Rapper still fired up about defending hip hop.
As previously reported, David Banner attended the recent hip hop hearings hosted by the House Energy and Commerce Committee of the U.S. Congress and read a prepared statement to vigorously defend the genre's use of offensive language and images.
The Mississippi-born and bred rapper continues to speak passionately against hip hop's detractors in a follow-up interview with Billboard.com.
In his prepared statement on Capitol Hill, Banner said, "If you fix our communities, we'll fix our lyrics." Asked how that would affect change, he tells Billboard: "In the Katrina hearing, one congressman asked, 'Haven't we done enough for Katrina?' They live in a world that we don't live in, and it's hard to speak for a majority when you don't live under the same conditions. People don't sing happy songs if they're broke."
"Rap music does for us the same thing gospel did for the slaves," he adds. "We communicate our anger through our music."
Banner has also taken issue with folks who are attempting to remove the words "bitch" and "hoe" from rap lyrics.
"Aren't there bitches out there?," he says. "Don't they exist? Those types of women exist, and if they didn't it'd be different. When someone yells in a room full of women the word 'dyke,' my mother isn't insulted because she isn't one."
"Rap is an art, and I can say whatever the hell I want to," he continues. "I use the words I use because they are graphic and they hurt. It's supposed to get people's attention. Where we come from, we speak that way."
David Banner's complete interview is available at Billboard.com.
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