Speed up to about five years ago, when there was much ado about nothing over his controversial stances on the black community. The town halls he held in those years afterward didn't necessarily make him very popular anymore among some black folk.

There were those in the community who were incensed at Mr. Cosby's audacious act of placing the predicament of poor black people squarely back on to their shoulders. What about racism? What about educational disparities? What about the disproportionate incarceration of young black men? Some wondered how Mr. Cosby could possibly get the state of our affairs so wrong.

I, for one, wasn't offended by Mr. Cosby's social criticisms at all: Concepts such as personal responsibility and self-determination and self-discipline didn't seem so foreign to me in the canon of the black literary experience. After all, many of our literary giants, from Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X to W.E.B. Dubois, famously wrote about the need for us to personally rectify our wrongs. To me, it just seemed that Mr. Cosby was fed up, fed up with the spiritual, emotional and physical inertia that was robbing us of our greatness.

There will be those who still disagree with Mr. Cosby's viewpoints, but here's something that Mr. Cosby, among many other things, inarguably gets right: "Bill Cosby Presents The Cosnarati, State of Emergency."

Many fall in to the misleading abyss of criticizing the young without providing any concrete action. Mr. Cosby fearlessly sidesteps this quagmire by creating a solution that conveys a deep sense of purpose and passion. How else would he conceive an album that selflessy uses his fame only to act as a vehicle to galvanize intimate conversations with our young people?

Enter Super Nova, Jace the Great and Brother Hahz-three Newark, N.J., rappers who are also committed community activists in their own right. Mr. Cosby executive produced "Emergency" while also creating the story concepts, but it is the rappers who offer their youth, contagious energy and solid lyrics to the world.

If you thought a Cosby hip-hop rendering would be as corny as Cosby's pudding pop commercials, think again. "State of the Emergency" draws on the wisdom of elders and leaps ahead with the vivacity and hunger of all that is young and free and pungent. No major issue is abandoned: from being a single parent to a fatherless child to getting a healthy body and mind, the Cosnarati handle it all, and they look to continue the discussion in listening parties they hold across the country, where attendees use Cosnarati songs as touchstones in discussing issues they may have.

Like the marching band played on their tribute to black women in "Where's the Parade?" here's a celebratory discussion of the achievement of Mr. Cosby and the Cosnarati.


Black Voices: Mr. Cosby what inspired you to make "State of the Emergency"?
Bill Cosby: I was in Detroit. Rachelle Riley is a journalist for the Detroit Free Press, and she had the ability to galvanize thousands of people to come to churches and to the Detroit community college, and this one time, I said, We need something for women to talk about being stuck, not being able to move. See, upper–middle income people, they go to seminars. They pay $54 for the package, and they hear inspirational people tell them information and they take notes. No one ever does that for lower economic people.

So I began to think, What is the best way to do that for lower, economic people? In other words, saying things that will help them see a picture of themselves, so they can say, "You know what, I have to do something. I have got to move, because I am identifying with the person in this [song]."

So I got with these young men [his group of rappers], who I'm telling you, I wish this on anybody with a project, I just wish [that you could ask someone to help you create something and it comes out perfect]: that you could walk up to someone and just say, "Listen, I have," and they say, "Ding," and you say, "Dong," and they say, "Ring, Ring." Of course, "Bong."

And the next thing you know, they send me the CD of the thing called "Running, just running, running on a treadmill going nowhere fast" [the third track on the CD]. It was wonderful. There are lower economic people that just keep asking questions to themselves: "Why? Why's it got to be this way." These guys wrote and performed. They [asked me], "Are you going to rap?" And I said, Why? [Laughter] I'm just the pretty face.


Black Voices: Brother Hahz, how is this hip-hop album different from what is out there?

Brother Hahz: For one, the content of it is totally different from what is going on today and what the youth are used to listening to. That's first and foremost. It's different because it hits a part of the spirit of the person that they're not used to. It digs inside the heart of a person and their personal issues that they are dealing with in their livelihoods and attacks those. And It also speaks for them because they are so bottled up inside with their depression and anger, and we're those voices that come out of the music, to say, We've been through your struggles, we know what you've been going through. I've been listening to the "Dads Behind the Glass" [Track 9]. What's the solution? Here's the solution. You don't have to do it this way. You don't have to go through this type of thing. You are somebody. "But First" [Track 7], you have to listen and dig deep within. So from that standpoint, I think this album is totally different from a lot of things that are going on, because it really deals with the inner spirit of a person.


Black Voices: Spaceman, the album has a very diverse feeling and tone. At times it's jazzy at others it is able to conjure up that hard-core angst and frustration just in the rhythm and layers of sound. Sometimes it conjures up Run DMC's '80s sound, and at times it is even bluesy. How was all of that achieved?

Spaceman: You have a lot of different elements that have happened. Music is a continuum. Everything comes out of something else, and when you're in music, you create an experience being wrapped in a number of different masters and aspects of music. You see, someone learns from someone who passes it to someone and passes it to someone. And all the genres come through different.

You know, jazz, blues and rock and funk and gospel-they all have these similar roots. What happens is, when you are versed with it, say, you are a painter and you have a palette, we just had a big palette, many different colors. And we can create these sound colors, and bringing in Ced-Gee from Ultramagnetic, he's one of the pioneers in hip-hop. He's hitting machines. I'm playing things. Doc [Bill Cosby] comes in; he may play a little percussion, being able to interpret these types of songs and put it in to an instrument and make it happen.

Bill Cosby: But this is a fun art form, because we took thoughts, and these gentleman took verses. There's excitement in this and what people are listening to. The whole idea now is so we can have people at the listening parties and study it, put it on. They can begin to talk about what does this mean to you because this what it meant to me. Wonderful things happen when people take time to talk to each other, because when you do that it's automatically sharing. You can share even if you all argue with each other, but you can start talking about something and then somebody starts crying. In a way, it's almost religious, but not really, because it comes from here [points to the heart].

To hear a woman begin to think about some things she doesn't want anybody to know anything about, because it is so special to her and she's afraid of where it might take her so she's never allowed it to come out. But in the listening party, she may find another woman and connection and word may hit while they are talking and the next thing you know, six, seven, eight more women are talking.

Men, who are being sexually molested, they keep it [way down]. They may find themselves talking with each other. And from so many of these things, we find that people may start to treat themselves better. That's the first person to start with. To raise your own esteem. Rather than being fraudulent and thinking that you're fooling this person and fooling that person, you begin to move and get off that treadmill going no where fast. So I'm very, very thankful for this whole project, along with the book ["Come On, People"]. I just feel like we are right there on it. And I'm not talking to elders or men, I'm talking to the kids that might not see themselves. Who may not see themselves [belonging] but because this music [is something they can identify with], it really gives them a kind of uniform. I laughed when you [Black Voices] said some of it sounded like the '80s, because if that's what it is, then that's what it is.

Spaceman: And that [the '80s] was a real great time in hip-hop: the social messages. The origins of hip-hop always dealt with what was happening, and to be a part of something that's a musical project, it's a joy for any artist to be a part of that.