Love Supreme: A Universe Made In Heaven on Earth, manifested by Mindbender Futurama

2008-11-06T08:16:00.000-08:00

MINDBENDER SUPREME SAYS 'FUCK AMERICA'S IGNORANT LISTENERS', AND IT'S DEDICATED TO SARAH PALIN, LOL!

GOD BLESS BARACK OBAMA FOR MANIFESTING THE DESTINY OF THIS NEW DAY IN WORLD HISTORY!

P.S.

I have moved on.

I should have told you, so I didn't break anyone's heart...

This blog's life continues here:

http://mindbenderfuturama.wordpress.com

Barack Obama, the President-elect of the United States of America

Barack Obama's victory was inevitable
By Anne Applebaum

The maps on the television screens started turning blue as soon as the polls had closed on the East Coast; by midnight, John McCain had conceded the presidency to Barack Obama. But I had known the election result many hours before. I didn't have special access to internal campaign data, or an early glimpse of the exit polls. I simply had one conversation, and one email exchange, which together told me everything I needed to know.

The conversation was with my sister, who lives in Florida, a bitterly contested battleground state. Florida was split down the middle in 2000, went for George W. Bush in 2004, and was considered a possible McCain state this year too. But as election day dawned, my sister told me that even though a huge percentage of Floridians had already taken advantage of early voting, there were still queues - everywhere - and many of the people standing in them were black. Clearly, those patiently waiting, sometimes for hours, were not waiting to vote for McCain. Those holding up signs saying "Make History: Vote!" weren't intending to make history by voting for McCain either.

The subsequent email exchange was with an old friend, a staunch Republican who is married to an even stauncher Republican - a rather famous one too. Despite this family circumstance she had, she confessed, just voted for Obama. Though she'd had her doubts, she suddenly found, on election day, that the decision was easy. More than easy: uplifting. When she emerged from the polling booth, she had a spring in her step, because she had just voted for the first black president. "And that's no small thing, " she wrote: "Maybe even worth some higher taxes."

And that was how, by about 10am, East Coast time, before the polls had opened in much of the country, I knew two extremely important pieces of information.

Number one: Black Americans were, for the first time in recent history, already voting in high numbers. Really, really high numbers. If the indelible image of the 2000 election was that of lawyers flocking to Florida to dispute the result, 2008 will be remembered for the photographs of those first-time voters, patiently waiting their turn to mark a ballot or pull a lever. The Obama campaign had identified and steadily lobbied some 600,000 Florida blacks who had registered to vote but didn't show up in the past. Their efforts paid off, in Florida and everywhere else.

Number two: Not just Democrats, not just independents, not just "swing voters" but actual, hard-core Republicans were so moved by the prospect of a black president - and so disgusted by the Bush administration - that they had decided to switch sides and vote for Obama. This happened despite the accusations that flew around towards the end of the campaign - that Obama was a socialist, a Marxist, a secret Muslim, a radical. None of those epithets really stuck, or at least not everywhere. In the end his inclusive, centrist, bipartisan rhetoric proved more powerful than even the hard evidence of his solid, left-liberal voting record. He repeated some of it again in his acceptance speech, after quoting Abraham Lincoln, who was a Republican: "I may not have won your vote tonight," he told McCain's electorate, "but I hear your voices, I want your help and I will be your president too."

As a rule, I dislike the word "historic" when used to describe elections: all elections are "historic", after all, and I seem to remember that the election of 2004 was meant to have been extraordinarily significant, deeply meaningful, and a thundering denunciation of Bush/Cheney/Iraq etc. It wasn't.

Despite the rhetoric on both sides, this election isn't "historic" either, in the sense that it presented the American people with some kind of monumental choice between presidents who would have had vastly different policies, and would have made vastly different decisions. Let's be clear here: whoever walks into the White House on inauguration day has limited choices, narrow possibilities, and almost no room for manoeuvre. There is no budget surplus to play with, no "peace dividend" to be had from cutting military spending. The economic and financial conundrums facing the next administration are so complex as to defy simple ideology. It doesn't matter whether the next president is Left or Right, Democratic or Republican: he still has to make sure that banks continue to lend money, the housing market continues to function, Afghanistan and Iraq do not deteriorate into chaos. I have absolutely no doubt that President McCain would have made many of the same decisions about many of these issues as will President Obama.

Nevertheless, this was a completely different election from any in recent years, as both the turnout and the cross-party voting reveal - and it has produced a kind of euphoria that I've never seen in American politics before. "Change" didn't seem like much of a slogan, when Obama supporters held it up on signs during rallies. "Yes, We Can" didn't seem like much of a clarion call, when repeated over and over again.

But when the first black president-elect took the podium, with the new black First Lady beside him, it was impossible not to feel that something profound really had just changed, and that all kinds of other things really are now possible. If nothing else, the worst chapter of the American story - a chapter which began more than three centuries ago, when the first slave ships docked in Britain's North American colonies - had just come to an end. Early yesterday morning, black Americans were sending a short text message to one another: "Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Barack could run. Barack is running so our children can fly." Rosa was Rosa Parks, who refused to take a back seat on an Alabama bus. Martin was Martin Luther King, who marched on Washington and quoted the Declaration of Independence back at Americans: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

Obama is their inheritor - and Obama knew it: "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible," he told a cheering, weeping crowd in Chicago; and if anyone "still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time… tonight is your answer."
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McCain knew it too. In a gracious and memorable concession speech, he praised Obama for "inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president." A century ago, he reminded his sombre audience, a previous American president, Theodore Roosevelt, was widely condemned for inviting the black scientist Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House: "America today is a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States."

In fact - improbable though it may sound - I am now completely convinced that it was not, in the end, a disadvantage for Obama to be black. On the contrary - as I predicted would be the case in January of last year - his race proved enormously advantageous, one of the keys to his victory. Obviously, it helped bring out that enormous black vote, which proved so crucial in states such as Florida. It may also have helped convince Hispanics, many of whom have voted Republican in the past, to switch to the Democrats too.

More importantly, though, his race was an enormous attraction for many white Americans too, even - or perhaps especially - some white Republicans. Here is something that may be hard for foreigners to understand: Americans desperately want to believe that their country stands for fairness, for equality, for democracy. They especially want to believe this at times like the present, when there is a good deal of evidence to the contrary. After the disasters and embarrassments of the past few years - the mistakes made in Iraq and Guantánamo, the terrible financial crisis, the embarrassment of Hurricane Katrina - a vote for Obama allowed Americans to believe, once again, that the United States is still a virtuous nation. It's not just about being liked abroad, though being liked is nice: it's about being certain that we still are, as we have often told ourselves, an example to other nations, a "city on a hill".

Americans stood in line for that certainty, they crossed party lines to vote for it, they donated record amounts of money to the Obama campaign in search of it. In, the end, it comes down to this: all Americans are told, as children, that "anyone can grow up to be president of the United States." And now, once again, we know that it's true.

~
STAR WARS MEETS CNN: A FIRST TIME IN WORLD HISTORY MOMENT, ONCE AGAIN...

~

FITTING:

BY JAY-Z, A BARACK OBAMA SUPPORTER LIKE NO OTHER.

Many Hip Hop artists have been voicing their opinions on the election and the fact that Barack Obama has been voted the next president of the United States of America. Throughout the election, Hip Hop artists have been vocal about their cries for change. Now, with the election over, many are speaking on how they feel about the new president.

"It's just incredible to know that Barack Obama is our president," Usher told MTV. "Can I say this? The coolest shit ever!"

He wasn't the only one.

"The vision of the hip-hop generation and its young people is in full and glorious effect tonight," Russell Simmons said. "While many older Americans, who marched and struggled so hard so Senator Obama could run for president of the United States, never dared to believe in his candidacy's real potential, young people, particularly the Hip Hop community, had faith, and their imagination became our reality.

"Obama's election as president is a beautiful testament to the American collective consciousness that is flowering. This more loving consciousness will be necessary to protect us from some of our hurtful human choices and tendencies. We will need it to create balance with the constantly emerging advances in technology so, going forward, we can use these advances in a positive way to lift up Mother Earth and all her inhabitants."

Nick Cannon even added his two cents, saying, "This is my proudest day as an American. We have elected a leader that represents change and unity. Barack Obama has carved his place in history as a true beacon of hope!"

Rick Ross noted that this brings hope to his trying times, as he mourns the loss of a friend who recently passed.

"I'm just ... to be honest, I'm speechless. I think we all should be. It's time for action. I'm one of the people that really think life can be a mind game at times. To see this obstacle that us, as men of color, have overcome. ... There are a lot of mind games that people played on us, or we used as an excuse for not being successful. I think the picture that Barack will paint for black males will be phenomenal. [The world] is finnin' to see us as being compassionate, as far as being leaders, as far as having the potential to be great as president.

"He showed his level of class. He commended John McCain. He thanked his team, his political adviser for putting together maybe the best campaign in the history of the presidential race. I would say he has the support of the people. One of the lines that touched me the most was when he said it doesn't make sense for Wall Street to be on top and Main Street suffering more than ever. That's the nerve of the problem in the United States for the past few years."

~

TIME TO HUSTLE LIKE RUSSELL, AND RUN THE BLOCK LIKE BARACK.

~

MAYBE BET CAN STEP THEIR SHIT UP INFINITELY NOW THAT AMERICA HAS A BLACK PRESIDENT!

~

THIS ONE IS A NECESSARY REFLECTION.

THE NEW NEW WORLD ORDER:

By Odeisel

And so we have the change that we fought so hard for; a gigantic monumental step towards the next phase of American evolution. The election of Barack Obama is more than a victory for black people or for any racial subset. More than anything else it was a triumph for the power of youth; for the voice of the generation that has yet to make its mark on the face of America outside of pop culture manifestation.

You can segment them with Generation X’s and Y's and Next's but this generation (or group of them) has been defined by its underachievement and apathy for anything non-immediate. Today was the day that Generation Now got off its collective ass and voted against the mortgaging of their future to preserve a present that has little regard for their destiny.

Congratulations. Welcome to the first day of the New World Order. Not the Illuminati world order but the real one. The one where you get out of the baby seat and take the wheel of the street car named desire. The one where you vote; where you voice. The one where you buy the politicians. The one where you lobby. The one where you become aware of the way the world works.

If nothing else, Barack Obama has shown you that there is strength in numbers. That three million people with 100 dollars is even stronger than 10 people with 30 million. That a bundle of that many branches are unbreakable. Not by slander, not by hate, and not by negativity. The lesson you should take from this historic event is the power of organization and the true force of mobilization.

The lesson you should take is that if youth culture marshals their forces and puts the resources behind them, there is no power on earth that can withstand it.

These opportunities don't come once in a lifetime. They don't come once every four years. They come daily. They come when corporations think that old white men in an office can determine what is cool for you to consume. They come when your favorite artist goes double wood while some cat who can't spell is selling hundreds of thousands of records.

You have been informed. You have been shown the power of your collective voice on a macro level. Do not lose sight of how to apply that on a micro level in your own lives. Your families, your crew, your blocks are all there. Be a bundle not a branch.

Don't surrender your power to apathy and laziness. Long Live Barack Obama. Longer live the spirit of youth. You can do even more than this. Change is like marriage. It's not a destination it's a journey. President elect Obama's... (wow) ascent is not the end but the beginning. The beginning of the New World Order. Will you be the driving force, or will you continue the mistakes of the previous world? This time you have a choice.

~

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMMM...

Jay-Z and Diddy may just have to watch history from a distance. According to Chicago Sun-Times columnist Bill Zwecker, Hov, Puff and Mary J. Blige have been strongly advised to miss Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama’s rally in Chicago’s Grant Park tonight (11/04). Word is the aforementioned celebs had been trying to get their hands on VIP invites to attend the event. Instead, the stars were told to think about attending a possible Obama inauguration in January.

”There really only needs to be one star in Grant Park, and that’s Barack,” an Obama insider told Zwecker.”There will be plenty of time for a new President Obama to be surrounded by famous fans, all hopeful about a new administration.”

Actors Tim Robbins, Susan Surandon and Ben Affleck were also among the celebrities advised to keep a distance. Longtime Obama supporter Oprah Winfrey is the only celebrity expected to make an appearance at the rally tonight.

Diddy and Hov have been quite vocal in their support of Obama through the Illinois Senator’s campaign. Jigga recently held a rally alongside Cleveland Cavalier Lebron James and joined Diddy and others in Florida rallies just two days ago.

WWW.XXLMAG.COM

~

PEACE TO LUDA. AT LEAST HE TRIED. FAILED, BUT HE TRIED.

With President-elect Barack Obama’s historic election run now complete, Atlanta rap star Ludacris is finally breaking his silence on Obama’s marked criticism of his July dedication song.

On the track entitled "Politics As Usual" taken from DJ Drama’s Gangsta Grillz: The Preview, Ludacris professed his full support for Obama.

That support was overshadowed by controversial lyrics that labeled President Obama’s former Democrat rival Hillary Clinton as a "b**ch," and alluded to Republican John McCain as being close to disability.

Ludacris also took aim at George W. Bush, calling the 43rd President of the United States "mentally handicapped."

“The song was my artistic expression and was meant to get people who weren’t involved in the political process involved,” Ludacris reasoned to AllHipHop.com. “Being as though it was the first mixtape to reach the United States government was a bit overwhelming.”

Obama, who in 2006 first met with Ludacris privately to discuss community activism and Hip-Hop’s role in it, was not understanding of Luda’s vitriolic words and publicly condemned the track.

“Rap lyrics today too often perpetuate misogyny, materialism, and degrading images that he (Obama) doesn’t want his daughters or any children exposed to,” Obama’s campaign released in a statement. “This song is not only outrageously offensive to Senator Clinton, Reverend Jackson, Senator McCain, and President Bush, it is offensive to all of us who are trying to raise our children with values we hold dear. While Ludacris is a talented individual he should be ashamed of these lyrics.”

Although Ludacris has since met with Obama, he declined to elaborate on what their discussion entailed.

Instead, the Atlanta star revealed he put his pride aside for the greater good of Obama’s campaign to prevent any possible damaging distractions, as previously seen with Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

“What myself and the president spoke about is confidential, but I took it upon myself to not speak on the song because I did not want to further distract either candidate in dealing with the ancillary issues they had to face in order to become the next president of this country,” Ludacris explained. “Now that Barack has won, I can honestly say that we are all fortunate to witness a period in America’s history when we rose to our best.”

Through this experience, Ludacris felt that he learned how much can be accomplished when people focus on common ground in lieu of highlighting disagreements.

“We stood up and acknowledged that America’s true power is when people come together and focus on our possibilities rather than our differences,” he proudly stated. “Obama’s focus is to bring this country together and move it forward as one united nation. I believe in him and what he stands for and wish him success!”

Ludacris’ is also finalizing his sixth solo album Theater of the Mind, due in stores November 25.

The album features collaborations with Nas, Jay-Z, Common, Spike Lee, Chris Rock, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, The Game, and Ving Rhames.

~~~

SURPRISE, SURPRISE. THE TRUTH COMES OUT:

Bishop Lamont had more than a lot to say about former label mate The Game this past weekend on Hoodhype.com's satellite radio show. Of course, none of his comments were flattering of the Compton-bred rapper. For most of the interview, Lamont referred to The Game as "Baby Girl," "Sweetheart," and "Star Face."

“Jayceon is the type of nigga that's bipolar. And he's a phony ass dude,” he told the radio show. “Baby Girl don't want to unify with other fly dudes out here on the West coast. She wants to keep everybody under her…She a hater. Whenever somebody is signed, or is about to blow up, she got an issue with them.”

The two rappers were acquainted even before Bishop Lamont was signed to Aftermath Records. In fact, it was on the set of The Game's "Dreams" that Bishop was introduced to Dr. Dre, who would eventually end up signing him to the Aftermath label.

When asked about The Game's current relationship with Dr. Dre, Bishop Lamont responded, “She [The Game] is heartbroken. She wants to get back to Dre. She misses the milk and cookies. She misses the walks in the park, I guess. You know, going to go get more fake tattoos. Baby girl got the Heineken bottle sticker on her face.”

He was also questioned about the fall-out between The Game and 50 Cent:

“[The Game] is a sweetheart… And when you comfortable with that, you go and get mohawks and 5 billion tattoos that you never had before you got signed. He was about to get dropped if it wasn’t for 50 writing all his hooks… People wanted to jump and believe that Game was the underdog and think that he was the victim. Nah, 50 was the good guy because 50 saved his career. He would have never came out if it wasn't for 50 Cent, and 50 Cent did everything right by him. But there are some missing pieces that 50 ain’t said because he just keeps it G like that, to what really went down, to why he really kicked him out of G-Unit."

Both rappers planned to come together in an effort to unify the West coast, according to Lamont. With The Game’s split from Aftermath, and what Lamont calls The Game’s “disrespect,” those positive hopes were dashed. However, Bishop Lamont assures that he and The Game have no substantial beef.

“I can't have beef with a girl," Bishop said. "I wish dude could be who he really is, and be the good dude that he really can be, but he's so into this maze of being this pretend person. He can't be the beautiful person he can really be, because I’ve seen it sometimes. But you know, Baby Girl is gonna be her. She's gonna put her press-on nails on, she's gonna put the tomato paste on her chest.”

Bishop Lamont also gave some revealing information about the recent drops of Busta Rhymes and others from the Aftermath label, and the current status of Eminem’s Relapse, 50 Cent’s Before I Self Destruct, and Dr. Dre’s Detox.

~~~

THIS IS DISGUSTING.

http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/audio/id.6032/title.jake-one-f-pharoahe-monch-kardinal-offishall-hurt-u

PEACE TO JAKE ONE AND KARDINAL AND PHAROAHE.

~~~

LOVE THIS SONG. SORRY I COULDN'T MAKE THE SHOW, SEAN P... IT WAS BARACK'S ELECTION DAY! HOPE HE FIXES BROWNSVILLE.

CAUSE YOU SAID IT HERE: IT'S SO DAMN TUFF!

~

CHARLES HAMILTON IS NOW ON INTERSCOPE. BUT WILL IT EVER COME OUT?

~~~

ONE FUCKING WORD: ~SLAUGHTERHOUSE~

!!!!

~~~

EPMD SAMPLER. WE MEAN BUSINESS!!! ~ http://www.zshare.net/audio/5089528544d66d94/

~~~

IT'S A NEW DAY:

How many deaths did gangster rap suffer in 2008 alone? And which was the least noble?

Was it Rick Ross getting outed as a former corrections officer and continuing to deny it, even in the face of incontrovertible proof? Was it Ice-T showing his age, and his lack of perspective, by losing a YouTube battle to Soulja Boy? Was it Shawty Lo bringing a camera around Bankhead and asking about T.I.’s neighborhood bona fides? Was it the unearthed criminal records that seemed to indicate Plies wasn’t quite the “definition of real” he proclaimed to be? Was it the venerable G-Unit, who, this summer, released their second (and best and hardest) album, T.O.S. to general indifference? Or was it that one of the more hooliganish rapper moments of the year came from Kanye West, of all people, who, along with his manager Don C, attacked a paparazzo at an airport and demolished his camera? Even Suge Knight plays nice with the paparazzi these days. Where have all the thugs gone?

Not long after the late-’80s media began using the term to describe a burgeoning style of brash, street-oriented hip-hop with lyrical focus on criminal behavior, gangster rap became the dominant strain of the genre. Its characteristics (or, at least, its affects) so flooded the form as a whole that, over time, the term lost precision in meaning. Over the past two decades, most of rap’s biggest stars have presented themselves, at least in some ways, as gangsters.

These days, though, the gangster icon is being replaced by that of the player, the bohemian, the seducer, the nerd, the precocious kid. Increasingly, any rap that markets itself as street rap is likely to be a footnote. Just a few years ago, 50 Cent brought about a tidal shift in the tone of the genre, out-thugging the competition to install the ultimate bad guy at the top of the food chain. Now, in 2008, that’s but a fast-fading memory.

Ask Styles P of the Yonkers hardcore trio The Lox how the climate for street rap is these days, and his answer comes quick and blunt: “It’s bad. It’s real bad… The past five years, there hasn’t even been a lot of gangster rap… If I started my career today, I think I’d be in a real fucked-up position.”

Last year, when Kanye West and 50 Cent faced off in a sales battle, Kanye seemed like the obvious underdog. 50 was a juggernaut and a bully; Kanye, by comparison, seemed small and humble. Until the first-week numbers came out, that is, with the fashionista besting the thug by more than 250,000 copies.

It was perhaps the first indicator of a shift that now seems to be in full flower. Suddenly, among the dance-rap teens, the hipsters and the bohemians, street rappers seem fewer and farther between. They’re not totally off the scene. Says Baby, CEO of New Orleans’s Cash Money Records, “Jeezy did it. Ross did it. Plies doin’ it. They came up the same way we did.” But the climate seems less and less forgiving. Even though Young Jeezy landed atop the album chart earlier this year, it was with such a small sales number that it left only the question: Is he the last of a dying breed?

WWW.XXLMAG.COM

~~~

WORD TO CHRISTOPHER WALLACE: IF YOU DON'T KNOW, NOW YOU KNOW.

THIS IS THE KIND OF THING THAT ENDS EVERYTHING FOR ME.
SEEING MY BROTHER K-NAAN PERFORM THE BEST SONG OF THE NEW MILLENIUM WITH MOS DEF IS JUST TOO INSPIRING FOR WORDS.

~~~

FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET:

Transition vulnerability

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday that the United States is vulnerable to attack or other incidents during the presidential transition period and that the military is ready to respond.

"When you go back and look at the number of incidents that have occurred three or four months before an inauguration to about 12 months out, back to the '50s, it's pretty staggering the number of major incidents which have occurred in this time frame," Adm. Michael Mullen said, noting that the danger is compounded by current world conditions.

The Sept. 11 attacks, for example, occurred eight months after President Bush took office, at a time when many key appointments had not been made.

Recent preparations for the transition in the Pentagon were aimed at preventing any attacks, and if an attack or incident does take place, the military is ready to respond, Adm. Mullen told Sara A. Carter, national security reporter for The Washington Times.

Shifts from old to new administrations are "always a challenging time in our country, always have been," Adm. Mullen said.

"Transitions are always difficult," he said. "We've put a lot of effort into it, and we're ready."

The chairman said he is concerned about the transition because of the global threats and opportunities facing the United States at the present time, namely in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I consider this a time of vulnerability, and I've worked this for months to have a transition team prepare for a new administration, mindful that this new administration, they don't take charge until the 20th of January," Adm. Mullen said.

The four-star admiral, who is the designated chief military adviser, stated that the military serves "one commander in chief always" while at the same time he will be going to "great lengths" to respond to the Obama transition team.

The team is expected to show up "very rapidly in this building," and Adm. Mullen said he and his staff are ready to help. Adm. Mullen is halfway through his two-year term as chairman.

Leaders' futures

One of the first decisions President-elect Barack Obama must make is whether to keep Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who plans to leave office unless asked to stay.

"As far as I know, he is still planning on returning to his home in Washington state at the end of this administration," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told Inside the Ring Wednesday.

"But as he has said many times before, he learned long ago never to say 'never' and does not rule out the prospect of serving the nation longer if needed."

Mr. Gates has focused most of his time at the Pentagon on the Iraq war since taking over for Donald H. Rumsfeld in December 2006.

Mr. Obama stated on his campaign's Web site that "immediately upon taking office," he will order the defense secretary and military commanders to end the Iraq war and withdraw U.S. troops "responsibly."

He said Oct. 30 that he views it as important to have Republicans in senior leadership posts in his administration, but he did not answer a direct question on whether he would keep Mr. Gates.

Among those considered for the key national security post of defense secretary are former Clinton administration Navy Secretary Richard Danzig, an Obama adviser, and Sen. Chuck Hagel, Nebraska Republican and critic of the Bush administration's war-on-terror policies.

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden also may resign or be replaced.

Asked whether Mr. Hayden will leave or stay, CIA spokesman George Little pointed to a statement Mr. Hayden sent to CIA employees Wednesday that said "those privileged to lead this organization understand that they serve at the pleasure of the president.”

Obama spokeswoman Wendy Morigi declined to comment on planned appointments or requests for officials to stay in place.

Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell also suggested that he may step down before the new administration. In a message to employees that was obtained by The Washington Times, Mr. McConnell said intelligence agencies have been working for months to prepare for the transition, which is about to enter "a critical stage" after the election and before the inauguration.

"A new national security team will soon emerge," Mr. McConnell said. "The current administration is leaning forward to ensure that the incoming team has security clearances and access to sensitive intelligence as soon as possible."

Intelligence agencies will both be working with the current administration and helping the incoming team, he said.

"We will be responsive to both and will work out priorities should conflicts arise."

A spokesman for Mr. McConnell said the director said earlier that he intends to leave at the end of the current administration unless he is asked to stay on for a period during the transition.

Obama and missile defense

Defense specialists say one likely policy change at the Pentagon under the incoming Obama administration will be funding cuts and program modifications for U.S. strategic missile defenses.

During the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama stated that he opposes "unworkable" missile defenses but that he thinks missile defenses are needed to counter Iranian and North Korean missiles.

A defense official involved in missile defense, however, said there is no reason to believe major changes will be made to the current missile-defense program.

"The Democrat-led Congress appropriated $9 billion for missile defense for 2009, only about $320 million less than the president's budget request," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of political sensitivities.

"Both North Korea and Iran are continuing their development of missiles of all ranges, including missiles capable of striking the U.S., and there is no indication the threat will abate anytime soon, considering how much money both countries are spending on missile development."

Missile defenses were integrated into the Bush administration's new strategic triad of capabilities, which include nuclear and precision conventional strike forces, passive and active defenses, and the buildup of defense infrastructure. The old triad was a combination of land-based, sea-based and bomber-carrying nuclear forces.

John Holum, former Arms Control and Disarmament Agency director and an Obama campaign adviser, told the Arms Control Association in June that Mr. Obama would limit strategic missile defenses to current deployments in California and Alaska.

"But at the same time, he thinks it´s very important to proceed on the basis of workable defenses, making sure that systems are capable before we put so many resources into these systems," Mr. Holum said.

Missile defense also needs to be based on threats and should focus on short-range missile defenses and "local defenses" against missiles, Mr. Holum said.

Mr. Obama's priorities for missile defense include so-called theater or regional defenses, "and further down the list, as the technology is proven, more effective defenses; national or longer-range defenses," Mr. Holum said.

Mr. Obama thinks a missile attack is less likely than a nuclear blast carried out from a suitcase, boxcar or shipping container smuggled into the country, "where missile defenses don't have any impact," Mr. Holum said.

During the Clinton administration, Mr. Holum opposed both short-range and long-range missile defenses during interagency discussions, favoring existing arms agreements over hardware, according to internal documents obtained at the time.

Mr. Holum led Clinton administration efforts to extend the now-defunct 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in talks with the Russians to cover short-range defenses, a move opposed by many in the Pentagon as restricting needed defenses against short-range missile attack.

Riki M. Ellison, chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, said he thinks missile defense will grow internationally under Mr. Obama and become part of "an alliance-building movement."

However, missile defenses are likely to be approached differently than under Mr. Bush, he said.

"I believe that there will be no growth in the long-range ballistic missile capability that includes both here in Alaska and California as well as Poland and little growth if any on future missile-defense systems," Mr. Ellison said in an e-mail.

Bill Gertz covers national security affairs. He can be reached at 202/636-3274, or at InsidetheRing@washingtontimes.com.

WE CAN'T GET TOO CAREFUL... AS SARAH CONNOR SAID IN 'THE TERMINATOR CHRONICLES': "WE ARE ~NEVER~ COMPLETELY SAFE..."

BUT STILL:
PEACE TO AFRICA, KENYA, AND THE OBAMA FAMILY WORLDWIDE:

~~~

FROM THE DAY AFTER OBAMA'S GRADUATION TIL INFINITY, I WILL BE THERE:
http://mindbenderfuturama.wordpress.com

NOT HERE.

SO TAKE THIS PORTAL TO THE NEW FUTURE, AND I WILL LOVE YOU THERE! THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS SUPPORTED THE BLOGGER.COM MINDBENDER WEBSITE... WE'RE GONNA KEEP RISING UNTIL WE ARE THE NEW TRUTH MEDIA!

CAUSE MINDBENDER AND TORONTO ARE THE NEXT BIG THING! :)

http://mindbenderfuturama.wordpress.com

THE WORLD IS YOURS. ONE LOVE!

2008-10-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

GOT MY MIND MADE UP, COME ON...

PEACE TO TUPAC (IT'S BEYOND THE TIME I LIVE LIKE YOU EVERY DAY)
PEACE TO METHOD MAN (HOPE YOU ARE FEELING MUCH BETTER NOW, BROTHER... THANKS FOR LETTING ME ON THE TOUR BUS!)
PEACE TO REDMAN (FUCK, I AM GOING TO STALK YOU TO GET A PICTURE NEXT TIME, HOMIE, LOL!)
PEACE TO DAZ (YOU ARE A G)
PEACE TO KURUPT (THERE'S MORE THAN JUST BELLY UP HERE IN CANADA, LOL!)
PEACE TO INSPECTAH DECK (I BEEN WAITING TEN YEARS TO HEAR THIS!)

~~~

ENJOY THESE WHILE I MAKE ANOTHER TRANSITION IN THIS JOURNEY TO ELEVATE... GOD BLESS THE INSPIRATION THIS BET CIPHER SHIT GIVES!

~~~

7 DAYS LEFT UNTIL THE ELECTION DETERMINING THE PIVOTAL TURNING OF THE WORLD AND UNIVERSE... LAUGH AND CRY:

ROBAMA from ROBAMA on Vimeo.

~~~

I LOVE ANYONE WHO LOVES TO FUCK... IT'S SOULFUL ALTRUISM :)

PEACE TO KARRINE STEFFANS. FUCK THE HATERS. (NOT LITERALLY, LOL)

~~~

AND I'M GOING TO GO LOOK AT THIS TODAY...

Those who wondered if Eminem would be dropping his highly-anticipated sixth solo album, well wonder no more. According to Amazon.com, Em's upcoming album Relapse will be dropping on December 23rd.

Not much has been set in stone in regards to the album except that Dr. Dre, DJ Premier, 50 Cent and T.I. have all collaborated with Em on this album.

In related news, Em just dropped his autobiography titled The Way I Am last week.

~~~

NEXT UP IS ME.
LOVE,
MINDBENDER SUPREME

2008-10-24T07:55:00.000-07:00

COMMON'S NEXT ALBUM IS GETTING TALKED ABOUT BEFORE 'UNIVERSAL MIND CONTROL' COMES OUT?! WEIRD. WHY IS RAP LIKE THAT NOW? LOL:

Common's next album is already gaining serious buzz. Universal Mind Control is set to hit stores, and with talk of Neptunes production, Common's garnered the attention of many. But, Common's still thinking ahead. He's already saying that The Believer LP will be next.

"The Believer is definitely gonna be an album," he told MTV. "It's gonna be the next album. I was ready to make The Believer, then I started working on an EP called Invincible Summer. Then I was like, 'OK, Universal Mind Control — that's the name of the single.' Like we said on the song, 'If you wanna dance, let's dance.' That's what that whole concept is like: Whatever you want the people to do, you create the music for them to do it."

As reported, Com's been working mostly with the Neptunes in an attempt to make party music. "Where I am with Universal Mind Control, which is the name of the album as well as the single, I wanted to make some music people can enjoy. It's a lot of stuff going on in the world right now. Sometimes people need to release. I felt that energy abroad, going to different parties in Spain and London, even back in the States. It was good times. I want people to have good times musically."

Universal Mind Control is set to be released in early December. He's also planning a tour for January.

WWW.HIPHOPDX.COM

~~~

GRAVY. THE MAGIC AIN'T THERE, BUT THE LOOKS ARE:

~~~

BUSINESS AS FUCKIN' USUAL!

After Erick Sermon announced to HipHopDX in June that EPMD would be returning with We Mean Business, the reunion album with Sermon and Parrish "PMD" Smith now has a concrete date. On December 9, Fontana will help release the group's first album since 1999's Out of Business.

"The CD is fuckin’ crazy. The shit is bangin’. Like, I ain’t gonna lie to you. It’s real Hip Hop shit for real Hip Hop heads. If you a Hip Hop head, it’s hard to hate the CD. You’re gonna be excited, trust me," Sermon said to DX.

Guests include longtime affiliate and onetime EPMD protege Redman, Havoc from Mobb Deep, Raekwon, KRS-One and 9th Wonder.

The first single is "Listen Up."

~~~

BUDDENS AND NICKEL NINE IN THE STUDIO!

~~~

I STILL LIKE THIS GUY!

SUPPORT Q-TIP!!

~~~

IF YOU DON'T RESPECT NAUGHTY BY NATURE... YOU DON'T RESPECT YOURSELF, LOL:

~~~

AKON IN TROUBLE... AGAIN?!

Akon responds to "I'm So Paid" controversy. from That Dude on Vimeo.

