Sunday, August 10, 2008

Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes

Is there an attack? Maybe one on our possitive Black role models? I think it might be so. Just one day after Chicago's own Bernie Mac passes away, so does singer/song-writer Isaac Hayes. It might not seem like much, just a commedian, just a dude who wrote some songs. But that was one less drug dealer, one less thief, one more notch on the belts of African-Americans, and one more dream for our youth. I don't really understand. I'm not saying that I wish death on anyone, but why is it that the 50 cent's of the world always seem to survive... they always seem to get away clean. I know that it's all written, that Bernie and Isaac had their name in the book way before I understood the entity that is God. I also understand that they died of natural causes, they weren't doing what they shouldn't have been doing. No affairs, no car crash, just working out, or trying to get better. These things I know. What I don't know is what we are going to do when I'm upset about these things, and my younger sister isn't. She doesn't know music past Miley Sirus, and Alicia Keys. She doesn't understand what it means to win a Grammy and an Oscar for music that you did not sample but actually composed; and, although she's seen the Bernie Mac show, and heard of The Original Kings of Comedy, she doesn't know what it meant to Black chicago for Bernie to get a HBO comedy special, or to be on one of the first seasons of Def Comedy Jam. To me it ment a lot. And I want to thank Isaac and Bernie for their contributions. For those who didn't appreciate you before you died, and for those who appreciate you even more now, I want to say thank you. Rest In Peace.