I was just tooling around the internet for a few minutes, looking for another topic to write about after discovering that my all but posted piece on the Citibank's 38 billion dollar tax credit had come to the wrong conclusion, when I hit one of my daily stops, Jack & Jill Politics.

They had a post titled "Jasiri X & President Obama: 'We’re Not Just Ballers & Rappers'" at the top of their page. I haven't listened to a rap song in some time, even though I grew up on rap music. I mean, grew up on it as in I owned a King Tim the III record back in the seventies.

"Ah to the beat, everybody..."

Anyway, the description of the song by Jill Tubman, the "Jill" of Jack & Jill Politics, was so inviting I clicked on the "PLAY" button on the video at the top of her post. Jasiri X delivered as advertised.

I guess you could consider Jasiri X a political rapper - he has produced several songs in response to politically sensitive events, beginning with the Jena 6.

He won't take the place of Lil' Wayne, whose appeal I can't understand at all, or Young Jeezy, whose song "Wasted" gets my attention as much for the story-telling ability the rap genre used to rely on as it does because of the hilarious and instantly recognizable imagery of the "white boy wasted" theme that permeates lyrics Jeezy matches very well with a simple driving beat.

But Jasiri X does take "responsible rap" to the next level by delivering his lyrics with a sense of energy not normally seen in this arena, and by marrying those lyrics to a rhythm track that doesn't sound like it came from Good Will. And the insert of the Obama sounding voice in the refrain is not just a part of the song - they are an actual quote of a phrase Barack Obama used in one of his speeches before he became president.

The mini-history lesson inside the song combines well-known black history events with obscure or unheralded achievements by modern day African American men, and ends with a few words from the O-Man himself.

Can you imagine this song blasting from car stereos and boom boxes on street corners? Being played over and over on I-Pod's? I've played it three times already myself.

"Ah to the beat, everybody..."

King Tim the III, eat your heart out.