THAT GUY.

~~~

I SAW THESE AWARDS LAST NIGHT AND I REALLY LIKED THEM. BIG UP TO YOUNG JEEZY FOR THE AMAZING BLACK PRESIDENT PERFORMANCE. I ALMOST COULD BELIEVE YOU COULD DO THE JOB, LOL!
PEEP LUDA BREAK IT ON DOWN:

~~~

TIME TO LIVE.
LOVE,
ADDI

2008-10-22T12:00:00.001-07:00

WOW. FINALLY.

http://www.sexolympia.com

~~~

THIS MATTERS AGAIN:

I NEED NEW TOMORROWS... TODAY!

~~~

HOLY FUCK, SHE'S AWESOME AND BRILLIANT. I NEVER KNEW:

Jesika Joy is a Toronto-based artist and theorist for whom art-making is an act of bodily faith. Joy uses gesture and movement to produce sexually-explicit, conceptual performances for live audiences and the camera. Through exaggerating normalized social practices, she creates works that remain emotionally dynamic, honest and raw. She believes good art appears as if it were inevitable.  

Gallery: Re-signifying Female Sexuality
Video performance: Untitled (Camera Blow)

 Q: What drew you to produce sexually explicit, conceptual performances for the camera?
 A: My answer to this question is always changing but I think my primary interest has been and continues to be a desire to re-signify female sexuality. I identify as a feminist who retains political commitments while making art and theory using critical tools. This is to say, with regards to (hetero)sexuality, I am concerned with the basics – how it is that women continue to be represented as objects of desire for desiring male subjects – but I address this concern through postmodern strategies of ambiguity. When I first started producing sexually explicit material I was a pro-pornography feminist (or at least I was not anti-pornography). This is not to say that I didn’t have my criticisms but I had much more faith in the pornographic image as something recuperable and open to multiple interpretations. I felt the pornographic text (even when heteronormative or depicting domination) had no inherent meaning and that feminist attempts to position it as such not only opened the door to censorship but to gender essentialism. Now I am not so sure. My academic research and heteronormative readings of my practice have led me to believe that most commercial pornography continues to be produced and read along the lines of male activity and female passivity and sexual “availability.”

Q: Which artists do you admire?
 A: I love the work of Orlan. I think she bit the jugular with her body modification work in rendering explicit the horrors of beauty. I feel a real resonance with Hannah Wilke, both her early work where she played heavily with desire and her later work that was so honest about her illness. I’ve always loved Adrian Piper, not only does she have gigantic femme-balls (as exhibited in her street interventions) but like me she is an academic who has had to learn to negotiate her two practices (writing and art-making). I also really like Hermann Nitsch. His work appeals to my existential interests through the use of the animal body and sacrifice.

Q: You’ve used seductive dance in some of your performances, involving various animal parts. How do you conceive the depictions of your exposed body with animal parts?
 A: While the use of animals definitely speaks to my feminist concerns – the female body and meat production as pornographic – it is more about my existential concerns. It brings us back to primal body – the body prior to identity (even while such a body has never and could never exist). While the specificity of the body is crucial to how it is that we experience the world, there is still something more fundamental – our shared human condition, our time-based existence and the inevitability of death. I’m also very attracted to the abject. E. M. Cioran once wrote that whenever he is romantically interested in a woman he imagines her in a high state of putrefaction but alas he continues loving her. There is something poetic about this. It reminds us that no matter how pathetic it is to be human (our need for love, the frailty of our bodies, the inherent meaninglessness of existence) there is also a beauty in our will to love, life and meaning. In this way, my use of the abject interrupts the viewer’s experience of my own beauty while highlighting our shared beauty as humans.

Q: Some men have reacted to some of your work with attraction and others disgust. How do you perceive divided responses to your art?
 A: I find that responses to my work amongst non-art-going, non-academic, non-feminist communities are quite divided along the lines of gender. Men outside these communities tend to fixate on what is desirable within the image. In this way, those elements that are abject become re-inscribed within a narrative of desirability to become “dark sexy” or kinky. There is rarely an acknowledgement of the work’s feminist orientation. Women, on the other hand, tend to understand my intentions without being immersed within art, academic or feminist discourse. There is often an instant “a ha” reaction or affinity to the work. There are also those women who turn up their noses mumbling “crazy” or “dirty slut” under their breath but that's of little concern to me. Reactions amongst men and women equipped with feminist and conceptual reading skills are not divided along gender lines but are more varied and nuanced. I feel my current task is to find a means of interrupting the viewing experiences of the aforementioned group of men.

Q: In one of your performances, you were wrapped in a bedsheet on the Eaton Centre floor. You did another ritual involving yourself riding the Bloor subway line, obsessively marking your face. How do you see these action involving you in populous public spaces?
 A: On the one hand, these sorts of actions operate as public interventions – they interrupt conventional use of public space, bring art outside the confines of the gallery, and force the position of viewer onto those who might not otherwise encounter this work. On the other hand, this work is site-specific. I chose the Eaton Centre to roll around in a bloody sheet as a means of speaking to the manner in which consumerism is so closely tied to sexuality, desire, acceptance and love. A new sweater or home-entertainment system does not, of course, deliver the goods through which they are sold. Many women (myself included) do their makeup on the subway which is why I chose the Bloor line for "Public Ritual #3." But instead of marking myself beautiful I make the mark explicit and thereby mark myself out of existence. This is not only a feminist commentary but one that is existential. It speaks to the continuous repetition of the individual mark through which the individual is rendered anonymous.

Q: Some of your performance imagery involves perhaps Catholic imagery – your use of a topless Madonna Pièta. Do you feel a certain eros in days deemed sacred?  A: I am less interested in Catholic imagery than I am the figure of Christ but because there is so much easily identifiable Catholic imagery it works well. Also, the Madonna Jesus Pièta has been popular in the history of Western art. Jesus is a spiritual interest for me while his representation often gestures towards sacrifice, asceticism and ethics (themes that also re-emerge in my practice). I do feel a certain eros around days deemed sacred. I have a compulsion around marking personal moments of passage – days that therein become sacred. This is a ritualistic activity – something I am drawn to – even while this is not congruent with my principles. I am more interested spiritually and philosophically with contextual ethics – ethics that move away from rule-based morality towards making the best decision possible within a particular set of social circumstances even when one’s decision might seem to some unethical on the surface.

Q: Do you find your performances relate to sacrificial modes?
 A: I am very fascinated with sacrifice. My interest in sacrifice proper (the sacrificial killing of animals or Jesus) is a curiosity for me, in part, because it speaks to personal sacrifice. As a doctoral candidate I am well acquainted with sacrificing lesser desires in the interest of a larger goal. While this has been my story for the past five years, sacrifice is inherent to the existential condition. As Kierkegaard explains, all of life is a series of choices that irrevocably alter the course of our lives forever. To chose "a" is to preclude the possibility of "b" (at least for the time being, depending upon the nature of the choice) and in this way "b" has been subject to sacrifice. But while this might seem depressing, we need to remember the meaning of "a" is tied to its opportunity cost – the price of a forgone "b."

Q: How do you think your academic interests relate to your continuing body work?
 A: My academic and artistic work are intimately tied. There is a persistent and reciprocal dialogue between the two even while they follow their own trajectory and maintain their own autonomy. My academic and artistic interests often fall in and out of conflict and confluence. This has been productive in that my artistic practice has forced me to reconsider my academic work while my academic work has been shaped through my practice. After producing my "Video Object" series, for instance, I realized I needed to rethink my sex-radicalism. I came to realize that while I had sympathies for sex-radicalism (particularly as a response to second-wave feminism), it was not perfect representation of my politics.  Academics in relation to body art is particularly interesting. Even when intellectual work is interested in the body, desire or corporality, the truth is that the production of theory requires a different relationship to the body than does body art. Yes, in writing one tenses the body, periodically stretches, ingests substances to aid the thinking process, and even experiences the emotional resonance of thinking in the body, these often feel like conciliatory gestures – a pacification of the impatient body. In contrast, body art asks the body to be exposed, smothered, extended and contained. Body art demands a certain athleticism wherein the artist forces the body to move beyond its usual limits while surrendering to the body itself as the final arbiter of how a performance unfolds.

Q: In the course of your work, you’ve come to question pornography. How do you see explicit body aesthetics and how pornography functions?
 A: The position I am about to forward is highly contested. I understand mainstream, heteronormative, commercial pornography to be a strategy of generating profit through the production and sale of pleasure as a narrowly defined product. In contrast, explicit body aesthetics has contemplation as its motive. This position is has been critiqued (by Laura Kipnis for example) for drawing a distinction between different forms of sexual representation on the basis of class-based morality. Those representations that make no effort to conceal the body as a messy, uncontained desiring machine are understood as porn while those that aestheticize sex and sexuality become erotica. While I sympathize with this position, it falls flat with artists such as myself whose work pushes the bodily boundaries of even explicit pornography. I have yet to see pornographic work that involves a woman penetrating herself with a dead pig’s heart.

Q: You’re interested in building a performance album with some of your work. What relationships do you see between your performances and what your body is enacting cumulatively?
 A: If I understand the question, I would say the body as a tool of artistic expression is in constant training and that the capacities of any artist’s body are continually changing, often improving with time. I am thinking here of marathon runners. Most marathon runners are in their late 30s or early 40s. This is not because the body is strongest at this time but because they have developed the psychological tools necessary for success. What they lose in strength and endurance is made up for by intellectual fortitude.

Q: Are you interested in how intimate physical expressions can interrupt orderly public processes in your everyday?
 A: I’ve always had a propensity towards exhibitionism as, for instance, when the Graduate Programme Director for my department walked into the bathroom outside our lounge to catch me urinating in the sink. I do find, however, that I become less interested in this sort of thing when I am making work consistently. It is far more satisfying to situate your actions within a generative discourse than simply act-out as a form of muffled speech.

Q: Would you want to see more sexuality manifested in Toronto's public spaces?  A: I am not necessarily interested in “more sex” manifested in Toronto publics. As Foucault would argue, we do not live in a society that represses sex and sexuality, rather, we are obsessed with the idea of revealing sex on the assumption that it has been concealed. We are, in reality, swimming in discourses and representations of sex. We can’t go to a restaurant, buy shampoo or sign up for a gym membership without being reminded of the relationship this bears to the liberation of our sexualities. Consumer culture is obsessed with more and more sex. There is nothing liberating, affirmative or revolutionary in this particularly because these discourses and representations are reproduced along such narrow terms.  I do believe, however, that public sex acts have a disruptive potential depending upon their execution. This is, of course, why I engage in public interventions. But certain acts are more recuperable than others. Two men holding one another and kissing in downtown Toronto is more important as an action than two leather daddies engaged in S&M play at Bay and Bloor because the later is so easily rescripted as what “typical gay men do.”

Q: Your performance work involves various disquieting qualities. Do you think sexuality is heightened when there's elements of tension?
 A: We receive a charge from linking sex with a variety of different elements. I have often used danger – sex with strangers, public sex, being the only female in a male-only sexual space. The thing is, however, that dangerous sex is only sexy until it becomes dangerous – until we are verbally abused by our phone-sex clients, until we have to push off a man who wont take "no" for an answer, until we encounter unwanted pregnancy, an STD or feel used because we were treated as less than human. One of the reasons women often seek out danger with sex is because of the conflation between love and rape as seen in romance novels (as you mention). Due to this, I now find dangerous sex to be a boring reproduction of patriarchal discourse – one that is damaging to the self and social relations more generally. I’m interested, rather, in linking sex with intimacy, trust and respect. Under these conditions water sports, role play, spanking and bondage are transformed into acts of love. When these conditions are not met even vanilla sex has the potential to be hateful.  I feel I am transformed through my performances mainly because they are so hard on me. It's hard to find the courage to become a public object of scorn. Making this kind of work has forced me to learn to be a little more caring with myself.

Louise Bak is a poet, with books including Tulpa and Gingko Kitchen. She co-hosts Sex City, Toronto’s only radio show focused on relations between sexuality and culture (CIUT 89.5 FM). Her performance work has appeared in numerous spaces and in video collaborations such as Partial Selves and Crimes of the Heart.

~~~

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS AND HOW DID I NEVER KNOW ABOUT IT!?!?!

MICHAEL JACKSON AND EDDIE MURPHY DID A SONG TOGETHER?! WHERE ON EARTH WAS I WHEN THIS HAPPENED?!?!?!?!? LOL

WELL, HERE IT IS.

~~~

THIS KIND OF IGNORANCE STILL CAN FIND A PLACE TO EXIST? HOLY SHIT... WHAT A WORLD.

'Stunned' white supremacists keep low profile in campaign
By Jim Rutenberg

WASHINGTON: A tall, extra-hot mocha in his hand and a .380-caliber pistol on his hip, Bill White sat near the window of a Starbucks in Roanoke, Virginia, last month and discussed his political predicament as the leader of one of the nation's more established neo-Nazi groups.

"Right now," said White, head of the American National Socialist Workers Party, "we're facing the potential of a half-black candidate financed by Jewish money going up against a white candidate financed by Jewish money, who are both advocating the same policy. So you've got two terrible choices."

On Friday, about three weeks after that interview, White was jailed on suspicion of making threats against a juror who was on a panel in 2004 that convicted a white supremacist of plotting to kill a federal judge.

So stands the state of organized racism in 2008, paralyzed and at a crossroads in what would presumably be a pressing moment of action - the possibility that Senator Barack Obama will become the first black president of the United States- but has so far not been.

There have been sporadic reports throughout the country of Obama signs vandalized with swastikas, windows smashed at local Obama campaign offices and racist pamphlets dropped on doorsteps. Overt and thinly veiled racist comments about Obama have been caught on camera at rallies, and a Republican women's group in California - the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated - has made headlines for a flier that showed Obama's face on a faux food stamp that also included images of watermelon and fried chicken.

But party officials and organizations that monitor hate groups, always concerned about the specter of violence, report far less activity from the more traditional sources of open racism late in this race than they had expected.

"What we really haven't seen is white supremacists really rallying over an Obama presidency," said Mark Potok, director of intelligence at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups. "Hate groups are in a more or less stunned position right now. They haven't been able to figure out how to proceed just yet."

Some attributed the relative lack of activity so far from white supremacist groups to the same cultural shifts that led the Democrats to become the first major party to choose a black presidential nominee.

"It's not like we're finally reaching Martin Luther King's promised land," said Michael Gehrke, research director for the Democratic National Committee, whose unit monitors such activity, "but as a political force, they've been marginalized."

In one sign of shifting mores, James Knowles, a former Ku Klux Klan member who was convicted for a 1981 lynching, said in a Discovery Channel documentary by Ted Koppel that Obama was a potentially acceptable candidate. "People need to vote for him because of his ideas and the veracity that he displays in what he does, and not because he's African-American," Knowles said.

There have been only sporadic reports of racist mailings, though Democrats say they are on the lookout for more. And there has been scant evidence that Obama's candidacy has helped hate-group recruitment, unlike the recent debates over immigration policy, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

White supremacist leaders, while threatening some political action before Nov. 4, similarly attribute their relative lack of activity this year to demographic and societal changes they cannot stop. But they also point to a Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, whose liberal immigration views and staunch support for Israel are against everything they stand for.

On top of that, the leadership is plagued by scandal and infighting in the absence of a unifying group like the Ku Klux Klan, which is no longer pre-eminent even among open racists, or figures like the former KKK leader David Duke, whose power waned after he was convicted on fraud charges early this decade. Duke has, in fact, written positively about the prospect of Obama's being elected, though arguing it would stir a white backlash and "result in a dramatic increase in our ranks."

"There's a real problem," White said in the interview last month, "in what's called the 'white movement.' One, there's a lot of people who are just mentally ill, and we deal with those a lot. No. 2, there are people who have serious sexual problems."

White, 31, who says he has a following of at least 1,200 people, considers himself a reformer in the white movement. A landlord of low-income tenants of all races, he devotes as much of his energy to attacking rival leaders he hopes to purge from the supremacist leadership as he does attacking Jews and blacks.

His Web site recently featured a blog post reporting that a fellow white supremacist, Curtis Maynard, was "married to a mestizo and raising half-breed children." Maynard, in turn, has written that White is "a Jew and an agent of the ADL and SPLC," the initials of the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

White's Web site abruptly went offline this month. On Friday, The Roanoke Times reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had seized his computer equipment as part of the investigation that led to his arrest. White told the newspaper he had posted the address of a juror who served on the panel that convicted the white supremacist Matthew Hale of plotting to kill a federal judge in Chicago. But the newspaper quoted him as saying he had not called for any particular action against the juror. Arrested late Friday, he is being held without bail.

Another leader, Alex Carmichael of the League of American Patriots, has sued White for linking him in an article to what White called the "pedophile sex network" of Kevin Alfred Strom. Head of the now-defunct white supremacist group National Vanguard, Strom was released from prison after serving time for possessing child pornography.

Last month, Carmichael's group became the first to deliver racist leaflets about Obama, distributing them to homes in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in a small effort that drew wide news coverage.

In the interview last month, White said his group was planning a similar but larger effort. With a donation of about $8,000 from a supporter in Michigan, he said he was planning to print and distribute to white working-class neighborhoods 20,000 copies of his party's latest magazine, The Nationalist Socialist. The newest edition has on its cover a photograph of Obama with a rifle's crosshairs focused on his head and a headline using a racial slur and seemingly calling for his assassination. White said the cover was satirical and pointed to a subheading that read, "Negro Deification and the 'Obama Assassination' Myth."

~~~

IS IT REALLY A WONDERFUL WORLD?

PEACE JAMES. THANKS FOR TRYING.

~~~

MARCH 2009 FOR CUBAN LINX 2? HMMMM.... WE'LL SEE, RAEKWON.

TSS Presents Smoking Sessions With Raekwon

The way rappers blatantly swagger-jack each other and recycle beats like tin cans, its hard to believe that “biting” was once unacceptable in Hip-Hop. Whether duping another artist’s graffiti or swiping someone’s slang, it was never a good look to be labeled a “biter.”

It was during this creatively-fertile era that Raekwon The Chef, a respected street disciple and founding member of the storied Wu-Tang Clan, dropped Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… a trend-setting album regarded as one of the best in rap history. With phenomenal beats by the RZA and his trusty wingman Ghostface Killah in tow, Raekwon gave gangsta rap a new language and illustrated the fast life like no other emcee before him. Although Rae has dropped two other solo albums, countless mixtapes and appeared on a slew of records since then, fans have faithfully waited for Cuban Linx 2, the sequel to The Chef’s masterpiece. Other than Dr. Dre’s oft-delayed Detox, there may not be another album as coveted or highly-anticipated. In his exclusive interview with The Smoking Section, Raekwon insisted that Cuban Linx 2 will soon see the light of day.

Meanwhile, a straight-to-DVD documentary titled Wu: The Story of The Wu-Tang Clan will be released by BET and Paramount Home Entertainment on November 18th. The film is an authorized account of the pioneering collective’s rise to power, boasting never-seen-before archival footage and unearthed interviews. Loud Records/Legacy Recordings will drop the film’s soundtrack album, a compilation of the Wu’s most memorable group and solo joints, also on November 18th. In light of the nostalgia, The Chef recalled his past, but also touched on his present and near-future.

TSS: Talk a little about the Story of the Wu DVD. What can fans expect?

Raekwon: The DVD is a cinematic documentary of brothers’ trial and error through the music game. It just an opus of all the things that we’ve been through and you know… just the good times, the bad times and the ugly times. The tragedies as far as my brother Ol’ Dirty Bastard passing and how that affected some of the guys in the crew. This is being told from the standpoint of a fellow that actually lived in our neighborhood that did the documentary. He was somebody that was pretty much familiar with our whole career from day one and he created an opus of the Wu-Tang Clan, as far as everything we’ve been involved with through the years.

TSS: You’re a bonafide legend in the game with timeless albums. When you first began, did you ever think that you’d be where you are now?

Raekwon: Nah, I didn’t think it was going to be that big. You know, our thing from the door was basically just to be able to let the world know that there’s talent in Staten Island and we just wanted to represent. We were a bunch of kids at the time that were basically Hip-Hop fanatics. We had a situation similar to the Hit Squad back in the early 90’s, with Erick Sermon. He had his little crew; Redman and all these cats. We kind of felt that the way Erick and them built their situation was the same way that we had built our situation on Staten Island. So we just put our minds together. Brothers was still fresh off the block, some brothers were just coming home. It was a good situation at a time when we needed it, you know what I mean? We just basically pursued our dreams of being heard… we didn’t know we’d affect the world the way we did. All praises due, though. We’re here.

TSS: On 36 Chambers you had some classic verses, like “Can It Be So Simple” and “C.R.E.A.M.” As dope as you were on that first album, you took things to a whole new level on Cuban Linx. Your lyrical skill elevated greatly in between the two albums. What happened in that period that made your skill level rise so high?

Raekwon: First of all, Kha, I want to say I appreciate that. I’m honored for you to even tell me that. I was just a street cat, man… that’s all. I had a lot of trial and error growing up and all the things I was subjected to, so I basically just came in with what I know. Like I’ll tell anybody, I’m just a cloth of Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, Slick Rick, Biz… you know what I mean? Just that era; I’m just a marble cake of that. Growing up in Hip-Hop and still dealing with my own trials and tribulations, I applied everything that I knew from the influences that I had around me as well as being involved with the music. I just felt like, “Yo, Rae, you’re a writer. This is what you love to do.” You know, I’m very cinematic when it comes to my vision sometimes and I think it was just energy, man. It was just something that I really had the passion for and I just pursued it. I jumped on it like how a real dude is supposed to jump on it. If you love something, you go for it and that’s all I did. Just surround myself with the best energy and the things that I respected about Hip-Hop and the people I liked and I used that as a platform to get where I have to go right now.

I’m a real street cat, so anything I talk about is definitely going to be in relevance of my lifestyle and the things I was going through. As far as the Cuban Linx album is concerned, that was something that I always wanted to express to the world. Like, “Yo, we move like the Mafia,” na’mean? Not based on their principles, but based on the real principles of morals and how important family is. So I just constructed that into my movement and we came with the names. Me and RZA was working on a lot of stuff ahead of time, before Cuban Linx was actually even made. So I had a lot of shit in the cabinets already; I had stored food already. So I just came in with my heart, B. Just really took it serious and did my thing, you know? All praises.

TSS: Regarding conflicts you may or may not have had with certain rappers back in the day, Method Man was once quoted as saying, “Rae and Ghost don’t like nobody.” Was that true then and if so, is it also true now?

Raekwon: It’s definitely not true now. Like I said, one thing about me is when I’m playing for one ball club, I’m playing for one ball club… you know what I mean? You know, it’s just a competitive sport. It ain’t never to where I felt like I had any drama with anybody so… Meth tends to exaggerate sometimes. But I guess by the same token, when you’re with Wu-Tang, yeah, it’s all about Wu-Tang. I’m a team player. If I was on Roc-A-Fella, it’s all about Roc-A-Fella. It was just constructive criticism and that’s something we all grew up on. We all grew up on challenges and things of that nature. So, I never really had no drama with nobody like that. To me, a beef is a beef. But as far as in this rap game, yeah, I’m down to war with anything that ain’t with me. So yeah, I guess that makes sense a little bit, you know?

TSS: Speaking of waving the flag for Wu-Tang how is your relationship with the other members; particularly with the RZA after you two had words not long ago?

Raekwon: Me and RZA, basically we’re brothers. I know that it affected him, because it affected me. One thing about me is that I’m the type of brother where I’m so loyal to the family as far as whatever we go through, that at the end of the day I’m going to be there. But that situation… it kind of was getting ugly for a minute. But me and him, we stopped and we talked about it. He knew I voiced my opinion the right way; I wasn’t trying to be like disrespectful as far as not looking at him as a piece of shit. It wasn’t never like that. It just that I feel that brothers are being stubborn sometimes, even myself. So I just had to say what I had to say but we built about it and at the end of the day we laugh about it right now. Because we know, at the end of the day, family is thicker than anything. So we cool.

TSS: How often do you get stopped in the streets or in a club and get asked about Cuban Linx 2?

Raekwon: That’s like walking down the block and somebody asking you what time it is or how to get here. That’s regular, you know? Like I said, I laugh about it because I feel that out of all these artists in the game, I think I’m probably the one that everybody looks more to do more with. I guess that’s just from coming with a classic album, but… that’s a regular, B. It’s like I never had an album and people are waiting for something that they heard, but they didn’t hear it yet. So, I walk down the street and everybody is Cuban Linx-fanaticked out. So I’m saying, “Damn, they know I still got it in me.”

It just gets repetitive; sometimes I get upset because I want to be able to cater to the audience faster but politics is a muthafucka. And it puts me in a situation sometimes where I got to look at the future of my family before I can sit here and just try to put something out that ain’t going to stick on the wall. Anything I do, it has to be done in a structure where I feel like it’s a growth and development stage; the people I’m doing business with got to know my worth. People sometimes try to make you change your philosophy, you know what I mean? So for the most part, it’s an honor, man. It’s an honor to still be here and people be like, “Yo, where’s that album at? C’mon, man, you’re playing!” It gives me a sense of motivation and I just feel like a lot of artists don’t really have these kinds of walls to climb.

But I guess for me, being the kind of product that I made before, I guess it sits in its own box. I just take the good with it, and like I said, this is nothing for me. I’m one of them real cats. I’m not a ringtone rapper. I’m not somebody that’s just doing an album for a few cuts and to be on BET, or even to go platinum. You can’t outdo yourself when you already did your thing. All you can do is try to grow as a scholar. That’s all I’m doing, man. I’m just going to give brothers the business again with a classic and hopefully my real fans that’s really rocking with me, they’ll be able to relate. As far as the young generation coming to the table, hey… if you can’t feel me, then I understand that too. Everybody ain’t always going to feel everybody so that’s what it is. But you know me; I’m doing it for the ones that’s down with me. Hopefully the young youth, which is definitely on my agenda… I can’t never forget them. I’m always going to try and drop a jewel or even give them something that I feel they need. But for the most part, this record is a movie and I’m just getting on some Martin Scorsese, going-back-to-my-roots right quick, you know?

TSS: Indeed.

Raekwon: It’s not a problem because this is something I love to do. I think a lot of people just got me a little misconstrued because they always want to try and put me in one box. But I’m a conceptual emcee; I like to talk about plenty things and I don’t always want to talk about the dug game or something that’s related to negativity because I know that’s not my walk. But by the same token, I am a writer. I am a storyteller. And I am a person that actually seen everything that I go through. So I guess it ain’t really a bad thing to go back down that lane if that’s what people want. I got to do it for the fans too as well as do it for myself. So I take all of that into consideration and I try to balance it.

TSS: It’s interesting that you brought that up because that brings me to my next question. You say you spit what you lived. There’s a lot of artists nowadays, and I won’t mention any names, who are getting caught out there because of their backgrounds and their pasts. So how important is it for an artist to spit about what he really lived?

Raekwon: I think the importance of talking about what you live is, you have to be real with yourself. We know that we turned this business into a billion dollar industry and basically there’s people that really recognize other people’s talents and then you got people that really know how to copy your situation and run with it the same way, but don’t necessarily live it. I would tell a G that’s really about it, that they got to come from the heart. And real people knows when it comes from the heart, you know what I mean? You could sit here and look at TV and tell, “All right, this is a two-year old rapper or this is somebody that just basically got a shot.”

For a real emcee it’s like, you have to stay true to yourself all the time. And whether you was this kind of way of that kind of way… even with the Rick Ross situation, I’mma shoot on that. I respect Rick Ross — he’s is a good friend of mine. Everybody’s chopping him up about the C.O. thing. I feel like overall, I’m sure he grew up in Hip-Hop but… you really don’t have to front if that’s what you did. Because back then if I would’ve had a job, any kind of job… whether it’s a C.O., a mailroom or whatever, I’ma walk with dignity behind that because I was able to have something back then. Like I said for myself, all we did was grow up selling crack all day.

I just feel like at the end of the day, I think the world would’ve still respected him even more if he would’ve just been like, “Yeah, I was a fortunate cat at the time to have that job.” And then on top of it, he may have looked for a couple of people in there. So it ain’t that necessarily he was on some police shit, it’s just that he had a job back then. I think if he would’ve probably hit everybody in the head like that, they probably would’ve been like, “That’s real.” Because the way we came up, like I said, I was hanging out with [C.O.’s] back in the days… a couple of cats or whatever. They was hood cats but they were fortunate too. One cat may have been a C.O. but that ain’t change who he was; he was still criminal-minded (Laughs).

But what it’s all about to me… being real, man. Whether people accept it or reject it, you know what you been through and you know how you took that to the next level by just using your mind. I just say that’s the key thing; don’t change who you are, just change for the better. If you don’t know where you came from, you might not know where you’re going.

TSS: How has the rap game changed since you first entered?

Raekwon: Things have changed a lot. Things have changed for the good; things have changed for the worse. I got the passion for Hip-Hop, but at the same time it just seems like Hip-Hop is being sold off like politics now, na’mean? You got the Bush’s, you got the Dick Cheney’s; you got all that going on in this right now. For the most part I think people is not really using their creative side all the way. There’s a lot of replicas out there… a lot of people caught up in the politics side instead of being caught up in the art side as well. But I guess that what happens when you got successful youth coming up and just opening their minds to do so many different things. Now people don’t even look at the talent no more, they look at the outside of it. They look at the frame instead of looking at the picture. You’ve got a lot of artists that make good records, but don’t get the same kind of quality run that a ringtone rapper may get…and everybody’s not a ringtone rapper! So everybody kind of thinks Hip-Hop dropped off to this young generation, but I think it’s just that Hip-Hop is being looked at by the younger generation because it’s their time to come up.

Everybody’s getting older. Us being in our mid-30’s we look for a certain kind of rapport when we pick up something that’s supposed to be Hip-Hop. And I think that affects a lot of things. I can’t really knock who downloads your music but if they really love you, they’re going to go get your album too if it’s worth getting. But if I got to sit here and hear you say the same thing on nine different tracks and you’re not showing me no growth and you’re just standing in one spot, I can’t really go out there and get these kinds of records. I want to get something that I’m excited to get; it’s like going to get an outfit. If you keep seeing a bunch of regular Levis and you got five pairs of them, you don’t want them no more. I need something with a zipper or a mean pocket. We want to enjoy what we pay for.

TSS: I saw you and Ghostface at Jones Beach for Rock The Bells and I enjoyed it. Which Rock The Bells city was your favorite? Do you have a favorite moment on that tour?

Raekwon: To be honest, Kha… I can’t even really say which one was better, man. All of them was really rockin’, man. I’m sitting there flippin’ out ‘cause I’m saying, “Ya’all are really turning it up like this and we’re artists that’s been in the game for so long.” But how can you sit here and have 80,000 people you’re performing to every day and you’re not on TV or on the radio every day? So like I said, it’s a beautiful thing but I can’t even say one spot like, “Yo, it always goes down here.” I can be anywhere, man. I’m a traveling cat anyway. I travel the world. When you ain’t hearing nothing up with Rae, Rae may be in Austria or here or there. The people around the world is really still for the real Hip-Hop, man. So, I can’t say. We do six shows out of seven shows in a week and every show is goddamn 30, 40 or 50,000 deep at that time, we gonna look at all of them like every show is ill.

TSS: That’s whassup. Any parting shots for the The Smoking Section readers out there?

Raekwon: Definitely. I just want to tell all of the real fans that I’m coming. I know I put ya’all on hold for a minute, but always remember that you got brothers that work hard and brothers that work harder. I just happen to be one of them brothers who work harder. [Cuban Linx 2] is definitely in the mix. It’s a beautiful record, it’s a classic again. Whether you may feel like it’s a classic, it’s a classic to me ‘cause that’s how we made our music from the door. Get ready. It’s a lot of things I’m working on with this project, that’s really going to blow people’s minds. The album is coming out in early March, or the middle of March, so get ready for the excitement, man. The Purple Tape Part Two… it’s going down! You’re going to have the formula that y’all wanted plus some and like I said, it’s a classic. Trust me on that.

Wu: The Story of The Wu-Tang Clan DVD & soundtrack release on 11.18.08.

~~~

SHAUN BOOTHE IS THE MAN:

~~~

SURPRISE! THE UNITED STATES ARE STILL RACIST! NOWAI:

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - Two weeks before an election that could install the first black U.S. president, scattered ugly incidents have reflected a deep residue of racism among some segments of white America.

A cardboard likeness of Barack Obama was found strung from fishing wire at a university, the Democratic presidential nominee's face was depicted on mock food stamps, the body of a black bear was left at another university with Obama posters attached to it.

Though the incidents are sporadic and apparently isolated, they stirred up memories of the violent racial past of a country where segregation and lynchings only ended within the last 50 years.

And some feared that Obama could be a target for people who reject him on racial grounds alone. The Illinois senator leads Republican rival John McCain in polls ahead of the November 4 election and has a big following in many sections of Americans, from liberals to conservatives, black and white, poor and wealthy.

"Many whites feel they are losing their country right before their eyes," said Mark Potok, who directs the Southern Poverty Law Center that monitors hate groups. "What we are seeing at this moment is the beginning of a real backlash."

Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said the incidents were disappointing but he said there were fewer than some had predicted.

"We've always acknowledged that race is not something that's been eradicated from our politics," said Axelrod. "But we've never felt that it would be an insuperable barrier and I don't think that it will be."

The latest incident occurred on Monday when the body of bear cub was found on the campus of Western Carolina University in North Carolina. Obama campaign signs were placed around the dead animal's head. School officials said it was a prank.

