Some people have said The Gantt Report is to editorial writing what N.W.A was to hip-hop music. If you know what N.W.A. stands for, you know the group members had a little gangster in them.
Well, gangsters are in the “hood,” and The Gantt Report does write about activities in black communities. Perhaps The Gantt Report is “gangster” compared to the milk-sugar, watered down, boot-licking, hat-in-hand columns penned by many other black opinion writers.
And don’t forget, both N.W.A. and The Gantt Report have made comments about pimps and whores! We did, however, mention those persons in a different context and for different reasons.
One obvious difference between us is that at least two of the gangster rappers are rich and very famous. The Gantt Report is merely infamous, but widely read, anyway.
Dr. Dre and Ice Cube are two former N.W.A members who are now multi-millionaires. Dre was named “Best Hip Hop Producer of All Time” recently and Cube has many successful movies and his own TV show on a big cable network.
Dre and Cube deal with millionaires every day, but The Gantt Report deals with billionaires. I don’t have a million or a billion, but I do have a brain, and I know that being on the right scene can sometimes result in something special. One percent of a billion dollars can have you set for life.
Even a wretch like me can be a big dog one day. Biblically speaking, sometimes the dogs eat what the master eats.
In Mark, seventh chapter, the Bible says a Greek woman comes up to Jesus and asks him to get the devil out of her daughter.
Jesus, a Jew, was meeting with Jews, and didn’t want to deal with the non-Jewish woman. Jesus told the woman:
“Let the children first be filled for it is not right to take the children’s bread, and cast it unto the dogs.”
The woman replied:
“Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.”
If you sit at the economic dinner table every day with billionaires, one day a crumb from the table will fall your way!
You can be a “dog,” a gangster, you can be jobless, you can be homeless, you can be disabled or anything else, and still be able to survive and progress if you do things right and treat people right.
Millionaires and billionaires don’t care what kind of raps you rap or what kind of black newspaper columns you write; millionaires and billionaires want to know if you can make them more millions and billions!
That is the reason why talents like Dr. Dre and Ice Cube can be “gangsters” and still be recognized and successful in the business world.
You can’t be scared and get rich! If you’re scared of money, stay away from people who make a lot of it! The Gantt Report “ain’t never scared”!
If you want to be a gangster, be a gangster for the people. Love God, love your neighbors, and love yourself!
Lucius Gantt is a political consultant based in Tallahassee. He is also the founder of All World Consultants and author of the book, Beast Too: Dead Man Writing. Contact him at www.allworldconsultants.net or call 850-222-3475. You can also find him on Facebook.
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