By: Davey D (taken from his blog here)

I have a question for the masses. Don Imus and his supporters have been running around saying they learned about the phrase 'Nappy Headed Hoes' from rappers. They said it's because of Hip Hop that they felt it was ok to joke around in the way that they did. Now I'll be the first to confess I'm not up on everything. So I gotta ask folks; What rapper referred to sistas as "Nappy Headed Hoes"? I recall the group Nappy Roots? I heard Ludacris say he has hoes in different area codes, but what song or group was Don Imus listening to that he got inspired? What song was this and when was it played on the radio?..

To be honest he was more likely to pick that up from a comedian like Chris Rock or Eddie Griffin if anything not Jay-Z, Ludacris, Diddy or anyone else. But I'm not excusing rappers for their foul language or disrespect, but I do think we should put things in historical perspective.

When I was growing up I heard comedians like Richard Pryor. I have all my mother's old albums. I saw and heard him call women 'bitches' even after he came back from Africa and stop using the word 'Nigger' I heard comedians like Redd Foxx, dis women. I heard Blowfly a grown man who was doing super duper dirty x-rated raps back in the mid 70s and he had no connection to Hip Hop as it was emerging in the Bronx.

Back in those days I heard the raunchy songs of Millie Jackson "25 years" before Lil Kim showed up. And long before Too Short or Snoop started pimping or moving keys, I had Superfly and The Mack lacing me up about those insidious trades. Heck, lets go even further back and bring up the fact that as a kid I used to go to school out in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx and would be called 'Nigger Charlie' in the second and third grade by white kids who saw the posters on the subways we used to ride for the movies Nigger Charlie and the Return of Nigger Charlie. Some of y'all reading this are old enough to know what I'm talking about. These were actual ads in the form of posters on the subway stations throughout New York.

What's interesting while our parents and other elders were listening to albums by Pryor and Foxx which had the word 'Nigger' in the title or reading books by activist Dick Gregory called 'Nigger', a young Afrika Bambaataa was running around the Bronx bestowing titles like 'King' and 'Queen' on cats as a way to make them feel good. Like Bam used to say; 'if I start calling brothers and sisters King and Queen perhaps they'll behave like Kings and Queens'. This my friends was going on in the mid 70s. Continued on page 2 »