Today is the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans, one of the worst natural (and political) disasters ever to hit this country. A year later, one third of the city's schools, hospitals and libraries remain closed, and there are sections of the city that have yet to see any significant reconstruction efforts. There are a ton of other blogs discussing the overall impact of Katrina, though, so I'll leave that up to them. I'm more interested in the response by the hip hop community to the disaster.
I know a lot of people felt that Juvenile's Get Ya Hustle On video was a significant contribution to the discussion on Katrina, but I never really bought into it. Juvenile took a song about selling drugs, which happened to have a one line reference to FEMA, and made a video with some kids wearing masks of Dick Cheney, George Bush and Ray Nagin. The video itself did a good job of showing the damage in New Orleans, but I had a hard time taking the political commentary from Juvenile seriously in a song where he is talking about selling cocaine, presumably dealing it to the same people who just had their homes destroyed.
Perhaps the most famous response to Katrina was voiced by Kanye West. During a televised fundraiser, Kanye called out George Bush for not caring about black people. I personally think the lack of response from the government was due more to incompetence than any racial prejudices, but I can't deny that Kanye truly believed what he said, and I do respect him for that. That video is probably the only time you'll ever see Kanye visibly nervous in front of a camera.
In the aftermath of Kanye's fundraiser outburst, 50 Cent criticized him for it, saying that, "people responded to it the best way they can." At the time, it seemed more like an attempt to grab headlines (50 had a movie coming out soon after) than a genuine reaction to the situation. Ultimately, it added very little to the overall discussion.
I thought the best response to Katrina was from The Legendary K.O., who rapped over Kanye's Golddigger beat:
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