David Banner releases new CD; speaks candidly about MLK
David Banner represents everything I love - and loathe - about mainstream hip-hop. You can read this week's CL cover story, "Power Moves: David Banner walks tightrope between politics and profit", on the rapper who released his fifth solo album, The Greatest Story Ever Told, today.
There isn't another southern rapper on commercial radio who infuses so much passion and socio-political angst into his music. Yet, he's also quick to indulge in (and excuse) rap's obsession with misogyny and crass commercialism.
In an interview with him last week, I asked Banner if he ever feels torn in too many different directions by making music that covers everything from explicit sex talk to sociocultural concerns? His provocative response summed up his penchant for keeping it extra real:
"I think life is a contradiction. How much Hennessy and weed do we smell Sunday morning from people coming from the club the night before? People are walking contradictions and they point so many fingers, and we don't look at ourselves. I'm just the most honest motherfucker....
"We're all like that. And we need to tell our kids that Martin Luther King was a womanizer. Martin Luther King liked getting pussy. I don't know why everybody just wants to make him so perfect? That's what makes black folks not want to be like Martin Luther King, because they think he's too perfect.... Naw, tell 'em that man had a weakness for women.