Money, Power and Respect

Thats a true quote right there

The money will get you alot of thing you though you would never have in your life, it can make the whole world turn around

Now the power, its just something that came make alot of things happen with the snap of a finger

Now the respect, that’s just something to let you know that your weren’t sh**t to begin with

I dont know you dudes so you gotta pay your dues in order for you to get through

but notice most thugs out there, they got the whole game twisted

M.O.B or M.O.E is what you see tatted right across they stomach and one stands for Money Over Bit**es  and the other stands for Money Over Everything

But I want to talk about the money or everything

I mean your money is over everything which means your money is over God?

Alright so I walk into the club and the DJ’s saying “If you got stacks in your pocket put your hands up” and everybody has there hands raised

Theres 45 thugs in the club then why is only 2 that is actually throwing money why they still have chickenheads fighting over money like porchmonkeys, everybody’s hungry, everybody wants money

But your money is over everything which means your money comes first and all the other bullish**t comes later

So you recruited that little 17 year old boy that can’t get a job at McDonald’s cause his momma working two jobs with 5 kids and she can’t keep the lights on for sh**t

So you gave him a couple of dime bags just to start him off with

The next day the little boy goes to school, he made his first sale

He sold one dime bag to the little white boy that said things aren’t going so well but hours later after the bell the police confiscated all the drugs and took the little boy to jail

But one week later the little boy is free but let’s not forget your quote is M.O.E, money over everything

So Uh, where’s the rest of the money I gave you? Where’s the rest of the work?

Oh uh.. the police took it

Okay, you free to go

But you don’t want to kill him you want to kill the one he loves the most

Click..Clack..POW

Kill the mother of the 5 kids because its M.O.E, I don’t give a damn about you or your family, ya’ll are nothing to me and I’m gonna let these people know that my money is more vauluable to me and with me having money no one can mess with me

But because I do have money the H.O.E.S want to mess with me but I wont mess with them because only one that earns it and its my M.O.E.

But there’s one that can mess with you and that the police

So go ahead and buy all the guns and other things that you need because they have canines and SWAT teams plus your money that is outnumbered by the government cheese

So get on your knees and put your hands up, before we pop a hundered C’s in your chest and color the grass red from what you bled before the grass was green

Now one year later, your serving a life sentence and you were found gulity of the plea and now your one less male taken from out of the streets all because you call yourself mister M.O. E

Mister Money Over Everything

But your family, preacher, friends and teachers they call you Joe want to know why ? Because while you were in jail your scratched off M.O.E and put J.O.E

Because you chose Jail Over Everything

Every time I hop on the stage I carry the church song it may be the last time in my heart

Because its true, it may be the last time you ever hear these words come from out my mouth

So I chose to go out with a bang and play the game like its the last shot in getting this superbowl ring so I’m going to address some things

There are times that I am not in the mood to step behind a mic some nights but I chose to spit anyway

Simply because I refuse to turn over 25 bodies in a venue of untouched souls, so its my job as  a poet to put Jesus Christ as a top prioirity

So I can spit this poems in the name of Jesus to be your lifeguard

But some of these poets they can’t be your lifeguard their better off being mailman

Mailing you pointless over exaggerations of poem its anthrax, they aint saving souls they more like satan inside of a young angry black male holding an AK47

they taking souls

And since their some people out here who came to pick up alittle bit of savor from these poems then theres one thing you need to know

poets are quarterbacks and you are the reciever

if you happen to pick up a poem that made you think twice at the end of the night

then when you get home you should think things through with you and practice how to overcome your obstacles so you could be an achiever

This right here is Spoken Word

My tall glass of water, I went 18 years without until I finally became dehydrated

And it left me with the option to ethier drink or it or die

so I drank, drank because water does the body good and it keeps me going

going so hard like Dj Kahled and Kanye, I walk around with their mentality

because people told me coming up that I wasn’t gonna be sh**t with my life and they said I need to upgrade like Beyonce

Because I walked around with the same pair of clothes and shoes for three years straight, don’t hate I’m just thankful that God gave me these shoes in the first place

I don’t have to walk to rocky roads of life some unfortunate people have to walk everyday so look down on me if you want to, Im gonna get mine what about you ?

