The Gantt Report-Weeks have past since shock jock Don Imus used the term “ho” on his canceled radio program. However the haters of rap music continue to blame rappers for the use of colorful adjectives.

Russell Simmons, a Hip Hop pioneer, says he thinks three words, “nigger, bitch and ho”, should be barred from radio airwaves.

“Rappers can rap whatever words they want to,” Simmons explained, “but those three words should not be aired on public airwaves.”

I don’t have a problem with Simmons’ solution because the recordings that I like most are never played on the radio anyway.

My concern is discrimination!

I watched an Academy Awards Show and didn’t hear any complaints about Three Six Mafia winning an Oscar for a song (Its Hard Out Here For A Pimp) about “hos”. I also saw the film “The Departed” and less than three minutes into the movie, actor Jack Nicholson was talking about “niggers”. No one chastised Jack about his use of words.

Fine artists like Picasso routinely painted pictures of scandalous women but no one seeks to criticize the world’s great painters.

To me, rap music, and other forms of music, parallel society. When societal conditions deteriorate, the language and words used in music get bad also.

Ever since slavery days, our people have been told what to say and when we can say it.

Today, it is not the slave master or the overseer telling us what is the proper way to describe our existence, it is the modern day media puppets.

If you evaluate what Oprah Winfrey’s recent show topics and Leonard Pitt’s editorial columns, for instance, have discussed about the lyrics of rap music, I think you will get a feeling of how the thoughts and feelings of Black media professionals can be controlled by white pay checks.

You tell me, how can you say rap music has bad lyrics if you don’t listen to rap music? The only classical music that I listened to recently was with Louis Farrakhan playing the violin. So, I don't complain about story lines in classical music that I don't listen to. Also, tell me why are so many rap artists millionaires if no one is buying their recordings with so-called disgusting words?

Truth is, everyone knows rap music is art and entertainment. If you censor rap music what will be censored next? I know! The next thing to be controlled and censored will be whatever Black people make money off of.

The women on the Rutgers basketball team are not “hos”. It is clear that the members of that team are very talented, beautiful and educated women.

But there are plenty of scandalous females too.

My friend Edrea Davis, author of the novel “Snitchcraft” and a coordinator of the dogonvillage.com web site had an interesting comment about the use of words to describe sexual activity.

Paraphrasing Edrea, she said, if a duck looks like a promiscuous duck, quacks like a promiscuous duck and waddles around the duck pond seeking to have sex with a variety of other ducks, it would be safe to call that duck a “duck ho”!

The word whore, or its derivatives, has been around since Biblical days. To stop using the word will not stop men and women from sleeping around. To use the word "ho" in connection with the Rutgers team was wrong. The word is not bad by itself but was used by Imus in a terribly racist and uncalled for context.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, rap musicians often accurately rap about things that happen in their communities. I don’t like what happens in some Black neighborhoods and I don’t always like how those events are described in songs, paintings, poems, pictures or novels.

But I won’t judge you for your choice of words. If I don’t want to hear what you say, or rap, I stay away from you and don’t buy your music. We all should do likewise. (Gantt’s new book “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” is coming soon. Contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants.net)