Hip-Hop artist Lupe Fiasco said that emcess and radio stations must do more to curb violence in urban communities.

Speaking about the death of Derrion Albert during an interview on 107.5 WGCI in Chicago, Fiasco said that some of the lyrics in rap music is influencing youth to do negative things.

From HipHopWired.com

“Hip-Hop has to take some fault for that. Just in the fact that the amount of violence and the amount of negativity that’s in Hip-Hop and the music, it attributes to so much that goes on, negatively, in the hood,” said Fiasco who added that radio stations need to be more selective on what music plays on air.

Lupe added that another overlying issue is the fact that positivity is not endorsed as heavily in outlets such as the radio. Oddly enough, people must not want to be lifted and told that there is a better way.

“It lacks entertainment value. It lacks a certain kind of hype around it. A certain “coolness” about it. So it doesn’t fit on the radio.”

Investigation into Grisly Cemetery Case Continues
The ghoulish discovery that hundreds of bodies at a historic African-American cemetery in Chicago were dumped in a greedy scheme to resell burial plots drew thousands of concerned and irate protestors this weekend. Many of the thousands who turned out at the Burr Oak Cemetery were hoping to find their dearly departed, and Cook County officials even exhumed the body of one grave as part of the investigation involving four former employees accused in case. In addition to getting rid of some bodies, the ex-workers also stacked more than one body in a single grave, authorities say. Cook County Sheriff’s Department officials say they have gotten more than 7,000 requests for information from those whose loved ones are buried in Burr Oaks but that they’ve only processed about 400 so far. The FBI and local officials continue the investigation today at Burr Oak Cemetery, where many iconic African Americans are buried – including Civil Rights-era lynching victim Emmett Till; musicians Willie Dixon, Dinah Washington and Otis Spann; and Negro Leagues Baseball players Jimmie Crutchfield and John Donaldson. Officials said they would try to respond to families in the next week, but Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said the investigation was hampered by a lack of maps for large sections of the cemetery. Many of those his staff had found were hand-drawn and sketchy, he said. “You might as well be talking about hieroglyphics here,” he said. “This is unheard of.”

King Billboard Stirs Controversy
A billboard in Houston identifying Dr. Martin Luther King as a Republican is an outrage and an outright lie, say community activists who want the humongous sign taken down. “The party of Tom Delay, the party of Rush Limbaugh, the party of Sean Hannity, the party of Michael Savage would not be the party of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior!” argues Quanell X, one of those opposing the billboard. But Apostle Claver, founder of the Black conservative group known as the Raging Elephants, says this the sign “is saying conservatives are coming. And we’re going to offer solutions to the problems that this neighborhood has.” Claver notes that the slain civil rights leader’s niece, Alveeta King, has mentioned in her book that MLK was indeed a Republican. However, King’s sons say their father never would have voted Republican.  X says that no one has the right to align the man who lived and died to save all people to a certain Republican or Democratic Party!”

 Five people at Jennifer Hudson’s South-side Chicago alma mater were shot in an apparent drive-by attack as they left a crowded basketball game Friday night.  Authorities said that five males – two in critical condition and three in serious condition – were taken from Paul Laurence Dunbar Vocational Career Academy to the hospital. Read details here.

 Former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris isn’t getting much love from President-elect Barack Obama or members of Congress these days, but scores of African-American clergy are lining up to support the controversial appointment of embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich. On Sunday, about 60 ministers were called together by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), who has been critical of his fellow Democrats in Congress for rejecting Burris. Read the rest and see video here.

A youth health forum on Chicago’s South Side Saturday drew more than 1,000 teenagers who were tested for HIV/AIDS and other diseases, The Chicago Tribune reports. Within 20 minutes, following a simple saliva swab, the youths learned their HIV status before receiving a T-shirt, candy or a pen. Even those who said they were not sexually active took advantage of the free screening, according to the Tribune. “It’s good to get them in the habit, even if they haven’t been sexually active,” said Regina Hampton, a case manager for Circle Family HealthCare Network, which administered the screenings. “You can get it from blood transfusions or a freak accident.” Saturday marked the second annual Teen Test Day, and organizers are saying it was even more successful than last year when the event drew 650 teenagers who were tested for HIV, which infects Black teens more than any other group. Teen Test Day is sponsored by the Metropolitan Area Group for Igniting Civilizations, a Chicago youth group.

