Rap Fans Are Harnessing Their Political Power

The Boston Globe reports newspapers are buzzing about recent attempts to harness the potential political power of hip-hop. Bill Clinton chatted up OutKast at a fund-raiser in Washington, D.C. The Rev. Al Sharpton reaching out to Russell Simmons, Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs, and Jay-Z at a club in New York. But some members of the hip-hop crowd refuse to get caught in the Democratic web. “It’s [politicians] getting the vote so that they can put the people that they want in office, so they can get the things that they want to get done,” says Bakari Kitwana, author of last year’s “The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture.” Read more.