NY Oil Speaks: Sean Bell Ain’t No Nigger & Neither Our You By Davey D Controversial rapper NY Oil comes at us hard with a two part interview that focuses on the aftermath of the Sean Bell verdict and Hip Hop’s collective lack of reaction to it. He addresses a number of important issues including how New York City in its war on terrorism post 9-11 has become a serious police state that has been pretty much accepted by all who live there. The daily routine for the average New Yorker now includes seeing police patrolling the streets and subways with military style weapons and performing random searches on any and everybody. He says people have been trained to conform and submit He says that the soul of NY has been broken and that a lot has been lost especially among Black people. He says many of us have lost our dignity. He talks about the mentality of the New York cop and notes how they have been given too much leeway with little oversight. NY Oil’s mom was one of the first Black police sergents on the force so he clearly understands whats going on, both from personal experience and from his mom. He notes that some of the most wicked people are on the force. NY Oil goes into great detail explaining why we have not seen a huge amount of reaction from the Hip Hop community. He says alot of mainstream artists are frauds who have perfected the skill of acting and now that they are needed to step up and be seen and heard, they gone to embracing a self serving attitude where making money is the end game. NY Oil says that fans and the community have got to ideally start empowering artists who are really down for the community. You can’t keep chasing 50 Cent and expect him to come back and be a leader if thats not what he’s about. He says that people would do better to align themselves with community minded artists like Immortal Technique, Mos Def, Rebel Diaz, Wise Intelligent and so many others. Lastly in this portion of the interview NY Oil gets deep as he talks about the value of self image. He talks about how the police have insisted and allowed themselves to be portrayed versus us within Hip Hop. He talks about how the police no matter what they do are seen as heroes while we insist on seeing ourselves as niggers. He notes that heroes die a dignified death that results in our collective out pouring of support while Sean bell is simply a ‘nigger who got shot 50 times’. He noted that in many people’s minds, ‘niggers always get shot and sadly too many of belive its something we desrve to have happen to us. In part 2 of our interview we talk about the relatiosnhip between conscious Hip Hop artists and activists and what can be done to tighten our bond. He talks about the types of steps conscious Hip Hop artists need to take to become more appealing. He also addresses the concerns he has with Nas and his new song about ‘Niggers’. Less