Pro-Life Rapping?

New York Times
June 26, 2005

An Unborn Fetus With a Message for Mom
By KELEFA SANNEH

Nick Cannon

On a new single, this fresh-faced rapper and actor rushes in where Hallmark fears to tread. Maybe you can't buy a greeting card to thank your mother for not aborting you, but now there's a hip-hop track expressing that very sentiment. Visit www.nickcannonmusic.com to hear "Can I Live," which has a chorus by the winsome soul singer Anthony Hamilton, and to watch the video. (Beginning with protesters outside an abortion clinic, it stars Tatyana Ali as the pregnant protagonist.) "I know the situation is personal," Mr. Cannon declares at the beginning, perhaps understating the case. He is no one's idea of a brilliant rhyme-spitter, but sometimes content trumps form, as when he rewinds to his very early years - as a fetus - to declare, "Mommy, I don't like this clinic/Hopefully you'll make the right decision/And don't go through with the knife decision." There should be a special Grammy reserved for the first politician (on either side of the aisle) who finds a way to appropriate this strange but not unmoving song. And Mr. Cannon deserves recognition, too, for finding a truly startling way to express a rather simple thought: he's happy to be alive.
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