• » Name: Meka Soul
• » Location: Los Angeles, CA
• » Member Since: 04/09/07
• » Bio: Providing clarity in hip-hop since 1981.
• » Contact Me:
• » Syndicate: RSS

• » Memphis Bleek: Hoe, Sit Down Edition
• » Who Really Cares If Rick Ross Was A Cop Or Not?
• » Yung Berg Lost
• » Goofies, Monkeys And Doofies
• » The Nerve Of Those Tall Israelis

	October 2008
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31
« Sep

• » Gangstarr Girl
• » Dah Shyt
• » 2 Dope Boyz
• » Dallas Penn
• » Plastic Squirtguns

Slap-Boxing With Jesus

Nigga

I wasn’t going to blog today. Rather, I was going to spend my day off laid up in my one-room mansion’s poor excuse of a living room running through round after round of Madden until my fingerprints were rubbed raw from the buttons. Then maybe I was going to rub one out to some porn - Lord knows I’ve “acquired” my own fair share of those shits on my computer - until I came cross this piece on the Internets that revealed that Mexico of all places has the world’s first retirement center for chalupa-chewing scallywhops. No, seriously.

Don’t believe me? You may want to check this out. Don’t feel like reading? Well, here’s the video report on it. I wonder if each guest gets a free pack of Valtrex, a bag of ice & a gift coupon to one of those recently reopened Taco Bell "restaurants."

But I digress.

Needless to say, I wasn’t entirely interested in watching the flexibility of Kapri Styles after that one. Shorty got crazy ass for a skinny broad though.

So in between searching for shit to yoke off the ‘Nets, I came across Nazz's response to detractors of the name of his next album. Not to come off as apathetic or anything, but I really don’t see what all the madness is about the shit in the first place, particularly when it involves a bunch of old geezers who are so out of touch with today’s younger generation that Michael Jackson and Robert Sylvester Kelly couldn't een show them how to do it properly.

Besides, it’s not like they don’t have their own skeletons anyways.

What makes it more disheartening is that these humps don’t even attempt to try to understand the culture of today’s youth, instead passing it off as simply destructive jibba jabba. I’ll admit I’ve talked my fair share of shit about rap, but the shit doesn’t mean I believe it is single-handedly destroying the Black race as a whole. Not when there are still traces of racism, a shoddy economy, poor public schooling and a plethora of other shit that will turn even the brightest of children into a dark-hearted killer.

It’s pretty wild to see hip-hop culture take such a beating like it has this year. At the same time, it’s not like it wasn’t unwarranted, what with all those piff pocketers that got ethered last year, not to mention the stunts some of these jackasses have pulled in this month alone. In their defense, perhaps it’s a twisted way of trying to police this culture, as our own representatives have continually failed us. At the same time, catching feelings over the dreaded n-word is pretty ass-backward when you got all these Southern rappers wanting to buy machine guns and silencers: point being, if they’re going to attack something, attack something that is a legitimate threat [1], as the dreaded n-word has been around longer than I have. Speaking of which, does anybody else find it ironic that the same YTs who “invented” the word to demean Blacks are now up in arms over its use in a musical genre they probably don’t listen to?

I hope that I’m not the only one who sees that bullshit.

[1] And don’t tell me that the new MC Hammer has a legitimate reason for trying to get those shits either.

13 Comments             

The Jailbird Syndrome

Let’s be real for a second: hip-hop is probably the only musical genre where even the most flagrant of quasi-homosexuals can even feel like some sort of über-thug, thanks to its representatives’, err, somewhat articulate mannerisms. Pretty much any of these humps would be anally violated on sight if they attempted to actually live out the misogynistic, violent, illegal lifestyles they portray in their raps, but that doesn’t mean that their fans would know it.

I’ll be honest: part of my transition from the run-of-the-mill book smart Nigerian to an aspiring stick-up kid a decade ago was due to a combination of newfound rebellion, raging hormones and an affinity to “Incarcerated Scarfaces.” I think I can speak for the majority of the humps here who have at one point felt as if they were invincible as well.

That indestructible attitude changed quickfast, however, when I was chained to the inside of a police squad car after my infamous 40-minute chase to escape the fuzz throughout Long Beach failed quicker than the Jena 6 rally [1]. Faced with the possibility of being used as currency in a Los Angeles prison, I – for lack of a better term – broke down like a little bitch.

Apparently the shit worked, because I only ended up on house arrest for a few months. Thank God(dess) for prison overcrowding!

