Guest Blogger: Twista: Takin' Away Happy Meals

What up Ballerstatus?

Some of you may know already that I was supposed to be performin' at a free concert that McDonald's was having in Chicago on August 7th. After some people called McDonald's and said my lyrics were inappropriate, I was taken off the show and had my lyrics called "inappropriate" and "raunchy" by McDonald's who first told me they loved my music.

This shit is really getting' crazy now with people blamin' hip-hop for every little thing that happens. Ever since Don Imus, people have just been lookin' for a scapegoat to blame everything on and hip-hop has become the scapegoat. It seems like people will take anything now and just say it's hip-hop's fault, even if it has nothing to do with hip-hop, which just doesn't make any sense, does it?

There's a Reverend out here in Chicago named Michael Pfleger who has definitely taken advantage of this entire situation with blamin' hip-hop and has decided to take it upon himself to not only attack hip-hop as a whole, but me individually as well. Pfleger started off with puttin' up some billboards around Chicago, callin' music by artists like me, 50 Cent, Nelly, Ludacris, and a few others trash. Honestly I'll tell you what's trash and it's the fact that this man will raise money just to put up these billboards attackin' rappers instead of puttin' that money back into his church or into the community. How can you sit there and complain about problems in the community and then go and raise all this money for billboards instead of using it to help actually solve those problems?

The thing that really gets me though is why any man who has a problem with another man won't just pick up the phone and call him and try to talk about it. I figured that a Reverend would at least think about reachin' out to someone and talking to them about a problem before going out of his way to raise money and use it to criticize the person. Reverends are supposed to set an example for the community and by not even trying to reach out to me Pfleger didn't really do a good job of trying to set an example on how to deal with problems.

But I guess it all comes down to the fact that Pfleger isn't really tryin' to do something for the community with all this, but himself. Pfleger is usin' my name to help build his own name. By attackin' me and my music, Pfleger is usin' my brand to get himself on the radio, on TV, and in the newspapers, which is really crazy. With all the noise Pfleger was creatin', Bill O'Reilly from Fox News decided to call into McDonald's and complain about my lyrics and my being the headliner of their Chicago show.

Now we're here to today with no more Twista on the McDonald's show and a lot of angry people because they were lookin' to see me perform at a show that has been usin' my name to promote itself for weeks. How you gonna push a show using Twista's name and then just turn around and decide you don't want to have him perform no more? I feel that my name and brand were used in the wrong way just to promote this show now.

Bill O'Reilly had Pfleger on his show this week and the two were talkin' about the whole situation and O'Reilly sat there and kept callin' my music "vile" and "raunchy," but if you listen to a lot of the things he says on his show, they seem to be vile. In fact O'Reilly is known to be one of the most biased reporters on TV, but at least Pfleger got a chance to be on TV.

If you watch this clip from the show, you'll see that O'Reilly starts off the show by playing snippets of "Kill 'Em All" to try to prove that my lyrics are inappropriate. Why didn't he play "Hope" or "Sunshine?" I want to leave y'all with an example of some of the bogus statements O'Reilly has made on other episodes of his show: "It is true that if you are poor, and can't afford a good lawyer, your odds of going to prison skyrocket. But you know what? Tough. Don't do the crime! Poverty is a terrible thing. But millions fight their way out of it, legally! If you are a poor criminal, you know what awaits you. So too bad. Society does not have a responsibility to provide top notch legal representation at taxpayer expense."

If that statement is not goin' against people in places like the inner city than I don't know who that applies to. If Pfleger is so dead set on helpin' the inner city why would he go on a show like that, which clearly doesn't care about the people livin' there? It's because Pfleger ain't tryin' to help the community right now.

I was gonna use the McDonald's show to get kids from the Chicago Choir Academy involved. I've performed "Hope" with kids from the Chicago Choir Academy whenever I possibly can and I was about to bring them out for this show and now these kids won't be able to perform. It's like O'Reilly and Ronald McDonald stealing Happy Meals from these kids. I've supported these kids whenever possible and have even helped the Chicago Choir Academy. I was also gonna be givin' the money from this show to two local charities, so maybe O'Reilly should think about that and take care of that because he's so concerned with helpin' the community anyways.

What we rap about in our music is only what we've experienced and that's what everyone's gotta remember. We ain't promotin' that people do certain things, we just tellin' people what we've experienced. That's why this whole thing about lyrics is bogus. We ain't promotin' anything we're just tellin' stories of the things we've seen. Pfleger said that he lives on the south side and hasn't seen some of these things, but maybe that's because he didn't grow up in the same culture we did. Instead of attacking the lyrics, which are our stories, why don't we all work together to make sure that kids don't live through these things so that they don't have to tell the same stories.

For all of you who support hip-hop, let these people know how you feel about hip-hop and that it's the parents' job to be parents. You can email Pfleger at pastorpfleger@ameritech.net and you can get at O'Reilly at oreilly@foxnews.com.

As for the video, we had to make a few edits to it, so it's coming out later this week and as soon as I can I'ma put it up here for y'all.

Todd wanted to know why "Whip Game Proper" wasn't a single and it was our street single, but there was some things on the business end that kept us from puttin' out a video and all for it.

Freaky Dime, thanks for the props, video will definitely be hot and I think everyone's gonna feel it when they see it. For Nutthouse and all of y'all that are wantin' another Tech N9ne and Twista track, I just wanna say we had recorded something together, but I don't think he used it on the album.

Geisha, you know I stay tryin' new things and with this album I'm bringin' that street sound, but I'm putting' different twists on it, so it should be hot. The video is definitely something different and I think y'all will appreciate it because we came from a different angle with this one completely.

Keep sendin' me your questions and comments y'all, my bad I couldn't get to all of 'em this week, but I just had a lot of other shit I wanted to say.

Keep doin' your thing y'all.

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