Earlier a cardboard likeness of Obama was strung up with fishing wire from a tree at a university in Oregon and an Ohio man hung a figure bearing an Obama sign from a tree in his yard. The man told local media he didn't want to see an African-American running the country.

ANGRY INDIVIDUALS

Potok said the displays of racism did not appear orchestrated as part of a campaign of racial intimidation, but were rather the acts of angry individuals. Their voices are often heard in radio call-back shows or letters to editors.

Many Americans "see the rise of minority rights, gay rights, women's rights as a threat to the world they grew up in and that their parents grew up in. They see huge demographic changes," he said.

"They see jobs disappearing to other countries, and now they see a man who is African American and who will very likely become president of the United States. For some of those people that symbolizes the end of the world as they know it."

He estimated there were as many as 800 white supremacy or nationalist groups in the United States, with at least 100,000 as "an inner core" of membership and many more on the fringes.

One such group, the League of American Patriots, last month distributed literature about why a "black ruler" would destroy the country.

Michigan State University professor Ronald Hall, writing in his new book "Racism in the 21st Century," said racism remains one of the most pressing U.S. social problems, though it now takes forms that are more subtle than the lynchings and mob violence seen decades ago in some parts of the country.

Some groups tagged with racist acts deny the charge.

In California, a Republican group said it intended no racial overtone when its October newsletter depicted a fake food stamp bearing a likeness of Obama's head on a donkey's body surrounded by fried chicken, watermelon and other images evoking insulting stereotypes about African-Americans.

Some acts have targeted not Obama's black heritage -- his father was Kenyan and his white mother was from Kansas -- but the false notion that he is a Muslim.

A derogatory billboard in West Plains, Mo., went up last month showing a caricature of Obama wearing a turban.

"There are a lot of Republicans and McCain supporters who find it hard to believe that a black guy whose middle name is Hussein is going to be the next president of the United States," said David Bositis, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

David Wolff, a 52-year-old white Pennsylvania voter who plans to cast his ballot for Obama, said he commonly hears racist comments and thinks such sentiments are deeply rooted across America.

"One thing that could speed up the eradication of racism would be to have a charismatic, inspirational, transformational, generational black president," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE49L7D020081022?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=10112

~~~

OH, WE LOVE YOU RAKEEM!

~~~

Gnarls Barkley will be releasing a digital EP on Nov. 11 via Atlantic. The EP, titled Who's Gonna Save My Soul includes four versions of the song of the same time, as well as a live version of "Neighbors" from the 40-Watt Club in Athens, GA. and the non-album track "Mystery Man."

"It's the first song we did for the new record. There was that nod of agreement and sigh of relief that we're starting, and ... we're off!," said Gnarls Barkley member Cee-Lo to Billboard.com of "Soul." The song appears in its original version, as a demo, an instrumental and as the audio from MTV's "52 Bands."

"The song was written about James Brown -- from an admirer's perspective ... someone who had truly personified everything that we are," he says. Gnarls Barkley played a 2006 show in London, and had the opportunity to meet Brown. However, the timing, and subsequently the plans, did not come together. Brown died a few months later.

"It disappointed me so bad," Cee-Lo says. "It was almost like he was about to pass a torch to me. It's my assumption but that's also my aspiration. When I say, 'I lay my own soul down,' it's like, I will have to be my own hero. I will have to save my own soul. Therefore, it is very painful, but there's also a silver lining."

"This song really showed that we had other places to go and things to do," Danger Mouse adds. "We tried it a couple different ways, and each time it still had a really great impact."

The group describes "Mystery Man" as "a song we weren't sure what to do with. We didn't know how to finish it, but we still liked what we had. It's half instrumental and half vocals." The live version of "Neighbors" is one that Danger Mouse is particularly fond of, as he went to college in Athens.

As for future plans, Gnarls Barkely plans to wait a little before they release another full-length album. "We really want people to hear this song, and hopefully this EP will carry it on," says Danger Mouse.

~~~

REDEMPTION SONG

I’m sorry to hear that you’re sounding so down and struggling with the pressure that you’re under. I’ve been thinking about your situation most of the evening and the best I can come up with is that you are rich beyond your wildest dreams. Money really isn’t the issue here, it’s your sense of worth that’s causing you pain.

For me how I measure my worth and meaning is around contribution. How many people are alive now that might not have made it without me? How many people have better lives as a result of the work I do or advice that I’ve given? I keep reminding myself of the numbers of people that think fond thoughts of me and the things I’ve given them. Then I think about the people who they pass that onto and the whole thing is like a pebble in a pond.

You have no idea what you’ve done for people and how much you touch them and that’s part of why you’re in pain right now. You’ve forgotten all the lives you’ve made so much better, all the people who talk about you being a great person, loving friend, inspiration and sometimes just a place to lean and feel human again. If all you’d ever done was make one person’s life that little bit better, or eased their pain a fraction, then I think you’ve accrued enough merit or credit with the powers that be to never earn another cent and still be proud.

You’re generous with your time and energy and insight. You celebrate people’s success rather than compete with them, and you do your absolute best to make them even better than you at what you do.

Let me share a few things I try to keep in mind when it feels really bad.

1. Your darkest hour will only ever last 60 minutes
2. That which is to burn brightly must be able to endure burning
3. Your success will be measured only in terms of the love you leave behind when you’re gone
4. This too will pass
5. Breath in, breath out - repeat as necessary

Personally I think it’s a miracle that you’re still standing. But I know that when people have said that to me, I think it ridiculous, as it’s not like I can ever afford to give up or fall down.

You sound very down right now, trust that it will pass. Sometimes when on top of a hill I’ve looked across the valley and seen a huge black cloud’s shadow passing over people. It occurs to me that they can’t see the edge, so for them it’s potentially going to stay dark. Given a bit of perspective though, we can trust that this too will pass.

I’m really, really glad that you’re alive, as are so many others. You’re going to get through this and you’re going to shine again. Here’s a song for you by James Morrison, it’s been a theme tune for me that has helped me through some of my downs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apb-kHZ5vto

Take some care of yourself, I’ll be meditating on your situation and healing you from a distance. That’s my way of saying you’re in my prayers. Thanks for reaching out to me, I’m always happy to make a difference.

Your loving friend who really cares,

Michael

~~~

I LOVE KARDINAL BUT WHY IN GOD'S NAME ARE THEY NOT DOING THE VIDEO FOR THE T-PAIN SONG?!?!? PURE FUCKORY, THAT SONG IS A NUCLEAR BOMB WAITING TO EXPLODE!

IS THIS THE END FOR THE 'NOT 4 SALE' CAMPAIGN? WRONG. SO, SO WRONG.

~~~

MAYBE THIS WILL MAKE UP FOR '50 CENT: BULLETPROOF' BEING SUCH A PIECE OF SHITE:

~~~

I'M ABOUT TO GO GET SOMETHING THAT SHOULD CHANGE MY LIFE.

MINDBENDERSUPREMERADIOTV IS COMING SOON!
LOVE, ADHIMUSIC

2008-10-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

PEACE TO DOLEMITE! YOU ARE ALIVE FOREVER.

AND PEACE TO RUSSELL JONES!

~~~

MONEY AIN'T A THING TO ME... WATCH THIS!

~~~

AT LEAST HE'S OPTIMISTIC:

Although some people may be counting Young Buck out of the game due to his less-than-amicable split from G-Unit, the Cashville rapper isn't phased.

"The name of my record is The Rehab," he told MTV News in Atlanta. "Straight up, that's where I been at."

Buck added that he and the Outlawz are planning to put out their separate projects around the same time. "You can expect for their album at the top of the year," he said. "Hopefully it comes January, no later than February.

"Regardless of whatever you may hear, whatever dealing with Buck, what you see is what you get. Honestly, to be real, 50 [Cent] made the statement to the world that 'Buck is no longer a part of G-Unit, but he's still an artist on the label,' so whenever I guess he gets over his situation and figures out his album, I guess we'll come to terms and figure out a release date on my album. Until then, I ain't stoppin'. That's why I'm going so hard with the mixtapes. I'm everywhere. Hopefully, we'll get a release on my album in January or February."

Buck's goal with the album? To sell a million in a week. But Buck indicated that if 50 is willing to negotiate, he has prospects ready to buy him out of his contract.

"I'm trying to get totally away from the whole G-Unit situation, period," he said. "If I can directly deal with Interscope, so be it. I only got two albums left anyway. So at this point, all I'm trying to do is fulfill what I got left with homeboy and move on. It's already understood that the relationship with me and G-Unit will never be the same, so you don't ever have to look forward to seeing me back with G-Unit. That's not my thing. I'm staying down with the streets, and the streets are staying down with me."

WWW.HIPHOPDX.COM

~~~

ABSTRACT POETIC. IN THE IDLE MODE, BUT HIS ENERGY'S KINETIC:

I WANT TO SEE THIS!

Though it’s been nearly a decade since Q-Tip’s last official studio release Amplified, the buzz off his new single “Getting’ Up” and its associated album, The Renaissance has been exemplary of the type of emcee he is. Stopping by Hot 97’s Angie Martinez Show, Q-Tip discussed his new album and also a documentary currently being filmed on A Tribe Called Quest.

After co-signing the likes of Charles Hamilton and Lupe Fiasco as fresh faces that are progressing the art form of Hip Hop, Q-Tip explained the title and musical direction of his upcoming release.

“You know we always have these conversations about ‘yo this is wack, this music is wack,’ and whatever, [but] we turning the corner," explained Q-Tip. "I feel like [The Renaissance] is speaking to a resurgence of some Hip Hop music that is just good.”

Another topic that "The Abstract" spoke on was a documentary being produced by fellow New York emcee, Nas. The significance of their relationship dates back to the early 90’s and Nas’ debut album Illmatic, for which Q-Tip produced “One Love” and subsequently was featured on the track.

Obviously behind the project 100 percent, Q-Tip stated, “Nas is producing a documentary on A Tribe Called Quest that Michael Rappaport is shootin’. He approached me like, ‘I wanna shoot it.’ He’s getting into film, and he’s producing it. I saw some of the rushes [unedited footage] and it looks crazy.”

Q-Tip’s album The Renaissance hits stores Nov. 4.

WWW.HIPHOPDX.COM

~~~

KANYE. LOVE HIM.

Kanye West visits Big Boy's Neighborhood from qdeezy on Vimeo.

Shortly after Kanye West launched his Web site, KanyeUniversecity.com, he expressed his distaste for being misquoted in interviews via his blog.

"SIIIIIIGGGHHHH! [sic]" he wrote. "I told the media you can't make up lies about me because I have a media outlet myself. Oh and sidebar I don't know if everyone has realized this yet but I don't do interviews if there's anything I wanna say I'll say right here on my own blog."

True to his word, there was very little, if any, written press done. Aside from live performances and the occasional talk show appearance, there were even fewer television and radio appearances. All details about his upcoming 808s And Heartbreak album have either come via his blog or from friends and collaborators, such as Common and Kid Cudi. On Monday, West appeared on Big Boy's Radio Show [WQHT 97.5 "Hot 97," KPWR 105.9 "Power 106"] and explained the reasoning behind his Auto-Tune and melody-heavy new album.

"I wanted people to take my words into their soul, and have it embedded it their life, spirit and energy," explains Kanye. "When I was a shorty, they taught us stuff with a melody, like the ABC's. So I'm about to express my stuff with melody. It's a fine line, where you don't know if it's rapping or what it is. It's just what's necessary at the time--what it feels like [and] what the beat makes me do."

West also addressed rumors that he was just being experimental and hoping critics would recognize his upcoming album as an Avant-garde work.

"People heard 'Heartless' and thought it was safe," says Kanye. "They were like, 'Kanye's over here. It's all good now.' As you see, nobody's safe. I'm coming for the spot. It's a lot of people with number one spots right now, and I'm coming back for my spot. I'm not really playing right now. I think people might have thought I was playing games or just doing something real Avant-garde. But I'm coming to make the best music I can possibly make."

808s And Heartbreak will be in stores Nov. 25.

~~~

I LIKE THIS GUY TOO. INSPIRING.

NOW HE OWNS ENYCE. GOTTA GET ONE TO GO WITH MY SEAN JOHN JEANS (WHICH ARE GOOD QUALITY, BTW.)

~~~

DON'T SEE HIM MUCH, BUT HE'S COOL WITH ME... J. IVY. THE SOURCE OF A NEAR ARGUMENT WITH ME AND KANYE WEST, LOL!

~~~

KISS MY ASS SAYS JADA:

KAY SLAY, YOU NEED TO TELL PAPOOSE TO CHANGE HIS PITCH UP.

~~~

WWW.RACIALICIOUS.COM :)

How We Are Getting Racists to Vote for Obama

by Guest Contributor SuzeNYC, originally published at Daily Kos (SuzeNYC’s Diary)

Yesterday, I spent the day canvassing with friends for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. It doesn’t matter where it was. It could have been any number of cities all over our country. I am shocked by my experience.

I’ve been working as a volunteer for almost a year and a half for this campaign and I have encountered a fair amount of people’s racism around Barack. I’m a white 44 year old woman. My support for Barack has meant that I’ve been spat upon, physically attacked, called terrible names, cussed at and, of course, had the door slammed in my face by people using the “N” explicative.

[UPDATE: It was brought to my attention in the comments that I am misrepresenting the canvassing experience and there is truth to that. While petitioning and registering voters on the streets, or while doing visibility on primary days I had most of those negative experiences. They were all completely un-provoked. I was wearing an Obama button and a smile. The only thing negative that has happened while canvassing is having doors slammed and being scared by dogs from behind a fence. On to the next door.]

As this campaign has progressed I always felt that it was a given that a certain percentage of Americans are racist and we just don’t worry about losing that vote because we never had it. We make up for that by registering tons of voters and making sure that they get to the polls. This is the work I’ve been doing with my band of friends who I’ve met through the campaign.

Well, yesterday that presumption disintegrated.

I was knocking on doors talking to folks. We met many Democrats, Independents and even some Republicans who are Obama supporters. We also talked with people who are undecided and heard at a few doors something that I’ve heard before, “I’m a Democrat (some were even Republicans) and I really don’t like John McCain, but I just don’t know what to do.” I’d go on to talk taxes, education, health care, but realized after a few of these conversations that something was missing,

I knew these people were intimating that they were having trouble with Obama’s race but I couldn’t figure out how to approach this.

The answer came in the form of an amazing guy I’ll call Stan. Stan’s daughter answered the door. She had long blond hair and looked to be about 15. She said her Dad was across the street at the garage where he works and he had not decided who he was voting for. My canvassing partner Kevin and I crossed the street to find Stan who was sitting with his co-workers having lunch, so we had quite an audience for what was to follow.

Stan said the usual stuff. Democrat. Doesn’t like McCain. Worried about the economy and then he was hedging around the fact that he has some problem with Barack. I looked him in the eye and with a relaxed smile on my face I plunged into the water and asked, “So, are you having a problem with the color of his skin?” He said he was. I asked him why and he said some non-sensible things like, “I don’t know. It’s just not right, you know? Something feels wrong about it.”

I asked him, again in a relaxed, non-judgmental tone, “Do you think you are a racist?’ At first he said, “No.” Then he said, “I don’t know, maybe.” I said, “You know, Barack’s mom looked a lot like me. And Barack and Michelle just finished paying their student loans last year. I wish that you would take a closer look at this man and try to see deeper than just his skin color. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are regular people who will never betray the middle class. That isn’t who John McCain is.” He agreed. At this point we could feel him relaxing and Kevin and I really stared connecting with him. I think he felt relieved that the cat was out of the bag and we weren’t giving him superior attitude or stomping away. We talked with him and listened to him talk about taxes and how Obama will give tax breaks to everyone making under $250K and we talked about the war and oil prices and how hard it has been to pay the bills.

He told me that his daughter with his first wife, the blond girl who answered the door is 1/4 African American but doesn’t know it. I said, “Wow. You are an interesting, complicated guy.” He laughed. He said that he doesn’t want to be a racist, but change is hard. I empathized. Kevin said, “Yeah, change is hard, but it’s inevitable and you don’t want to be on the wrong side of change.” Stan smiled and said, “Well, this is going to be the first time that I vote and I just might vote for Obama.” We told him we were amazed and thanked him. He seemed happy. We were happy.

We went on to have very similar conversations with about 6 more people that afternoon. Later when we joined our other canvassing friends they reported very similar conversations.

So, what I was shocked by is the realization that it seems that there is a category of white Americans who are somewhat racist but who are poised to be persuaded. In my experience the key was asking these people in a non-judgmental manner if they think the color of Barack’s skin is getting in the way for them. They were struggling with deciding to vote for Barack, but they did not seem to want to think of themselves as racist, so they were open to re-thinking their position with me and Kevin. Once we got past the racism thing it was not hard to show them how Barack is more like they are than McCain is.

What is so unexpected to me is that it really only took between 10- 15 minutes per person to turn this category of people that I had given up on from “NO” to “MAYBE” or “LEANING.”

We have 30 days to keep talking to these people. Please. Please, get out there canvassing! You can make the difference.

~~~

THE THINGS GOING ON OFFLINE ARE SO FUCKED UP I CAN'T WRITE ABOUT THEM ON HERE.
LOVE YOURSELF RIGHT.
ADDI

2008-10-21T12:59:00.002-07:00

"OUR SURVIVAL IS BASED OFF OUR ABILITY TO GROW WITH CHANGE." - MICHAEL YARDE.

~~~

KING LIF:

Off to Boston and marching on to the spirit of healthy political opinion and debate, DX chops it up with Mr. Lif, who finds time to take a break from studio in order to introduce his new album, I Heard it Today, and explain its relevance to the current political environment. And one can count on Mr. Lif to stay creative and remain relevant as he uses his album to convey a message about the prevalent problems and issues the U.S. of A. is up against – just in time for elections. Best known for his membership in the group The Perceptionists (with Akrobatik and DJ Fakts One), Mr. Lif sheds light on his recent European tour, the peculiar support of Republicans and their policies, and of course, sexy Sarah Palin.

HipHopDX: You recently came back from your European tour; how was it?
Mr. Lif: It was a lot of fun. It was actually a more casual type of tour than I’m used to doing. If I go someplace for 20, 25 days, I’m used to having to do 17, 18 shows. But due to the fact that I’m recording this project, my shows were a little bit more spread out and it gave me some time to be in the studio in Berlin and hang out with some of my friends – I have a lot of friends in Berlin. It was actually very enjoyable. We traveled to Holland, Switzerland, several parts of Germany. We wrapped up the show in Estonia; it was my first time in Estonia.

DX: How do the fans in Europe differ from those in North America?
Mr. Lif: They just don’t get to see you as often. So there’s just an appreciation, especially for “Hip Hop Camp” which is a show we did in the Czech Republic. You get the sense that some of these kids have listened for a long time to the music, but never had a chance to actually come out and see the show…maybe if they caught a show before, they’re appreciative. It’s not an everyday thing; it’s not even necessarily an every-year thing. I don’t go to the same cities every time. I feel that the appreciation is very high, they’re very unashamed that they love Hip Hop and are very true school in that they love more of the golden era style of Hip Hop and it’s just good to see that.

DX: What’s up with The Perceptionists?
Mr. Lif: Both Akrobatik and I are focused on our solo careers, and that’s the way it has to be right now. I think I called Ak about three-and-a-half months ago and said, “Look I’m ready to start writing a Perceptionists record,” ‘cause my attitude at the time was the more projects, the merrier. I can work on a Mr. Lif record right now if you will and also work on a Perceptionists record and choose what aura I want. Then once I got into the idea of doing my project, I got so lost in the process – I can’t express how much this record and this project has revitalized me in terms of reconnecting with my passion about my making music and just feeling a sense of purpose. It’s not like I’m just making songs to hear my own voice, or to flex a couple of styles so people would think I’m one of the best. This is me trying to stay with current events and offer a view that’s a little bit more liberal, or a view that’s alternative to what’s being offered in mainstream media. Just gives me an incredible sense of purpose – it’s the last thing I think about when I close my eyes at night and first thing I think about when I wake up. And during the hours I’m awake, most of them by far are spent in the studio while I’m working on this material.

DX: This is a good time to introduce that new material.
Mr. Lif: The new album is called I Heard it Today [click to listen] and it’s a political…basically what’s going on in the United States right now in such a unique moment in American history that I figured it would be a good moment to document it. We have a black man running for president; we have the energy crisis, housing crisis and of course the huge economic crises that has not only hit us but is affecting other markets around the world. So once a month I release a song that covers a political issue. And in September I released a song that was about the housing crisis. And for October, the song is called “The Sun” and the “The Sun” is a song of inspiration for all the people out there that are disenfranchised right now, and feeling cheated on. A lot of people lost their retirement funds, people are losing their homes – it’s tough for people to survive in America right now.

DX: Many of these subjects covered have been prevalent in the U.S. for at least the past couple of years. Why do you think they haven’t been brought to attention before this complete economic and political crash?
Mr. Lif: I think because people were getting paid. A lot of the big…they had to keep silent so they can finish making their billions or multi-millions, and no one wanted to say anything until shit absolutely hit the fan. And I also think the fact that this election coming up has created an arena for the issues being discussed as the American people are gonna want to know what each of these candidates is gonna do about the problems that affect them on daily basis. When the people that are truly in power of the nation are making money hand over fist, I think they’re gonna keep pretty quiet about that until they have to talk about it. [Laughing]

DX: Why are the republicans continuing to receive significant support after such detrimental policies, fiscal, foreign and domestic?
Mr. Lif: The cold and harsh reality […] the center of this nation seems to be extremely conservative. And when you get into the so-called “Bible belt,” I think you just have people – it’s a broad sweeping generalization here – but I think the majority of the people just like the good-old America. If we’re involved in the war, let’s win the war.

DX: I understand the conservatism. But when the policies are not beneficial to individuals, when they are bad economic and domestic policies, why does support continue for the Republicans?
Mr. Lif: It baffles me. Maybe people just aren’t that informed or maybe people see that the black man is on the opposite side of the building and they’re just like “Hell no.” I think that’s a lot of what’s going on, the Republicans are just like “This black dude?” A lot of people in the heartland are just like, “Yo man, we have no chance in hell that this black man is gonna run this country.” The progressives are not necessarily the majority in America.

DX: With the rising gas prices, the lay-offs and with the collapse of the stock market, do you think that people are still looking at Obama’s skin color?
Mr. Lif: I’m not trying to throw a big importance on race as it seemed like I was; I think that’s just one aspect of what’s going on. No matter what, there’s a contingent of people that are going to look at his skin color, whether you want to believe that or not. It’s tough for me - I don’t know what people think. I literally cannot even come up with anything to explain really why someone could have lived through the last eight years in America where we had two planes knock down the towers, 2,000 people die in New York, where we have the energy crisis and to top it all off, the drop of the economy. I can’t even believe that 20% of the people in this country will even consider McCain, let alone vote for him but that’s what we’re up against. We’re also up against an extremely skewed electronic voting system that people have figured out how to exploit the flaws of. Maybe we shouldn’t be focusing so much on these candidates right about now; we should put maybe an equal amount of attention on people who are counting the votes.

DX: A pensive point. Why do you think there’s such a pre-occupation with Sarah Palin? She’s no less educated or experienced than George Bush was so why is this much focus on her?
Mr. Lif: First of all, I just think it offensive that the McCain camp presented her. Now they’re basically just not letting her speak to the public unless it’s in like an extremely controlled environment where they have to program her on everything she has to say because she’s failed so intensely - like in the interviews with Katie Couric. Every time she’s asked a question that she’s not scripted and ready for, she’s just a complete buffoon. And Republicans, I guess just thought, "Hey Hillary Clinton was popular with the Democrats, so let’s just get a woman out there, and let’s just disenfranchise female voters,” but really, they’ve just made a mockery about the whole system. The question about Palin is “Is she intelligent?” and “Does she even know politics?” And when those are the questions you’re asking about the potential Vice President, who’s gonna be vice president for a guy that’s 72 years old and has had four cancer surgeries – it shouldn’t be a factor. I just don’t see why she’s not completely disregarded.

DX: Where is responsibility within the American population?
Mr. Lif: First of all, find a common ground upon which we can join together. Here’s the problem: they still have us divided, whether it’s Democrats or Republicans. We’re divided into - and I’m guilty of feeding into this too - progressive people on the coast and the people in the heartland. The American people need to figure something out that is going to hit the wealthy in the pocket because that’s all they’re going to understand. They’ve found several ways to see our cash flow – they tax us on every dollar we make, on every cent we make; they create conditions in which they can gain an ordinate wealth and we can go broke and bankrupt and our lives can be ruined. I just think that there’s gotta be some way the American people can brand together and be like, “Look, we’re not gonna be a part of this anymore.” And I don’t know what that is. Sometimes I think maybe not give as much value to the things that we care so much about now, our possessions and that paper…

There has to be a point where we have to put our foot down. The protests of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the protest of this bill – they’ve already run us over. They snuck a president into office and kept him there for 8 years…

DX: You mentioned “capitalism rap” before. Elaborate?
Mr. Lif: It’s not any level of a breakthrough. Hip Hop was a form of music created by people in low-income areas. It was a means of their own escapism, creativity; as a means for them to try to hopefully earn some recognition and some money so they can improve their own living conditions. Once it became clear to corporate America - or just corporations around the globe - that Hip Hop was an extremely marketable commodity, what happened at that point was the corporate vision and the dumbing down of the music. And I think that you can’t talk about this issue without recognizing the fact that there is an all-out assault, especially in this country, on the young black male. There are tons of young black men in prison. In my opinion, the view of people worldwide of us continues to suffer. The African-American has definitely been seen in a very negative light at least in my opinion, what I’ve gathered through the media, my own experience, what I experienced first-hand…

Hip Hop is a corporate vision that shifted from an instrument from which the black community told their youth stay in school, become educated. This is where the truth lies, in the knowledge that you hold and what you’re able to do with that knowledge. And now, the majority of what you see is cats driving big flashy cars, with a lot of women dancing around them and they’re throwing money at the camera. And ultimately, it killed the movement in the black community toward intelligence, respect, pride. And it moved toward “Man, get some money,” period. And it’s okay to sell crack; in fact, it’ll help your rap career if you sold crack or shot some black people. That’s what the music has disintegrated to. You have a better chance of having a good rap career if you have good street cred: if you sold poison to your own people and it’s on your records that you have threatened to kill your own people; and of course, using the “n” word incisively, helps.

I FUCKING LOVE HIPHOPDX.COM INTERVIEWS.

AND DEFINITIVE JUX.

~~~

SPEAKING OF...

WORD TO MURS!

BUY HIS NEW ALBUM, 'MURS FOR PRESIDENT'!!

~~~

RAP IS FUCKIN OUTTA CONTROL FOR REAL NOW:

Though heralded as one of Hip Hop’s most acclaimed artists, MF DOOM has been a mystery behind the mask. In recent times, it has gotten to the point that fans are questioning the validity of DOOM shows, unsure if the man on stage is in fact the real MF DOOM. Speaking in the recent issue of Wax Poetics magazine, DOOM confronted the question of impostor performances, vying for a new perception. Putting his explanation into context, MF DOOM recapped a show from last year.

"I did some show, wrecked it, girls climbing up onstage and shit," recounts DOOM. "That was the first time that happened--but we was rocking, right? Somebody from the label was going to be there. I was like, 'Cool, he saw the show, and it was wrecked.'" Continuing on DOOM stated, "Next couple of days, I speak to him, and he was like, 'Good show, but a lot of people are saying it wasn't you!'"

Receiving the disconcerting news, DOOM was amazed to hear his character continues to fool people. "I lost fifty-nine pounds last year on some healthy shit, and I'm out there busting my ass, and niggas is still saying that shit? Niggas is caught up in the character part."

However, instead of killing off the impostor noise, MF DOOM stressed his shows are for the music, first and foremost. "Looking at it has nothing to do with what it sounds like," says DOOM. "A blind person could be at the show and feel it clearly, but don't see nothing of it. Don't matter what the shit look like. Look, was niggas rockin' or was niggas rockin'?"

For the full interview with MF DOOM, be sure to pick up the newest Wax Poetics, on sale now.

WWW.HIPHOPDX.COM

~~~

EMINEM SAYS SOME SHIT THAT WE BEEN WAITING TO HEAR, FINALLY:

Eminem, the most commercially successful rapper alive, no longer seeks the massive success which has been a constant in his career.

"There's no desire to be that big again. Whatever happens, I'll take it, but that's definitely not what I'll be recording the songs for," said Em in a recent BBC interview with Zane Lowe.

Em's reason for releasing his next album? He wants "to remind people how I rap."

"[I feel] pretty good about what I've done," said the rapper, whose accolades include multiple Grammy awards and the first Oscar ever to be award to a Hip Hop artist. "I've accomplished enough with the music that I haven't had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate. ... That's probably what I take pride in most."

The veteran emcee also took the time to speak on the Hip Hop game, which he deemed garbage - but not all of it. Em gave props to Ludacris, among other artists, saying "I don't mean everything about rap is crap. I just mean the majority of it. Actually I think T.I.'s new album is great and I've been pumping that for the last two weeks every day in my car aside from my own stuff as I record it. Andre 3000 is also incredible. So I just mean rap in general."

Eminem is currently in the studio working on his upcoming album, The Relapse, with Eminem focused on the writing, and Dr. Dre on the production.

WWW.HIPHOPDX.COM

~~~

HE AIN'T THE ONLY ONE:

Shortly after Kanye West launched his Web site, KanyeUniversecity.com, he expressed his distaste for being misquoted in interviews via his blog.

"SIIIIIIGGGHHHH! [sic]" he wrote. "I told the media you can't make up lies about me because I have a media outlet myself. Oh and sidebar I don't know if everyone has realized this yet but I don't do interviews if there's anything I wanna say I'll say right here on my own blog."

True to his word, there was very little, if any, written press done. Aside from live performances and the occasional talk show appearance, there were even fewer television and radio appearances. All details about his upcoming 808s And Heartbreak album have either come via his blog or from friends and collaborators, such as Common and Kid Cudi. On Monday, West appeared on Big Boy's Radio Show [WQHT 97.5 "Hot 97," KPWR 105.9 "Power 106"] and explained the reasoning behind his Auto-Tune and melody-heavy new album.

"I wanted people to take my words into their soul, and have it embedded it their life, spirit and energy," explains Kanye. "When I was a shorty, they taught us stuff with a melody, like the ABC's. So I'm about to express my stuff with melody. It's a fine line, where you don't know if it's rapping or what it is. It's just what's necessary at the time--what it feels like [and] what the beat makes me do."

West also addressed rumors that he was just being experimental and hoping critics would recognize his upcoming album as an Avant-garde work.

"People heard 'Heartless' and thought it was safe," says Kanye. "They were like, 'Kanye's over here. It's all good now.' As you see, nobody's safe. I'm coming for the spot. It's a lot of people with number one spots right now, and I'm coming back for my spot. I'm not really playing right now. I think people might have thought I was playing games or just doing something real Avant-garde. But I'm coming to make the best music I can possibly make."

808s And Heartbreak will be in stores Nov. 25.

SAME SPOT AS THE LAST ONE. LINK THAT WEBSITE, IT'S TIGHT! WWW.HIPHOPDX.COM

~~~

HI, MY NAME IS MARSHALL MATHERS, AND I'M A NORMAL HUMAN BEING NOW.

Eminem, the most commercially successful rapper alive, no longer seeks the massive success which has been a constant in his career.

"There's no desire to be that big again. Whatever happens, I'll take it, but that's definitely not what I'll be recording the songs for," said Em in a recent BBC interview with Zane Lowe [click to listen].

Em's reason for releasing his next album? He wants "to remind people how I rap."

"[I feel] pretty good about what I've done," said the rapper, whose accolades include multiple Grammy awards and the first Oscar ever to be award to a Hip Hop artist. "I've accomplished enough with the music that I haven't had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate. ... That's probably what I take pride in most."

The veteran emcee also took the time to speak on the Hip Hop game, which he deemed garbage - but not all of it. Em gave props to Ludacris, among other artists, saying "I don't mean everything about rap is crap. I just mean the majority of it. Actually I think T.I.'s new album is great and I've been pumping that for the last two weeks every day in my car aside from my own stuff as I record it. Andre 3000 is also incredible. So I just mean rap in general."

Eminem is currently in the studio working on his upcoming album, The Relapse, with Eminem focused on the writing, and Dr. Dre on the production.

~~~

SINCE EVERYONE'S GONNA BE TALKING ABOUT IT...

~~~

I'LL NEVER STOP POURING THAT 40 WATER!

~~~

KOOL KEITH!

~~~

JIGGAMAYNE. OBAMA. SUCCESS!

~~~

I'M READY FOR CHANGE.
LOVE, ADHIMUSIC

2008-10-20T07:46:00.000-07:00

SOMETHING HAPPENED THIS WEEKEND THAT WILL HAVE REPERCUSSIONS FOR YEARS TO COME.

PEACE TO THE LOVE THAT WE KNEW, PRINCESS.

I DON'T FEEL LIKE WORKING TODAY, BUT I'VE NEVER NEEDED TO CREATE AND SERVE THE WORLD MORE IN LIFE THAN I HAVE TO DO NOW. SO LET'S DANCE THIS FUCKING DANCE, SHALL WE?

WE SHALL.

