“These Bush years need some truth-tellin’. Needs some critiquin’.” — Cornel West. How to Be a Better Playa. An invitation-only “Hip-Hop Summit”, with rappers and record executives counseled by African American elders including Cornel West, Congressional representatives, and Louis Farrakhan, resolved to turn hip-hop’s dominant cultural position into political clout through a hip-hop political action committee, moves to get out the hip-hop vote, the creation of a hip-hop think tank at Columbia University… Nagging doubts about the genre’s capacity to transcend gangstah-ism and misogyny remain. Washington Post [via Robot Wisdom]