Umar Johnson and a skullcap with a ball on the topYoutube screenshot

It was a Hotep hoedown, or a Hotep smackdown—straight WWE-style—when Dr. Umar Johnson, aka the Prince of Pan-Africanism, waded deep in the petty waters and posted a full 45-minute video rant against former conscious comrade General Seti.


Who knows how it all started? And truthfully, who cares, because Hotep logic and philosophy live outside the realm of the natural. It’s like black fantasy Disney on dope.

It looks like it all began when Seti questioned Johnson’s Hotep credentials. It’s expletive-laced because, well, hip-hop.

Johnson took this as a no-no, noting that he is the “Christopher Wallace of this shitt!” and posted the following (please watch it as long as you can, because I promise you, it’s genius). He also proceeded to try to out-cuss Seti because, well, Hotep:

But here is what is funny about this: everything!

For all their pseudo-intellectual talk about how the black man is god and the black woman is queen, two grown-ass black men are engaged in a full-on expletive-laced video attack on each other. I don’t know anything more anti-progressive than this, but it happened, and the “Prince of Pan-Africanism” was wearing a Philadelphia Flyers skullcap with a ball on top, because nothing says “Take me seriously” like a skullcap with a ball on top.


Johnson claimed that Seti is a grown man who lives in his mother’s house. He also called him a “dirty nigga” and a “little nigga” and noted that Seti wasn’t tall enough to box with the god, adding, “I’m 6-feet-3.” And because Seti is light-skinned, Johnson made it a point to exclaim that when he looks in the mirror he sees a black man, but when Seti looks in the mirror he sees a “cracker!”

Although Seti’s initial attack—which was filmed on a couch (no word on whether said couch was in his mother’s house)—seemed to be rooted in work Johnson has done for the community, his attacks weren’t as personal. Seti could have noted that Johnson rose to fame only after an appearance on the popular New York morning radio show The Breakfast Club, in which he questioned special education in the public school system and noted that he was on his way to building a school for black boys until a conscious stripper destroyed his empire.

I’m not making this up.

Side note: Is Hotep beef veggie patties? Is it soy beef?

Anyway, Johnson challenged Seti to a lecture-based showdown Friday in Seti’s hometown of Detroit, in which both men would have to answer three questions:




What have you done for your people? What is the platform and ideology of your so-called movement? What is your solution to the problems affecting us as African people?

Johnson also noted that after the lecture, they could go out back and fight, should Seti still need to get something off his chest.


No word on whether Seti has accepted. Check back, because this story will definitely be updated.

Stephen A. Crockett Jr. is a senior editor at The Root. Follow him on Twitter.