:)

ADHIMUSIC

HERE'S LL COOL J, GETTING HIS BAROCK STAR ON:

PEACE TO WYCLEF.

~~~

IT'S TIME TO RISE. I'M NOT AFRAID OF NONE OF YOU ANYMORE. NONE OF YOU!Lil Wayne: There Is None Higher

He’s out-rapping, out-selling and out-thinking everyone else in the music world. So why is Lil Wayne freaking out?

Jonah Weiner

Blender July 23 2008

lilWayne_PR_article03.jpgAs the West Dixie Highwaycurves toward North Miami, the city’s glitzy epicenter becomes a distant memory. The cruise ships, sandy nightclubs and gated island communities of South Beach give way to all-night coin-op laundromats, strip clubs lit in queasy green neon (NUDE REVUE! FRICTION RUBBING!) and run-down single-story homes. Al Capone, John Collins, Gianni Versace—swells like that never set a loafer on this soil. At 149th Street, though, an unexpected outpost of wealth looms into view. The windows are tinted and the doors are always locked—to get in, you either know a code or someone famous. The parking lot gleams with Benzes, Bentleys and Rolls-Royces, a luxury fleet under 24-hour guard. This is Miami’s Hit Factory—the recording studio where Justin Timberlake made his last album, where Shakira and Scott Storch regularly bump into each other in the halls and where Lil Wayne is camped out, hard at work, one hot June night.

A clock on the wall reads 4:08 A.M. one moment, 5:22 the next, 5:26 what seems like an hour later—time has slipped its leash. Since Wayne arrived in his chauffeured black Phantom around midnight, he hasn’t stopped moving, hasn’t taken a seat, hasn’t so much as leaned on anything. The New Orleans rapper, 26, zigzags from vocal booth to control room to lounge; he jerks and bops and kicks in time with blaring instrumentals, feeling out rhythms, mouthing rhymes to himself. He’s wearing a fitted white Polo tee, slouchy Evisu jeans and wildly patterned Supra high-tops. A red bandanna plumes from his left pocket like a cartoon wound. He carries a triple-stack of Styrofoam cups, swigging the sweet, narcotic cocktail of promethazine-codeine cough syrup he’s never without—recently, he’s been mixing it with Jones cream soda. Between sips, Wayne sucks at a spindly brown blunt, forcing marijuana smoke from his nostrils in stuttering double columns. His smile is an infestation of diamonds, but right now he isn’t smiling much. There’s an agitation to his drags—a fretful element more chain-smoker than Cheech Marin. Within this fume-spewing, rhyme-spitting perpetual-motion machine, you detect the rumbles of anxiety.

And then, Wayne stops moving. He raises a palm to his jaw. “Fuuuck.” His toothache is back. It’s been bugging him for a few days, and the pain is irritatingly familiar. “Anyone seen my Orajel?” he growls. Someone rises from a couch, flips open a phone and disappears.

Wayne’s discomfort is contagious. The members of his entourage shift their weight and sneak glances at their boss for cues. The rule around Wayne, especially when he’s grumpy, is speak when spoken to, otherwise keep your mouth shut.

Suddenly, he breaks into a tuneless croon.

I got a toothache
The size o’ Virginia
I got a tooothaaache
And it hurts like a muh-fucka!

Gutter and Kid-Kid, two teen MCs from New Orleans signed to Wayne’s Young Money imprint, shake their heads in sleepy commiseration; they’ve been here all night, occasionally recording eight-bar verses and fishing for Wayne’s approval: “You fuck with that one, Weezy?” Josh, one of Wayne’s engineers, nudges a cursor around a computer screen, chuckling. Nadia, a curvy olive-skinned girl, grins. Curled up on a leather couch, she’s overdressed for a sleepover: gold sandals on her feet, black tights decorated with gold fleurs-de-lis on her legs, an oversize gold Chanel bag doubling as a pillow. Wayne likes having girls in the studio—they rub his back when requested; they smile demurely when he makes jokes; they play with their cell phones and stare into the middle distance, keeping him company of a quiet, undemanding sort.

No Orajel in sight, Wayne throws open a Louis Vuitton weekend bag and yanks out a translucent-orange prescription bottle and a plump pack of gummy bears. He takes a little from column A, a little from column B, gulps down the mess and resumes crooning, his eyes squeezed shut.

I’m gon’ eat a Xanny
I’m gon’ eat some candy
And the candy prolly won’t help
But if it makes you feel good, it’s good for your health!

It’s a demented rock-star jingle, which is perfectly appropriate. Lil Wayne is the most demented rock star in the world. Two weeks ago, his sixth album, Tha Carter III—full of raps about space, cannibalism, wealth and drugs—sold just over a million copies in its first week: a stunning seven-figure bow when music-industry experts had proclaimed the seven-figure bow a relic of better, bygone days. A week ago, Wayne appeared on seven separate songs in the Billboard Hot 100—“Lollipop,” his androidish ode to oral sex, spent five weeks at No. 1. Barack Obama has taken to shouting him out in stump speeches.

But Wayne has other things on the brain tonight. He has a court date in two days in Atlanta: drug-possession charges he thought had been dismissed until his manager informed him otherwise. He has offers coming in faster than he can process them: 8 Mile–style biopic deals, clothing-line deals, a deal for Wayne-branded bubbly called Halo. And two days after court, he’s leaving for a two-week vacation, the first he’s had in months. “He was gonna go to Saint-Tropez,” his longtime friend and manager Cortez Bryant explains, “but when he found out it was in France, that was off.” Wayne despises long flights. He can’t sit still for that many hours, hates having to fasten his seat belt when told to, and his blunt-a-minute weed habit doesn’t really jibe with TSA guidelines. “Wayne likes to do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it,” says C.J., one of his assistants.

So Saint-Tropez has given way to a resort in the Dominican Republic—a much shorter flight—but even the prospect of white-sand beach-bumming seems to stress Wayne out. At one point, passing in the hall, I say, “So, you’re headed to the Caribbean, huh?”

He keeps his eyes down, mutters, “Something like that,” and brushes past on his way back to the booth.

Despite his million-selling triumph, there’s a voice nagging at Wayne, flaring up in his head like a toothache, crashing the party. It’s the reason he spent the morning he learned about Tha Carter III’s sales recording a song about Tha Carter III’s sales, for release to radio stations that day—“A million sold, first day I went gold/How do I celebrate? Work on Tha Carter IV,” he rapped. It’s the reason he’s here now, in the bleary-eyed dawn, recording take after take of songs with no clear idea of where they’ll end up. Many MCs tout their tireless hustle ethics, but with Lil Wayne, it seems less like a brag and more like a pathology. “It’s a faucet I can’t turn off,” he says. “I can try and ignore it, but I can’t ever turn it off.“

And I gotta keep going, ’cause I still don’t have the crown,” he explains. “Someone else just won Best Male Hip-Hop Artist at the BET Awards. Why not me? Huh? That tells me I’m not going hard enough. That tells me I’ve done something wrong.”

Wayne’s South Beach condo is on the 26th floor of a 35-story tower. Its western exposure is glass from floor to ceiling, offering IMAX views of the speedboats and shipping cranes below. The walls are beige; the furniture, cream leather. A pool table dominates the living room, where a row of black-and-white photographs hang: Martin Luther King, Al Pacino in Scarface, Miles Davis, Bob Marley, John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix (“Cortez set this place up,” Wayne admits. “I ain’t really listened to all of those musicians yet”). Inspired by the art-collecting habits of his friends Jay-Z and Kanye West, Wayne’s thinking about adding a Basquiat to the room (last year, one canvas sold for $10.5 million): “The first time I saw one, I said, ‘It costs that much for this?’ But I want my house to look cool.” On another wall there’s a flat-screen TV flanked by two $2,000 Taylor electric guitars—Wayne’s a competent player, and you can hear him solo on Tha Carter III. “I love when a girl walks in here and says, ‘Oh! Those guitars are such nice decorations!’” he says. It’s the day after his studio all-nighter, and he’s padding around shirtless, wearing plaid pajama pants and matching slippers. “Pfff! I’ll pull one down and start playing. ‘This ain’t no decoration, bitch—I’m nice!’”

Wayne has places in Atlanta and New Orleans, too (“I got an 11,000-square-foot mansion for $1.9 million ’cause of the hurricane”), and even though he uses this one the most, it’s clearly the home of a guy whose true resting place is the tour bus: Vuitton luggage splays everywhere, spilling tees, jeans and Jockey boxers still in the shrink-wrap. Wayne’s sneakers, tossed haphazardly, fill an entire room: The floor is a gnarled topography of Dunks, Air Force Ones, Jordans, Stan Smiths, Bapes, Vans and Pumas. A narrow path weaves through the patent-leather foothills.

There is no evidence that a meal has ever been prepared in Wayne’s kitchen. His stainless-steel refrigerator is stocked like a convenience store’s: rows of Fiji water, rows of A&W root beer and, in the door, a row of Moët bottles. There is no food in sight besides candy. The counter is crowded with Blow Pops, Sour Patch Kids, Snickers, Milky Ways, Dots, Skittles. “It’s always like Halloween in here,” says one of Wayne’s assistants, who goes by T.

Today, T is joined by another handler, E.I., and a hulking Dominican tattoo artist named Juan, who’s waiting to re-ink some of the designs that cover Wayne’s arms, face and torso. As Juan puts it, “I’m gonna throw a whole lot of red on him.” A month ago, Juan wrote three words in red above Wayne’s right eye: I AM MUSIC. (The color signals Wayne’s affiliation with the Bloods.) Today, Wayne places his fists knuckle-to-knuckle, so that a faded message forms, running in cursive along the bottoms of his hands: I AM SELF MADE BITCH! “I need this freshened up,” he says.

Before Juan can start freshening, though, Wayne has to finish what he’s doing. And what he’s doing, of course, is working on a new track. He has a little white iBook connected to a mic in his living room, so he can watch traffic on the 836 while he works. Between takes, he picks from a plastic bowl of tennis-ball-size doughnut holes, toothache be damned.

The song—which may end up on Luv Sawngz, Wayne’s planned R&B LP; on his forthcoming duets album with T-Pain; on a mix tape; or buried forever on an external hard drive—is full of cosmic come-ons that Wayne sings rather than raps: “Shorty, don’t say shit, get in my spaceship/Let me take you to another world/A better world/Probably in the sky, flying with the fishes/Or maybe in the ocean, swimming with the pigeons.” It’s a daffy rhyme, not far in spirit from the ones he was making up last night about Xanax and gummy bears. This is part of Wayne’s genius: He rides free-associative waves, pushes tangents to surrealist extremes, and the results are exhilaratingly odd: gangsta dada. This might have to do with all the codeine cough syrup he drinks. “It’s a narcotic high. It’s like he’s taking a little bit of heroin,” says Dr. Cynthia Kuhn, professor of pharmacology at Duke University Medical Center and coauthor of the drug taxonomy Buzzed. “You can get an otherworldly feeling, and you can feel less constrained by your usual thought patterns.

”But as unhinged as Wayne’s rhymes get, he can strike an intense, no-nonsense figure in person. Spotting Gremlins, Rush Hour 3 and E.T. DVDs on his coffee table, I ask him what other ways he wastes time. “I don’t waste time,” he responds. He watches TV, but has no patience for anything besides the ESPN lineup. “I don’t watch anything where they go ‘action’ and ‘cut,’” Wayne says. “’Cause that means it’s not real. If I wanna see some acting, I can get 15 naked bitches to act out a scene. I’m a real-life nigga. Life’s too short for me to die tomorrow and the only thing I know about is the last episode of Law and Order.”

Wayne has felt this sort of urgency since childhood. He grew up in Hollygrove, a working-class New Orleans neighborhood, and while other kids were playing with toys, he was writing raps and performing them on neighborhood porches. “I wasn’t ever no action-figure kid,” he says. “If I wanted to fight, I’d fight for real.” Wayne thanks his mother, Cita Carter, for this mentality. A tough-as-nails chef, she raised him by herself, teaching him early on how to act like a man. When he was in junior high, she gave him his first Glock, with instructions to empty it into the first guy that messed with him.

At 18, Wayne decided he wanted a teardrop tattoo, the first of four he wears today. These usually signify people you’ve killed, and although Wayne won’t explicitly explain their meaning, he habitually points to his tears when he’s threatening to destroy enemies. “I asked my mother permission to get it, and she respected my choice,” he recalls. “When I came home and showed it to her, she told me, ‘Boy, I might have to get one of those for myself!’”

Atlanta, December 2007. Wayne is camped out, as always, at a recording studio. Tha Carter III was supposed to be in stores this month, but that was before most of the album leaked, denting Universal’s fourth-quarter bottom line. Rather than proceed with compromised material, Wayne decided to scrap it and start over. “There wasn’t a second thought,” he says. “I was like, I got 135 trillion more songs, I’ll just make an album from that.” Even without any more leaks, though, the album will keep sliding down the release schedule, a month at a time, until June. It will be safeguarded against piracy by several means: Engineers from the earlier sessions will be replaced; Bryant will keep the album’s master hard drives on him at all times; when the music arrives at the plant to be pressed onto CDs, boxes will be labeled with the names of less download-plagued artists, like Neil Diamond. Despite this, the album will be all over blogs a week before release.

But that is in the future. Right now, in Atlanta, Wayne is excited about a new song. “I gotta play this for you,” he says, and asks his engineer, Deezle, to cue up a track called “Lollipop.” The song foregoes the hardened, brain-scrambling rhymes Wayne has perfected in lieu of simple, insinuating pick-up lines delivered in an oozing, digitally modulated warble. Wayne grins and shouts over the music, “Dudes are gonna hate this one!” He pauses for effect. “Ugly dudes, that is!”

Flash forward seven months and “Lollipop” is the single that turned Wayne from the biggest story in hip-hop—debated and extolled on stoops, porches, lunch lines and message boards—to the biggest story in pop. With one Auto-Tuned flourish, ladies were invited to the party—and with them, Top 40 radio—and Wayne found himself with the biggest hit of his career. “We’d come in from the weekend and it would be, like, 8,000 spins!” recalls Katina Bynum, a Universal product manager who’s worked with Wayne since Cash Money signed him at 12. “We were like, Were they playing anything else besides it?” She couldn’t remember the last time it felt that great to work at a record label. “We were running up and down the halls, champagne was popping, like, Wow.”

Still, it’s hard to imagine Tha Carter III selling quite so astronomically if it weren’t for all of Wayne’s gray-market output, too. Since 2005’s Tha Carter II, Wayne appeared on dozens of mix tapes and dozens of other artists’ songs—it was a great way to keep up with the breakneck pace of music fandom circa 2008; it proved that he had a wealth of material, not just singles, worth hearing; and it was wildly lucrative. “You call Wayne and ask him for a feature, he says yes, no matter what,” Cortez Bryant says. “Then it’s up to me to work out the money. Wayne gets $75,000 for each guest appearance, but that’s what we call the love fee. The regular fee these days is $125,000.” (If half of Wayne’s 60-plus cameos in 2007 clocked the love fee, that means he made $2.3 million off guest appearances alone.)

Industry execs are busy trying to analyze the Wayne model and figure out ways to duplicate its success. “I’m not sure how you do it. There’s not a lot you can take away from this,” says Sylvia Rhone, president of Universal Motown. “Wayne is sitting on the same shelf with U2, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye—creative geniuses. He’s almost like a poet laureate. You can’t do a case study on that.” Not that the label hasn’t tried to impose its own strategic sense on Wayne. Before Tha Carter III came out, Universal was unhappy with the volume of Wayne material flooding onto the mix-tape circuit and airwaves. They feared overexposure, worried that an audience accustomed to so much free material would be less likely to pony up for a CD. “The label was blunt. They told us, ‘Wayne shouldn’t be doing all this. He’s gonna burn himself out,’” Bryant recalls. “Wayne said, ‘Nah. I’m gonna keep it up.’ He raps like he breathes.”

Like any rock star, Lil Wayne isn’t immune to self-mythologizing. To hear him tell it, he’s a superman: He describes surviving two bullets—one a self-inflicted accident at age 12 and one fired into his bus by an angry groupie—with chuckling élan; he’s an indefatigable hustler: “I’m always in the lab”; and he’s an artist beholden to no one but his own codeine-addled muse: “The word pressure is not in my vocabulary.”

But the man desperately needs a vacation. The first day we meet, he’s running 10 hours behind—handlers try to rouse him from bed throughout the day, but word keeps coming back that “he’s in a coma.” The next day, at his condo, he snaps at T for failing to pack enough cough syrup for the trip to Atlanta. “I thought you said you were doing it,” T protests.

“Me? Why would I say that?” Wayne snarls. “Since when is that my job?”

I’m sitting across from Wayne with a notepad, Juan is sitting across from him with a tattoo needle, and our conversation has taken a prickly turn. Wayne once mentioned that he keeps a set of encyclopedias on his bus, so I ask about his reading habits. Does he ever pick a subject at random and learn all about it?

“No,” he says. “I’m a millionaire.”

“What’s that mean? Millionaires still have things they can learn!”

“Are you a millionaire?” he asks. “No. So don’t tell me what millionaires do.”

And then Wayne’s up, moving again, agitated. “That hurts my bone,” he says to Juan, who’s been inking his elbow. He goes into his kitchen, comes back chugging a can of root beer. He sets it on his coffee table, half-full, and stares out the window, running a finger around his bellybutton. “Take care of that,” he mumbles, and T carries the can to the trash.

Wayne walks over to his iBook and adjusts the microphone. “There’s just one more thing I’ve got to do,” he says. And then he starts working on another song.

http://www.blender.com/LilWayneThereIsNoneHigher/articles/3/39237.aspx

~~~

B.O.B. DOES HIS THING, BUT I THINK IT SOUNDS LIKE TOO MANY OTHER PEOPLE. MEH. WHO CARES WHAT I THINK. HE'S DOING HIS THING. TAKE IT IN.

THIS IS ORIGINAL, BUT TOO ANDRE 3000-ISH. WHATEVER.

~~~

FUNNY!

PSA: Don't Buy Albums from jeff on Vimeo.

LOL @ THE SWIZZ BEATS ALBUM AT THE END. AND THE MYSPACE COMMENTS. FOR REAL!

P.S. BUY MY ALBUMS.

~~~

BUSTA RHYMES GETS NO FUCKING PROPS FOR NOT TALKING ABOUT THIS MORE!!! YOU ARE MY HERO, TREVOR! USE YOUR POWERS WISELY! INFORM MORE PEOPLE ABOUT THESE THINGS YOU THINK!

""I think it's horrible. I think it was done intentionally so that they can start introducing and implementing new things like the AMERO and the national ID card and things like that. They doing things right now and I hope people pay closer attention to what's going on. A long time ago, Mexico, Canada, and the United States became one. So they trying to one world government this side of the planet and all that.

I don't want to get into the conspiracy talk but you know I'm good for that. I'm good for that, you know what I'm saying. Ever since The Coming album in '96, when I told people it was only 5 years left. 2001 you saw what happened downtown, that was 5 years later. In 1998 the cover of Extinction Level Event was what happened downtown, so it's like the information is out there, it's just people don't pay attention to it because at the time, if you pay attention too early, they try to make you look like you bugged out ;you crazy or something's wrong with you. You're just a conspiracy theorist.

I just feel like you know, it's time the people see that things come to pass. Don't ignore anything. Even if they may not come to pass, pay attention to it because at the end of the day, it's better to be safe than sorry. So you can look at these things and be like "What If?" Pay attention to the 'What If’s?'"

WWW.ALLHIPHOP.COM
~~~

ME SOON, LOL.

~~~

MIGHTY MOS, STAYING SLICK.

~~~

THE GAME IS OVER.
DR. DRE DID THE RIGHT THING.
"LIFE AFTER THE MATH" CAN'T BE AS GOOD AS LIFE BEFORE THE MATH, CAN IT, JAYCEON?

AND I HEAR JAYCEON EVEN HAS A DIS SONG TOWARDS BISHOP LAMONT CALLED 'GOING NOWHERE'. SMH.

~~~

AND THIS IS A GOOD NOTE TO END ON BEFORE I GET TO RECREATING MY REALITY:

BET Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment will release an authorized documentary of the Wu-Tang Clan Nov. 18.

Wu: The Story of the Wu-Tang Clan will feature all nine members of the Staten Island collective and will include never before seen interviews and rare concert footage.

In addition to the DVD documentary, an accompanying CD with the same title will also be released. According to a press release, the CD will include “C.R.E.A.M.,” “Protect Ya Neck,” and solo tracks from Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Cappadonna, and the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

Wu: The Story of the Wu-Tang Clan was named best documentary at the 2007 Hip Hop Odyssey Film Festival. It was also featured at the London Black Film Festival, the American Black Film Festival and will be screened at this year’s UrbanWorld Film Festival.

~~~

WORD UP.

LOVE, ADHIMUSIC

PEACE TO MY DAD, WHO CALLED ME A FEW DAYS AGO, JUST TO HEAR MY VOICE. I WISH YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN PATIENT ENOUGH TO LISTEN TO WHAT I WANTED TO TELL YOU, BUT YOU ARE TOO CAUGHT UP IN YOUR OWN HEAD... AND I'M NOT GOING TO LET THAT HAPPEN TO ME.

TIME TO GIVE.
LOVE, MINDBENDER

2008-10-17T07:56:00.000-07:00

KANYE'S AMAZING ADVICE FROM ON TWITTER:

Life is 2 short man. Turn off the TV and get to work. Work on what you love. Live your dreams and hustle like no other. Most of all, enjoy. 2:38 PM Oct 13th from web

~~~

JIGGA SEZ:

AMERICANS, DO WHAT JIGGA SEZ.

Jay-Z joined DJ AM Wednesday (Oct. 15) night for the re-opening of the Hollywood Palladium, less than a month after DJ AM and Travis Barker survived a plane crash that wounded them and killed four others.

Jay-Z and AM performed for nearly two hours, backed by brass and rhythm sections dressed in tuxedos. The first show AM has done since the crash went smoothly, as the deejay didn't miss a step, even rapping with Hov from behind the turntables.

According to MTV News, Jay decided to make it an evening of shout outs. Some were expected, as Jay yelled to the audience "make some noise for DJ AM" three separate times in the concert.

But it was when he dedicated "99 Problems" to John McCain and a "homegirl" described not by name, but as "the one who says 'You betcha.' "

"I'm gonna get in trouble for this," joked Jay onstage, "but fuck it, this is freedom of speech."

WWW.HIPHOPDX.COM

~~~

PEACE TO DAS EFX!!! http://coldrockdaspot.blogspot.com/2007/01/solid-schemehook-track-up_6980.html

~~~

CHECK ME OUT:

~~~

PEACE TO BRAD JORDAN!

~~~

DL HUGHLEY AND CNN? THE WORLD IS OUTTA CONTROL.

After starring in his own sitcom, The Hughley’s and traveling nationwide on the highly successful Original Kings of Comedy tour, D.L. Hughley is ready to try his hand at “reporting” news Saturday nights on CNN. Currently titled D.L. Hughley Breaks the News, Hughley will poke fun at current events, as well as interview political figureheads in front of a live audience every weekend.

In a press release statement, Hughley was adamant about the new gig that will see him sitting alongside a reputable list of well-established anchors. “I am very excited for the opportunity to work with the network that I have watched for a very long time, and that to a large extent, has shaped my comedic view,” Hughley stated. Hoping to provide a fresh face to a network that caters to an average age of 56, Hughley continued, “CNN offers the perfect blend of news and information on a local, national and international level. What more can a comedian ask for?”

CNN U.S. President Joe Klein reiterated this same point adding, “When you watch as much news as our audience does, there comes a time you just want to stop and laugh -- and that time will be Saturday nights at 10 on CNN.” Providing an overall scope of the new show, Klein explained, “The basic premise of the show is, what if a guy like [Hughley] was let loose in the CNN building for a weekend after the lights went off?”

D.L. Hughley Breaks the News will debut on Saturday, Oct. 25 at 10 p.m. ET on CNN.

WWW.HIPHOPDX.COM

~~~

CORY GUNZ SPEAKS. LISTEN.

~~~

OBAMA DIDN'T WIN YET! 13 POINTS AHEAD OF MCCAIN DON'T MEAN SHIT WHEN YOU ARE DEALING WITH THE ILLUMINATI! LOL!

By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama warned his supporters to guard against overconfidence on Thursday as he and underdog Republican rival John McCain opened a 19-day sprint to Election Day.

The two candidates hit the campaign trail -- Obama in New York and New Hampshire and McCain in Pennsylvania -- after their third and last presidential debate on Wednesday, a testy face-off that made an Ohio plumber famous.

So far, all the stars seemed to be lining up in Obama's favor. He leads in national opinion polls and in many of the battleground states where the November 4 race will be won or lost.

A confident but cautious Obama told supporters in New York "We are now 19 days not from the end but from the beginning. The amount of work that's going to be involved for the next president will be extraordinary."

Traders betting on future events in the political prediction markets are overwhelmingly predicting an Obama victory, giving the Illinois Democrat a better than 80 percent chance of winning.

Ireland's biggest bookmaker, Paddy Power, was already declaring Obama the winner. The Dublin-based bookmaker said it would pay out early more than 1 million euros ($1.35 million) on bets that Obama will be the next U.S. president.

But Obama pointed out to deep-pocket contributors at a fundraising breakfast in Manhattan, and later to supporters in a driving rain in Londonderry, New Hampshire, that he was supposed to win New Hampshire last January in the Democratic primary but lost the state to Sen. Hillary Clinton.

"We are 19 days away from changing this country -- 19 days. But for those who are getting a little cocky, I've got two words for you: New Hampshire. I learned right here that you can't let up or pay too much attention to the polls," he said.

In New York, he said: "I've been in these positions before when we were favored and the press starts getting carried away and we end up getting spanked."

NEW POLITICAL STAR

The new star in U.S. politics -- at least for a news cycle or two -- is Joe Wurzelbacher, "Joe the plumber," who told Obama at a campaign stop that he wanted to buy a small plumbing business in Holland, Ohio.

Joe came up about two dozen times during the debate as each candidate argued that their prescriptions for America's economic ills would help the plumber best.

Wurzelbacher was all over morning television shows and was not saying who he would vote for, but he sounded like a McCain backer.

"McCain came across with some solid points, and I was real happy about that," he told the Toledo Blade newspaper.

McCain, speaking at a rally in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, quickly worked Wurzelbacher into his stump speech, arguing that small business operators like Joe the plumber would see their taxes go up under Obama.

"Senator Obama told Joe that he wanted to spread his wealth around. America didn't become the greatest nation on earth by spreading the wealth; we became the greatest nation by creating new wealth," McCain said.

"This is the choice that we face. Three weeks from now, you will choose a new president. Choose well. There is much at stake," he said.

Although McCain went after Obama aggressively in the final debate, it might not have done much to change the shape of the race in its final stages.

Karl Rove, the architect of President George W. Bush's two electoral victories and now a political pundit, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that McCain has difficult but not impossible odds.

"If Mr. McCain succeeds, he will have engineered the most impressive and improbable political comeback since Harry Truman in 1948. But having to reach back more than a half-century for inspiration is not the place campaign managers want to be now," Rove wrote.

The two candidates will be on the same stage again on Thursday night when they give speeches at the Al Smith charity dinner, a political tradition in Manhattan named for the former New York governor and a regular stop for presidential candidates.

~~~

NUFF SAID.
I HOPE I'M WRONG, BUT THE OCTOBER SURPRISE THREAT ALWAYS LINGERS.

WILL WE HAVE THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT EVER?

RESIDING OVER THE WORST AMERICAN SOCIETY EVER?

MAYBE.

LOVE,
ADHIMUSIC

2008-10-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT BIGGIE. THAT'S NEVER A BAD THING. I LIVE VICARIOUS.

~~~

EMINEM IS BACK.

JUST IN TIME FOR ME TO GO BOOYAH!

I MISSED YOU, MARSHALL!

AND I'M GONNA BUY THIS:

" Fiercely intelligent, relentlessly provocative, and prodigiously gifted, Eminem is known as much for his enigmatic persona as for being the fastest-selling rap artist and the first rapper to ever win an Oscar. Now, in The Way I Am, he shares his private thoughts on everything from his inner struggles, to the trials of being famous, to his love for his daughter, Hailie, creating a book that is every bit as raw and uncensored as the man himself.

Illustrated with never-before-seen photographs of Eminem’s home and life along with original drawings, The Way I Am is filled with reflections on his greatest hits, previously unpublished lyric sheets, and other rare memorabilia. Providing his millions of fans with a personal tour of Eminem’s creative process, it is poised to be hailed in much the same way as Tupac’s The Rose that Grew from Concrete, Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, and Journals by Kurt Cobain. "

WANT TO HEAR SOME NEW 2008 EMINEM MUSIC?!

http://zshare.net/audio/2061256371bb36bf/

~~~

JAY-Z RAPPING IN L.A.

~~~

KANYE WEST'S RELEASE PARTY... THE ONE WITH THE 40 NAKED GIRLS! I'MA BE AT THE NEXT ONE :)

~~~

LAST NIGHT'S SHOW WAS FUCKING MAGIC! IT'S TIME!! THE WORLD IS MINE, AND EVERYBODY ELSE'S WHO LOVES TRUTH AND LOVE!
THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO CAME OUT TO THE PARTY. WORDS ARE NOT ENOUGH TO EXPRESS MY APPRECIATION!
MINDBENDER LOVES YOU, AND WILL GIVE MORE EVIDENCE OF THAT LOVE EVERY DAY THAT I CAN!
SINCERELY YOURS,
adhimusic

P.S. MY FATHER CALLED THIS MORNING. HE JUST WANTED TO HEAR MY VOICE. I WANTED TO TELL HIM ABOUT MY SHOW LAST NIGHT, BUT HE WASN'T EVEN TRYING TO LISTEN TO ME. IT WAS WEIRD, BUT COOL. THE UNIVERSE IS A WONDERFUL BEING.

2008-10-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

IT'S GOTTA END ONE DAY! PEACE TO LUSH WON, THE SAURUS AND PHILLIP DRUMMOND!

The Last Dope Run (hi-res) from John Hyams on Vimeo.

~~~

SURPRISE, SURPRISE:
New York, NY (October 15, 2008) – 50 Cent (aka Curtis Jackson) was the top earning rapper in 2007, earning an astonishing $150 million, according to Forbes magazine. He parlayed a stake in Vitamin Water to a 9-figure payout and he continues to be the single savviest businessman in the music game. As he puts it, “If I was just my image, I wouldn’t have made this much money.” 50 Cent’s success is nothing less than the American dream and this show is his coming out party as an inspiration to a new generation of street-savvy entrepreneurs. His forthcoming book, “The 50th Law,” co-authored with Robert Greene (”The 48 Laws of Power”), will share the lessons he learned as a street hustler and how those lessons allowed him to become the massive success he is today. In “50 Cent: The Money and the Power,” hosted by and starring 50 Cent, he will share these lessons with a lucky few. The winner, the young man or woman whose ideas and drive make them worthy of 50’s support, receives a $100,000 investment from 50 Cent himself. “50 Cent: “The Money and the Power” will premiere on MTV on Thursday, November 6th at 10pm ET/PT.

“50 Cent: The Money and the Power” contestants worked together while also living at “Camp Curtis,” a Brooklyn warehouse where they slept in tents named after the five boroughs of New York City. The 14 wannabe moguls, personally hand-picked by 50 Cent, compete in inventive challenges that 50 Cent helped to create, while mastering the skills that took the rapper from his hard-knock life to the top of corporate America. Each week, 50 Cent will narrow down his search by testing the candidates on the knowledge he has taught them while pushing them to their limit. Viewers will be treated to special appearances by LL Cool J, Aubrey O’Day of Danity Kane, Lloyd Banks and radio personality and blogger Miss Info. And since no business mogul can work alone, 50 Cent recruited his G-Unit label mate Tony Yayo to be his “Underboss” and right hand man. Yayo kept contestants in line for 50 Cent throughout series.

Ultimately, the last individual standing will, in 50’s eyes, possess the strongest combination of business flair, strength, ambition, and fearlessness to win the $100,000 and help achieve their dream and pave the way to future mogul status. “50 Cent: The Money and the Power” was mostly shot in New York City (in and around Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, etc…) and will have ten one hour episodes.

In addition to his record label, G-Unit Records, 50 Cent has enjoyed enormous global success across a vast array of entrepreneurial ventures, including videogames, books, clothing, footwear, beverages, personal care products, automotive and more. 50 Cent is set to deliver his fourth major label album, Before I Self Destruct (Shady/Aftermath/Interscope), on December 9, 2008. Accompanying the album is the gritty feature length film, Before I Self Destruct, which 50 Cent wrote, directed and starred in.

“50 Cent: The Money and the Power” is Executive Produced by 50 Cent. Michael Hirschorn, Stella Stolper and Michael Bloom of Ish Entertainment are Executive Producers. Sacha Jenkins and Gabe Alverez are Co-Executive Producers. Chris Lighty and Laurie Dobbins of Violator are Co-Executive Producers. Bruce Klassen is Supervising Producer. Tony DiSanto, Liz Gateley and George McTeague are creative executives overseeing project for MTV. “50 Cent: The Money and the Power” is produced by MTV and Ish Entertainment.

