gil Scott-Heron, Billie Holiday, Etta James, Etta Jones, hundreds more...and Run-DMC. Forever.

Music is my medicine and my weapon. Music literally keeps me alive. Music conquers my depression. Music brings me God and peace. Killers took Jam Master Jay. But, nothing will ever take his music away. Run-DMC is eternal...

To Jam Master Jay: Bless your eternal soul my dear brother. Thank you for the happy music and the happy memories. Your life and art were taken from us far too soon. But, your spirit and your music will never die. The best among us always die too young. There are superior places that are impatient for their superior company. We know you dwell there now homie...It's like that and that's the way it is...