Is "The Sopranos" racist? and other things

Anyone see The Sopranos tonight? It featured a rapper and rapper-wannabe complete with "blinged-out" girlfriends and gunshots. One of them paid Tony's brother-in-law $7000 to shoot him in the thigh (although he did it in his butt) to increase his potential record sales and "street cred." Yes there was the requisite black nurse (for balance?) who caused Tony to say that the hospital staff was like "the United Colors of Benneton." The main rapper even referred to his boy as "nigga." Was that just a legit way to call someone a nigga on the show? I don't know...the whole rapper-thing kind of rubbed me wrong. Comments?

Got an interesting blog comment from "Eternal Blackness" who was responding to my last post about the stripper raped at Duke. EB said black rappers don't care about their women so why should anyone else. A bit disturbing I thought since I believe we should ALL care about one another and that it's not okay to rape anyone anytime.

On a lighter note -- Kimora and Russell are apparently splitsville. (Yes if you didn't know already I am an admitted fashion-culture-junkie.) This marital demise is kind of surprising to me even though when I think about it I never perceived any true intimacy or chemistry between them as I have with folks like Jada and Will and Denzel and Pauletta, etc.