Obama: It takes "A Milli" to hold us back

"It might feel good
It might sound a lil somethin
But the fuck the game if it ain’t saying nothin' "
Public Enemy, "He Got Game" (VIDEO: YOUTUBE; LYRICS: craveonline.com)

"Is it just me, or does it seem like every hip-hop awards show staged in Atlanta winds up in some insane drama that effectively "brings down" the whole race? *
The "race" in question, it goes without saying, is the black one. The same one that's waiting so breathlessly to get on the guest list for President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration.
(I pity the fools who live anywhere near D.C. and answer the phone when virtual strangers call between now and Jan. 20...)
The same one that tracks "The Real Housewives of the ATL" more intently than the cabinet appointments now that Obama's been elected.
Back to the point: the rap genre has much potential to undermine the Obama Presidency as any scheme devised by Rove and his cohorts in the foreseeable future.


(VIDEO: YOUTUBE *WARNING-EXPLICIT IMAGES AND LYRICS*)

They'll try to trip him up so that it's a one-term administration. His public perception, unfortunately, could be tied to the pop-culture icons whose words and deeds rub off on us all.
In this house, rap's a guilty pleasure. On the way to pre-K the other day, the II and I exchanged a gleeful glance as we soaked in Outkast's "So Fresh, So Clean" on the Steve Harvey Show without Mommy there to rinse our minds out with Borax.
Beyond that, though, hip-hop and too much of what it alludes to isn't fit to young ears. And the genre clouds what the mainstream thinks of Obama's most fervent constituents.
I can imagine camping out on a lawn somewhere near one of the Jumbotrons that will broadcast Obama's inaugural speech live to the masses on January 20th, and conceive of how bouncing around to someone's beatbox serenade might help keep me warm that night. But other voters for change might easily find those intonations appalling. Shouldn't we?
A valued viewer of the askyourdaddy blog asked whether Seal's version of "A Change Is Gonna Come" resonated with me. Certainly it did. But not as much as the Sam Cooke version, obviously.
The question, music lovers, is: Will it?
*(Kudos to Sandra Rose for intrepidly following the ongoing downfall.)