The urban music community responds to Katrina and the aftermath -miaminewtimes.com | Music | Rise Up | 2005-09-29

miaminewtimes.com | Music | Rise Up | 2005-09-29: "'[Katrina] is one of those pivot points that come along all so rarely,' Chang says. 'Every time there's a gap between reality and perception, hip-hop is likely to jump into the breach. I wasn't surprised that [Kanye] said what he did in that kind of form -- to break from formality and be like, öLook, this is the reality of the situation.' That's what hip-hop did back in '92 [during the L.A. riots]. But the difference is now we're a lot more organized.'

The organization to which Chang refers stems from celebrity-driven initiatives, such as David Banner's Heal the Hood Foundation, as well as community outreach programs, such as New Orleans Network and Common Ground, that are remobilizing to provide relief to Katrina victims and ensuring they are not shut out of the rebuilding process.

'What I'm seeing are people trying to reactivate these networks that were put in place during last year's election,' Chang says. 'People say that P. Diddy and Russell Simmons didn't do shit [with Vote or Die], but they did. The celebrity efforts were crucial. You had a surge of youth voters last year. There were four million new voters last year between the ages of 18 and 29, and about 50 percent of those were urban, black, or Latin youth. That was an unprecedented surge. And I can tell you that folks weren't going there because of Kerry. It was because of hip-hop.'

Activists within the hip-hop community may be mobilizing and organizing, but a pervading sense of chaos and unfocused anger remains. This mixture of outrage, tension, and absurdity was on full display Monday, September 19, at the Sunoco gas station on SW 27th Avenue and Coral Way as Puerto Rican hip-hop/reggaeton artist Bimbo attempted to give free gas to a few motorists to protest the Western world's perilous and seemingly insatiable hunger for oil."