'Akeelah and the Bee' star to be "pimped" out

Keke Palmer, who is now 14 year old, played Akeelah, in the movie Akeelah and the Bee with Laurence Fishburn. She is a real talent that has been attempting to put out a R&B album. One problem: record companies have determined that the music she needs to produce is "urban" which in corporate-ize means raunchy.

From Davey D's Hip Hop Blog by Bruce Banter
of Playahata.com:
"Atlantic Records Tries to Turn 14yr Actress Into Lil Kim" —

She and her mother Sharon have a huge problem with the upcoming record deal they signed with Atlantic Records in March of 2006. The problem is that the record label wants to market the 14 year old as a sexpot but she does not want that image.

... Keke admits "From the very beginning Atlantic's A&R representative tried to get me to record inappropriate music, and my parents and I resisted."

... Paul Porter of www.Industryears.com says "Keke Palmer is the poster child for what's wrong with the music industry. Imagine being 12 year's old and Atlantic Records trying to mold Keke in the mold of Lil Kim or Foxy Brown."

What has happened to R&B is the height of what's wrong with the music business: there is more business than music. The images that are being pumped out depict the worst parts of American culture. One could say that this is non-culture, a made up way of life concocted in the boardrooms of white men with adolescent minds. The negative images of black people in media are not produced by black people. So it is mostly a waste of time to ask the black artists to stop producing these negative images since we can see the strong arm tactics of the large corporations use to make these artists produce them.

The old adage that "it is in the hands of the consumer" and "if we don't buy the bad stuff, they won't make the bad stuff" is beginning to seem doubtful. Large corporations don't seem to care what Americans really think. Their ambition is to make Americans think what they want us to think. Corporations will shove down our throats their vision of the world until we see the way they want us to see it.

I suppose the solution is to continue to use the Internet for purchasing our music. Listen to independent radio stations where individual DJs actually have control over what gets played and cut the large corporations out.

Check out Keke's music for youself at www.kekepalmer.com. It's kids stuff. It's not supposed to be deep, just fun. My God, man, she's just 14 years old!