The thing I learned the most from my experience is that I wasn’t willing to sacrifice the little things – like the freedom to bathe on a daily basis – for some cheap, tawdry thrill. And this is coming from someone who treats a bowl of Trix like it was ambrosia. So I don’t understand why those same artists who could buy and sell my ass are willing to do a bid, risking everything they’ve worked for.

I already mentioned this week how I could care less about my street credibility if had the financial capabilities to invest in a three-way with Melyssa Ford and that Angel (Lola?) muckluk. So needless to say, I sure as shit wouldn’t risk my livelihood just to prove to the fickle-minded masses that I’m some sort of pseudo-Teflon Don. Had these asscunts taken a page out of Diddy’s expansive catalogue, they’d realize how easy it is to get you top-selling acts ethered at will, then go to some nondescript club and proceed to smack the flames out of anyone who has the gall to get pissed when you hit on their woman. Now that I think of it, Sean Combs has the most street cred out of all those sizzurp-drinking dipshits. Cracking somebody in the head with a bottle of the finest of bum wines, shooting the shit out of a club and blaming your boy and sending your marquee artist to the recording studio in the sky is one thing, but yoking somebody for their publishing, even after they leave your label? That’s some straight-up “leave you die breathing”-style gulliness.

***

On a semi-related note, I’m having a celebration to the jailbirds of the hip-hop world over at 2 Dope Boyz. I invite you all to check it out.

[1] One of the humps ended up back in jail, and two of them look like straight-up homo thugs. It’s safe to say that Black people lost that match.

30 Comments             

Dumb Rappers Need Teaching

I’m not gonna front: it’s been a particularly slow time in hip-hop. Sure, there’s been the usual assortment of shitty rap albums coming out and rumors about random-ass rappers doing random-ass shit, but for the most part the fall semester is pretty sluggish.

Logically though, this sense of slow motion (pause, no Soulja Slim) is a good thing for hip-hop. Think about it: the slower the news season, the less likely you’re going to hear about rappers doing insanely dumb shit, fucking it up for everyone else in the process.

Something I’ve always wondered was why rappers want to pull said dumb shit, despite the fact that they don’t have to ask their mothers to take them shopping at the local Costco like my borderline-broke ass does every now and then. Those chocolate muffins are that crack though. But I digress. I mean if I had half the money these shitbag artists have, you’d probably see me loading up on economy-sized buckets of Kirkland Brand Ultra Laundry Detergent than, say, loading up on blammers with potatoes in the cases of TI, Prodigy, Lil Wayne and Ja Rule.

I figure that they only reason they pull asinine shit is so that they can maintain that all-too-important street credibility that appeals to their fans. I don’t know about you, but as long as I’m respected enough, as well as eating and providing for my loved ones, I could give less than three-eighths of a shit about my “street cred.”

Then again, I’ve not been caught doing otherworldly fruity shit that would make anybody question it in the first place. But if they’re going to make that decision to cater to the nappy-headed hoes of the world, these humps can’t expect their “hardcore” fan base [1] to really take them seriously when they’re running around greased up with their chests all out [||]. I know I sure as shit couldn’t, but that’s only because I’m a cynical asshole like that.

If anything, these humps should learn a thing or two from the King Of All Jigs. Shit, if there should ever be a manual on being the gulliest ladies man ever, the Black tall Israeli should definitely write the foreword. Ever since he stepped into the arena almost 20 years ago, he’s killed more careers (figuratively and literally) than Blackwater, and has gotten away with it to boot. Shit, I wish I could punch out random bystanders and mack their bitch in one swoop. Now that’s the definition of street.

[1] Does that shit even exist anymore?

41 Comments             

Can’t Win For Losing

Random epiphany number 362: White people are as equally stupid as their melanin-loaded counterparts.

Random epiphany number 363: It’s just that when White people fuck up, they do it in the most hilariously asinine way possible.

A while back, I mentioned that I could give less than a shit if by chance some cornball saltine decides to step out of pocket and start spitting out the dreaded n-word as if Robin Williams would pop out of a lamp & grant them three wishes. For the most part I’ve stuck to this feeling, but it makes me wonder if my somewhat “meh” attitude about the word is indicative of the entire Black demographic as a whole, as well as if it’s contributing to the increase of Whites using the word as a whole.

