Alex Constantine - July 13, 2010
by Danielle Canada | HipHopWired | June 18, 2010
A controversial book is continuing to making headlines fort its message, one that claims that the FBI used one of the most notorious Hip-Hop labels in history as a means of suppression for Black activism.
Titled The FBI War On Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders: U.S. Intelligence's Murderous Targeting of Tupac, MLK, Malcolm, Panthers, Hendrix, Marley, Rappers & Linked Ethnic Leftists, the book was originally published in 2008 but is being highlighted again along with its accompanying DVD.
According to Author John Potash, Death Row Records was a sham—a front company that was filled with police officers working to stifle the creative genius Tupac Shakur from distributing his message of activism.
He tells the Baltimore City Paper,
“I believe that Death Row Records, which included dozens and dozens of police officers at all levels, according to a high-level police officer that investigated them, was a front company and was trying to continue penal coercion and mess up [Tupac Shakur's] head. Death Row, of course, published the most negative songs he ever produced."
Potash, a Columbia University grad and former addictions counselor, admits that he doesn't have a real background in Hip-Hop but was compelled to spend ten years researching the death of Tupac after seeing a coincidence in the infamous Quad Recording Studios shooting and a time when Pac was previously arrested.
The link made him think that the rap legend was being targeted, much like his parents who were well known Black Panthers.
He tells the Baltimore City Paper,
“I knew some rap--like Public Enemy But I didn't really know Tupac Shakur at that time … one of the many strange twists in the case, the officer who raced to the scene after Shakur's friends called 911 was the same officer who arrested him a year ago…..So I called [Shakur's] New York trial lawyer and said, 'Do you think they're targeting him in the same way they targeted his activist parents? So that's how I got into it all."
He also tells the Batlitmore City Paper that U.S. Intelligence is known for controlling people through their thinking which posed a problem for Tupac who directly threatened their suppression tactic.
"What I think it was was that he had become the most influential black man in the black community in the country. CIA and U.S. intelligence, what they have to do is win the hearts and minds of the people. They don't want to control us by force, they want us to control ourselves by having us believe in a certain way--that we don't need national health care, for example. And here, Tupac was threatening to win over the hearts and minds of people, he was able to counter so much of the propaganda in the black community."
The DVD was screened Wednesday at Baltimore's Cyclops Books And Music and the book is available on Amazon.com
John Potash
http://hiphopwired.com/2010/06/18/book-claims-fbi-used-death-row-to-stop-black-activism/