50 Cent’s The Money and the Power debuts November 6 at 10:00 PM.

WWW.ALLHIPHOP.COM

~~~

When he's not deejaying and producing, Quannum Projects founder DJ Shadow likes to hit the blogosphere via his website, DJShadow.com. When asked to clarify his recent remarks to Remix magazine, Shadow blogged that the move away from the Akai MPC series he used for so long was more about change than anything.

"I felt as though The Private Press was the best record I could ever make on the MPC, and I was eager for a change," says Shadow. "It was also important to me that I not get stagnant and start repeating things I had done in the past. So I switched it up and forced myself to 'go back to school,' in a sense. I felt that if I refused to rely on the MPC and learn new techniques my music would change, for better or worse, and change was what I craved most."

Shadow added that he does plan on bringing some form of MPC technology back into the mix, because the sequencer/sampler is still "the easiest way I have found to quickly get a groove going."

One thing DJ Shadow has apparently not abandoned is his love of all things related to the late Soul legend James Brown. Shadow was present this summer when Christie's auctioned off millions of dollars worth of Brown memorabilia. Among the lot was a plaque issued from Georgia Governor and future US President, Jimmy Carter. Carter commended Brown for his 1972 recording, "King Heroin," and added a hand-written thank you note stating, "Thanks for your help with heroin addiction--1972."

When asked about why he would be after such a random piece of memorabilia, Shadow simply replied, "Because he is the Godfather." Christie's reports that the plaque has a realized price of $500. Shadow can also be found as a featured guest on the upcoming album from The Mighty Underdogs entitled Droppin' Science Fiction.

WWW.HIPHOPDX.COM
WWW.DEFINITIVEJUX.NET

~~~

YUP, AND I RAP TONIGHT AT THE RIVOLI! BE THERE!!
LOVE, MINDBENDER

2008-10-08T17:51:00.000-07:00

I WILL BE IN OTTAWA FOR 4 DAYS WITH CONSPIRACY AND MOTHER GODDESS. SEE YOU ON MONDAY!
LOVE, MINDBENDER
~~~

IS THIS RACIST?

"THAT ONE."
HMMM....

~~~

I STILL THINK NAS IS THE GREATEST, BUT EMINEM IS CERTAINLY TOP 5 ALL-TIME:

Eminem has been voted the greatest rapper alive by fans and readers of VIBE Magazine and its website.

Although Em hasn't released a full solo album since 2004's Encore, his fan base has shown that it remains tremendously loyal.

Vibe broke the competition down tournament style, placing a slew of emcees into four brackets: the Notorious BIG bracket, the 2Pac bracket, the Pimp C bracket, and the Big Punisher bracket. The number one seeds in each bracket were, respectively, Jay-Z, Eminem, Lil Wayne and Andre 3000.

After voting each week from July 21 to August 4, the final were decided. Eminem and Jay-Z made it to the final four, as expected. Somewhat unexpected was Game's defeat of Andre 3000 in order to make it to the semifinals, and Ludacris' defeat of Lil Wayne in order to claim the same spot.

Eminem, who had beaten Nas by a slim margin to claim a final four spot, and Jay-Z made short work of Ludacris and Game, respectively. The two legends faced off in votes, and after over 920,000 votes, Em beat out Hov, retaining 61 percent of the votes to Hov's 39 percent.

"It’s obviously an honor to have won the fans' support by being voted the Best Rapper Alive,” said Eminem to the fans on Vibe.com. “I don't think that there is any one rapper that is simply the best though. Everyone who was in consideration and many others are the best at certain things, and at what they do. But since VIBE's offering the distinction, hell yeah I'll accept!"

~~~

FINALLY: SOMEONE WITH ENOUGH SENSE TO NOT SIGN TO DEATH ROW!!!

Blu has finally confirmed what some industry insiders have known for a while: Suge Knight was once interested in signing him.

The Los Angeles emcee spills the details in an interview with Jeff Weiss, who interviewed him for L.A. Weekly's cover story on Los Angeles' emerging crop of rappers. Faced with the possibility of pursuing deals with Death Row or Roc-A-Fella Records, Blu decided to spurn both and link with upstart indie Sound in Color, which distributed his critically acclaimed Below the Heavens [click to read], release in August 2007.

"My cousin was engineering at Death Row and he played the CD for Suge right when he got out [of prison], and had already signed Left Eye and Crooked [I]," Blu said. "My boy told me, just come with me and we'll get signed by either Suge or Roc-A-Fella."

Death Row Records, besides Kurupt's 2004 album, Against Tha Grain, has not released an active artist's album of new material since Michel'le, Knight's spouse at the time, released Hung Jury one decade ago.

~~~

I DIDN'T KNOW JIM JONES SMOKED CRACK. WOW!

T.I. IS 10 LEVELS ABOVE JIM IN EVERY WAY IN LIFE.

Jim Jones has recently made clear his feelings about being left out of the “Swagger Like Us” single .

“I think it was deliberate,” Jim Jones told Complex.com. “I really do think it was deliberate; maybe in my sick twisted mind I’m a little crazy. People know who set the precedent as far as fashion in this industry and people know who damn near changed the world as far as fashion...in the past five years I stepped in and gave them a taste of what rock and roll looks like from my side. I guess people would say from an urban side, and it seemed to catch on like wildfire, to the point that people was going to stores and asking for that Jim Jones look.”

The Diplomats member is now working on a track called “Jackin’ Swagger From Us,” featuring Lil Wayne and Juelz Santana. The song will use the same M.I.A. sample from the original record.

In addition to expressing his less than enthused feelings about being excluded from the track, Jim Jones also had a few words for the artists on the record, including rapper T.I.

“I don’t feel like he possesses any swag. Not like that. It’s fabricated. They’re watching other people, then they try and do it. You know people that dress like T.I.? You know people that go out and say let me get a T.I. outfit or do you know people who say, 'Yo, you’re looking like Jim Jones?' Which one? Lemme hear it! When the bitches want to fuck you and the niggas want be like you, who got the swag? Niggas with money and fame always going to look like they doing something ’cause they got the camera in front of them. But the cool dudes always stick out no matter where they at.”

This week, radio personality Clinton Sparks spoke with T.I. and filled him in on Jim Jones’ recent comments. Tip had this to say:

“Well you know what, that's very funny that either one of you should mention that because my clothing line Akoo will be in stores in November and I believe there will be quite a few people going out to get it. So hopefully, I can step my swag up a little bit. Maybe I can meet his standards. I ain't trippin' over that, man.”

T.I. dismissed the comments made by Jim Jones, calling them “entertainment” and opted not to speak too candidly about the subject.

The two had worked together on Jim Jones' debut album On My Way To The Church.

WWW.HIPHOPDX.COM

~~~

KANYE IS A NUT. BUT I LOVE HIS DEDICATION TO HIS VISION:

Kanye West Says 'Love Lockdown' Video Was Inspired By 'American Psycho'
Rapper also explains what led him to write his book, 'Thank You and You're Welcome.'

By Jocelyn Vena

After Kanye West unveiled the new video for his single "Love Lockdown" on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" on Tuesday (October 7), he admitted that the clip's modern look was inspired by a chainsaw-wielding maniac.

"On this album, I kind of embody Patrick Bateman from 'American Psycho,' " he joked on the show, adding, "You know at the end of the movie [that] he didn't really kill anyone. [I just liked] the clean aesthetic and the way he was all about labels. I wanted to express all of that in the video."

The rapper, who sings on the single, explained that he was ready to try a different direction on the upcoming album 808s and Heartbreak, which was recently slated for a November 25 release. "I had all these ideas and I just needed to get it out as an artistic vision," he said. "I don't have a rapper's name, [but] I have really good taste and anyone who likes it probably has really good taste too."

In addition to opening up about his late mother, Donda West, the rapper also talked a bit about his unlikely turn as an author and the philosophy behind his book, "Thank You and You're Welcome."

"I wanted to come up with a theory that applies to my life in 2008, not someone else's thousands of years ago. I wanted to make a book for non-readers, like myself," he said. "I only read when necessary, so me and my friend designed this book."

WWW.MTV.COM

~~~

LOVE

2008-10-07T08:19:00.000-07:00

MYSTIC IS BACK!!!

http://www.allhiphop.com/stories/multimedia__music/archive/2008/10/07/20559741.aspx

THIS WOMAN IS SO DAMN BEAUTIFUL AND BRILLIANT, I'M SO HAPPY SHE'S MAKING MUSIC AGAIN :)

~~~

T.I., WHY EVEN BREATHE AT JIM JONES? HE'S SO NOT ON YOUR LEVEL IT'S A FUCKING JOKE. PEACE TO JIM, HE WAS A NICE GUY. BUT JIM, YOU CAN'T FUCK WITH T.I., PERIOD.

T.I.'S NEW ALBUM IS PRETTY DAMN GOOD, ACTUALLY.

~~~

GLC, PEACE! GANGSTA L. CRISIS IN EFFECT. NICE!

LOOKS GOOD, SOUNDS GOOD!

~~~

SAIGON SPEAKS:

WHERE'S MY ALBUM, HOMIE!? HA HA

PT. 2:

~~~

RAEKWON.

I WANT CL2.

~~~

DON'T GO DUMB!

The Demise of Hyphy
Thizzle, bling, and blunts may have helped bring down the overhyped hyphy movement. But KMEL pulled the trigger.
By Eric K. Arnold
Published: February 20, 2008

After breaking through to mainstream pop-culture awareness in 2006, the Bay Area's youthful, party-oriented hyphy movement seemed poised to become the next big thing. Fueled by cannabis, thizz pills, and top-shelf tequila, hyphy's uptempo, feverish sound put a psychedelic tint on turf rap. "Go dumb" became the rallying cry for an attention-deficit culture that spread like wildfire, taking over clubs and commercial radio. As silly as it seemed to outsiders, hyphy created an economy whose main selling point was regional pride, built around stunna shades, Bay Area–themed T-shirts, rims, mixtapes, and Mac Dre bobblehead dolls. Despite its ghetto origins, hyphy had surprising suburban appeal. Rebellious, rambunctious, and not a little subversive, its infectious energy was a shot in the arm to a moribund rap industry.

The Bay Area's answer to Atlanta's crunk, hyphy validated the efforts of the independent-label-saturated local scene, which had long struggled to gain a national toehold. Media coverage extended to such nontraditional rap outlets as NPR, Newsweek, and The New York Times. Hyphy's potential seemed limitless; once it hit middle America, there was no telling what it might do.

Yet by last summer, it had all but disappeared from the music industry's collective radar screens.

Many factors may have contributed to hyphy's demise. Contractual snafus and bad business practices by some artists resulted in missed opportunities; major labels signed local artists, then delayed releasing their albums. National media made a big fuss over the controversial practice of "ghost-riding the whip" (putting a car in neutral and dancing on its hood or roof while the vehicle kept rolling). Additionally, hyphy was frequently linked to illegal sideshows, and there were reports of violence at concerts and clubs. Subsequently, overall sales figures never quite caught up with the hype.

Even so, the largest single factor in hyphy's decline may have been the withdrawal of support for local music by KMEL 106.1FM, the Bay Area's top urban radio station and a powerful industry tastemaker.

A year and a half ago, it wasn't uncommon to find at least four or five songs by locally based indie rap artists in rotation at the San Francisco–based station. These days, however, you won't find a current local rap release in KMEL's top 50, or its top 100 for that matter. In fact, the highest-ranking recent single by a Bay Area rap artist the week of February 4 was the Federation's "Happy I Met You," way back at number 187.

At present, KMEL is playing "a lot of Down South music ... anything but the Bay," according to Hannah Wagner, a publicist at SF indie digital music label INgrooves and a regular listener.

Author Jeff Chang, who has written extensively about commercial radio, feels the station has returned to standard programming: "You don't hear a lot of music breaking. You didn't get a sense of excitement like you had a couple of years ago. It's gone back."

A closer look into the absence of hyphy from the airwaves found that while local artists bear a degree of responsibility for the decline of the homegrown art form, KMEL is far from blameless.

Specifically, the station

• yanked local rappers with buzzworthy records from rotation over petty personal beefs

• made it difficult, if not impossible, for artists not aligned with favored promoters to get access to station personnel

• ignored the advice of its own DJs on potential hit records by local artists

• put the kibosh on efforts to spread hyphy in other regions

• engaged in blatant favoritism toward certain artists, alongside other activities that contributed to the fragmentation of the local hip-hop community

• employed a two-tiered promotion system for major-label and independent acts

KMEL's provincial attitude toward local rap artists is perhaps best exemplified by the station's treatment of Mistah F.A.B., a charismatic Oaklander sometimes referred to as "hyphy's crown prince." According to F.A.B., a "personal situation" with current music director Big Von Johnson has existed for years. The rapper speculates that jealousy might be the cause: "Von wanted to be an artist." Still, "It's no bad blood, it's no hatred from me," he now emphasizes. (At press time, Johnson hadn't responded to several requests for an interview.)

In 2005, the hyphy phenomenon was beginning to create a tangible buzz, and F.A.B. had the hottest song in the streets in "Super Sic wit It." When it was initially played on KMEL, presenters announced it as a new song by E-40, one of the few major-label artists from the Bay, who appeared on the record.

Yet after E-40 invited F.A.B. onstage at the 2005 KMEL Summer Jam, the audience reaction was so overwhelming that even Johnson had to give F.A.B. his props. Soon after that, other F.A.B. songs were added to the station's rotation. But his increased profile didn't last long.

In March 2006, MTV aired a segment of the show My Block that focused on the Bay Area. Though other artists were featured, F.A.B.'s charming personality nearly stole the show; he appeared to be a safe bet to be the next rapper from the region to blow up nationally. With a hot album, numerous guest appearances, and several songs on the radio, F.A.B. suddenly found himself weighing deals from major labels.

Not long after that, F.A.B. pitched Johnson with an idea for a new, locally oriented show, to be called Yellow Bus Radio. But KMEL already had a similar show in E-40's E-Feezy Radio, so F.A.B. took the concept to Jazzy Jim Archer, the program director at KYLD-FM (94.9) — located in the same building as KMEL. Archer green-lighted the show, which aired directly opposite Johnson's on KMEL.

That, F.A.B. says, "really made it seem I was going after timeslot. I became his archenemy."

By all accounts, Yellow Bus Radio was a success. The program garnered high ratings on KYLD and was syndicated by other stations across California and podcast by Web sites worldwide. In addition to playing his own music alongside songs by lower-profile locals, F.A.B. used his airtime as a vehicle for community interaction, conducting interviews, and, in keeping with hyphy's special-education theme, reading book reports.

"I don't necessarily want to use the word 'movement,'" F.A.B. says, "but we actually started a big deal with Yellow Bus Radio, which was to give people a chance and an opportunity." However, he adds, "I didn't know it would stir up that much controversy."

The show's run ended because of the rapper's busy tour schedule and because, Archer says, it was "causing F.A.B. some problems in other areas of his career."

In retaliation for F.A.B.'s perceived disloyalty, sources say, someone at KMEL apparently deleted all of his music from the playlist; in addition, his verses began to be omitted from songs by other artists he had appeared on. "Once I started noticing that, I was like, 'Goddamn,'" the rapper says. "That's what made it look like it was an individualized effort to stop me."

F.A.B. loudly blamed Johnson for the deletion of his music from KMEL. "I was real bitter about it," he says now. "There might have been some things said out of spite."

Without hometown radio trumpeting his buzzworthiness, F.A.B. says, major labels started to get cold feet. Atlantic eventually signed him in late 2006, but being persona non grata at KMEL "affected what their whole staff would be able to do promotionally" as far as breaking him, he claims.

Being blacklisted from KMEL also affected the rapper's other major sources of income: money for "features" (appearances on other artists' songs) and concert revenue. When he traveled outside the Bay, F.A.B. says that he was often asked, "Why you ain't getting play in your own town?"

KMEL program director Stacy Cunningham confirms there was an "unofficial" ban on F.A.B., but says the station stopped playing his music not out of spite, but because he was "our competition in the ratings." She claims to have "nothing but love" for F.A.B., but advises, "Don't play the 'Cry me a river' card."

Cunningham says the station never received a copy of F.A.B.'s latest album, Da Baydestrian, adding that even after Yellow Bus Radio went off the air, "there was no real follow-up by the artist."

However, F.A.B.'s issues with KMEL may have had a domino-like effect on the entire Bay Area rap scene. Few of the artists signed to majors in hyphy's wake saw their records released, and those that did come out were often significantly delayed. "Once they canceled my airplay, it put a big halt to the movement," F.A.B. says.

According to former KMEL DJ BackSide, F.A.B.'s conflict with the station was "a very big part of why the hyphy shit stopped."

The Bay Area has long had a love/hate relationship with KMEL. At 69,000 watts, the station casts a sizable shadow over the entire region, from Santa Rosa to San Jose. For many local rap artists, the perception is that the path to commercial success goes through KMEL.

In the late 1980s and early '90s, KMEL earned a reputation for innovative programming, creating the blueprint for the "hot urban" format, a mix of hip-hop and R&B later adopted by New York's Hot 97 and Los Angeles' Power 106. Its annual all-star concert, Summer Jam, was widely copied. The station was the original home of The Wake Up Show, the first hip-hop program to be syndicated nationally. To this day, fans have fond memories of Wake Up Show exclusives like the 1995 Saafir vs. Casual battle, a defining moment in Bay Area hip-hop. KMEL is often credited with being the first commercial station to play the likes of Too $hort, MC Hammer, Digital Underground, Tony! Toni! Toné!, En Vogue, Tupac Shakur, E-40, Souls of Mischief, the Luniz, Mac Mall, Goapele, and the Federation.

Unfortunately, the station hasn't always supported local artists. Following a backstage altercation at the 1995 Summer Jam, Too $hort was temporarily banned from the airwaves, as was Tupac just before his death in 1996 ("At least I'm in good company," F.A.B. jokes).

In 1996, KMEL's parent company, Evergreen, was purchased by Chancellor Media. Award-winning program director Keith Naftaly was replaced by Michael Martin, KYLD's program director, who now oversaw both stations. Martin methodically cleaned house at KMEL, slowly but surely replacing the station's core staff, who had forged key relationships with the local hip-hop community.

In 1999, amid an industrywide consolidation trend, Chancellor's Bay Area stations were bought by Texas-based media conglomerate Clear Channel Communications, becoming part of a national chain which at its peak had more than 1,200 stations, including several in the Bay Area. Even before the Clear Channel takeover, KMEL's programming had become more mainstream. As former KMEL air personality Davey D recalls, "The playlist suddenly shrunk. We had to follow dictates. That was a rude awakening with respect to the local stuff."

In 1998, Oakland's Delinquents sold 30,000 copies of their album, Bosses Will Be Bosses. The group felt its single, "That Man," had the potential to be a big commercial hit on KMEL. "We had a current record with a current single," rapper G-Stack recalls. "We had a street buzz." The Delinquents also had decent sales figures, moving 2,000 copies a week. Despite sending their music to the station, "they still wasn't playing our stuff," he says.

Out of frustration, the Delinquents and a large number of thuggy street dudes confronted former KMEL DJs Trace and Franzen at a club one night, demanding that they receive airplay; rumor has it that someone in the group's entourage pulled a gun on one of the DJs. Urban legend or not, this incident led to a meeting at the station with the DJs and then-music director Jazzy Jim Archer.

G-Stack remembers the meeting well: "We got up in there. They weren't trying to let us in. We told them, 'It ain't gon' be okay to ride your vans through the 'hood.'"

Faced with the threat of retaliation against its marketing street team, KMEL grudgingly conceded a modicum of airplay to the Delinquents. But by then, their album had been out for six months, and the group's momentum fizzled. "We never really had that radio support again," G-Stack says.

The Delinquents' experience wasn't uncommon. In a 2001 interview, E-40 wondered aloud about KMEL, "If you're 'the people's station,' why aren't you playing the people's music?" And in 2003, producer EA-Ski complained that other regional scenes benefited from radio play: "Everybody else is supporting their music, but KMEL isn't doing it."

Rappers haven't been the only ones upset with KMEL. Over the years, community activists have frequently targeted the station. One flashpoint came when Davey D, host of the popular public affairs show Street Knowledge, was fired three weeks after the 9/11 attacks when he hosted interviews with Rep. Barbara Lee and Boots Riley of the Coup that ran afoul of Clear Channel's pro-Bush agenda.

In 2002, Malkia Cyril, executive director of Youth Media Council, formed the Community Coalition for Media Accountability, which studied KMEL's social impact on young people in the Bay Area. Cyril says the station allowed local artists little airtime, and promoted music that tended to criminalize its primary listeners: young people of color.

In January 2003, the coalition met with Johnson, then-community affairs director Cunningham, and a Clear Channel executive who flew in from Texas, to discuss their concerns. Cyril says KMEL didn't share the view that the station should be a public resource: "Big Von's stance was — I'll never forget him saying this — 'This is my radio station.'"

Possibly as a result of the public pressure, KMEL added "Closer," a jazz-tinged R&B single by then-unsigned Oakland singer Goapele, to its playlist. The song ended up being the most-played song on KMEL that year.

"Closer" may well have opened the station's eyes to the fact that there were local records out there that could compete with national hits. Still, KMEL resisted opening up its playlist – until its hand was forced by the emergence of an unlikely rival that threatened its market dominance.

In April 2004, Power 92 (92.7 FM), an upstart station that branded itself "The Beat of the Bay," began its existence by playing 48 straight hours of Tupac Shakur. Its playlist quickly evolved into a locally oriented version of the "hot urban" format. For perhaps the first time, KMEL was suddenly faced with real competition.

The battle for supremacy of the airwaves and the loyalty of the 18–34 urban listening bloc set the stage for what became known as the hyphy movement. Practically overnight, the radio was flooded with local rap music. If, prior to Power 92's arrival, one or two Bay Area rap groups at a time broke through to KMEL's or KYLD's rotation, listeners now had a choice of hearing their music on three stations.

Though owned by the same company, KMEL and KYLD catered to slightly different demographics: KYLD skewed younger and more Hispanic, while KMEL's core audience is older and more African American. By targeting the same demographic as KMEL, Power 92 represented a viable threat to the station's hegemony. Once Power 92 emerged, artists could leverage their radio play by deciding to which station they would first take their music.

KMEL responded to Power 92 with what Davey D characterizes as a "corporate thuggin' mentality." He says labels, artists, and advertisers were allegedly told in no uncertain terms not to do business with Power 92. The new station's street teams were harassed by what the East Bay Express called "Clear Channel shock troops," who piled out of KMEL- and WYLD-branded vans and slapped bumper stickers advertising their stations on Power's vehicles.

DJ BackSide had been a Power 92 street team member for just a week when she was offered a slot on KMEL. In July 2004, she started hosting The Hot Spot, a late-Friday, early-Saturday show. It quickly found an audience among hyphyites eager to keep their buzz going as they headed home after a night of clubbing.

BackSide rapidly became one of hyphy's most visible proponents. In addition to her KMEL show, she hosted an online show at Warner Brothers-sponsored Web site www.hyphymovement.com; produced mixtapes hosted by such luminaries as Too $hort, San Quinn, and E-40; sold her own "Got Bay?" T-shirts; held residencies at non-KMEL-promoted clubs; and received exposure from national outlets like BET. There was a perception, she says, among longtime KMEL staffers that she was doing too much.

BackSide soon found herself an outsider among KMEL's predominantly male DJ roster. She says she experienced some resentment because she was new and because she had come over from Power 92 (which has since changed owners and become LGBT-friendly dance station Energy 92). Cunningham says she respected BackSide's hustle, but adds, "She was young. She didn't know how to handle situations."

BackSide alleges that certain individuals at the station did everything they could to get her fired or removed from the air, including accusing her of taking payola. On May 3, 2005, she remembers, she had just left the New York City offices of Bad Boy Records, where label owner P. Diddy thanked her personally for breaking one of his records on the air.

Not 20 minutes later, she says, she received an instant message from Scotty Fox, 3,000 miles away at KMEL. In a transcript of the conversation provided by BackSide, Fox takes an aggressive tone, accusing her of taking credit for breaking a record other KMEL DJs played on the air first. She denies it, but Fox berates her repeatedly. "U stay in your lane," he warns.

Several times, Fox invokes the name of the station's music director. "This is from Von," he says at one point. After some more back-and-forth, he curtly states, "There's nothing to talk about."

A month and a half later, BackSide was told of a letter sent to the editor of RPM (an industry trade publication) accusing her of taking payola and requesting that she not attend the Mixshow Power Summit, a high-profile conference of the nation's best radio mixers.

At first glance, the letter (which SF Weekly has reviewed, along with other documents supplied by BackSide) looks like an official document on letterhead from Clear Channel's corporate HQ in San Antonio. It claims that the DJ was under internal investigation for accepting plane flights and other forms of payola from Universal and Bad Boy.

Curiously, though, the letter is unsigned, and has no return address. Furthermore, it seems odd that an internal investigation into illegal payola by a KMEL DJ would have originated not at the station, but at its parent company's corporate offices.

After receiving a copy of the letter from RPM, BackSide says she met with Cunningham and Johnson. When asked who could have written it, BackSide gave a copy of her IM communications with Fox to Cunningham. She was then told she was suspended pending an investigation.

After consulting a lawyer, BackSide returned to the station the next day and handed a letter to the HR director detailing the conversation among her, Cunningham, and Johnson. A half-hour later, she says, Clear Channel honcho Michael Martin personally informed her that her show was reinstated, effective immediately.

From that time on, she says, she received a chilly reception at KMEL: "You could cut the tension with a knife." Johnson, she says, "wouldn't even look me in the eye."

BackSide says there was no internal investigation into the letter's authorship, although Cunningham told her the station had looked into her NYC trip and found she had paid for her own ticket. Cunningham says the station confirmed no one from the corporate office initiated any investigation: "Honestly, we don't know who sent it."

In February 2006, BackSide was fired from the station. Cunningham says the DJ didn't help her own cause by falling asleep in her car when she was supposed to be doing her show, resulting in "dead air." But BackSide says she played prerecorded music during that time, adding that she dozed off because her show was moved to 4 a.m. In any event, Cunningham says, "at that point, she knew she was not on the good side."

BackSide's departure from KMEL deprived the hyphy movement of one of its loudest supporters. By silencing her voice, the station closed a door which had allowed the artists community access to otherwise-impenetrable airwaves.

Currently living in Los Angeles, BackSide likens working at KMEL to working at a restaurant: "On the outside, it was great," she recalls. "You go into the back and it's a whole different story. Behind closed doors, was a lot of stuff going on."

Much of the dissatisfaction with KMEL's support of local rap in recent years has centered on Johnson's perceived attitude toward the homegrown scene. As the public face of the station, he is in the difficult position of having to balance the corporate agenda with community needs, while his boss remains behind the scenes. "Von gets the blame because he has allowed himself to be the go-to person," says Davey D, who adds, "You're not seeing Michael Martin; you're seeing Von."

In a 2004 interview, Johnson argued that commercial radio can't placate everyone. "For the records that we do play, I could name 100 people that's still upset," he said, adding that he looks for "good records," not necessarily because an artist is from "this clique or that clique."

However, more than one local artist has found out the hard way that Johnson holds grudges for perceived slights — sometimes for years. "Big Von, he's the biggest hater there could be," says Sean Kennedy, CEO of ILL Trendz Productions, an Oakland street promotions company.

Frank Herrera, an independent promoter for several local labels, says that Johnson has done some positive things for the Bay Area, but "always seemed like he was unhappy with music." Herrera claims Johnson has "played God" with artists' careers and says he often ignored the advice of DJs who advocated for local records they felt were deserving — most notably in the case of the late Mac Dre, often considered hyphy's founding father. After Herrera brought Dre's now-classic "Thizzle Dance" to the station in 2003, "his DJs had to tell him it was a requested song. Von was holding out on the record."

Herrera also says that Johnson was nowhere to be found the day he brought Dre to the station for a prescheduled interview on Johnson's show. Instead, the interview was conducted by another DJ. Although Dre's 2004 hit, "Feelin' Myself," is currently in rotation, Herrera says KMEL "really didn't start playing him until after he passed away" in late 2004.

In the July 2005 issue of Ruckus magazine, Johnson appears to take credit for breaking hyphy artists: "Name someone you knew of before I played them," he boasts.

Yet Johnson may also have held the movement back. Davey D says he was present at a meeting with prominent Los Angeles radio DJs who had been supporting Bay Area artists. During the course of the meeting, it emerged that Johnson was asked by a well-respected veteran DJ whether L.A. musicians could get some KMEL love in return. Johnson reportedly denied the request; as a result, Davey D says, L.A. stations "stopped playing a lot of that hyphy stuff, almost overnight." Reached by phone, the L.A. DJ (who asked not to be named) confirmed Von's refusal.

According to Herrera, KMEL's internal power dynamic shifted in 2005, when Jazzy Jim Archer left the station and Johnson took on a greater role in programming. "Jazzy fought for Bay Area music. I know that for a fact," Herrera says.

The week after Archer's departure, Herrera remembers going to the station and being made to wait for an hour and a half in the lobby of Clear Channel's Townsend Street office as major-label reps paraded past. Eventually, the receptionist told Herrera that Johnson was unable to see him. He asked to speak with Cunningham, who reportedly told him, "Right now we're not seeing any independent people."

"It was a new regime. Things change," Cunningham says when asked about the incident. But Herrera says other local promoters favored by Johnson were allowed access. Cunningham says the new policy allowed indie-label reps to make monthly appointments at the station, while reps from national companies were granted weekly access. "We have major-label Mondays," she explains.

A similar thing happened to Kennedy, who says he had a personal and business relationship with Johnson dating back to the mid-'90s. But in 2005, the two had a falling-out. "That's when he decided to roll with Rob Reyes," he says, referring to the San Francisco DJ whose promotional company, M1, now handles the majority of major-label accounts as well as a significant portion of indie-label accounts for the Bay Area market.

When he was tight with Johnson, Kennedy was able to come into the station and give records to DJs personally, but after their disagreement, he says he was told to drop off the records at the front desk. With his access curtailed, Kennedy says the labels hired M1 instead, "because they can get radio."

Now that he has fallen from favor with Johnson, Kennedy is willing to talk about the nature of their business dealings. Kennedy says he executive-produced five volumes of Big Von's Chop Shop mixtape series, which didn't do as well as other mixes by the Demolition Men, DJ Juice, or DJ BackSide. Kennedy says he ended up giving most of them away, but he still paid Johnson several thousand dollars per mixtape, with the unspoken understanding that Johnson would give special consideration to the label accounts Kennedy was working.

"I was coming back and giving money for records he never sold," Kennedy says. However, he adds, "I never just outright gave him dough and said, 'Play this record.' I should have, though."

Kennedy's account appears to contradict what Johnson told Ruckus: "If you're in the house thinking I take money, I never took a dime."

Allegations of quid pro quo and backdoor arrangements might seem titillating, but the larger point is that KMEL's machinations effectively limited station access to hand-picked local promoters and major-label employees. The end result has been a narrowing of diversity on the airwaves due to what appears to be widespread favoritism on the part of KMEL executives. This extended not only to major-label acts, but to local indies: Artists like the Team (for whom Big Von was the DJ) received considerable airplay, as did rappers with financial ties to M1, including Keak da Sneak and Kafani.

In 2005, KMEL appeared more than happy to go along for the ghost-ride. Yet both Malkia Cyril and Davey D contend the station had ulterior motives. They believe its support of local music at that time was a way to defuse activist efforts to challenge the station's FCC license (which is renewed every eight years) during the public comment period that ended in November 2005. According to Davey D, "The KMEL that played local music did so begrudgingly, under pressure."

In spring 2006, E-40's hit "Tell Me When to Go" made hyphy a national catchphrase. Davey D says KMEL responded by doing what he calls "superserving" local stuff, to the point where he started to feel that the station might be "trying to burn the audience out on the material." Intentional or not, that's just what happened.

According to Johnson, local music was outperforming national hits in 2004. Cunningham says Bay Area artists tested well in KMEL's market research as late as 2006. But by March of 2007, she claims, "they slid down." To the station, this showed that the "local stuff was no longer as relevant," she says. "Everything has a shelf life ... there's only so much hyphy you can take."

Asked why listeners aren't hearing as much local music on KMEL anymore, morning drivetime DJ Chuy Gomez remarks, "There is not a lot of hot stuff out there. ... It all starts to sound the same. Everybody wanted to sound like F.A.B. or sound like Keak. It got kinda stagnant."

Archer says KYLD began to back away from hyphy because of concerns over violence. "The culture that was developing was, unfortunately, not a healthy one," he says. Additionally, he says, KYLD's programming became more focused on "core" artists like Justin Timberlake, which made hyphy less than a perfect fit.

It may be closer to the truth to say that once KMEL's license was renewed, hyphy ultimately didn't fit Clear Channel's agenda. It's well known that commercial radio has longstanding arrangements with major labels, such as artists who perform for free at Summer Jam for "promotional considerations." By killing hyphy, the station could return to business as usual: playing national hits.

According to Cunningham, localism isn't good for commercial radio's image: "You can be a local artist and play up to where you're from, but if every song is about where you're from, there's a problem."

Ironically, she notes, San Quinn, Big Rich, and Boo Banga's "Frisco Anthem" is currently being spun on mix shows (though it appears on KMEL's playlist as "Scotty Fox's 6 O'Clock Chop Shop Mix"). In all fairness, local artists do show up frequently in mixshow airplay — which, coincidentally, happens at peak listening hours — but the artists don't get name recognition for it on that all-important industry barometer of hotness: the playlist.

Even if hyphy has run its course, a larger question remains of why hyphy artists were the only local rappers KMEL was playing. The Bay Area, after all, doesn't produce just one type of rap; nationally respected hip-hop artists like Lyrics Born, Blackalicious, and Hieroglyphics make music with socially responsible lyrics, yet were ignored by the station as hyphy scraped across the intersection of pop culture, leaving behind it a trail of empty Patrón bottles, half-smoked blunts, discarded pillboxes, and reckless-driving citations.

In a 2006 appearance at the Commonwealth Club, F.A.B. — who is clean and sober — told a sold-out house that he purposely "dumbed down" the lyrical content of his music in order to fit the popular radio formula and gain airplay. To a certain extent, the same could be said of KMEL, which stupefied the creative expression of a vibrant local culture — narrowcasting it to the point of redundancy and, ultimately, irrelevance.

