"Cuz both black and white are smokin' crack tonight."Tupac Shakur
VATICAN CITY - This week The Vatican released a playlist on their official MySpace page. You read that right. The Vatican is as hip as Dane Cook, baby. MySpace!
The list of tunes features classical Italian selections, Mozart, Dame Shirley Bassey and ... Tupac Shakur. Tupac's song "Changes" is one of the 12 songs selected. A rap legend and the Papal now have an official connection. It used to take six moves to connect a Death Row rap artist to the Pope. (At some point there had to be a jump from Snoop Dog to Mel Gibson.) Now? One straight line.
At first glance this appears to be an effort from Catholicism to appear less stuffy. An appeal to the youngsters. But is it? There are a lot of question marks here. How did this happen?
Normally we'd need tweedy symbologist Robert Langdon to crack this puzzle. Except he's not real. I had to Google it, but it turns out that Baby Jesus Code book wasn't a true story. So Langdon is no help here. Out of the bullpen, comes your humble correspondent, Johnny Wright.
I hopped a flight to Vatican City to do some sleuthing. That's where I am right now. Through an inside source, I'm sitting inside the walls if the Vatican Archives. For three straight days I have been chasing down leads, researching documents and conducting off-the-record interviews.
You won't believe what I have found.
