If there's one thing The Duke would like to be remembered for, it's that I once said "Give Peace A Chance". I didn't say you had to follow it through, just give it a chance, is all. Maybe half an hour or so on a Monday afternoon. You might be surprised, on account of how peaceful it can get.

Saigon, AKA The Yardfather, is a fella who obviously heard The Duke yacking about these sentiments, since his debut single, The Color Purple, is a slab of hip-hop wonder urging folks to get together, have a hug, maybe say about you like the other one's jacket.

The Color Purple is, The Duke feels compelled to relate, a stunning single, with the ferocity of early Public Enemy, and sounding a bit like something Tupac might have slung alongside the better tracks on 2Pacalypse Now.

It's an attack not just on gang mentality, but how such regrettable antics are in effect an example of contemporary black youth performing to the whims of white corporate interest.

As the aforementioned Tupac Shakur proved, nothing turns a rapper into an industry quicker than a backlog of unreleased half-arsed shit and a couple bullets in the chest.

Saigon has elaborated on his thoughts regarding gangster-chic;

"These rappers are gonna look the same way we looked in 1929 when we see the black 'jiggaboos' tap-dancing for the crackers. They don't see it right now. Just the way (people) in blackface didn't think at the time that they were being clowned. Think about it. There's no right way to do something wrong."

The Color Purple sounds incendiary, alive with frustration and righteous rage. "The real gangs are in the government", he spits.

His forthcoming album, Dear Black America, is currently in production, and The Duke looks forward to it, is the downright truth of the matter. It's easy to forget, in an era of bling-bling pistol-waving machismo that hip-hop was once a genuinely threatening, defiantly progressive force. So much so, in fact, that Jello Biafra once suggested that the only reason Nirvana were marketed to number one was to keep middle-class white kids from discovering gangsta rap.

Comparing, say, Race War by Ice-T, or anything from Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, or even Words Of Wisdom from Tupac's debut, to anything currently blaring from expensive stereos, proves to be a disheartening exercise.

Nowadays, hip-hop celebrities want to be making DVD's about folks having a sex by a swimming pool. Thank God, then, this Saigon fella has the talent, the intelligence, the courage and the wit to actually say something worth saying.

Plus, it's catchy as a motherfucker, is what.

Thanks folks.

The Duke resides at Mondo Irlando

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