This weekend I sent a good amount of time at my cousin’s shooting the shit out of various Internets humps via Halo 3, where in between the matches I was treated to a bunch of random-ass crackers shouting out the n-word [1]. While the closet hippie/militant side of me wanted to find and beat the YTs silly, in the end I didn’t mind too much because a) it was a video game, b) they were random dumb-asses spread across the nation and c) I know that due to the freedom of the Internets, they probably wouldn’t attempt to say it in my face unless they wanted to catch an eye jammie.

Then again, I’m pretty sure there are those Whites that actually say the shit to their Black counterparts’ faces because they know they won’t do anything about it, thanks to the seemingly lax attitude – like mine – in society as a whole. Apparently now the dreaded n-word is as alright to say as “damn,” “ass” or “hell,” because I’ve heard that shit drop on shows that come on in the middle of the day, for shit’s sakes. If that were the case, should I have really gotten slightly pissed at some random Xbox paleface in the first place?

My logical side eventually trumps my blind rage in the long run; I mean, Black people have shouted it out so much, you would think it’s a code word or something. Hell, as I was just going to get some groceries last night I was treated to a couple humps my age (as well as a older guy whose dinner for the night was nothing more than a 40 of Miller High Life and some chips, but I digress) dropping the n-bomb almost unconsciously. So could I – could Blacks as a whole, for that matter - really get mad when some random person gets out of pocket & says it?

***

Speaking of White boys, I should let you know that my “racist” brother-in-arms Shake and myself have started our own venture, 2 Dope Boyz. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

[1] Interesting fact: White people know how to pronounce my name correctly more than Black people. Go fucking figure.

12 Comments             

YouTube Is The New Blackface

I don’t particularly watch television. Actually, I do watch television, but I spend so little time watching it (and less paying attention to it when I do turn it on) that I think I’m wasting my money on the cable bill, especially for a whole bunch of channels I don’t bother watching at all (Lifetime, anyone?).

I’ve deduced my logic of still having a TV to a few reasonings: a) being raised in a household full of sisters, I got used to the adventures of the Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers and the Saiyans of Dragon Ball Z to ease the pain of living through one of my four sisters’ “time of the month” on an almost weekly basis, b) I need it to play video games or watch bootleg movies and c) to catch a music video every now and then.

In the latter case scenario though, it gets rather trite looking at he same eight videos (since I refuse to pay extra money for those video-only channels), so most of the time I hop on my computer and head straight for the marvelous train wreck known as YouTube.

I first heard about this site in my college days, where I realized I could watch classic videos I had never seen due to that brief, five-year stint where my parents refused to pay for cable after our illegal hookup was discovered and disconnected. But soon after, I began to notice this trend where people would post other random videos. While some were amusing, and others simply quenched my lust for violence, in the time where this little-known website had exploded into a world-renowned sensation, where viewers can watch virtually anything from around the world.

It’s also during this time that a lot of random schlubs were inspired to slap a video of themselves doing a variety of cornball dances, cornier raps or just acting like an idiot in public. Watching people posing like Desmond Howard was one thing, but shuffling their feet to a rap version of “The Lion King” instantly brings to mind the minstrel shows of the past, which is just wrong on so many levels.

But perhaps that is simply the current generation’s form of expression, similar to the b-boys of the past and the (ugh) krumping styles of today. If that is the case then, I may have to stay away from my computer like I do the television now.

14 Comments             

Gym Class Heroes: Better Than Rap Music

Way the fuck back when I still hadn’t experienced that warm, tingly sensation one can only achieve from blasting off of a woman’s honey pot for the first time, I was my, um, junior college’s go-to hip-hop head. At the time I simply used hip-hop music for a variety of things: motivator when it came time to start robbing these fools Lyfe Jennings-style, background noise during bus trips and, on occasion, comforter for whenever I was going through the proverbial ringer, the latter of which happened more often than I’d liked it to.

Interestingly enough, since that fateful day when I rammed out my stripper ex-girlfriend for the first time (let’s just say that I can tell you more about the Lakers/Trailblazers playoff game that was going on than the actual fucking part, sad to say), I’ve had those moments where I needed to turn to this rap shit more frequently. Unfortunately for me, I’ve been stuck with the likes of repugnant sing-along rap music that’s ironically coming from a region where slavery used to run wilder than it’s current down-low influx.

I could correlate the fact that these god-awful Southern rap songs are a direct descendant of the hymns the cotton pickers used to sing in between gang rapes from their white slave owners, but I’ll refrain from doing so at this time. Lord knows I don’t need the wrath of some non-spelling refugee trying to cyber-pistol whip me in all capital letters.

