Nas remembers VTech by shouting at Billo

The decision to invite Nas to perform at last night's Virginia Tech showbiz memorial wasn't a universally popular one, what with Nas's track record for making gratuitiously violent songs. However, the adoption of the 'ban Nas' campaign by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly handed Nas an easy way out. Instead of defending his music, he was able to get on the safer ground of attacking O'Reilly instead:

"He's a racist," Nas said. "Everybody has a marketing plan; his marketing plan is racism.

"He doesn't understand the younger generation. He deals with the past," Nas continued. "The people he represents are Republican, older, a generation that has nothing to do with the reality of what's happening now with my generation. ... He's not really on my radar. People like him are supposed to be taught and people like me are supposed to let niggas like him know. I don't take him serious. His shit is all about getting ratings or whatever. I wouldn't honor anything Bill O'Reilly has to say. It just shows you what bloodsuckers do: They abuse something like the Virginia Tech [tragedy] for show ratings. You can't talk to a person like that."

Now, you'll not find anyone keener than us to point out the shortcomings of Billo, but this is somewhat simplistic - after all, while Fox News' interest in Virgina Tech might be a ratings boost, isn't Nas' appearance at the Dave Matthews organised event also about commerce? And is turning the event into a platform to cry "racism" at Fox really any less of an abuse of the memories of those who died?

Nas did eventually try to explain why a man who makes money selling violent records was present at a memorial service for those who were killed. Tried being the operative word. His reasoning? Erm, life's hard:

Here's somebody that speaks about America in his music, and the community that I come from has the same kind of violence as Virginia Tech," the legendary rapper said about himself. "It's unnecessary, stupid violence. Hip-hop is a part of the generation of [Virginia Tech] as well as alternative and pop and rock. Hip-hop is a part of that. That's why I'm [performing at the concert]. With Bill O'Reilly, it doesn't raise an eyebrow to me because it's garbage, its bullshit. He has nothing to do with the real people who go to school or the parents who had to endure that tragedy."

Hmm. Is Nas really comparing the tiresome internal gang-on-gang shooty-shooty-look-at-my-gun violence which has blighted hip-hop is comparable with being shot in a random mass-killing? He does seem to.

Nas then suggests that it's not odd that he would be there, because not all his songs are violent and, um, he doesn't sing about Russians:

"Let him ask why I made the songs I made," Nas said. "It didn't come from nowhere. It came from this country. I'm not talking about Russia in my music. I've never been to Russia. I'm not talking about Africa, Switzerland, China. I'm talking about me being American and growing up in a crazy world and helping to reflect all different sides of life. I got songs also about totally different things — 'Black Girl Lost,' you feel what I'm saying?"

Some of these points may or may not be fair - the more coherent of them, anyway - and there is room, certainly, for a debate about how far artists are making violent works because they're influenced by surroundings, and how far violent art makes all our public spaces less safe. And Bill O'Reilly's one-manned version of less-informed Daily Mail, with piles, is fair for a take-down.

Indeed, so wrong-headed is Bill's worldview, his suggestion that something must be banned is usually enough to get us out running up a petition to have the State supply whatever it is on the general rates.

But this does miss the point somewhat. The best Nas has done is suggest why Bill O'reilly might not be the best person to frame the question, but he still hasn't managed to answer it: when families and survivors of the Virginia Tech killings had asked you, because of your violent work, to not come to an event being held in their name, why did you still go?

Murder victims families object to Murder singer

We're not entirely sure that having a gig at Virgina Tech is a robust idea in the first place - is the idea that, somehow, forty minutes of Dave Matthews is going to heal the pain? Or is it merely a slightly grisly way of bumping up John Mayer's sales?

What's made it worse, though, is that the organisers - who are, funnily enough, the Dave Matthews Band - has invited Nas to be on the bill.

Yes, Nas. Because how better to remember the brutal murders by a gunman than listening to the bloke who did the "shoot 'em up, just shoot 'em up, what?/ Kill, kill, kill, murder, murder, murder" song.

Some of the families, represented by Vincent J. Bove, aren't happy:

The lyrics "are indicative of the moral decay in our society that contributes to acts of violence," said Bove, a New Jersey security expert who has volunteered to speak for the families. "For a university official to condone it or to be clueless of what this person's track record is, it's unconscionable beyond belief."

University officials, however, said they have received an overwhelmingly positive response since they announced the concert Wednesday and have no plans to revise the lineup.

Because, of course, the Virgina Tech officials are pretty good at not taking responsibility.

Too soon, George

He really has done it. What last month was a slightly tasteless joke, watching the coverage of the Virginia Tech murders and thinking "wonder if George Michael will take the Lennon piano of peace there, then?" has now become reality. A community struggling to cope with still-raw grief and loss is having to make room for the insulting piano photo-op.

He hasn't actually started forcing the bereaved to gather round the piano to sing Imagine, but it's probably only a matter of time.

Haven't they suffered enough?

We know that R Kelly almost certainly has his heart in the right place writing, recording and releasing a song inspired by the Virginia Tech murders, but even with all the money going to the victims, you might wonder if he might have been more empathic if he'd kept a dignified silence?

The lyrics?

"Rise up, when you feel you can't go on/
rise up, and all of your hope is gone/
rise up, when you're weak and you can't be strong"

Yes. Silence might have been better than this, which sounds more like an advert for a fortified breakfast cereal.

Cowell screws up his face; screws up

If there's one hard and fast rule of mainstream TV popularity in the US, it's that you don't intrude on that nation's moments of grief. So it'll be interesting to see if Simon Cowell can extricate himself from the mess he's gotten into after he was caught apparently rolling his eyes while an American Idol contestant made a speech about his friends at Virginia Tech.

Cowell's explanation? He wasn't rolling his eyes at that at all:

"You get this crazy story that appears that I rolled my eyes disrespectfully at Chris because he made the comment... The truth was I had switched off at that point and I was talking to Paula.

I did wanna clear this one up because this is a very sensitive subject. The irony was is that we did want to set the right tone on the show."

So, rather than showing disrespect by making a face, you simply weren't listening at all? That'll play well, Simon. Especially if you're suggesting you set up the memorial speech in the first place and then had a little chinwag with Paula over the top of it.

Really, this would be a storm in an espresso cup were it not for the red raw scar of this week's shootings; it suggests why a light entertainment man like Cowell should steer clear of trying to engage with the real world altogether. It also shows that his connection with what the mainstream, Fox-watching segment of the American public are thinking is nowhere near as closely attuned as he likes to claim.