~~~

HA. ARE AMERICANS STUPID?

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMMM.....

~~~

HA HA HA!!!

~~~

LOVE LOCKDOWN VIDEO:

~~~

WHAT THE FUCK, JIGGA?

Mogul Jay-Z left thousands of fans disappointed last night (October 6) at Miami’s Bayfront Park Amphithreatre, as the mogul cancelled his second free Obama show at the last minute, due to rumored throat problems.

Upset event organizers first attempted to stall for time, stating the rap star was just running late, but eventually made the announcement to dejected concert-goers.

With October 6 being the last day for eligible voters in Miami to register, organizers feel a great opportunity was missed.

“The whole concert has had to be cancelled because it was Jay-Z who pulled out. We haven’t been told why, but I’m sure all the fans want an explanation,” an anonymous Bayfront Park official speculated.

The free concert/voter registration drive was set to include supporting performances from Wyclef Jean and Rick Ross.

However, the entire event was scrapped due to the backlash from fans after Jay’s cancellation.

This past weekend, both Jay-Z and Wyclef completed successful Miami performances for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Over the past year, Jay-Z has shown vocal support for Obama at his shows, most noticeably on the Blueprint 3 lead single “Jockin’ Jay-Z.”

During the early stages of his campaign trail, Obama citied the rap star as one of the favorite artists in his Ipod.

At press time, it is unconfirmed whether Jay-Z plans to reschedule the Miami show.

WWW.ALLHIPHOP.COM

WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THIS:

~~~

MARTIAL LAW IF THIS BILL DOESN'T PASS? OKAY, LET'S GET IT CRACKIN, 'BENDER. THAT'S YOUR CUE.

~~~

EMINEM'S NEW BOOK IS COMING:

Fiercely intelligent, relentlessly provocative, and prodigiously gifted, Eminem is known as much for his enigmatic persona as for being the fastest-selling rap artist and the first rapper to ever win an Oscar. Now, in The Way I Am, he shares his private thoughts on everything from his inner struggles, to the trials of being famous, to his love for his daughter, Hailie, creating a book that is every bit as raw and uncensored as the man himself.

Illustrated with never-before-seen photographs of Eminem’s home and life along with original drawings, The Way I Am is filled with reflections on his greatest hits, previously unpublished lyric sheets, and other rare memorabilia. Providing his millions of fans with a personal tour of Eminem’s creative process, it is poised to be hailed in much the same way as Tupac’s The Rose that Grew from Concrete, Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, and Journals by Kurt Cobain.

~~~

LOVE THESE GUYS:

D.I.R.T., IN STORES NOW!

~~~

FUCK SARAH PALIN! (PEACE TO LISA ANN AND NAYLIN' PAYLIN'! :)

ILLSEED AND JASIRI X DROP MORE BOMBS!!!

~~~

50 CENT NOT A MAN OF HIS WORD??? AWWWW FUCK. NOW I GOTTA STEP MY SHIT UP A THOUSAND TIMES.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUL5XY8R5Qg

~~~

PEACE TO ROBIN THICKE, YOU PUT ON A DOPE SHOW LAST NIGHT!
WHAT UP DIANE BABES!
LOVE, MINDBENDER

2008-10-04T10:04:00.000-07:00

MICILL SHAZAAM WRITE AND MINDBENDER SUPREME MADE 12 SONGS OF THIS YESTERDAY:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obeah#Obeah_in_popular_culture

~~~

R.I.P. TO JOHNNY J:

Producer Johnny Jackson aka Johnny J. died from an apparent suicide in the Los Angeles County Jail yesterday (October 3).

According to a number of reports, Jackson, who was incarcerated on a DUI charge, allegedly jumped from a tier in the prison, resulting in his death, although the official cause of death has not been determined.

Johnny J., who was born in Mexico and raised in South Central Los Angeles, is best known for the body of work he recorded with the late Tupac Shakur.

He started in the music business at the age of 16, but his first taste of success came in 1990, when he produced the Grammy nominated hit single “Knockin’ Boots” for pioneering “Spanglish” rapper Candyman.

Around 1993, Johnny J started an affiliation with Shakur, which would eventually produce hundreds of recordings land the producer work on a number of high profile releases.

He produced tracks on albums like The Above The Rim soundtrack, as well as Tupac’s Thug Life album, Me Against The World and All Eyez On Me, which contained the hit single How Do U Want It, which was a Johnny J. production.

Johnny J. was prolific as well, having produced or scored music for movies like Blood Diamond, The Fan and The Big Hit.

Johnny J. also released a solo album in 1995 titled I Gotta Be Me and many of his productions on Tupac Shakur ended up on posthumous releases like Until The End Of Time, Better Dayz, R U Still Down (Remember Me) and others.

Johnny J. also worked with a number of artists, ranging from Tatyana Ali and The Outlawz to Lil’ Eazy E’s group The Kings of L.A.

A documentary on his life was also being produced at the time of his death.

WWW.ALLHIPHOP.COM

~~~

EMINEM AND 50 CENT. DOES ANYBODY CARE ANYMORE? I DO :)

http://www.blender.com/BlenderBlogNewPost10022008/Blender-Blog/blogs
/1168/42287.aspx?src=dx25:mtd

50 Cent has been hitting the studio with BFF Eminem to record a few songs for his upcoming album.

"Dre sent over a bunch of beats, and we're just going through them all, picking out who wants what," the G-Unit chief told Blender from Eminem's Detroit home, where he was spending the night. "We already finished one joint"--the Slim Shady-starring "Norman Bates Motel"--"and just started vocals on another. It's gonna blow you away, I guarantee."

Before I Self Destruct, 50's fourth album, is due December 9.

~~~

HOLY FUCK. OUTSIDAZ NIGHTLIFE!

~~~

OBAMA IS STILL RIGHT... BUT I'M NOT SURE HE'S GONNA WIN ANYWAYS. PROVE ME WRONG, UNIVERSE!

ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama counterattacked on Sunday against a new Republican tactic by saying rival John McCain was more interested in a smear campaign than fixing the U.S. economy.

The Obama campaign unveiled an ad hitting McCain as one of the "Keating Five" senators who met federal regulators on behalf of a California savings and loan institution that collapsed in 1989. The ad faults McCain as unwilling to regulate the financial industry.

With McCain losing ground in opinion polls, a campaign strategist was quoted as saying the Republican presidential candidate needed to "turn the page" on the economic issue and make the election about Obama's experience and character.

That effort started on Saturday when Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists" in reference to his acquaintance with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Vietnam War-era militant Weather Underground.

"Senator McCain and his operatives are gambling that he can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance," Obama responded at a rally in Asheville, North Carolina, a swing state where he was preparing for his second debate with McCain on Tuesday.

"They'd rather try to tear our campaign down than lift this country up," the Democratic presidential candidate said.

"It's what you do when you're out of touch, out of ideas and running out of time," Obama told a crowd of 20,000 attending the rally one month from the November 4 election.

Obama's improvement in the polls has been fueled by the public's perception that he can best handle the ailing economy. The Illinois senator kept the focus on the economy and used the "turn the page" quote as a way of keeping the issue alive.

"We're facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and John McCain wants us to 'turn the page?'" Obama said.

"Well, I know the policies he's supported these past eight years and wants to continue are pretty hard to defend. I can understand why Senator McCain would want to 'turn the page' and ignore this economy."

Then he poked fun at Palin's folksy way of speaking by saying: "We're not going to let John McCain distract us. We're not going to let him hoodwink ya, and bamboozle ya, we're not going to let him run the okie doke on ya."

NEW ADS

The Obama campaign released a new ad hitting McCain as erratic during the past two weeks of economic crisis, a reference that could be interpreted as subtle reminder of McCain's age. The Arizona senator, age 72, would be the oldest person elected president for the first time.

McCain was cited by the Senate Ethics Committee in 1991 for "poor judgment" for taking part in the meetings with regulators but said his role was minimal. The committee ruled three senators improperly interfered with an investigation of Lincoln Savings and Loan, whose collapse cost taxpayers more than $2 billion. Its head Charles Keating was convicted of fraud.

But McCain's supporters and his campaign did not back down. They pushed the issue of Obama's character on the Sunday television talk shows and defended linking Obama with Ayers.

"The last four weeks of this election will be about whether the American people are willing to turn our economy and national security over to Barack Obama, a man with little record, questionable judgment, and ties to radical figures like unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers," McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said.

Ayers was one of the leaders of the Weather Underground when it was involved in a series of bombings in the 1960s, when Obama was 8 years old. Obama met him in the 1990s when first starting his political career in Chicago and the two served on a board together.

~~~

NEW COMMON VIDEO:

~~~

PEACE TO BIG FASE HUNNED. I KNOW YOU INSPIRED ALL THE GAME'S DRUG/GANG STORIES!

TELL IT LIKE IT IS, BRUH!

~~~

TECH N9NE. ALWAYS.

~~~

JIGGA AND WYCLEF SUPPORT OBAMA:

~~~

RICHARD TRUMKA? I DUNNO WHO YOU ARE BUT IF YOU'RE DOWN WITH OBAMA, THEN WORD UP!

~~~

DMX IS A DOG WITHOUT A KENNEL:

SORTA.

~~~

I TOLD YOU THAT NAUGHTY BY NATURE WAS COMING BACK!!!

AWESOME!!!!

~~~

PEACE TO NUIT BLANCHE, SUZANNE AND KATE!
GOD BLESS FRANKAH'S SICK STOMACH, DIANE'S DRUNKEN HEAD, AND ALL THE WOODBRIDGE ANGELS!!
PEACE TO LOVELY JOANNE AND THE HERBALIZER, SORRY FOR THE CRAPPY PHONE CRAP.
ONE LOVE FROM MINDBENDER SUPREME

2008-10-03T08:32:00.000-07:00

WORD TO SLUG AND SAGE:

Sage Francis has recently recorded a free song titled "Conspiracy to Riot" in response to the unjust arrests of of journalists, protestors and ordinary bystanders by this year's Republican National Convention in St. Paul MN.

The RNC was marred by the arrest of numerous journalists, including "Democracy Now!" host Amy Goodman and two of her colleagues. Also arrested was Jared Paul, colleague of Sage Franics.

Francis writes, "out of the thousand unjust arrests that will happen this year, why am I focusing on this one in particular? Jared Paul is a fellow Providence poet and musician. We've lived together, toured together, protested together, argued with one another from time to time, and shared many incredible moments over the past 15 years. He is a social worker, a community organizer, a selfless human being and a champion of justice. He'd do the same for me in return. He'd probably do the same for you."

To raise awareness of the situation and money for Paul's ongoing defense, Sage Francis recorded a song, "Conspiracy To Riot," and will be giving it away for free at www.ConspiracyToRiot.com . Jared Paul's complete story is there, along with a place where donations can be made to his defense fund. Slug (of successful independent group Atmosphere) posted his bail.

Francis added, "this has less to do with a friend of mine possibly looking at jail time, and more to do with citizen's rights continually being trampled on. There are thousands of innocent people in jail right now because of their lack of finances. This is a principle thing as much as it is personal."

WWW.HIPHOPDX.COM

~~~

CHRIS ROCK, THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY?

WOW

~~~

COLIN MUNROE IS WONDERFUL.

HOW WONDERFUL? THIS WONDERFUL!

~~~

KARDI, ALWAYS.

BIG UP TO STOLEN FROM AFRICA!

~~~

THIS IS WHAT TIME IT IS:

~~~

WE DON'T BELIEVE YOU, YOU NEED MORE PEOPLE:

Busta Rhymes has had an interesting week. After previewing his new album, unveiling news about a new release date and a new dance, Busta's gotten the chance to perform in London, even after overcoming a conflict with the UK High Court. After all of this, he has been able to come out and reveal his new found joy.

In a recent interview with Tim Westwood, of Westwood Radio, Busta spoke on all of this.

"A lot has changed in the last two months since I last seen you. They detaining me for 12 hours in the immigration," he said, speaking on his immigration hold up before his recent London show. His attitude has also changed to one of joy.

"[I] got a new label situation. I got a new album release date, December 9. I'm happy,"

The songs on his new album may feature some songs that were set to release on his final Interscope album.

"First and foremost, all the records that was gonna come out on the last records was my records," says Busta. "So at the end of the day, my records are on the new label."

He also spoke on what the label move meant and how he felt about his former label, saying, "Big up to Interscope because they put up two hot leak records for me."

A new song that's got some people talking, for better or worse, is "Arab Money." Speculations of a politically incorrect connotation swarmed the song at first, but Rhymes spoke on what it should be taken to mean.

"It's called 'Arab Money.'...'Take the Money' or 'Arab Money'," he said before speaking on his interpretation of the song. "Sometimes, people like to twist things. We ain't mockin' the culture. we ain't tryin' to be disrespectful. Ain't no racism going on right here. If you listen to the song, you see that we are actually acknowledging the fact that the Arabian culture, a middle East culture is one of the few cultures, that value passing down hard work riches that's been built amongst the family."

"It would be nice if a lot of other cultures did the same thing. Feel me? So, I would like for it to be like that in my culture where we could build things to the point where we got so much that we don't need to rely on other cultures to contribute majorly in a financial way, or in whatever other way, to societies, communities or whatever governments we might live in. So, we are actually biggin' up the culture. At the end of the day, I want to be like that. I think a lot of us want to be like that."

His new album is set to hit stores December 9. He is also featured on JakeOne's White Van Music.

WWW.HIPHOPDX.COM

~~~

KID CUDI IS IN G.O.O.D. HANDS:

G.O.O.D. Music's latest addition, Kid Cudi, recently spoke to Urb.com about contributing to Kanye West's 808's And Heartbreak, his upcoming album and how it feels to be a part of West's label. In addition to his solo offering, due in early 2009, the Cleveland native can be found on at least two songs on the West's upcoming album.

"It was dope, helping him brainstorm and all that stuff," says Cudi, who often refers to himself as "The Man on the Moon." "It's like being in the studio with myself 10 years from now. The energy is intense and it feels dope that someone like him gets my vision."

Early reports describe 808's And Heartbreak as an album that relies heavily upon singing and Antares' Auto-Tune technology. While Kid Cudi didn't necessarily deny the rumors, he says singing sometimes has its merits.

"When I’m saying it or listening to it or singin’ it back, it just feels good, rather than just saying a rap," says Cudi. "It sounds a whole lot more interesting…it doesn’t sound so dry. It brings a lot of my character out. I’m a real feel-good type person. And I feel like I have a real good spirit in me. I feel like I can portray that through the melody."

West has yet to give a specific date for 808's And Heartbreak, only stating, "I changed my album to November something 'cause i finished the album and I felt like it." Kid Cudi previously released a mixtape in conjunction with the streetwear clothing company 10 Deep.

WWW.HIPHOPDX.COM

~~~

not much else matters, except this:

Duckdown boss man Buckshot was released from the hospital on Thursday (10/3) after spending eight days in intensive care after suffering from a series of seizures.

The rapper was originally taken to the hospital following his return from an oversees tour. After returning to the States, Buckshot endured a number of seizures and was rushed to receive medical treatment.

Buckshot is not believed to have a history of health issues, however, according to a spokesman for his label, doctors say the rapper was “physically drained” and perhaps exhaustion triggered his seizures.

The rapper was released from the hospital under his own care and to show his turn around in health, he danced his way out of the facility.

“I want to thank all the fans who called and wrote emails extending their well wishes and prayers,” Buckshot said in a statement. “All the support helped me recover that much quicker.”

The rapper has a number of projects on the table. First, is a collabo album with KRS-One for Duckdown. Then Buckshot and 9th Wonder will team again for their third album together. And Buck will reunite with his partners DJ Evil Dee and 5FT for Black Moon’s fourth studio album.

WWW.XXLMAG.COM

~~~

AND THIS TOO, CAUSE THE SONG IS DOPE:

His new song is called “Gettin’ Up” and fittingly Q-Tip is calling on his fans to do just that. And take a stand while they’re at it.

The A Tribe Called Quest front man took to his MySpace blog and asked that his fans help him work toward getting his video aired on BET’s 106 & Park.

“[BET] kinda played me,” the rapper wrote.

Tip explains how he tried to have his video listed to be voted on by 106 & Park, however the clip was never placed among the poll. He cites the network telling him the video was “different.” Although Tip makes it clear he’s not slighting the network, he is asking for his fans to support his having taken a chance.

“I have been doing my music for a long time and I want to continue,” he wrote. “But when you are a real artist and you take chances, which my whole career is based on, you have to force your way through to be effective sometimes. BET feels my video is “different” meaning it doesn’t fit. I want to change that. My video “Gettin’ Up” was posted four days ago and is already over 100,000 views thanks to you! Now let’s take this to the mainstream. A win for me is a win for Lupe, Mos Def, D’Angelo, The Roots, the Cool Kids, Pacific Division, J-Dilla, etc. If BET is forced to play it when it’s time for other artists of our nature to [get] play it will be easier.”

WHO CAN HATE ON THIS? BLACKS ARE OUTTA CONTROL.

~~~

GET YOUR LIFE TOGETHER, AND I'LL GET MINE.
MINDBENDER LOVES YOU ALL

2008-10-02T07:59:00.000-07:00

NEW JOEY BUDDENS:

YEAH, SOUNDS LIKE 'PUMP IT UP' 2008. HE NEEDS TO SWITCH IT UP

~~~

PEACE TO MICHAEL HOLLETT:

Reason to believe
Don’t panic. There’s still time to be talking about the kind of government we want
By Michael Hollett

Like the classic Chicken Little tale, it appears the puffin shit landing on comical Liberal leader Stéphane Dion’s shoulder has convinced some progressives the sky is falling.

Two weeks into a national campaign, it’s still time to be talking about the kind of government we want, not the kind we have to accept.

If Barack Obama can convince Americans that the U.S. is better than the last eight years, why can’t NDP leader Jack Layton convince a significant number of Canadians that Canada is better than the last 18 months?

As the Liberal party implodes and fields the least electable candidate since the ass-grabbing John Turner, why should progressive Canadians be asked to consider falling behind this fading parade?

After only 14 days of electioneering, Liberal “insiders” are already squealing to the press, exposing dissension in the once Big Red Machine’s ranks. There would have been bodies in the backwoods with this kind of insubordination back in Liberal fixer Keith Davey’s day, but under Dion’s corduroy rule, loyalists are desperate to distance themselves from what they see as an imminent disaster.

Layton is the second-most-popular choice for prime minister among Canadians in these early stages, and, except for his fossil-fuelled attempt to bar Green leader Elizabeth May from the leaders’ debate, he has also been running the second-best campaign.

By ditching his suit jacket for a sweater, Stephen Harper has managed to soft-pedal his hardcore values, but as the North American economy crumbles, why assume his lint-free run is forever?

As reports of the collapsing Liberal and Bloc Quebecois vote eat up newspaper inches, mainstream media often feature positive reports of the NDP run. If Ja-?rack Layton could stop rhyming off huge spending numbers and start expressing his dreams by stealing a bit of Obama’s politics of hope, why couldn’t he ignite an electoral brush fire among the majority of Canadians opposed to Harper’s cruel rule?

For the first time since forever, the NDP even has a chance of electing MPs in Quebec, and their Montreal-?bred bilingual leader could be a real option for social democratic Bloc Quebecois supporters tired of the stale Sovereignty Show.

There is no certainty around elections, and voters and votes cannot be moved around easily like poker chips or small change. It’s hard to imagine supporters of the newly ascendant Green party, perhaps a real party for the first time ever, stepping aside to be part of some amorphous alliance of the left.

And with the Liberals in such disarray, it’s getting harder to determine who is the real progressive front-runner in the strategic voting game.

Did anyone foresee the complete collapse of the Conservative party under Kim Campbell in 1993? Lyn McLeod (remember her?) and her Liberals seemed poised to take Ontario in 1995 until Mike Harris and his nasty Tory team came out of nowhere in the election’s final week.

And when Bob Rae was still an NDPer, the provincial party stole a 1990 Ontario victory that even its own members couldn’t have predicted.

There’s plenty of election left. Harper and his team have ample opportunity to go for the gaffes. And the uncertainty that surrounds battlefields and banking could still make his campaign explode in his face.

As we like to say on the left, it ain’t over till the fat person sings.

michaelh@nowtoronto.com

~~~

HIP HOP'S GREATEST RELEASE DATE EVER:

http://www.complex.com/blogs/2008/09/30/remembering-hip-hops-greatest-release-date/

HONESTLY, I BOUGHT 'BRAND NUBIAN' THAT DAY, AND NOTHING ELSE. SO WEIRD, LOL!

~~~

BUSSA BUS:

~~~

K, I'M DONE NOW.
ONTO THE NEXT MISSION!
LOVE,
ADHIMUSIC

2008-09-30T14:50:00.001-07:00

HOW AWESOME IS THIS? REDMAN RULES!

~~~

I LOVE YOU, NOW!
MINDBENDER DROPS TRUTH ON BUSTA RHYMES, A CHILDHOOD HERO OF MINE WHO HAS FORGOTTEN WHERE HE PUT HIS CAPE:

http://www.nowtoronto.com/daily/story.cfm?content=165130

~~~

Barack Obama Says McCain's Debate Attacks 'Didn't Make Much Sense'

'John McCain has promoted the same policies of George Bush, and people know they're not working,' Obama says in first post-debate interview.

By James Montgomery, with reporting by Sway Calloway

Less than 15 hours after he made his closing remarks in the first presidential debate, Democrat Barack Obama gave his first post-debate interview when he and running mate Joe Biden sat down with MTV News following a campaign stop in Greensboro, North Carolina.

The discussion ran the gamut from Biden to Kanye West, but Obama seemed most eager to dissect Friday night's often-testy debate with Republican nominee John McCain, specifically McCain's repeated assertions that his experience makes him the stronger candidate and that Obama "just doesn't understand" the complexities of issues like foreign policy and the economy.

"I don't get taken aback by that kind of stuff. The problem was, every time he said it, when he tried to follow it up with an actual statement about policy or his positions about what it was he presumably understood or did 'get,' it didn't make much sense," Obama told MTV News' Sway Calloway. "If you look at Iraq, for example, the question was asked, 'What lessons have you learned?' and his lesson was 'Well, we should just stay.' Well, that's not a policy. ... The question was 'Should we have gone?'

"He says that because he doesn't have a record to defend himself. We've become accustomed in our politics to folks just being able to make stuff up — it's one of the few areas of public life where the standards somehow are lowered in terms of what you say about other people," he continued. "For example, he suggested that I'm talking about raising everybody's taxes, when every analyst has shown I'm actually calling for a tax cut for 95 percent of [American] families."

He also took issue with a just-released McCain campaign commercial, which made pointed reference to the number of times Obama agreed with the Arizona senator's comments during the debate: "I don't assume the American public are passive consumers, watching these things going, 'Oh, John McCain runs an ad, so I guess it must be true.' If that were the case, we'd already be losing." Obama also addressed a recent New York Times story that pointed out "dubious claims" in some of his own campaign ads.

"The truth is, we put out tons of ads, and there have been two or three times where we've slipped beneath my standards, where it was kind of a stretch. And when that happens, I tell my team, 'Pull it down,' " he said. "In this kind of thing — where it's a fierce competition — it's not going to be perfect. [But] I think generally people will take a look at how we've run this campaign, and people will say, 'This is someone who has been positive, who's been factual and who's been trying to promote the core ideal that we need to change our economic policies so that we have prosperity not just at the top, but in the middle of America.' "

And to that point, Obama said he wasn't outwardly concerned with who actually won last night's debate (though, when pressed, he admitted that he has data that says he did), but rather that the issues wouldn't get lost in the post-debate cloud, saying that, oftentimes, the media get too focused on who won instead of what's really important to the American people: "What did each candidate say?"

"I think the pundits and the press, you guys are looking at tactics. What the American people are looking at is they might lose their job ... they might lose their house," he said. "And I could cite all the polls that showed the overwhelming number of people who watched [the debate] thought I won ... but even that's not actually relevant. What's relevant is the substance of this thing, which is people out there are hurting, and John McCain has promoted the same policies of George Bush, and people know they're not working. They understand we can't continue four more years of doing the same thing."

~~~

I LIKE WHEN COPS RAP, LOL:

~~~

FUCK THE WORLD, DON'T ASK ME FOR SHIT, CAUSE EVERYTHING YOU GET YOU GOTTA WORK HARD FOR IT!
PEACE TO THE GOOD ONES
LOVE,
MINDBENDER

2008-09-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

JOKES! THIS GUY DID THE NEWS IN RAP FORM. WORD WORD! AND PEACE TO WWW.ALLHIPHOP.COM

MORE JOKES!

LAST NIGHT, I GRADUATED AGAIN.
PEACE TO COMMON AND PHARRELL, PEACE TO THE GOOD PEOPLE AT THE POLARIS AWARDS PARTY AND AFTERPARTY (BIG UP TO THE ENGAGED HOMIE STINKIN' RICH AND DWIGHT IRELAND, AND GUARAV MY SAVIOR AND SHADRACH FUCKING KABANGO, WHO I WISHED WON. I WILL HOPEFULLY COP IT FOR YOU NEXT YEAR, BROTHER MAN!!!)
PEACE TO COMMON AND PHARRELL AND REMG STAFF, AND HEAL WELL, JONATHAN RAMOS!
MY LIFE WAS A MOVIE YESTERDAY.
MEGAN AND KUBOTA AND YOUR NEW FRIEND, ALL OF YOU ROCK AND I LOVE YOU ALL!
LIFE IS PARADISE HEAVEN, EVEN IN THE RAIN OF TODAY...
SINCERELY YOURS,
MINDBENDER

2008-09-29T08:27:00.000-07:00

USAIN BOLT!!!

PEEW!

~~~

50 CENT IS PRESIDENT: http://www.zshare.net/audio/19559273fb1831a9/

NOT BAD. BETTER THAN MOST OF T.O.S.!

~~~

THE BEATNUTS ARE BACK!!

~~~

MAAAAAD RESPECT FOR JOELL ORTIZ:

~~~

LLOYD BANKS LIKE HILLARY, LOL:

Investment Lloyd Banks from jeff on Vimeo.

~~~

LOVE THIS GUY.

~~~

KARDINAL IN SPAIN. YOU GO, HOMIE!

~~~

CROOKED I IS THE FUCKING REAL:

~~~

BUSTA RHYMES SPEAKS ON HIS KARMA BITE

~~~

B-REAL'S ONE HANDED SPLIFF ROLL. WELL DONE! BIG UP TO AMY :)

~~~

T.I. WILL SHOOT YOU IF YOU DON'T BUY HIS NEW 'PAPER TRAIL' ALBUM, LOL:

T.I. WISDOM:

~~~

PEACE TO JANET JACKSON, LL COOL J, KID CUDI, AND ALL THE PEOPLE I LOVE WHO I SAW THIS WEEKEND! YOU KNOW WHO YOU ANGELS ARE :)
I LOVE LIFE, BUT MUST LIVE IT BETTER.
AND I THINK MY FAVORITE MOVIE EVER IS 'SEX AND DEATH 101'. SEE IT!!!
LOVE, MINDBENDER

2008-09-26T08:10:00.000-07:00

PEACE TO WWW.OKAYPLAYER.COM!

Kardinal Offishall
Not 4 Sale

(Konlive/Geffen : 2008)

89 OUT OF 100

Posted on 09/15/2008

Those outside of Toronto may find it difficult to understand what Kardinal Offishall’s Not 4 Sale means to the city. In a scene long overlooked by an industry whose center was just south of its border, Kardinal (alongside few others), has been carrying a generation of heads on his shoulders for years. For many internationally, Kardinal has become the quintessential Toronto emcee, building a rep locally while outside recognition crept in.

Some Kardi fans, in defense of hip-hop and in the name of “realness,” may take issue with a few of the high profile (read: mainstream, commercial, pop) guest spots. They might question T-Pain’s talent and hate on Akon’s skills. But really, “Numba 1 (Tide is High)” is a clever remake, even with Rihanna lacing it.

Listeners will be hard pressed to find fault with “Due Me A Favour,” featuring Estelle and “Set it Off,” will be a definite hit for the club kids. “Nina,” a sweet tune reminiscent of Beres Hammond, conjures up memories of couples in dimly lit basement jams. And “Burnt,” with its creative lyrics, dancehall influence, and signature cadence, is classic Kardinal.

Toronto, a city in which residents acknowledge its long standing self-hate issues, rarely ever cheered for the home team. However, with Not 4 Sale the T Dot can proudly support one of its own without the guilt of nepotism. Kardinal Offishall skanks to the beat of his own riddim – a rude bwoy with a rude bwoy walk.

- Alison Isaac

http://www.okayplayer.com/reviews/september-2008/kardinal-offishall-200809156432/

~~~

ILL WILL STRICKLAND, YO!

~~~

Frank Moulaert and Allen John Scott’s 1997 work Cities, Enterprises and Society on the Eve of the 21st Century: A State of Knowledge makes the point that there has been a general shift in the way we look at the city. We’ve moved from the notion of the city as a reproduction of the labor force to a notion of the city being a productive force of its own. While they warn us against over-simplifying that shift, they note it as an important one and so do I.

In my post on House music and Chicago, there was a comment by Felix saying that he had gone to the city to find some vestige of the music’s history but could find none, but that he “walked around listening to Mr Fingers on my headphones…that was almost enough.” He makes an interesting point. There is something to be said about that special feedback loop - listening to the products of a city in the city that produced it - that is so revealing. A city’s music is like it’s signal to the world. When we talk about a city being “put on the map” so-to-speak by an artist or a song, we’re really saying that the world responded to that signal in a way that valorizes that place. When an artist is propelled from the local to the international level, by representing their home it’s like that locality is also made international.

And so the opening lines of this review of the latest offering from Toronto artist Kardinal Offishall spoke to me, specifically as someone born and raised in the GTA, and even more specifically as someone raised in the GTA’s urban music scene. The writer captures something that I also observed in listening to the album and being from the city. As an urban music scene, we have been working toward the international level of respect and recognition for some time, but Toronto’s productive forces are so unique - from the physical geography, to the cultural demographics, to the nightlife. We permit and respect and resolve so many cultures within the city that the signal we put out can often be misunderstood as noise. Perhaps understandably so - complex productive forces wouldn’t necessarily create a product that is simple to understand. It would take time to make intelligible. After listening to that album though, I couldn’t help but smile and feel very well represented. In simple choices of diction, lyrics, collaborators, etc. Kardinal made an album that could only come from a Torontonian and one that radiates with locality at an international level. After working at it for over 10 years, it seems like he’s made something of a signal from the city’s noise. We’ll see if the world responds commercially.

Can you identify the artistic products of your city through the dull hum of the homogenization of popular culture? What is distinct about them with respect to the locality and its productive forces? What does it take to get a local scene’s signal out to the world? How do you keep it honest with respect to that locality?

And now, as always, some music.

http://www.creativeclass.com/creative_class/2008/09/18/the-productive-forces-of-the-city-noise-vs-signal/

~~~

CHANG IS GOD.

Veteran rhymesayers Nas and Mos Def will be among the artists carrying the banner of Hip-Hop overseas for the Rock the Bells 2008 International Festival Series.

The SanDisk-sponsored outing, which kicks off Oct. 31 in Prague, Czech Republic, marks its first appearance outside the US with scheduled stops in Amsterdam, Stockholm and Paris before concluding Nov. 12 at Manchester’s Apollo.

The chance to take part in a major milestone in Rock the Bells and Hip-Hop history proved to be too good to pass up, according to Nas.

"I've been down with Rock The Bells since day one, and I'm excited to be a part of Hip-Hop history for the first Rock The Bells festivals in Europe," said the Queensbridge rapper, who will perform classic songs in addition to new material from his latest release Untitled.

"It’s an honor and blessing to share the stage with so many artists that I truly love and appreciate on so many levels."

Like Nas, Mos Def will take the stage to perform new tracks from his highly anticipated new album The Ecstatic.

The rappers won’t be the only entertainers on hand for the international Rock the Bells trek.

All four original members of the Los Angeles-based collective the Pharcyde will reunite on stage for the event, which also includes performances by Supernatural, former Roots member Scratch, De La Soul and EPMD, who will join the tour in Prague, Amsterdam and Birmingham.