So needless to say, I began expanding my horizons a few years ago in order to calm my nerves after a long day of catering to YTs. In between rediscovering my love for the buttery-soft stylings of Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam, I discovered (read: “acquired”) the Gym Class Heroes’ As Cruel As School Children. Like most of my catalogue, I’d instantly pass on it for weeks, but one particularly uneventful day I gave it a listen, and damn if – in all its “emo rap” glory – it isn’t one of my frequently-played joints in my iPod.

A semi-related nod to yesterday’s post, I’m more attracted to the live instrumentation than anything else on the album, and in some cases it powers the album past its mediocre parts. The lead, um, singer(?) can’t really rap his way out of a wet paper bag with scissors in his hands, but the melodies effectively cancel out his jibba jabba.

For someone such as myself who was strictly a hip-hop head, I find it amazing how its elements are slowly breaching into other genres. Let’s hope that not all of it infiltrates though; I’d probably slap the ever-loving shit out of Amy Winehouse if she started throwing Crank (Crack?) Dat-type of foolishness in her songs.

***

As a bonus I decided to throw in my favorite GCH song. Don’t say I never did anything for you humps.

Gym Class Heroes - Viva La White Girl

38 Comments             

Producers > Rappers

As is the case with most hermits, I’ve found myself more glued to the magic that is DVR more than anything as of late. Being that it’s much easier to catch the few non-sporting events that actually appeal to me on television, I’ve more or less simply recorded what I want, and spend my weekends watching them instead of doing things “normal” people do like go out in the sun (as if my midnight-toned ass needs any more of it in the first place).

Ladies, take heed: if you’re looking for a well-educated, multi-tattooed homebody, it’s as simple as hitting that email under my all-seeing eye.

In any matter, I sometimes forget (or am too lazy to bother) to watch most of the shit I have saved, so it almost always ends up getting tossed anyways. The few things I do save however provide excellent sustenance whenever the only compelling thing that’s on television is that god(dess)-awful show with that "bisexual" [2] MySpace Asian. If not for that Monchhichi face and those fake-ass tits with those nipples that look cross-eyed, that Tila broad could catch a couple babies to the face.

Aw shit, I’d still fuck, retarded boobs & all, because I don’t discriminate the tang like that.

But as usual, I’m digressing from my point.

So anyways, I guess as a warm-up to the letdown that was Hip-Hop Honors, VH1 had a special on the making of Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt. Now, anybody that knows me knows that the album is in my “holy grail” lists [1], so while it held my interest for the most part, I came to the realization that Reasonable Doubt wouldn’t have been Reasonable Doubt had it not been for the beats that amplified the emotion of the lyrics.

As much effort as it supposedly takes to rhyme the phrase “nappy-headed hoe” [3], it takes more effort to create a soundscape that can at the very least capture the essence of the lyrics. Even the worst of rappers can come off sounding semi-decent behind the roughest of beats. Group Home, anyone?

Plus, producers end up having a longer life span in the rap game than rappers themselves, as they can branch off into other genres of music. Odd as it may have been on paper, DJ Premier linking up with Christina Aguilera was a better match up than I ever expected. And we all know Timbaland doesn’t need Black people anymore, what with him spooning with Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake more often.

Most importantly, producers may have one of the safest jobs in hip-hop. Since they’re basically nerds, nobody’s going to take them seriously if they start talking about guns & crack. At the very least, they’re not going to get Stack Bundled.

Maybe if more rappers decided to try a hand at producing, their careers wouldn’t stay on 14:59 all the time. But shit, it seems like everybody with a Casio and a xylophone is a producer now. Word to Mr. Collipark’s bitch ass.

[1] And no, I won’t give you humps my list.

[2] Face it: if a woman likes scissoring with another woman, they're gay. Not that I'm complaining, of course.

[3] Um, “glass of Mo’?” “Pass the ‘dro?” And I wonder why I haven’t been signed yet.

20 Comments             

“Hip-Hop Honors?” Not So Much

If there’s something I can take with me from watching VH1’s poor excuse of a rap event “Hip-Hop Honors,” it’s that I really need to step my FILA game up. I’ve been thinking about bringing that shit back, but I actually need to put more effort into doing so.

But if I wanted to make a post about the gear game on the show, I’d simply ask my overlords for a piece of bandwidth next to the albino from Strong Arm Steady and the faux-Arnold Drummond over at The Evil Collector. So I’ll try to keep this one as hip-hop oriented as possible.

