For me, it’s the beginning of a strange day when I find myself drinking my morning coffee, reading the newspaper, and commenting to my wife about how I agree with Al Sharpton.

I’d hope it’s obvious that the coffee and the newspaper aren’t what made the morning seem weird to me.

Sharpton wants the FCC to turn a critical eye to New York radio station Hot 97, the big apple’s epicenter of hip-hop, violence, and garbage radio. And that makes sense to me. Hot 97 should probably be examined closely. This is not only the radio station that broadcast a tasteless parody song mocking tsunami victims (vile, but not a crime), but also one of the stations that airs songs wherein rappers threaten to kill one and other. What makes Hot 97 different from the other stations that air violent rap songs? Well, for one thing, rappers actually try to kill each other in front of Hot 97. A couple of weeks ago, a member of the entourage of a rapper who calls himself “The Game” was shot in front of the station after rapper “50 Cent” said on air that “The Game” was no longer a member of “50 Cent’s” entourage, called the “G-Unit.”

To adults, this kind of thing seems silly. One guy goes on the air and says that you can’t play with his friends anymore? Whatever. To rappers, however, this is a matter of life and death, and worth trading gunfire over.

This isn’t the first shooting outside Hot 97. Rapper “Lil’ Kim” is facing a jail sentence for perjury stemming from her knowledge of and/or involvement in a rap shooting at the station in 2001. That shooting involved rappers who call themselves “Capone” and “Noreaga.”

If you’ll excuse the aside, can somebody explain to me why the hell rap music is so popular? It’s unoriginal, uninspired, boring garbage. With few exceptions (The Beastie Boys and Outkast, actually, are the only exceptions that come to mind), rap music is infantile school-house rhymes, perpetrated by idiots who steal their names from the real-life gangsters they admire (Gotti, Capone, Noreaga, Murder Inc, etc). Besides, their rhymes are usually set to stolen beats from older, better, more original songs. And you can call it sampling all you want… you can protest that it’s an art form unto itself and that a corn-fed southern cracker like me just wouldn’t understand… and I’ll still say it’s garbage. If I play a Perry Como record and, over top of it, record myself yelling that I want to kill my wife, you wouldn’t think I’m a genius. You’d think I was an idiot and a nutcase. Why would I be considered a genius, then, if instead of being a corn-fed southern cracker, I was a ghetto-raised street thug… and instead of a Perry Como record, I used a Parliament/Funkadelic record? It’s nonsense.

Anyway, Hot 97 probably should be investigated. For what it's worth, some among the rap community have expressed concerns about it as well. What’s going on there is probably, to a large extent, illegal.

By the way, newly Christian rocker Brian “Head” Welch thinks 50 Cent is worth saving. (That story, by the way, struck me as a bit odd, too). As for me, all I can say about 50 Cent is that his name is about 51 cents more than I'd give you for one of his CDs. I've heard a couple of his songs, and I can't understand what he's trying to say, or why. I understand that he's angry about something, but I don't know what. Maybe it's his inability to speak clearly. Maybe it's because someone has forced him to put a cock-eyed hat on top of his doo-rag. Maybe it's because he doesn't have a sombrero to put on top of that. Who knows. Who cares?

Go get ‘em, Al.