"When I first heard the line-up for Rock The Bells, all I could think was what more can anyone ask for?," said Dave, aka Plug Two from De La Soul. "If there ever was a hip-hop tour that made reminiscing more pleasant, Rock The Bells ’08 was it…and now to go to Europe, can’t wait!"

The inaugural European Rock the Bells festival series comes amid the recent conclusion of the outing’s 10-city US leg at The Gorge in George, WA.

The show's line up of artists is a dream come true for event organizer Chang Weisberg, who feels the tour’s initial shows "represent the beginning of our long-term commitment to bring quality Hip-hop events on a more regular basis globally."

"We are thrilled that Rock The Bells is launching its inaugural series of festivals in Europe. It is the first American hip-hop platform to do so," Weisberg told AllHipHop.com in a statement. "We appreciate the enthusiastic support of all our partners especially SanDisk, Live Nation, and all the fans who love quality live music experiences."

The following is a list of Rock the Bells 2008 International Festival Series dates.

The BBC’s digital Black Music station, 1Xtra, will have exclusive interviews and live music from the UK leg of the tour.

For details, visit www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/events.

Oct. 31 – Prague, Czech Republic – T-Mobile Arena –Nas, Mos Def, De La Soul, The Pharcyde, EPMD, Supernatural and Scratch

Nov. 1 – Amsterdam, Holland – Heineken Music Hall – Nas, Mos Def, De La Soul, The Pharcyde, EPMD, Supernatural and Scratch

Nov. 4 – Stockholm, Sweden – Annexet – Nas, Mos Def, De La Soul, Supernatural and Scratch

Nov. 6 – Birmingham, UK – Birmingham Academy – Nas, Mos Def, The Pharcyde, Supernatural and Scratch

Nov. 10 – Paris, France – Zenith – Nas, Mos Def, The Pharcyde, Supernatural and Scratch

Nov. 12 – Manchester Apollo – Nas, Mos Def, The Pharcyde, Supernatural and Scratch

WWW.ROCKTHEBELLS.NET

~~~

THE ROCKNESS FILES:

~~~

RIGHTEOUS BLAOW!

ROOT CHAKRA
Muladhara, 1st Chakra

A trembling in the bones may carry a more convincing testimony than the dry documented deductions of the brain. ~Llewelyn Powers

There is deep wisdom within our very flesh, if we can only come to our senses and feel it. ~Elizabeth A. Behnke

I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. ~Henry David Thoreau

Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense. ~Henry Miller

Every man is the builder of a Temple called his body, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. ~Henry David Thoreau

The body never lies. ~Martha Graham

What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera. ~Aldous Huxley

Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become. But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, translated from French by Stuart Gilbert

To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another. ~Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

And remember, no matter where you go, there you are. ~Confucius

SACRAL CHAKRA
Svadhisthana, 2nd Chakra

To give vent now and then to his feelings, whether of pleasure or discontent, is a great ease to a man's heart. ~Francesco Guicciardini

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement. ~Alfred Adler

Let's not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it. ~Vincent Van Gogh, 1889

What is commonly called love, namely the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh. ~Henry Fielding

Sex is emotion in motion. ~Mae West

Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
~John Donne, Extasy

Emotion always has its roots in the unconscious and manifests itself in the body. ~Irene Claremont de Castillejo

The tragedy is when you've got sex in the head instead of down where it belongs. ~D.H. Lawrence

The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie. ~Agnes de Mille

Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather. ~Martha Graham

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain. ~Carl G. Jung

Socrates learned to dance when he was seventy because he felt that an essential part of himself had been neglected. ~Source Unknown

Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person's physical, emotional, and mental states. ~Carol Welch

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth. ~Benjamin Disraeli

SOLAR PLEXUS CHAKRA
Manipura, 3rd Chakra

No man is free who is not a master of himself. ~Epictetus

They are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their own powers. ~Christian Bovee

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to heaven.
~William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves. ~Edmund Hillary

Learning too soon our limitations, we never learn our powers. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself. ~Epicurus

I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship. ~Louisa May Alcott

Chiefly the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands. ~Francis Bacon

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

It's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you're not. ~Author Unknown

The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid. ~Lady Bird Johnson

Whether you think you can or think you can't - you are right. ~Henry Ford

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Put your future in good hands - your own. ~Author Unknown

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within. ~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The words "I am" are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to. The thing you're claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you. ~A.L. Kitselman

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. ~Anaïs Nin, Diary, 1969

You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them. ~Michael Jordan

If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground. ~Henrik Ibsen

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself. ~Michel de Montaigne

If I am not for myself, who will be? ~Pirke Avoth

Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul. ~Henry Van Dyke, The Prison and the Angel

The greatest hazard of all, losing one's self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed. ~The Sickness Unto Death

We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war. ~Charles Caleb Colton

A wise man never loses anything if he have himself. ~Michel de Montaigne, translated

Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him. Then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, "This I am today; that I will be tomorrow." ~Louis L'Amour

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to them, if they will not apply themselves to me. ~Michel de Montaigne, Essays, 1588

I am,
indeed,
a king,
because I know how
to rule myself.
~Pietro Aretino, 10 May 1537

Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got. ~Janis Joplin

The value of identity of course is that so often with it comes purpose. ~Richard Grant

He who knows others is learned;
He who knows himself is wise.
~Lao-tzu, Tao te Ching

Every man is the architect of his own fortune. ~Sallust

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. ~Seneca

Every time you don't follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness. ~Shakti Gawain

You must have control of the authorship of your own destiny. The pen that writes your life story must be held in your own hand. ~Irene C. Kassorla

Life is the sum of all your choices. ~Albert Camus

HEART CHAKRA
Anahata, 4th Chakra

When your heart speaks, take good notes. ~Judith Campbell

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. ~William Shakespeare

The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of. ~Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. ~Dalai Lama

If you haven't any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble. ~Bob Hope

Kindness is the greatest wisdom. ~Author Unknown

The first and highest law must be the love of man to man. Homo homini Deus est - this is the supreme practical maxim, this is the turning point of the world's History. ~Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity

The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience. Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around.... Throughout history, "tender loving care" has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing. ~Larry Dossey

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. ~Mother Teresa

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
~William Shakespeare, Mid-Summer Night's Dream, 1595

Who, being loved, is poor? ~Oscar Wilde

A baby is born with a need to be loved - and never outgrows it. ~Frank A. Clark

Love is, above all, the gift of oneself. ~Jean Anouilh

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity. ~Henry Van Dyke

A bell is no bell 'til you ring it,
A song is no song 'til you sing it,
And love in your heart
Wasn’t put there to stay -
Love isn’t love
'Til you give it away.
~Oscar Hammerstein, Sound of Music, "You Are Sixteen (Reprise)"
(Thanks, Krystel)

It is astonishing how little one feels alone when one loves. ~John Bulwer

Love never reasons but profusely gives; gives, like a thoughtless prodigal, its all, and trembles lest it has done too little. ~Hannah Moore

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. ~Zora Neale Hurston

Love is the poetry of the senses. ~Honoré de Balzac

A man is not where he lives, but where he loves. ~Latin Proverb

What "love" is I don't know if it's not the response of our deepest natures to one another. ~William Carlos Williams

Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up. ~Jesse Jackson

It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice. ~Author Unknown

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. ~Mark Twain

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness. ~Seneca

There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life - reciprocity. ~Confucius

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these. ~George Washington Carver

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. ~John Wooden

If those who owe us nothing gave us nothing, how poor we would be. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~Attributed to both T.H. Thompson and John Watson

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. ~Leo Buscaglia

A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives roses. ~Chinese Proverb

Open your heart - open it wide; someone is standing outside. ~Quoted in Believe: A Christmas Treasury by Mary Engelbreit

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again. ~Og Mandino

I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again. ~William Penn

THROAT CHAKRA
Vishudha, 5th Chakra

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. ~Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1907

To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks. ~Ben Jonson

The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

By swallowing evil words unsaid, no one has ever harmed his stomach. ~Winston Churchill

The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie. ~Agnes de Mille

There is in a man an upwelling spring of life, energy, love, whatever you like to call it. If a course is not cut for it, it turns the ground round it into a swamp. ~Mark Rutherford (William Hale White), More Pages from a Journal, 1910

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak. ~Epictetus

Talking is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hands on the strings to stop their vibration as in twanging them to bring out their music. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't being said. ~Author Unknown

Keep your words soft and tender because tomorrow you may have to eat them. ~Author Unknown

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make. ~Truman Capote, McCall's, November 1967

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. ~Lord Byron

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer

Every word born of an inner necessity - writing must never be anything else. ~Etty Hillesum, quoted in Ten Fun Things to Do Before You Die by Karol Jackowski

A writer's mind seems to be situated partly in the solar plexus and partly in the head. ~Ethel Wilson

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes. ~Theodore Dreiser, 1900

Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. ~Henry Ward Beecher

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. ~Amy Lowell

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for. ~Georgia O'Keeffe

Art is your personal diary where you may color your thoughts and emotions on a page. ~Sara, Los Cerros Middle School, 1999

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything. ~Mark Twain

The truth needs so little rehearsal. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

BROW CHAKRA
Ajna, 6th Chakra

We have five senses in which we glory and which we recognize and celebrate, senses that constitute the sensible world for us. But there are other senses - secret senses, sixth senses, if you will - equally vital, but unrecognized, and unlauded. ~Oliver Sacks

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. ~Henry David Thoreau

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do. ~Benjamin Spock, Baby and Child Care, 1977

Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way. ~Florence Scovel Shinn

Reasoning at every step he treads,
Man yet mistakes his way,
Whilst meaner things, whom instinct leads,
Are rarely known to stray.
~William Cowper

There is a wisdom of the head, and... a wisdom of the heart. ~Charles Dickens

The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have. ~John Locke, 16 May 1699

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's. ~Billy Wilder

Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out. ~Michael Burke

Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness. ~John Sterling

Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level. ~Joyce Brothers

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. ~Theodore Geisel

CROWN CHAKRA
Sahasrara, 7th Chakra

Beyond my body my veins are invisible. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer. ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts. ~K.T. Jong

It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling. ~Robert M. Pirsig

God, why do I storm heaven for answers that are already in my heart? Every grace I need has already been given me. Oh, lead me to the Beyond within. ~Macrina Wieherkehr

There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away. ~Henry Ward Beecher

Never be afraid to sit awhile and think. ~Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

Not all those who wander are lost. ~J.R.R. Tolkien

We can be Knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom. ~Michel de Montaigne

Wisdom begins at the end. ~Daniel Webster

Patience is the companion of wisdom. ~St. Augustine

Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe. ~Josh Billings

There is no god higher than truth. ~Mahatma Gandhi

Before enlightenment - chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment - chop wood, carry water. ~Zen Buddhist Proverb

BALANCE, BODY, & HEALTH

Our bodies are our gardens - our wills are our gardeners. ~William Shakespeare

What fools indeed we morals are
To lavish care upon a Car,
With ne'er a bit of time to see
About our own machinery!
~John Kendrick Bangs

Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other. ~Henry David Thoreau

The... patient should be made to understand that he or she must take charge of his own life. Don't take your body to the doctor as if he were a repair shop. ~Quentin Regestein

Health is a large word. It embraces not the body only, but the mind and spirit as well;... and not today's pain or pleasure alone, but the whole being and outlook of a man. ~James H. West

Yet this is health: To have a body functioning so perfectly that when its few simple needs are met it never calls attention to its own existence. ~Bertha Stuart Dyment

Enough is as good as a feast. ~English Proverb

Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance. ~Epicurus

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short. ~Confucius, Analects

The human body is a machine which winds its own springs. ~Julien Offroy de la Mettrie, L'Homme Machine

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs. ~Aldous Huxley

If the mind, that rules the body, ever so far forgets itself as to trample on its slave, the slave is never generous enough to forgive the injury, but will rise and smite the oppressor. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Some patients I see are actually draining into their bodies the diseased thoughts of their minds. ~Zacharty Bercovitz

The best and most efficient pharmacy is within your own system. ~Robert C. Peale

The greatest wealth is health. ~Virgil

The best six doctors anywhere
And no one can deny it
Are sunshine, water, rest, and air
Exercise and diet.
These six will gladly you attend
If only you are willing
Your mind they'll ease
Your will they'll mend
And charge you not a shilling.
~Nursery rhyme quoted by Wayne Fields, What the River Knows, 1990

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book. ~Irish Proverb

Water, air, and cleanliness are the chief articles in my pharmacopoeia. ~Napoleon

I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more. ~Henry Ward Beecher

Know, then, whatever cheerful and serene
Supports the mind supports the body too.
~John Armstrong

Life is not merely to be alive, but to be well. ~Marcus Valerius Martial

He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything. ~Arabian Proverb

Joy and Temperance and Repose
Slam the door on the doctor's nose.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We live longer than our forefathers; but we suffer more from a thousand artificial anxieties and cares. They fatigued only the muscles, we exhaust the finer strength of the nerves. ~Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick

A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety. ~Aesop, Fables

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. ~Lao Tzu

http://www.quotegarden.com/chakras.html

~~~

2008-09-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

oops, this didn't go up Thursday.
here!
~~~

NOEL GALLAGHER DISSES JAY-Z AGAIN LIKE A CRY-BABY BEEYOTCH.

~~~

TRAVIS BARKER AND DJ AM TRAGEDY:

"[Travis and Adam] told me that they slid down the wing on the right side of the plane," Lieut. Josh Shumpert of the South Congaree Police Department tells PEOPLE. Shumpert was one of the second responders at the scene – Congaree is the town outside of Columbia, S.C. – after the airport police arrived.

"They said they were on fire," adds Shumpert, whose patrol car's dashboard camera caught video of the fiery aftermath, "and that they tackled each other and put each other out."

"When I got there they were on the side of the road," says Shumpert. "They were pacing and in shock."

"Travis was very shaken up," he says, noting that Barker was given Gatorade after he asked for some water.

According to the lieutenant, the pair weren't naked, contrary to eyewitness statements.

"Travis was wearing some kind of shorts and no shirt," says Shumpert, adding that Goldstein was wearing shorts or boxers as well. "Travis had one sock on. And a black hat on his head."

~~~

David Letterman on McCain canceling the debate:

"You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves. I think someone's putting something in his metamucil. He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sara Palin. Where is she? What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"

~~~

KANYE AND RHYMEFEST'S SHOW IS REAL NOW!

~~~

BEST HIP HOP SONG -EVER-: FIGHT THE POWER BY PUBLIC ENEMY. I AIN'T MAD AT THAT!

~~~

TWO WORDS:

Kanye West feat. Mos Def, Freeway & The Harlem Boys Choir -
by Miss_Keys

TWO MORE WORDS: KANYE. NOVEMBER.

~~~

UH OH!

~~~

KIM RESPONDS:

TO BENZINO:

~~~

JIGGA SPEAKS:

Who are your favorite New Yorkers?
Jay-Z: My number-one favorite—I don’t know how much time he spent here, but when he was in Tribeca, the way he lived his life: JFK Jr. How he would take the subway and walk around the neighborhood. Spike Lee’s another one, because he’s a fixture courtside. When you think about the city, you think of them. I like Billy Crystal, too.

What’s had the most cultural impact on New York in the past 13 years?
Jay-Z: Hip-hop. The emergence. It came right up out of the Bronx in ’79 and that affected so many different things: the economy, culture, even the crime rate—guys had jobs now.

But in the past 13, you think it’s been a force in NYC?
Jay-Z: I mean, once you start something and other places adapt, everyone’s got to get their chance. Like, the West Coast was dominant in hip-hop for a while, then it came back to New York. Now, the South is dominant in hip-hop. It’ll come back to New York as well. What I love about it is it makes guys from New York hungry. Now they’re making music with the intention of, and I’m putting up quotes now, “taking hip-hop back for New York.”

What’s your favorite place to go in New York? Not a place to be seen but a secret place.
Jay-Z: Now, I can’t do that, it won’t be a secret no more. I can give you the ones everyone knows about. Okay, okay, I’ll do it, but it’ll be the one thing I share with you guys and all of New York: Right in Cipriani’s on a Saturday, sitting outside with a nice Bellini and good conversation, there’s a shades store right around the corner that I love, walking up the block, getting me a couple pair of shades. They have all the classic shades: Ray-Bans and the Persols that I have on presently. And I’m not gonna tell you the name—they’ll walk there, they’ll see it.

What about favorite moments?
Jay-Z: Damn.

What comes to mind?
Jay-Z: That’s a difficult one. I always relate it back to music—I don’t have a life outside of that. Playing the Garden, headlining that for the first time, was—Oh! I have my greatest moment! I don’t even know how I forgot this! When I was a teenager, early teenage years—maybe later, I went to see Diana Ross in Central Park, in the rain, the infamous “in the rain.” And it started raining and everyone started running. And I’m running and slid down the entire hill. Oh, it was the greatest day.

Diana was pretty hot. Were you old enough to—
Jay-Z: Yeah, I had hormones. I thought she was fantastic. Her hair was blowing. The rain was hitting her face, and her outfit was, well—It was working for me. And she really braved it out, still trying to go in a torrential rainstorm. I don’t know who said “run,” but everyone started running. I don’t even know—me and my friend. I don’t know what two guys were doing at a Diana Ross concert, but [Laughs] anyway, I think we was already in the city, okay? We slid, got up and kept running to the train.

What about the future of NYC? What do you hope for it?
Jay-Z: I hope it keeps its sense of pride. I’m a fan of moving into the future, but I’m also a fan of things that are sacred—like I said, I bought me some vintage shades. So a mix of both, as long as we maintain our sense of pride, we won’t do anything crazy.

If you could have a drink with some of our other 39 contenders—Patti LuPone, Philip Seymour Hoffman…
Jay-Z: Oh, wow.

Peter Gelb of the Met Opera…
Jay-Z: There you go.

Tim Gunn or Jonathan Lethem, an author from your own Brooklyn—who do you pick?
Jay-Z: I’m a fan of what Philip Seymour Hoffman does. He’s fantastic—one of the top actors out there right now. He’s got that thing: That thing that can’t be taught or you can’t learn. I hate when people say “je ne sais quoi,” but he has that thing where he just disappears into the role. You feel his pain. You feel like it hurts him.

Are you introspective like that?
Jay-Z: I am introspective, and, well, there’s that 10 percent that just can’t be taught, but a lot of how I think about myself comes from how I grew up and how I can articulate my experiences without making it too much like, “Everything is great!” or “I’m Superguy!” A vulnerability in the music and a toughness of “I will not lose”—that combination resonates with people.

You’re the only rapper on this list. We were considering Nas but have this 13-year rule: People on this list had to have had an impact in the last 13 years. And Illmatic was 1994. Should we have included him?
Jay-Z: Ah, wow! [Laughs] That’s a tough question. [Pauses] Yeah, only because of the impact of that album, when it’s considered one of the best albums ever created, you have to document that.

How about Kanye? Has he earned it yet?
Jay-Z: He’s from Chicago, but he’s close. I don’t know if he’s had that one album that’s moved the entire culture, but he’s hit it three times in a row. He’ll be on every list one day.

Are you guys really teaming up for Blueprint 3?
Jay-Z: Yeah, actually. We’re partners right now. Starsky and Hutch right now.

And B? What was your first meeting with your wife like?
Jay-Z: I can’t answer that question. [Laughs] Come on now.

Seriously? You guys wrote a song about being in love.
Jay-Z: I’m actually pretty open, especially in the music. And in conversation, when I get to know people. But there’s one side of my life I tend to keep quiet. You have to have some time of sanity. You can’t live with everything out there. You have to have sanctuary.

~~~

ACEYALONEO:

~~~

KANYE AND GLC IN THE STUDIO:

~~~

ROYCE THE 5'9" SPEAKS:

~~~

THERE ARE NO PROS TO 'SWAG'.

~~~

WHAT I'D LIKE TO DO, IS THANK THE GOOD PEOPLE AT PHILAFLAVA FOR KNOCKING SOME SENSE INTO ME.
THANK YOU ALSO TO THE WOMEN IN MY LIFE THAT I LOVE AND LEARN FROM.
AND THANK YOU TO THE LANDLORD FOR YOUR PATIENCE.
UNIVERSE, THANK YOU THE MOST. I LOVE YOU!
SANTOGOLD, I WILL SEE YOU NEXT TIME.

2008-09-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

FOR GRACIE CLARE ~ DONNIE HATHAWAY:

~~~

GAME ON THE WEST COAST, DOING SHIT:

~~~

STATE PROPERTY REUNION! WORD. FUCK THE MONEY. THE LOVE MATTERS MOST.

~~~

THE ECONOMY IS FUCKED. FUCKED. FUUUUCKED!

~~~

TERMANOLOGY GETS PROPS OVER HERE FOR SHOUTING OUT TORONTO, FOR LIKE FOREVER :)

~~~

JOE BUDDENS GOT BEEF WITH PRODIGY?!

~~~

BENZINO'S SIDE OF THE STORY.

~~~

OH GOD, THIS CLOWN IS TOO MUCH.

RETIRE FROM RAP, PLEASE. NOW.

~~~

Pinpoint attacks focus on Obama
By Jim Rutenberg
Published: September 24, 2008

STERLING HEIGHTS, Michigan: Hundreds of times in the past three weeks, cable television viewers here have been the exclusive audience for two of the roughest advertisements of the political season.

One links Senator Barack Obama to the former mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, an African-American whose political career unraveled in scandal. The other features Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A Wright Jr., also black, and his now infamous sermon marked by the words "God damn America."

The advertisements, from a political action committee that is not connected to Senator John McCain's presidential campaign, are running only here, in Macomb County, heavily populated by white, unionized auto workers, once considered "Reagan Democrats," whose votes could largely determine which candidate wins Michigan, a state vital to both sides.

The advertisements point up the unusual nature of this year's more potentially pernicious political attacks: They are not coming with the loud, nationally recognized cannon blast of the type launched by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against Senator John Kerry in 2004, but, rather, as more stealthy, narrowly aimed rifle shots from smaller groups armed with incendiary material.

McCain has at times been a target of over-the-top attacks from outside groups, such as a recent advertisement from the liberal group Brave New Pac, based in California, that suggested his time in a Vietnamese prison ill-affected his ability to be president; the Internet was filled with various unsubstantiated and discredited rumors about his running mate, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, immediately after he named her last month.

But the more explosive charges from outside groups against Obama have often drawn closer scrutiny this year for their volume and the cultural and racial sensitivities they tend to touch, and, occasionally, seek to exploit.

In Obama's case, the messages have frequently sought to paint him as foreign, like the chain e-mail messages sent for months to Jewish areas of Florida, suburban Philadelphia and other swing states that portray Obama as Muslim (he is Christian). This week, a hate group calling itself the League of American Patriots distributed fliers to as many as 50 homes in Roxbury, a mostly white town in northern New Jersey, portraying Obama as Osama Bin Laden and including language that was derisive of black people.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, said the fliers, initially reported by The Star-Ledger in Newark, were the first overtly racist printed tracts of their kind this election season.

The advertisements running here against Obama come from a group called Freedom's Defense Fund, a political action committee based in Washington that was formed four years ago and raises money from conservatives around the country. The advertisements have stood out because of the group's connections — including to its paid consultant, Jerome Corsi, the author of the highly negative, largely discredited political biography of Obama, "Obama Nation" — and what local critics say are their racial overtones.

"That's all they are — race oriented," said Ed Bruley, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Macomb. "I think some people will be affected by it, others will see it for what it is."

It is a view shared by Democratic leaders, including Governor Jennifer Granholm, who, in a recent interview with MSNBC, said of the advertising campaign, "The fact that it is being run in a predominantly white suburb tells you that there is an explicit effort to try to divide people by race."

Todd Zirkle, the executive director of Freedom's Defense Fund, said race had "zero" to do with the spots. "That's the standard retort when you want to say 'Don't listen to these people,' " Zirkle said.

He said the group's intention was to show Obama's affiliations — although Obama and Kilpatrick were never known to be close.

He said coming spots would highlight Obama's ties to two white men, the developer Antoin Rezko, a former financial backer of Obama's who has been convicted of fraud, and to the Weather Underground founder William Ayers, with whom Obama worked on an education commission in Illinois and whose past Obama has repudiated.

Zirkle said a fifth spot would highlight Obama's supposed support for the Kenyan prime minister, the opposition leader Raila Odinga. Zirkle did not share that script, but Corsi's book asserts, without substantiation, that Obama has been a close supporter of the African leader. Obama remained neutral in the Kenyan elections.

Officials with Freedom's Defense Fund, which gives Corsi's book to its donors, said they paid Corsi only to help write fund-raising appeals. Federal returns show he was paid $15,000 as a fund-raising consultant. But the details of his book provide a thread that runs through several of the anti-Obama groups.

Hundreds of times in the past three weeks, cable television viewers here have been the exclusive audience for two of the roughest advertisements of the political season.

One links Senator Barack Obama to the former mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, an African-American whose political career unraveled in scandal. The other features Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A Wright Jr., also black, and his now infamous sermon marked by the words "God damn America."

The advertisements, from a political action committee that is not connected to Senator John McCain's presidential campaign, are running only here, in Macomb County, heavily populated by white, unionized auto workers, once considered "Reagan Democrats," whose votes could largely determine which candidate wins Michigan, a state vital to both sides.

The advertisements point up the unusual nature of this year's more potentially pernicious political attacks: They are not coming with the loud, nationally recognized cannon blast of the type launched by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against Senator John Kerry in 2004, but, rather, as more stealthy, narrowly aimed rifle shots from smaller groups armed with incendiary material.

McCain has at times been a target of over-the-top attacks from outside groups, such as a recent advertisement from the liberal group Brave New Pac, based in California, that suggested his time in a Vietnamese prison ill-affected his ability to be president; the Internet was filled with various unsubstantiated and discredited rumors about his running mate, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, immediately after he named her last month.

But the more explosive charges from outside groups against Obama have often drawn closer scrutiny this year for their volume and the cultural and racial sensitivities they tend to touch, and, occasionally, seek to exploit.

In Obama's case, the messages have frequently sought to paint him as foreign, like the chain e-mail messages sent for months to Jewish areas of Florida, suburban Philadelphia and other swing states that portray Obama as Muslim (he is Christian). This week, a hate group calling itself the League of American Patriots distributed fliers to as many as 50 homes in Roxbury, a mostly white town in northern New Jersey, portraying Obama as Osama Bin Laden and including language that was derisive of black people.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, said the fliers, initially reported by The Star-Ledger in Newark, were the first overtly racist printed tracts of their kind this election season.

The advertisements running here against Obama come from a group called Freedom's Defense Fund, a political action committee based in Washington that was formed four years ago and raises money from conservatives around the country. The advertisements have stood out because of the group's connections — including to its paid consultant, Jerome Corsi, the author of the highly negative, largely discredited political biography of Obama, "Obama Nation" — and what local critics say are their racial overtones.

"That's all they are — race oriented," said Ed Bruley, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Macomb. "I think some people will be affected by it, others will see it for what it is."

It is a view shared by Democratic leaders, including Governor Jennifer Granholm, who, in a recent interview with MSNBC, said of the advertising campaign, "The fact that it is being run in a predominantly white suburb tells you that there is an explicit effort to try to divide people by race."

Todd Zirkle, the executive director of Freedom's Defense Fund, said race had "zero" to do with the spots. "That's the standard retort when you want to say 'Don't listen to these people,' " Zirkle said.

He said the group's intention was to show Obama's affiliations — although Obama and Kilpatrick were never known to be close.

He said coming spots would highlight Obama's ties to two white men, the developer Antoin Rezko, a former financial backer of Obama's who has been convicted of fraud, and to the Weather Underground founder William Ayers, with whom Obama worked on an education commission in Illinois and whose past Obama has repudiated.

Zirkle said a fifth spot would highlight Obama's supposed support for the Kenyan prime minister, the opposition leader Raila Odinga. Zirkle did not share that script, but Corsi's book asserts, without substantiation, that Obama has been a close supporter of the African leader. Obama remained neutral in the Kenyan elections.

Officials with Freedom's Defense Fund, which gives Corsi's book to its donors, said they paid Corsi only to help write fund-raising appeals. Federal returns show he was paid $15,000 as a fund-raising consultant. But the details of his book provide a thread that runs through several of the anti-Obama groups.

~~~

I'LL STOP THERE.

P.S. WORSHIP THIS WOMAN: http://therealfrequency.podbus.com/blog/

(IF THE LINK ISN'T WORKING, JUST CUT AND PASTE. IT'S WORTH IT!)

2008-09-23T07:25:00.000-07:00

CAGE IS COMING BACK SOON... DEPART FROM ME IS GONNA BE AMAZING!

~~~

AND MY HOMIE BOONAA MOHAMMAD:

http://www.myspace.com/thekingsofkush

Hailing from ancient Nubian descent, the “Kings of Kush” represent a category of storytellers not yet seen. A humble blend of new age poetry and traditional pan-african rhythms, this group represents all that is past, present and yet to be discovered. Consisting of Award winning singer, musician and composer (Toronto African Music Awards, Band of the Year Award, 2000) Waleed Abdulhamid and award winning Spoken Word Artist (CBC poetry face off, Best New Artist, 2007) Boonaa Mohammed, the Kings of Kush provide a blend of innovative acoustical candy. Breaking down generational gaps by bridging hip hop with its ancestry, their originality alone helps secure an uncontested throne.

~~~

DEF JAM AND JANET JACKSON NEVER WAS GONNA WORK OUT.

Sep 22 - Janet Jackson Leaves Def Jam

Janet Jackson is officially a free agent. In his first Darkchild video blog for Rap-Up.com, super producer Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins exclusively reveals that Janet has cut ties with the Island Def Jam Music Group.

There had been speculation that the youngest Jackson was having issues with the label, but we now have confirmation that she has been released from her contract. Janet signed to Island Def Jam in 2007 and released Discipline, her first album on the label, in February of this year. It debuted at No. 1, but sold less in its first week than Janet’s last two albums, 2006’s 20 Y.O. and 2004’s Damita Jo. Jerkins produced the album’s first single “Feedback” and follow-up “Luv.”

“We didn’t get the support from the record company,” he discloses. “[Janet] felt like it wasn’t pushed. I felt like it wasn’t pushed correctly. She just didn’t get her just due as an artist of that magnitude.”

Jerkins also shares his thoughts on Janet’s Rock Witchu Tour and looks to the future. “I could make an album with her, possibly me, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis. Keep it real simple. They focus on what they’re great at, I focus on what I’m great at. We come together and make a classic Janet record.”

Tour
-He states the tour is crazy and that Janet is at such a high level/caliber that these new artists can't compete and need to take notes

Label
-Janet asked to be released from IDJ and she was
-There was no label support with the entire project and states that he and Janet didn't feel IDJ didn't really push/support the singles
-Confirmed Luv was supposed to be the second single.
-Currently Janet is a free agent with no label at the moment.
-To Date "Discipline has only sold 418,000 in the U.S.
-Can't B Good was only released to Urban Adult Contemporary R&B Radio.