VH1 has been trying to “blacken” up their shows for a few years now, perhaps due to the fact that they can reel in the pickaninny crowd by disguising minstrel shows as thought-provoking television better than BET can nowadays. I’m not gonna front like I’ve not been caught up in that shit as well; as much as it pains me to admit, I watched my fair share of Flavor Of Love episodes every now and then, if only for the donkey that was on that mannish-looking broad with the keloids. And the first Hip-Hop Honors was always something that caught my eye, even though I felt that the shit was about as relevant as a Razzie award.

But after watching last night’s all-extra-fucked-up incarnation, I’m pretty convinced that I could have pulled a better show out of my ass. In between the retarded promos for Irv Gotti’s and Salt-N-Pepa’s shows, I was treated to a plethora of bullshit under the premise that they were “honoring” the innovators of the past, which probably would have been more convincing had they honored a woman who actually deserved the proverbial knob-shine like, I don’t know, Roxanne Shante or some shit. The fact that they had to pull Missy out of nowhere is further proof of how glaringly insignificant women rappers are in rap nowadays.

But adding Missy to the mix wasn’t entirely as awful as the poor camera work, shoddy acoustics and overabundance of, well, dreaded n-word moments Hip-Hop Honors had on display. True, Lupe Fiasco flubbed two lines from “Electric Relaxation.” But the hubbub over his fuck-up was kind of unwarranted, especially given that the first 30 minutes of the damn thing was just one incomprehensible mess, what with Tweet (who used to be the prototype, but not so much anymore), T-Pain and the pork chop sammich mann himself Ne-Yo skipping lines altogether. Really now, how hard is it to remember a line from "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)?" No wonder I kept flipping between that shit, a game of Madden and WWE Raw.

If VH1 really wants to put on a show that properly honors hip-hop’s greatest change makers, they shouldn’t look to those same braintrusts that created those dumbass lists for MTV earlier this year. Leave it to them and they’re gonna start inducting space wasters like Red Hot Lover Tone or Master P, even though the latter did grace my adolescent ass with this back in the day.

25 Comments             

I Wish You Would

Last week I mentioned how I more or less could give a shit about purchasing albums thanks to the combination of exorbitantly high prices of CDs, the increasing simplicity of yoking shit off the Internets and the overall quality of music as a whole. And it doesn’t look like I’ll be returning back to my purchasing ways, what with rent, bills and Nike Dunks to take care of before anything.

The thing that gets me however is the fact that the TIs’ personal army – the RIAA – has consistently bitched and complained about illegal downloading, as if it were the sole reason why albums sales are down. Surely it couldn’t be for the fact that today’s music resembles a gigantic shit sammich, but I digress.

So, rather than create music that doesn’t make artists look like buffoons, compelling slack-jawed yokels like myself and the readers of this site to actually go out and purchase these albums, records companies scramble to the RIAA when it’s glaringly obvious that some fucktard like Soulja Boy [1] isn’t going to sell but 8 copies, instead of at the very least promoting some music that captures the already fickle attention of listeners for more than a few months.

But I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t help out their bottom line, so instead they start suing the ever-loving shit out of average Joes who can barely afford the service provider who gives them the ability to “acquire” the music in the first place, as if it will single-handedly cease and desist bootlegging. The interesting thing about this is that many of today’s top-selling artists would not be relevant if not for bootlegging. I know I’m not the only one who remembers that Metallica got their start pushing off dubbed copies of their demo.

Not to give out any ideas (not to mention contribute to the downward spiral that is record sales, because that would be very, very, wrong), but there are a plethora of... errr... loopholes that the humps can use to avoid detection altogether. And no matter what bullying scare tactics the RIAA throw upon us, getting music the cyber-Ski Mask Way isn’t going to stop any time soon. Not while that Simon and Garfunkel catalogue I need to get is still lingering out there.

***

I know my blogs have been somewhat shorter than usual. Not to put too much out there (nor to grab sympathy) but I’m in the process of working a couple life situations out. But I still appreciate you fucks enough (seriously) to put my shit to the side for these entries.

[1] Wanna know something interesting? This hump is from Chicago of all places. Now wonder that town can’t win for shit nowadays.

