Meanwhile, who wears a keffiyeh like that? On their head… not tied… just sitting there? Is this guy a nun or a thug?

May’s right – this isn’t original – not innovative – nothing.

Re: Busta’s joint / video to go with it: If you’re gonna take our sh*t you better LEARN about it first you f-k!

Ey Programmer-your an asshole-self absorbed. Who are you to judge, to set the standard, to be the high priest of what is sufficient and whats not-whats art and whats not-what real and whats not-whether your christian or muslum-do as the word says and walk with this man….carry this mans burdons…love your neighbor as yourself….U think the world is fucked up cause of rap music and watered down commercial bullshit? NO! the world is bullshit because of people like you….people who have nothing better to do with their time then to hate on somebody else. How dare you knock Khaled, how dare you knock anyone whose strived for success through the midst of hardship….your too educated for yourself with no f’n common sense. I cant stand people like you, and because of people like you I grow more and more apt to have a discontentment with my people-but no, its not a new ideal that arabs are critical and judgemental of one another real khalil gibran’s my counrty men and he’ll tell you…and you think your breaking the mold…haaa! lol

Noose rocks. From giving love to real Arab female thickness to buying off the black cop and waving him away to his intro as an activist, he’s rocking the identity proudly.

BTW, the end shot where he’s smoking shisha in his apartment shows he’s fantasizing about all that.

Will

I agree with you that not every Arab hip hop artist needs to write politically charged music. I’m not criticizing Noose and Khaled from that perspective. But what I am saying is that their style (especially Noose) is highly derivative of other artists. There’s no originality to it.

With few exceptions, the last 10 years of mainstream hip hop have been plagued with a ton of artists who all look and sound the same. True, you’ve got your Nas, Tupac, Common, Lupe, etc who’ve all got their own style… but the vast maturity of artists have done nothing but milk whatever fad happened to be big at the moment.

And are you serious defending DJ Khaled? He ain’t the “best” at anything. He’s a humiliation to our community. I mean seriously, have you seen any interviews that he’s done lately? He can’t string 3 words together without sounding like an uneducated baboon. It makes me cringe to think kids in our community look up to him as a role model.

And Noose? May is right, this whole video is 100% unadulterated orientalist bullshit.

Just because an Arab-American strikes it big doesn’t mean he/she is automatically deserving of our respect. Let Khaled or Noose do something worth giving props to first…

For now, I’m unimpressed at best.

I thought it was about money… arab money apparently…