Producing
-Rodney has a great relationship with Janet
-He would love to collaborate on an entire album even possibly with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Also states he has expressed this to her.
-Janet wants to wait until the end of the tour before thinking about another label/album
-Lastly he offered Janet to come to his label, Darkchild Records, which is distributed through Interscope.

http://www.rap-up.com/2008/09/22/dar...jam/#more-8237

~~~

Explaining White Privilege (Or, Your Defense Mechanism is Showing)

Sigh.

I guess I should have expected it, seeing as how it's nothing new. I write a piece on racism and white privilege (namely, the recently viral This is Your Nation on White Privilege), lots of folks read it, many of them like it, and others e-mail me in fits of apoplexy, or post scathing critiques on message boards in which they invite me to die, to perform various sexual acts upon myself that I feel confident are impossible, or, best of all, to "go live in the ghetto," whereupon I will come to "truly appreciate the animals" for whom I have so much affection (the phrase they use for me and that affection, of course, sounds a bit different, and I'll leave it to your imagination to conjure the quip yourself).

Though I have no desire to debate the points made in the original piece, I would like to address some of the more glaring, and yet reasonable, misunderstandings that many seem to have about the subject of white privilege. That many white folks don't take well to the term is an understatement, and quite understandable. For those of us in the dominant group, the notion that we may receive certain advantages generally not received by others is a jarring, sometimes maddening concept. And if we don't understand what the term means, and what those who use it mean as they deploy it, our misunderstandings can generate anger and heat, where really, none is called for. So let me take this opportunity to explain what I mean by white privilege.

Of course, the original piece only mentioned examples of white privilege that were directly implicated in the current presidential campaign. It made no claims beyond that. Yet many who wrote to me took issue with the notion that there was such a thing, arguing, for instance that there are lots of poor white people who have no privilege, and many folks of color who are wealthy, who do. But what this argument misses is that race and class privilege are not the same thing.

Though we are used to thinking of privilege as a mere monetary issue, it is more than that. Yes, there are rich black and brown folks, but even they are subject to racial profiling and stereotyping (especially because those who encounter them often don't know they're rich and so view them as decidedly not), as well as bias in mortgage lending, and unequal treatment in schools. So, for instance, even the children of well-off black families are more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than the children of poor whites, and this is true despite the fact that there is no statistically significant difference in the rates of serious school rule infractions between white kids or black kids that could justify the disparity (according to fourteen different studies examined by Russ Skiba at Indiana University).

As for poor whites, though they certainly are suffering economically, this doesn't mean they lack racial privilege. I grew up in a very modest apartment, and economically was far from privileged. Yet I received better treatment in school (placement in advanced track classes even when I wasn't a good student), better treatment by law enforcement officers, and indeed more job opportunities because of connections I was able to take advantage of, that were pretty much unavailable to the folks of color I knew growing up. Likewise, low income whites everywhere are able to clean up, go to a job interview and be seen as just another white person, whereas a person of color, even who isn't low-income, has to wonder whether or not they might trip some negative stereotype about their group when they go for an interview or sit in the classroom answering questions from the teacher. Oh, and not to put too fine a point on it, but even low-income whites are more likely to own their own home than middle income black families, thanks to past advantages in housing and asset accumulation, which has allowed those whites to receive a small piece of property from their families.

The point is, privilege is as much a psychological matter as a material one. Whites have the luxury of not having to worry that our race is going to mark us negatively when looking for work, going to school, shopping, looking for a place to live, or driving for that matter: things that folks of color can't take for granted.

Let me share an analogy to make the point.

Taking things out of the racial context for a minute: imagine persons who are able bodied, as opposed to those with disabilities. If I were to say that able-bodied persons have certain advantages, certain privileges if you will, which disabled persons do not, who would argue the point? I imagine that no one would. It's too obvious, right? To be disabled is to face numerous obstacles. And although many persons with disabilities overcome those obstacles, this fact doesn't take away from the fact that they exist. Likewise, that persons with disabilities can and do overcome obstacles every day, doesn't deny that those of us who are able-bodied have an edge. We have one less thing to think and worry about as we enter a building, go to a workplace, or just try and navigate the contours of daily life. The fact that there are lots of able-bodied people who are poor, and some disabled folks who are rich, doesn't alter the general rule: on balance, it pays to be able-bodied.

That's all I'm saying about white privilege: on balance, it pays to be a member of the dominant racial group. It doesn't mean that a white person will get everything they want in life, or win every competition, but it does mean that there are general advantages that we receive.

So, for instance, studies have found that job applicants with white sounding names are 50% more likely to receive a call-back for a job interview than applicants with black-sounding names, even when all job-related qualifications and credentials are the same.

Other studies have found that white men with a criminal record are more likely to get a call-back for an interview than black male job applicants who don't have one, even when all requisite qualifications, demeanor and communication styles are the same.

Others have found that white women are far more likely than black women to be hired for work through temporary agencies, even when the black women have more experience and are more qualified.

Evidence from housing markets has found that there are about two million cases of race-based discrimination against people of color every year in the United States. That's not just bad for folks of color; the flipside is that there are, as a result, millions more places I can live as a white person.

Or consider criminal justice. Although data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration indicates that whites are equally or more likely than blacks or Latinos to use drugs, it is people of color (blacks and Latinos mostly) who comprise about 90 percent of the persons incarcerated for a drug possession offense. Despite the fact that white men are more likely to be caught with drugs in our car (on those occasions when we are searched), black men remain about four times more likely than white men to be searched in the first place, according to Justice Department findings. That's privilege for the dominant group.

That's the point: privilege is the flipside of discrimination. If people of color face discrimination, in housing, employment and elsewhere, then the rest of us are receiving a de facto subsidy, a privilege, an advantage in those realms of daily life. There can be no down without an up, in other words.

None of this means that white folks don't face challenges. Of course we do, and some of them (based on class, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, or other factors) are systemic and institutionalized. But on balance, we can take for granted that we will receive a leg-up on those persons of color with whom we share a nation.

And no, affirmative action doesn't change any of this.

Despite white fears to the contrary, even with affirmative action in place (which, contrary to popular belief does not allow quotas or formal set-asides except in those rare cases where blatant discrimination has been proven) whites hold about ninety percent of all the management level jobs in this country, receive about ninety-four percent of government contract dollars, and hold ninety percent of tenured faculty positions on college campuses. And in spite of affirmative action programs, whites are more likely than members of any other racial group to be admitted to their college of first choice.* And according to a study released last year, for every student of color who received even the slightest consideration from an affirmative action program in college, there are two whites who failed to meet normal qualification requirements at the same school, but who got in anyway because of parental influence, alumni status or because other favors were done.

Furthermore, although white students often think that so-called minority scholarships are a substantial drain on financial aid resources that would otherwise be available to them, nothing could be further from the truth. According to a national study by the General Accounting Office, less than four percent of scholarship money in the U.S. is represented by awards that consider race as a factor at all, while only 0.25 percent (that's one quarter of one percent for the math challenged) of all undergrad scholarship dollars come from awards that are restricted to persons of color alone. What's more, the idea that large numbers of students of color receive the benefits of race-based scholarships is lunacy of the highest order. In truth, only 3.5 percent of college students of color receive any scholarship even partly based on race, suggesting that such programs remain a pathetically small piece of the financial aid picture in this country, irrespective of what a gaggle of reactionary white folks might believe.**

In other words, despite the notion that somehow we have attained an equal opportunity, or color-blind society, the fact is, we are far from an equitable nation. People of color continue to face obstacles based solely on color, and whites continue to reap benefits from the same. None of this makes whites bad people, and none of it means we should feel guilty or beat ourselves up. But it does mean we need to figure out how we're going to be accountable for our unearned advantages. One way is by fighting for a society in which those privileges will no longer exist, and in which we will be able to stand on our own two feet, without the artificial crutch of racial advantage to prop us up. We need to commit to fighting for racial equity and challenging injustice at every turn, not only because it harms others, but because it diminishes us as well (even as it pays dividends), and because it squanders the promise of fairness and equity to which we claim to adhere as Americans.

It's about responsibility, not guilt. And if one can't see the difference between those two things, there is little that this or any other article can probably do. Perhaps starting with a dictionary would be better.

*U.S Federal Glass Ceiling Commission, Good for Business: Making Full Use of the Nation's Human Capital. (Washington DC: Bureau of National Affairs, March 1995); Fred L. Pincus, Reverse Discrimination: Dismantling the Myth. (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003), 18; Roberta J. Hill, "Far More Than Frybread," in Race in the College Classroom: Pedagogy and Politics, ed. Bonnie TuSmith and Maureen T. Reddy. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), 169; Sylvia Hurtado and Christine Navia, "Reconciling College Access and the Affirmative Action Debate," in Affirmative Action's Testament of Hope, ed. Mildred Garcia (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997), 115.
**U.S. General Accounting Office, 1994. "Information on Minority Targeted Scholarships," B251634. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, January; Stephen L. Carter, "Color-Blind and Color-Active," 1992. The Recorder. January 3.

SOURCE
http://www.timwise.org/

http://slumz.boxden.com/showthread.php?t=1150919

~~~

IN CASE YOU DIDN'T CATCH IT THE FIRST TIME, THE LYRICS TO 'LOVE LOCKDOWN':

Lyrics:
I’m not lovin’ you, the way I wanted to
What I had to do, had to run from you
I’m in love with you, but the vibe is wrong
And that haunted me, all the way home
So ya never know, never never know
Never know enough, til it’s over love
Til we lose control, system overload
Screamin no no no, no no
I ain’t lovin you, the way I wanted to
See I wanna move, but can’t escape from you
So I keep it low, keep a secret code
So everybody else dont have to know

So keep ya love locked down, ya love locked down x 3
You keep ya love locked down, you lose

I’m not lovin you, the way I wanted to
I can’t keep my cool, so I keep it true
I got somethin’ to lose, so I gotta move
I can’t keep myself, and still keep you too
So I keep in mind, when I’m on my own
Somewhere far from home, In the danger zone
How many times did it take til I finally got through
you lose, you lose
I ain’t lovin you, the way I wanted to
See I had to go, see I had to go
No more wastein time, we cant wait for life
which is wastin time, wheres the finish line

So keep ya love locked down, ya love locked down x 3
You keep ya love locked down, you lose

I’m not lovin you, the way i wanted to
I met no one new, I got no one new
No I said im through, but got love for you
But im not lovin you, the way I wanted to
Gotta keep it goin, keep the lovin goin
Keep it on a roll, only god knows
If i be with you, baby im confused
You choose, you choose
I ain’t lovin you, the way I wanted to
Way I got to go, I dont need you
I been on this road, too many times before
I ain’t lovin you, the way I wanted to

So keep ya love locked down, ya love locked down
Keepin ya love locked down, you lose.

~~~

CROOKED I CALLS LIL WAYNE OVERRATED? OH WORRD?

~~~

I'M TRYING TO FIND THE INSTRUMENTALS OF THIS:

PEACE TO JAKE ONE AND SLUGGO!

~~~

THE KANYE EMPIRE EXPANDS:

Comedy Central has teamed with Kanye West for a project described as hip-hop meets the Muppets.

A half-hour pilot has been shot for the project, tentatively titled “Alligator Boots.” It’s from Jackhole Prods., the production company founded by Jimmy Kimmel, Daniel Kellison and Adam Carolla that also was behind Comedy Central’s puppet-centric “Crank Yankers.”

The project, which is under consideration for 2009, would feature music produced and performed by West and fellow rapper Rhymefest, both of whom are serving as executive producers on the pilot alongside Kellison. West also hosts the pilot; the idea is to have a different celebrity guest host for every episode, similar to the setup on the original “Muppet Show.”

~~~

RAP IS OUTTA CONTROL. JEAN GRAE IS SELLING VERSES ON CRAIGSLIST:

http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/crs/845951471.html

~~~

DIDDY JERKED PETE ROCKN TO MAKE BIGGIE'S FIRST HIT SONG:

http://grandgood.com/2008/09/22/pete-rock-on-not-receiving-production-credit-for-biggie%E2%80%99s-juicy/

Pete Rock has talked extensively (and bitterly) about this before so I’m glad he’s gotten over it. His remix definitely holds its own too.

Speaking of revered emcees you’ve worked with; you knew Biggie too, right?

Yeah. Sean ["Puffy" Combs] brought Biggie over to my house in Mount Vernon way back when. We kicked it and talked all night. Biggie wanted to see my procedures and how I made beats—that’s how we met. There’s a song called “In The Flesh” on The Main Ingredient, and he was present when I made it. I remember, I made it from scratch right in front of him! So when I hear that track nowadays, it takes me back to that exact moment, like, “That’s how I met Biggie!”

You produced “Juicy” but never got credited for it—What’s the story behind that?

Biggie and Sean came to my house one day and the beat was playing on my drum machine. Biggie thought I was making it for C.L. When I told him I was just making it for myself, he immediately wanted it. I said sure, but didn’t think much of it. Then, next thing I know, I heard it playing somewhere. I’m over it now though.

Have any efforts been made to give you proper credit for it?

No, nothing’s been done, but that was back then. Life goes on. I settled and just did a remix for it. Really though, I just wish Biggie was still alive for me to work with him.

~~~

NOTORIOUS: THE BIGGIE SMALLS MOVIE. THE TRAILER:

I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE GRAVY GOT THIS PART. RAP IS OUTTA CONTROL.

~~~

I WAS SICK LAST NIGHT. TOO MUCH WRONG LIVING.
I'M MAKING BETTER CHOICES TODAY.
LOVE,
ADDI

2008-09-20T19:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.kanyeuniversecity.com/blog SAYS: Claudia is an American model based out of Arizona. THIS IS EXCELLENCE.

~~~

TERMANOLOGY, PRODIGY, AND TORONTO SHOUTOUTS!
http://www.zshare.net/audio/19071745c8d851dd/

~~~

BLACK MILK: GIVE THE DRUMMER SOME. HOT SHIT!
http://www.zshare.net/audio/1906874569db1b60/

~~~

BLACK AUGUST DOCUMENTARY TRAILER. WORD:

~~~

SAY WORD.

It’s too bad Jay isn’t here to see this.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Run-D.M.C. could “Walk This Way” into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The 1980s rap act, along with Metallica and the Stooges are among the nine nominees for next year’s hall of fame class, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation announced Monday.

The other nominees are guitarist Jeff Beck, singer Wanda Jackson, Little Anthony and the Imperials, War, Bobby Womack, and disco and R&B group Chic, the only nominee back from last year’s ballot.

The five leading vote-getters will be announced in January and inducted April 4, 2009, in Cleveland.

The ceremony typically has been held in New York but is returning to Cleveland after more than a decade-long absence. Tickets will be made available to the public for the first time.

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five opened the door for rap at the Rock Hall as the first hip-hop act to be inducted in 2007. Now, Run-D.M.C., nominated in the first year of its eligibility, has the chance to follow on the strength of rock and rap blends such as the 1986 cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” and classics like “It’s Tricky” and “My Adidas.”

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jo8-XqSlhv8TT3v_00wXV27kXkOgD93BR9M80

~~~

J-HOOD STILL SPITTIN AT JADAKISS? UGH.

~~~

KILLAH PRIEST AND CHIEF KAMACHI GOT NEW ISH:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/192149966b25c88a/

~~~

IN THE TRADITION OF AMERICANS REALIZING HOW SMART AND COOL CANADIANS ACTUALLY ARE, HERE'S NARDWUAR INTERVIEWING AFRIKA BAM:

~~~

JOE G SAYS HE LIKES KID CUDI. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO THIS KID IS... IT'S HARD TO KEEP UP TO ALL THESE NEW RAPPERS THESE DAYS:

~~~

COMMON SPEAKS:

~~~

LADY LUCK BATTLE, WHOA:

~~~

T.I. SPEAKS TO MC SERCH.

~~~

E-40 IS KING.

~~~

TEK MAKES A SONG CALLED 'COCAINE COWBOYS'

http://www.zshare.net/audio/19104326ccc84fb0/

I SAW THE SEQUEL. IT'S FUCKING DOPE! (PUN INTENDED)

~~~

LAST NIGHT, I HOSTED MANIFESTO www.themanifesto.ca AND HAD A WONDERFUL DAY. I LOVE EVERYONE IN TORONTO, AND YOU KNOW WHO I'M TALKING ABOUT!! ALSO LAST NIGHT, SEEING STARTING FROM SCRATCH MURK THE CIRCA STAGE WITH ALL THE CITY'S BEST B-BOYS (BENZO, JEDI, HEIST, STRO, AND THOSE TWO NEW SHORT CATS I SAW WHO WERE DISGUSSSSTING) WAS ACTUALLY MORE ENTERTAINING THAN SEEING THE LEGENDARY DJ PREMIER BATTLE DJ PETE ROCK WITH EACH OTHER'S RECORDS!!! RAP IS OUTTA CONTROL, AND TORONTO GOT NEXT FOR REAL!!!
GOD BLESS EVERYONE DOWN WITH MANIFESTO, AND THE CITY OF TORONTO. I LOVE YOU ALL.

MINDBENDER SUPREME

TIME TO CREATE MY FUTURE IN MY PRESENT, NOW!

2008-09-19T06:52:00.000-07:00

I LOVE NAS!

~~~

I LOVE TRUTH!

~~~

GUESS HE'S NOT SO 'BLESSED' AFTER ALL. IZZY WANTS JUSTICE, TREVOR:

It has been confirmed that Busta Rhymes has left Aftermath/Interscope and is officially signed with Universal Motown.

According to Motown reps, the New York rapper has signed an agreement to release his next project on the famed label - which is also home to Lil’ Wayne and Chamillionaire.

As previously reported, the hip-hop icon was in talks earlier this week about leaving Aftermath to pursue a run with Motown. Busta helped the summer heat up when it was rumored he was being dropped from the label.

“I can’t confirm or deny anything,” an Interscope/Aftermath rep previously said about the then rumored split.

In addition to an alleged industry beef with label chairman Jimmy Iovine, Busta suffered major delays with his eighth studio album, Blessed, originally slated for an early July release, including various sampling conflicts. Blessed was never released, despite the label dropping two videos for the songs “We Made It” and “Don’t Touch Me (Throw Da Water On ’Em).”

If released on Motown, Blessed will feature contributions from Linkin Park, Dr. Dre, Green Lantern, Cool & Dre, Nottz, Timbaland and Pharrell. As of press time there is no word on when or if Blessed will hit stores.

~~~

PEACE TO KARDINAL OFFISHALL. RAP IS OUTTA CONTROL:

FROM HIPHOPDX.COM

quote: Young Jeezy bumped a single slot in a week with his junior effort Recession [click to read] selling 89,941 in its second week. One of the new faces of Def Jam (along with Rick Ross) outsold one of the label's reasons for existence - LL Cool J, in his opening week with Exit 13 [click to read]. The rapper of over 23 years cracked the charts just above the 10 spot, selling 43,645 units in its first week, of an album given less than stellar critical reviews. One of LL's champion advocates, The Game [click to read] takes #7 with LAX [click to read] selling 49,241, nearly half of last week's numbers, but remaining the top-performing Interscope/Geffen/A&M rap artist - with Eminem and Dr. Dre returns forever in the mix. After reigning the charts for weeks, Lil Wayne [click to read] stands between The Game and LL Cool J, at #8 with his Tha Carter III [click to read], selling 47,345 units. Lastly, rounding out the top rap-related showings, the Gym Class Heroes [click to read] reminded fans that they can still bully the charts on the playground, with their most recent major label showing, Quilt, doing 32,195 , placing them at #14.

Rank Artist Album This Week Est. Total

2 Young Jeezy Recession 89,941 350,510
7 The Game LAX 49,241 377,100
8 Lil Wayne Tha Carter III 47,345 2,409,995
9 LL Cool.J Exit 13 43,645 43,762
14 Gym Class Heroes Quilt 32,195 32,266

Top 200 Album Sales (Top 5 Hip Hop/R&B)

Another Interscope artist, Kardinal [click to read] makes his long-awaited return, after success over five years ago. His Akon-touted Not 4 Sale [click to read], backed by hit "Dangerous," entered the Top 40 at its bookend, selling 11,869 copies. Ice Cube [click to read] comes in next, at #41 with 11,770 copies sold of Raw Footage [click to read]. Nas jumps at bit to the #64 position with 7,758 copies of his Untitled [click to read] album sold this week, while Slim Thug's supergroup Boss Hogg Outlawz debut their sophomore album, Back By Blockular Demand remains Koch's premier rap album of the moment,at #178 with 3,232 copies sold. In related news, it appears as though Plies [click to read] will reach gold status with his sophomore album Definition of Real [click to read] this week, as the work sits less than 3,500 units away from the coveted 500,000 mark.

Other Notables
Rank Artist Album This Week Est. Total 40 Kardinal Offishall Not 4 Sale 11,869 11,911
41 Ice Cube Raw Footage 11,770. 130,359
64 Nas Untitled 7,758 380,419 67 Plies Definition of Real 7,303 496,568
17 8Slim Thug Presents Boss Hogg Outlawz Music Back By Blockular Demand 3,232 13,060

Will DJ Khaled continue to join Jim Jones at Koch's top rap money-maker? Will the Ill Bill goons help the rock-rap album lead Fat Beats to the charts? Will Nelly's return go celebrated? Stay tuned till next week.

~~~

CORY GUNZ IS THE TROOF:

WWW.ALLHIPHOP.COM

'RICHER THAN RICHIE'

In the Roc-A-Fella film Backstage, Jay-Z had a premonition. He said that somewhere out there there’s a kid sitting at breakfast, eating some Apple Jacks, writing some s**t. And that hungry young dude is going to be the next big thing in Hip-Hop.

While one can argue Jay wasn’t speaking about anyone in particular, after hearing the demolition of Lil Wayne’s “A Milli” beat, you can’t help but wonder if the “God MC’s” vision of a Hip-Hop golden child was the young Bronx native named Cory Gunz, son of rapper/ghostwriter Peter Gunz who, along side Lord Tariq, had everybody screaming “Uptown baby” with their hit song “Déjà Vu (Uptown Baby)” ten years ago.

Suffice it to say, Cory grew up in Hip-Hop. After proving himself to be a potential monster in the rap game, Peter began mentoring Cory on the finer points of making songs. From 2005 to 2006 Cory began building his street buzz with a steady presence on the mixtape scene.

After a brief hiatus he hit the ground running, delivering noteworthy tracks all over mixtapes and the Internet including the infamous “A Milli” freestyle. But even that’s no indication of what the future holds. So take a minute to familiarize yourself with your favorite MC’s dream MC, Cory Gunz.

AllHipHop.com: You were a fixture in the mixtape scene back in 2005. It was said that you were dealing with Tommy Mottola and people were hearing you a lot but after a while you kind of faded away. What happened?

Cory Gunz: As far as Tommy, shout to Tommy Mottola first of all, he took me to Def Jam. He orchestrated the whole Def Jam move and sat me down with Jay so if anything, he was trying to help. In '05 I was at the pinnacle. I had a crazy buzz in the streets and all he was trying to do was help. It was really me. I took kind of a hiatus because I was kind of turned off on the industry and the transition I felt it was taking. At the end of the day it's all fun and I consider myself like one of the greatest at it and a genius can always find a way. So that's what I'm doing right now, grinding.

AllHipHop.com: With all the different file sharing sites, social networks, and digital labels coming out the Internet can be your best friend or your worst enemy. What part will it play in your movement?

Cory Gunz: It's going to play a real major part. The Internet has its ups and downs in the music industry. It kind of killed the whole going out and buying an album thing but people are still paying the same amount on iTunes for an album as they would in a store. So it's all about finding a way and coming up with a scheme. Well, I wouldn't even call it a scheme but, coming up with a way to promote yourself on the Internet.

I look at the Internet as the biggest promotion tool in the world. On top of YouTube and MySpace and different things like that, anything is possible. People check those things everyday. There are actually record labels looking at people's YouTubes and MySpace looking at their listens and views, seeing who's paying attention to who to make their jobs easier.

Who's getting these views, who's paying attention to that kid so if we put some money behind him he's going to sell these records so we'll be able to recoup? That's all they're thinking about. You just got to find a way man and if you're a genius and you love the craft, and you're as passionate about it as I am you'll come up with something.

AllHipHop.com: I got the chance to speak with Square-Off, the rap group made up of Doug E. Fresh’s sons.

Cory Gunz: Oh yeah, those are my n****s right there.

AllHipHop.com: They said they had problems growing up because of people knowing who their father was. Did you experience any of that?

Cory Gunz: At the end of the day, that's crazy because everybody gets that. I call it like 75 percent hate. Well, I can even call it that. I call it like 65 percent hate because the majority of the people on my block and in my neighborhood coming up was my whole family. I have a big family and my family basically built this neighborhood that I grew up in. It had its perks, it was cool. Of course you had the haters, the cheesing and the fake friends but, it comes with the territory.

Of course now it seems worse because people are automatically comparing me to my dad and I have to fill those shoes. And I know with Square-Off they have the same pressure. When your dad makes a mark in history so big and makes records like that that make history, well, I don't call them records, I call them anthems. But it’s a lot of pressure to have to live up to something like that.

AllHipHop.com: Given who you father is and the overall historical significance the Bronx has in Hip-Hop, do you feel any pressure when it comes to representing where you’re from?

Cory Gunz: I love the Bronx, I keep the Bronx in my heart. The Bronx is always in my heart I'm going to rep the Bronx in my heart forever. But I'm a world artist. Well, let me not say world artist but if I do something like a down south track with a Bronx flow, you know that gritty, New York flow to it, it's still me. Like, I'm trying to be bigger. I want to represent good music. And I'm not saying there's not any good music out there, shout to everybody doing their thing right now, but I'm doing my thing trying to carve a certain lane so that's really the pressure for me.

AllHipHop.com: Speaking of carving your lane, what you did to the “A Milli” beat got a lot of people’s attention where some were saying your verse was better than Wayne’s. Did you ever receive any feedback from Wayne?

Cory Gunz: I'm going to keep it all the way 100. Like, this is not for no controversy or to start no beef and I'm only saying it because we're 100 percent on the record, but I haven't heard from the homie since I sent him that verse. Shout to Wayne because that song gave me a chance to gain some notoriety. Shout out to every DJ that played my version and helped get that heard. That song definitely got me out there so there's no beef. I know Wayne is busy and he's doing his thing. I'm just focusing on doing Cory Gunz and getting me where I need to be.

AllHipHop.com: So what are you working on?

Cory Gunz: I'm working on some things. I got a lot of deals on the table. Labels have been quietly hollering at me but I got a lot of deals on the table and a few really, really good independent deals on the table too. But I'm going to keep making music. I got a couple mixtapes coming out, I got one with Square-Off, my Militia family got mixtapes coming out. We're just going to keep making music.

AllHipHop.com: What’s your relationship with Shaquille O'Neal and how is he playing a part in your career?

Cory Gunz: Shaq knew me before I knew me. When I say that I mean before I was even born, Shaq knew me. That's my God dad so he's always going to be there for me and I'm going to ride with Shaq to the death. But yeah, that's my family for real.

AllHipHop.com: When it comes to Hip-Hop, some do it for the money, some do it for the fame, few still do it for the love. Why do you do it?

Cory Gunz: I've been saying this since I was young. I want to be one of the best. Like in somebody’s top five of all time. Like when you mention Jay-Z, Eminem, Nas, Luda, I want to be in that category. You can't forget about the legends like BIG, Pac, and Pun, may they rest in peace, but I want to mentioned with them.

AllHipHop.com: Is there anything else you want people to know?

Cory Gunz: DJ's and everybody can hit me up on the MySpace, Myspace.com/cgunz174. I check it myself so hit me up if you want to get at me. Also, shout out to AllHipHop too because y'all been rocking with me from the beginning.

~~~

YUNG BERG SPEAKS:

BETTER START KISSING SOME DARK BUTTS! LOL!

~~~

THOUGH PAPOOSE FUCKED UP, I STILL LIKE KAY SLAY:

~~~

THE NEW ALICIA KEYS SONG FROM THE JAMES BOND MOVIE:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/18993145b0e29aa9/

~~~

THE NEW WACHOWSKI MOVIE - NINJA ASSASSIN:

WHEN NOSTALGIC ANIME GOES WRONG... DO A NINJA MOVIE! WORD, HA HA

~~~

BIG UP KARDINAL. PERIOD.

AND BIG UP EVERYONE IN THE MANIFESTO MOVIE FROM YESTERDAY!!! THAT SHIT WAS GLORIOUS!

AS WELL AS PEACE TO HIP HOP KAREOKE, AND ALL THE WONDERFUL PEOPLE I MET THERE!

I LOVE YOU ALL. TRULY.
MINDBENDER SUPREME

2008-09-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

WANT TO UP YOUR SUCCESS RATE? DOUBLE YOUR FAILURE RATE!!!

OH BOY!

~~~

OH GIRL! :)

~~~

DJ HERO!

The phenomenon that is Guitar Hero has been a dream come true for adolescents and adults alike who have had a hard time emulating their favorite rock stars in the real world. The makers of the extremely successful guitar game, Activision, are hoping they can do the same for DJ Hero.

According to Kotaku.com, DJ Hero is tentatively scheduled for release next summer, with developers FreeStyleGames still hard at work on the game. The controller has been described as a simplified deejay deck, with three buttons for sampling and a cross fader included on the small platform that will likely be wireless.

Though the development of DJ Hero has run surprisingly well, Activision’s main obstacle has been the abundant amount of songs that feature samples, and licensing could put its premiere on hold. The wait may give a more satisfying result though, as Activision is looking to make DJ Hero and Guitar Hero compatible for game play.

HipHopDX will keep you posted on new developments for DJ Hero as the product is slowly unveiled.

~~~

DR. DRE GETS DISSED BY LIQUOR COMPANY:

British vodka company 02 has apparently taken issue with Dr. Dre's release of a sparkling vodka thought to be similar to their own brand. In August, the legendary producer announced he would unveil both a cognac and sparkling vodka as a marketing tie-in with his long-awaited album, Detox. Drinks Americas, who is partnering with Dre and Aftermath/Interscope, described the spirit as a "unique new to market sparkling vodka" in an associated press release.

Phillip Maitland, President of International English Distillers Ltd., 02's parent company, has now issued a similar press release, calling Dr. Dre's version a poor imitation, among other things.

"I am very complimented that Dr. Dre has recognized how innovative and special our sparkling vodka is and is trying to copy it," Maitland said, in a written statement. "My concern is that it isn't produced by our patented method and may well turn out to be a very poor imitation."

Maitland's product was launched in the U.S. in January. Drinks Americas announced the creation of Aftermath Cognac and the as-yet unnamed sparkling vodka in August.

"I hope that consumers will not be swayed by the celebrity endorsement of a copycat product by Dr. Dre," Maitland added. "There are a lot of mixed messages going on, Dre's unreleased album is even called Detox to ad a bitterly ironic twist."

Dr. Dre as well as Aftermath artists 50 Cent (who is signed to Aftermath via Eminem's Shady Records label) and Bishop Lamont have both stated Detox will be released sometime during the fourth quarter.

WWW.HIPHOPDX.COM

~~~

FLASHBACKS OF IKE:

Although Hurricane Ike is gone from Texas, the recovery from the wrath the storm wrought is just beginning.

In exclusive interviews with AllHopHop.com, various members of the Houston Hip-Hop community illuminated on how they are coping in the aftermath of Ike’s destruction.

An estimated 40% of Houston residents ignored warnings to flee the city, expecting that the hurricane would not cripple the region, which eventually suffered more than $20 million in property damage.

While assessing the damage to his own properties, rapper Chamillionaire explained to AllHipHop.com why he took no chances and is relieved he chose to evacuate.

“I honestly didn’t expect the storm to have as big an impact on Houston as it did. The storm lifted trees from the roots at my house and knocked down a fence at my car shop but that’s nothing compared to some of the disaster the storm caused for others,” he stated. “I feel blessed to have the means to get out of the city to seek refuge in surrounding cities but feel pity for all the people that are still sitting in the dark with no power. I really hope they can get all the power in the city restored sooner than the 2 week recovery time they are estimating.”

Madd Hatta, radio host of 97.9 The Box’s #1 rated morning show, elaborated on the perilous situations many stranded residents now face.

According to him, the lack of essential living items like water and gas now leave many in more danger than the hurricane itself.

“I stayed on the air for about 40 plus hours and I’m still working day parts for talent that couldn’t come back on the air,” Hatta revealed. “The city was shocked that it was touched the way it was. We didn’t see it. I’m without power at home and luckily the station had water and food. The city is begging for gas, water, and ice. It’s a hectic situation. But we’re a strong city…we will survive.”

Despite not being able to offer physical assistance, Madd Hatta colleague Terri Thomas explained that they were still able to act as a calming influence on air, by offering residents valuable rescue information.

“People were terrified, calling us on the phone. Family and friends huddled in closets and smalls rooms for information or a song of hope or even just comfort knowing that they were not alone,” Thomas recalled. “We made it through together. We did our best to give out information on the storm, relief efforts, rescue efforts, and safety measures. For those that were stuck, we were able to link up neighbors to share supplies and a helping hand.”

It is estimated that over 100,000 homes were flooded. Many cornered residents resorted to climbing trees and rooftops, floating on debris, and punching holes in their attics to survive.

Ozone-award winner Paul Wall is one of an estimated 2 million still without power, but remains thankful for his safety and stresses that his fellow Texans remain cognizant of helping out their neighbors and community wherever possible during this difficult time.

“I haven’t had any power since Friday (September 12).There’s 13 people at my house because of all the flooding. But by God’s grace there’s no major damage to my house, and most importantly we’re all safe,” Paul explained. “I never thought a hurricane would come this far north. This is the time for family and friends to stick together and for us to be kind to strangers and look out for our neighbors. Really this is all a walk in the park compared to Katrina so I can’t complain. I know my fellow Texans out there are going through far worse than me and I wish there was something we could do to help out.”

Also among the lucky few were Pimp C widow Chinara Butler and their six-year-old daughter Christian, both of whom narrowly escaped Ike’s punishing flood waters that consumed and saturated their entire home.

Still shell-shocked, Butler remained short for words and in awe of Mother Nature’s frightening power.

“Wow!” she exclaimed after surveying her ruined home. “One day you’re here, and the next day you’re gone.”

Hurricane Ike made landfall on September 12 over Galveston, Texas with winds of 110 mph and waves overcoming the 17 foot high protective Galveston Seawall.

As a result, landmarks like the historic Balinese Room nightclub were completely washed away.

The TMI Boyz, some of whom have family from Galveston, allege that the federal government is still making the same mistakes that cost people their lives during the rampage of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.

“This is a major situation we have here at home, the citizens of the United States don’t have any where to live, and nothing to live off of, we have the same FEMA problems as New Orleans after Katrina,” the group disclosed in a joint statement. “You would think that the government would have already prepared itself for a catastrophic event such as Hurricane Ike, some of our family members lost everything.”

Houston officials report that relief efforts are still ongoing and estimate a completion time of 2 weeks before power is returned to every Houston resident.

At press time, Hurricane Ike’s death toll for Texas stands at 19 people.

~~~

HIP HOP IS JESUS, HERE TO SAVE THE WORLD.
LOVE, MINDBENDER

P.S. WWW.THEMANIFESTO.CA ALL WEEKEND, MOTHERFUCKERS!

P.S. 2: ON WWW.NOWMAGAZINE.COM , PEEP THE GRAPH NOBEL STORY I DID! :) LOVE YA, GRAPH!