What MLK Doesn't Mean To Me
Happy Martin Luther King Day, everybody, and cheese it with the tired character assassinations against this great American. Unfortunately, my own appreciation of King was, I think, permanently destroyed about ten years ago, through no fault of either MLK or me. At the time, I used to help a friend who ran a recording studio in the Big Apple—my way of keeping up with the "new sounds" coming off "the street." Although the clientele consisted mostly of warmed-over gangsta types, you'd still get the occasional KRS-One-And-A-Half coming in to recite Pride/History sagas. During one of these latter sessions, I had the honor of hearing the worst lyric in the history of recorded sound:
Martin Luther, he was the King.
Preached about peace
Until a racist shot him down.
These lines have been lodged in my head ever since, and no MLK Day can arrive without my imagining the Reverend in an Imperial Margarine crown, preaching about peace until a racist shoots him down. (On the plus side, this passage did convince me once and for all of James Earl Ray's guilt.)
Sadly, I've forgotten the name of the act, so I wouldn't know how to track down their recordings, if there are any out there. But a lyric that retarded deserves to live on forever.