Oh I already forgot you get everything handed to you, cause I’m a hustler I’ll  rather work hard to get what I want so in the end it will feel rewarding

So what you know about a hustle, what you know about getting up for one job 3am to 7am and the second job 9am to 5pm and night classes 6pm to 10pm and then quit school to make ends meet and try and fit this spoken word in between and still come home at the end of the night eating off some rice and beans

What you know, what you know about being inside a side a car with toothpaste in left hand, tooth brush in your right hand and still manage to bring home both hands and still thank God for the roof over your head

What you know, what you know about getting boo’ed off the stage doing something that you love because people just to damn ignorant to shutup and hear it

This right here is my kitchen

I’m cooking bacon, scramble eggs, grits and catfish to feed to the hungry and giving the haters and the phonies the left overs like that bag of mut in my backyard

But eventually I’ll put on my lifeguard jacket just to save you

Save you like U.S troops that still saving lives and rebuilding the city

And there be times where you wonder why I’m still helping the people who have mess me over because if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be a poet

If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have a story to tell

So I reach way down like Jesus gonna save that lost soul from drowning and in the end I tell him to have mercy on you

I put my emotions into this spoken word because he’s my husband, he’s my everything

He’ll sit there and listen because 90% of all people, 90% of all people, 90% of all people don’t give a damn about your problem and glad you got them

So while I’m out here spitting this poem I’m hoping that the 10% is out here the place that people came to hear what’s on your mind

And if you aint in the 10% then I really want to you what you hear for

you must be here to kill me while I’m on this stage like a man fully equipped in audience not concerned with what Malclom X had to say, they took his life but his legency is still breathing

So if you take me it will be okay with scarifies already knowing the consequences of when I hop on this stage

I already told you it might just be my last time so I chose to spend my little time as a poet to share my pain of thoughts with you

So, I presented my TED talk today and boy does it feel good to have got it done and over with, it’s like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I was so nervous yesterday night when I was practicing, hoping and praying that everything would go smoothly, and I must say it did (well for the most part). But everyone who I did watch present did an amazing job overall, from the animations to the topic of choice even to the gestures, I must say our class has some very creative well spoken individuals. However, I did notice that the way I organized and delivered my material of my TED talk was different then many of fellow classmates. I had used three original techniques to illustrate my point in an effective “sticky” way in order to make my TED a success.

First, I fully embraced the idea that a TED talk is about delivering an message in a way to change peoples lives. Instead of using a thousand and one statistics and quotes to get my point across I just spoke to my audience personally and gave them Sarah.

Second, I used relatable topics and examples to capture thier attention as well as pointing out indivduals within the audience and using them within some examples to really stress the idea of beauty coming in different forms physically and mentally.

Lastly, I used the power of the smile to my advantage. I was comfortable speaking in front of the groups waiting to present and by being comfortable and smiling it lighten the tone of my presentation

Overall, I think I did a great job (:

Since I have decided to change the topic of my paper to focus on the issue of colorism within the African American community my TED talk is going to frame a similar route. But just talking about colorism isn’t very relatable to a diverse audience, so as of now, my TED talk is going to be about the ideology of beauty. Is there a global definition of what beauty is?  What does it mean to be attractive? or in other terms, what does it mean to be unattractive?

Often times, because I am not fully African American and I’m in fact Guyanese ( South American country of Guyana) and Bajan ( Caribbean island of Barbados) most blacks do not see me as black. Many times I am presented with statements like, “ you have have such pretty hair, your going to have such pretty babies.” Hearing statements as such made me question, how physical features have become the main focus in our world, as well as the thought if everyone was “attractive”.

My Outline for my TED Talk:

• Start with a story using various forms of imagery expressing my idea
• Express what my personal story allowed me to realize
• Use examples if magazines images, product purchases,statistics on gym members to stress the ideology of beauty
• Explain what beauty means to me- with story
• Incorporate rhetorical questions to enable thinking

by the end of my presentation my goal is for the audience to have a different mindset and outlook on beauty.

