Y-Love, the hip hop activist, is on his way to Louisiana right now and wanted to update you on what’s going on down there:
“The BP oil spill is potentially the biggest ecological disaster we or our descendents will see this century. Hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf before BP even took accountability, and now that Obama has said that BP will pay for all of their wrongdoing, we may see millions more gallons killing wildlife and economies before the oil is actually cleaned up. This is bigger than “junk shots” or “top kills” — BP must be held accountable for the havoc they have wreaked on the environments and economies of the Gulf Region. This is bigger than blogs, this is bigger than Facebook. To this end, I had to at least go down to Louisiana myself to see what was happening and to do my part to mobilize and inform people so that they can do their parts as well. Protests against BP are happening nationwide. This is mine. If you haven’t joined the activist movement yet, I can’t imagine a better time to start.”
Shemspeed is an independent recording label and promotional agency highlighting cross-over music artists with positive and unifying messages. Founded by Erez Safar, an American-Israeli DJ/Producer, Shemspeed promotes over 15 dynamic artists representing a wide range of genres including hip-hop, reggae, and rock. These artists include Y-Love (revolutionary Jewish hip-hop), Diwon (Yemenite / Sephardic hip-hop, Israeli music and more), DeScribe (soul-awakening dancehall, hip-hop, & soul), and Electro Morocco (Israeli rock, dance music.) Shemspeed artists, collectively showcasing the diversity in world Jewish music, have performed with musicians as varied as Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, Idan Raichel and Eminem; they’ve been profiled in Rolling Stone, SPIN, The New York Times and XXL; and they’ve been seen and heard around the world on various TV appearances (Conan O’Brien, CBS and BBC World) and global radio. Shemspeed’s mission is unifying people through culture and education, celebrating diversity and common ground. By way of this work, we add a public Jewish voice to multi-cultural, inter-faith, creative and collaborative bridge-building.