East Bay rapper says Bush using war on terror to silence dissent

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Cover is meant to provoke
East Bay rapper says Bush using war on terror to silence dissent

Neva Chonin, Chronicle Pop Music Critic Friday, February 28, 2003
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When East Bay rapper Paris' new album is released in April, it's bound to create some noise.

The cover of "Sonic Jihad" depicts a commercial jetliner headed for the White House, evoking the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Paris, whose 1990 hit album and single, "The Devil Made Me Do It," helped bring the Bay Area hip-hop scene to national prominence, admits the cover image is incendiary. He means it to be. The point, he says, is to provoke debate over the Bush administration's actions before and after the events of Sept. 11. "Upset by the cover?" he asks on his Web site. "You should be, but for the right reasons."

"This image is not intended to inflict further pain on the victims of those tragedies," says the 35-year-old rapper, born Oscar Jackson Jr. "It's intended to raise questions: What would you do if suddenly you discovered that the brutality that's implied in that image is not even on the same register as the real-life viciousness that the U.S. government inflicts on people in the name of democracy and freedom? What's more vicious, bombing people around the world or this album cover?"