Subliminal messages are embedded in advertisement all around us, it may take a few more rewinds,a couple of stops and pauses and some retakes to catch, but trust me there in there. Growing up especially as a 90’s baby, we have had some of the best television shows and cartoons , but let us not forget, movies. When you think way back to those early childhood days, what cartoon movies come to mind? Disney ones I would hope, movies like : Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and so on .

Now over the years, it has been discovered that Disney slipped in odd subliminal messages into their cartoons. Most of these messages are of erotic nature or pure surprises, and in the newer version they have been removed (supposedly). So let’s take a look:

1. Notre Dame- watch clip from 2:45

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEOFQAJAcss&feature=player_embedded

 During the song “ Out There” that Quasimodo sings in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, as we pan over a view of Paris from the bell tower, character from past Disney movies are seen in the background. If you watch carefully, Belle ( Beauty & the Beast ) is seen strolling along in a blue dress reading. For the more harp eyed viewers, Pumbaa from the Lion King is seen being carried by two men and the Magic Carpet from Aladdin is being shaken out by a street merchant.

 2. Little Mermaid

A phallic object is draw into the castle of the Little Mermaid.

 3. Lion King 

There has been a long debate over the dust cloud in The Lion King. In the scene before Simba means Rafiki he lays down on the edge of the cliff and a dust cloud rises up and for a split second ,spells S-E-X.

 4. Aladdin-Listen carefully 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4piZV5wPrw&feature=player_embedded

In the scene where Aladdin is on Jasmines balcony in which the hero is trying to brush off the growling tiger Raja, he can apparently be heard whispering “ Good teenagers take off your clothes”.

 5. Aladdin 

And a silly one, where Aladdin’s skin color magically changes at the end of the movie.

As a child you would not recognize many of those subs, if you are to consider them as such. Many are still up for debate and in my opinion, you can make any message appear as a sub if your mind wants it too. It’s up to you to decide.

“The rhetoric of self-presentation speaks louder about us, in many cases, than our voices ever can. What we wear and how we wear it is associated with certain assumptions. First impressions are made before we even open our mouths.” How true is that statement, rhetoric is expressed in so many hidden ways throughout or society. On a fashion level, you can self-express yourself without saying anything at all .

Outfits can play on peoples emotions without even realizing it. For example, what feeling/thoughts come to mind when you see an outfit such as:

You might think a person is well-off,feeling under going amazement and  respect for being able to make enough money to afford a designer suit.

What happens if someone wore something like this ?

you might feel a sense of appreciation toward their creativity to be able to confidently wear an outfit as such and be able to pull it off.

With someone wearing something like this on the other hand you might feel sorrow or sympathy towards the individual.

The style of dress that we use speaks volumes about who we are, ether by choice or circumstantial . We can breed confidence with the clothes that we wear and the familiarity and comfort of how we wear it. All of this can be used as a rhetorical strategy to convey our personal values and beliefs to others without the necessity of vocalizing it (or as a way to reinforce what we do vocalize).

What does your personal style say about you?

Often times the word “rhetoric” is said with a negative connotation, therefore receiving a bad rap “ as a form of oratory manipulation”. I view rhetoric as a  productive way of getting ones point across, it is the key to communication.

Think about how much meaning is behind the everyday commands we say to one another. For example, we want something done from another person, what do you do ?

You word your command in such a way that it appeals to the individual in order to fulfill your need. “ Please go get my book, my feet hurt “- whether realized or not your appealing to ones pathos, through the usage of the sympathy card. There is rhetoric all around us especially here at Penn. Such as the big blue  “respect responsibility poster” that is hanging up in nearly every resident hall. It asks a ton of rhetorical questions, “ How do you show respect for the individuals in your community?”..” How do you influence your peers to live in a respectful community?”.. “How will you be responsible for your academic and social success?” Each one of these questions appeal to ones logos to get up, get out and make a positive difference within yourself ; it lets you know your bigger than just yourself you effect your community. Pssst! those are logos.

Rhetoric is all around us,  hidden in the strangest places but yet effects each one of us. It brings us together and gives each of us a voice.  So for this week I dear each and every one of you to pay attention to how we communicate amongst ourselves, you’ll be surprise at the power of words.