NEW YORK (AP) – On Wynton Marsalis’ upcoming CD, he criticizes political leadership in America, cultural corruption, and sex and violence in rap – and that’s just on one song.

“I don’t speak from outside, I’m not finger-pointing,” the 45-year-old jazz great told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

“I’m a part of it, I’m speaking from inside of our culture,” Marsalis said. “We’re not taking a moralistic view. It’s not, “Let me tell y’all how I’m different from you.’ It’s a comment on our way of life and our culture.”

“From the Plantation to the Penitentiary” is due out March 6. Marsalis calls it his most political album in years.

“It’s been in my mind for a while. Every decade I like to do one piece that has that kind of social involvement with American culture,” he said.

But a look at some of the lyrics shows Marsalis is disenchanted with that culture. “The Return of Romance” appears to take rappers to task, accusing them of being modern-day minstrels with “song-less tunes”; “Super Capitalism” chastises those obsessed with materialistic goals; and “Where Y’all At,” among other things, criticizes ’60s radicals and idealists who have lost their revolutionary slant.

“Where Y’all At” is notable because it features Marsalis as the vocalist, delivering a sort of rap chant.

“I always try and do something different. I don’t try to make any of my records the same,” he said. “I’m always singing and chanting all over my house. I grew up doing it in New Orleans, chanting and singing and making up rhymes; long before there was rap music we were doing that. That’s the New Orleans’ way.”

Though the album has its pointed moments, Marsalis isn’t completely pessimistic about American culture. He noted the outpouring of support from citizens nationwide after Hurricane Katrina as an example of what people can do when they are aware of a problem.

“That’s the one thing the Katrina episode taught us about America. Americans can be moved to do things when they have good information, honest information. People are more serious, people do want to participate in things,” he said.

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On the Net:

Wynton Marsalis: http://www.wyntonmarsalis.net/main1.html

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CHICAGO (AP) – Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn says she struggled through decades of abuse and hopes her story will inspire other women.

Burstyn, who has written a memoir, “Lessons in Becoming Myself,” told Oprah Winfrey on Thursday’s show that her mother was violent and her husband stalked her for a decade before his death in the 1970s.

“It’s so humiliating to put all this stuff out there,” the 73-year-old actress said. “Finally, you have to say, “It’s all right. I can be powerful and be a woman and be loved all at once.”‘

Burstyn won an Oscar for 1974’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” She has received Oscar nominations for “Requiem for a Dream,” “Resurrection,” “Same Time, Next Year,” “The Exorcist” and “The Last Picture Show.”

When she was young, Burstyn said, she learned to use her sexuality as a means for survival.

“When I was 18 or 19, I wasn’t earning very much money, so I ate when I had a date,” she said on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” “But that was all the food I got. So I felt the least I could was say “thank you.”‘

It took nearly 25 years of study, therapy and meditation to feel ready for an emotionally healthy relationship, she said.

“This is quite a book,” Winfrey said. “It’s easily one of the most candid and most thought-provoking memoirs.”

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On the Net:

“The Oprah Winfrey Show”: http://www.oprah.com

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The New York Post has excerpted an incendiary, or at least mean-spirited, interview in Elle magazine in which 50 Cent (shot nine times as a street hood, which he was before becoming a gazillion-selling artist) calls Oprah an Oreo, an insult signifying that an African-American is only black for show and really white inside.

The Big O, Fiddy says, “started out with black women’s views but has been catering to middle-aged white American women for so long that she’s become one herself.”

Fiddy says that black women may look up to her because she’s a self-made billionaire, but that O’s message is really aimed at “the demographic of white Americans” with whom she has “the same exact views.”

Oprah, who’s yet to retort, has been criticized in the past by Fiddy, Ice Cube, and other hip-hop artists for not hosting rappers on her show.