Chicago, which produced the nation’s first African-American president, is the most segregated major city in the United States. Blacks comprise more than a third of the Windy City’s 3 million residents, and they are lumped into the South and West sides.  “Whites make up nearly 28 percent, largely located to the north and in slivers of the South Side, while Hispanics, about 30 percent of the population, are scattered to the Northwest and Southwest Sides of the city center,” The Chicago Tribune reports. The patterns of Black-White segregation in Chicago were established in the 19th century. African Americans were forced to live in certain neighborhoods, and those strictures were bound by laws and real estate practices and enforced by often abusive and violent means. When hundreds of thousands of Blacks left the South and pushed into Chicago during the early 20th century, they maintained earlier patterns of migration and continued settling in the South and West sides. When real estate agents steered prospective African-American settlers to “Black” segments of the city, and the city decided to build high-rises for Black public-housing residents, it ensured that Chicago would remain starkly divided along racial lines.

The Chicago factory sit-in ends. The window-manufacturing plant sit-in by laid-off employees ended Wednesday, after a six-day standoff, with an agreement, according to news reports. Bank of America, which had cut off financing for Republic Windows and Doors, said it would lend the company $1.35 million to help pay the employees severance and continue their health care for two months as the workers had been demanding. Also, JPMorgan Chase, which owns 40 percent of the windows company, pledged an additional $400,000. The money will allow the company to pay 60 days of severance to more than 200 laid-off workers, who had been occupying the North Side Chicago  warehouse since the doors of the factory were padlocked before Thanksgiving. The deal also will pay the workers’ vacation time they had accrued but which the company had previously said it would not pay, union officials representing the workers said. The resolution ended six days of negotiations between the bank, company owners and union leaders. The workers voted to end their sit-in on Wednesday evening and emerging from the factory chanting, “Yes we did!”

Rev. Jackson meets Chicago sit-in workers. The Rev. Jesse Jackson is beginning to meet with the hundreds of workers who are staging a sit-in at a Chicago factory that they say gave them no notice or severance before closing, according to The Associated Press. The workers say they won’t leave the Republic Windows and Doors plant until they get some assurance that they’ll receive their severance and vacation pay. Jackson met with the workers Sunday morning, and his Rainbow PUSH Coalition says he’s trying to help get Republic’s creditor, the Bank of America, to reinstate the company’s line of credit so that it can pay the workers and possibly save around 300 jobs. Union organizer Leah Fried says the window manufacturer can’t pay its employees because the Bank of America stopped the money flow. The bank said it isn’t responsible for Republic’s financial obligations to its employees.

A Chicago businesswoman is a new White House aide. President-elect Barack Obama has picked prominent Chicago businesswoman and socialite Desirée Rogers as the next White House social secretary, reports The New York Times. Rogers, 49, told the Times by phone: “One of the things that is particularly important for this administration is that we continue along this vein of making it everyone’s America. We are inviting all of America and all of the world to share in that splendor.” Read the rest here.

As he addressed a crowd of 200,000 in the city that not long ago had elected him as its Senate representative, President-elect Barack Obama said in his acceptance speech, “I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to: It belongs to you.” Sounding conciliatory, humble and yet commanding, Obama acknowledged that there were doubters who wondered whether America was capable of electing a Black man as its leader, but he said his belief in America never wavered. “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible …, tonight is your answer,” he said. But Obama also acknowledged that he faces some difficult challenges – a failing economy, high unemployment, a faltering housing market, spiraling energy costs, two wars and terrorist threats. But, in the face of those threats, Obama still delivered a message of hope, but cautioned against immediate results. “For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime – two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage or pay their doctors’ bills or save enough for their child’s college education. There’s new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair. The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there. …So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other. … And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.” Watch Obama’s speech in its entirety here.