Tucsonan uses hip-hop to shout out on issues
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009Citizen Staff Writer
Music
BRIAN MORI
bmori@tucsoncitizen.com
Nearly everyone at some point is compelled to speak out on an issue. For instance, most Americans have something to say about the cause of or maybe even how to fix the economy.
But with so many of us losing jobs, homes, faith in government and loved ones to war, it’s hard to know what to say, much less how to be heard.
So when Mike Adams, the 39-year-old founder and chief exective of Wyoming-based Ariel Software, decided he wanted to shout out what he felt, he figured hip-hop would grab people’s attention.
“I really came to appreciate the medium of rap as an expression of free speech. . . . I decided to embrace the power,” he says during a phone interview last month.
He spent a year studying LL Cool J, Eminem, AKON and, particularly, Kanye West – “a master of delivery,” Adams says.
In late 2008, Adams wrote and recorded his first of two songs, “SSRIs – S.S.R. Lies” and “Where’s My Bailout Money?”
The latter is a semi-satirical call both to government and American society to be accountable for the current state of the economy.
“I don’t agree with fictitious money and inflating the supply. If you’re going to do it, you should give (the money) straight to the people,” says the novice rapper, who’s lived in Tucson for six years.
Adams says his lyrics encompass two voices beyond his own: that of greedy wall street bankers and bewildered Americans.
As the banker, he raps, “I’m a new kind of thug with a Washington buzz, ’cause dealing debt pays better then dealing drugs.”
Asserting his own viewpoint, he continues, “The politicians are useless, don’t you know that they used us? And the bankers refused us, while the media schooled us.”
Adams explains, “The media taught the people to accept this. USA TODAY and The New York Times bought into the fearmongering of the Bush administration.”
In his second song, “SSRIs – S.S.R. Lies,” Adams draws a connection between violence in schools and the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors to treat attention deficit disorder in children.
Adams claims that most kids who have committed mass school shooting tragedies have taken SSRIs.
“It’s just about public service,” he says of his music.
He’s packaged both songs under the title “Beyond all Reason,” which you can hear on www.naturalnews.com, a health-related site he edits.
Both “Bailout” and “SSRIs” can be found on YouTube as well.
Adams is now working on another song, this one about the health care industry. Along the lines of “S.S.R. Lies,” Adams’ next rap will question the ethics of major health care companies, specifically those producing cancer treatment technology.
He says the amount of money that the “cancer industry” makes distracts it from an obligation to educate the public about natural ways of preventing the disease.
Adams, a self-proclaimed “health ranger,” has devoted his life “to educate people . . . to achieve and maintain peak human health.”
He says people aren’t skeptical enough of the information provided to them.
“I don’t demand that people agree with me. The real problem is that people don’t ask, they just agree” with the status quo.
His music and lyrics are targeted to pop fans in their mid-20s, those he says would be most interested in discussing the economy and other pressing social issues. Adams says he’ll continue to use rap as a means to speak on issues.
