Renée Graham writes about why rappers have stayed quiet on the Tookie Williams exceution.

[M]ainstream hip-hop -- and the billion-dollar corporations behind it -- has spent far too much time, effort, and money marketing inner-city misery to champion someone who has renounced gang violence. Williams's early life of crime is practically a template for gangsta rap. And that hugely popular hip-hop style is more likely to embrace the scary image of the young Williams, with his huge Afro, menacing glare, and muscle-thick prison-yard physique, than the middle-age, gray-haired author of children's books.

On the money.