22 Comments             

Black On No Sides

In case you don’t know, I’ve not been a fan of Bojangles Entertainment Television for quite some time now. What makes this tidbit (not so) more interesting is that when I was an aspiring stick-up kid living in Long Beach (and we all know how well that turned out), I didn’t have cable for a good eight years [1] until I moved into my college apartment way the fuck back in 2002.

In a sense, being deprived of BET, MTV and virtually any and every conduit that played music videos (well, when they used to play music videos) made me appreciate the art form more, as I essentially had to wean off of word-of-mouth, magazines and my own discoveries to develop my own tastes. So naturally, when I finally moved out of my mother’s house and got cable (as well as the luxury to have sex without being walked in on and mollywhopped afterward), I spent more time “catching up” on old videos via YouTube (before its blackface days) than visually BuFu’ing my eyes watching the likes of Ms. Jade and Lil’ Flip.

But even though they were slowly eschewing their nightly news program for reruns of shitbag UPN shows and playing some random-ass gospel show after UnCut [2], I felt (or at least tricked myself in to believing) that BET was still a relevant, positive influence and choice for, well, porch monkeys like myself and most of the South.

I could not have been more wrong.

Now that I’ve had access to the channel over the past half-decade, I’ve actually made a conscious effort to not watch it at all, as it’s painfully obvious they couldn’t pull decent programming out of their ass even if Justin Slayer just ran through it [||]. Never would I ever expect VH1 – whose original format was, in laymen’s terms, MTV for the colon cancer crowd – to usurp any and every smidgen on Blackness BET used to have, which in a sense is getting dangerous because you know how us darkies like to fuck shit up.

Perhaps it’s just me, but I can’t help feel somewhat confused about the state of BET. Apparently Black people run it, so logically they should be a fair representation of Black culture right? But maybe they’ve never been more accurate in depicting it than they are now. And if that’s the case, I better knock up a PAWG soon. Lord knows they can already get me a good job.

[1] This probably explains why I take pleasure in dumb-ass local commercials like this one (shout outs to Drea for that) and (if you’ve ever lived in Southern California and stayed at home on a weekday) this one.

[2] “What That Thang Smell Like,” “Time For Freakin’” and anything by Mighty Casey and Joker The Bailbondsman > that rather fruitbaggy video Ja Rule has out right now. Tell me I’m wrong.

32 Comments             

The Art Of The Leak

At the risk of making myself vulnerable for the RIAA’s terrorist-like raids, I’ll admit that most of the songs and albums that occupy my iPod were not acquired legally; In fact, most of my catalogs of songs aren’t. I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere in between the increasing number of bad albums and the advent of high-speed Internet I just stopped buying records.

While I do understand that my little contribution may be part of the cause for the decline in sales – not to mention the possible demise of the record industry as a whole – at the same time, can you really blame me? Alongside the aforementioned rise in bad music, also add to that the increasing prices of CDs and the drop in local and major stores that carried records, and you have nothing more than me wasting transportation money going to some random record store a good ten miles away to purchase an album I wouldn’t let my pet turtle use as a pillow. In that sense, what’s the point of buying records?

It also doesn’t help that once I’m in the mood to find obscure music (which has become more frequent than ever before, thanks to said bad music), it’s either nowhere to be seen, or ridiculously expensive once they are located. A shining example of this would be my search for what I consider part of my “holy grail” of records: Raekwon’s magnum opus, Only Built For Cuban Linx... Now, I was on my way to purchase my fifth copy of the album (and first on CD, as I was very reluctant to give up on tapes until earlier this decade), as it had been mysteriously “borrowed” and never returned. After searching in about four record stores throughout the city, I had finally found it on my fifth try... for $18.99 (mind you, this album at the time was several years old already).

However, I do have my limits. I’ve never been one to get an album of an artist or group I genuinely enjoy without purchasing its official release. Unfortunately, that happens so few and in between that I’ve only bought approximately four albums in the past two years, including the one I copped this year.

Obviously, you can see the dilemma I face here. But as long as this trend of fantastically awful music and ridiculously insane prices continues, I’ll keep loading up my iTunes with music I’ve acquired from my good friends SBC and Wi-Fi.

20 Comments             

Wildflower

A few words of advice to any aspiring rappers, singers... Hell, to all guys (and girls who get down like that) in general: sleeping with Karrine Stephans will probably not do anything for your career outside of requiring a year’s worth of Herpecin-L.

Seriously, the simple fact that I’m dropping her name in this blog shows how insidiously ass-backward this so-called hip-hop shit can be, because on the real, has this bitch [1] actually done anything other then half of the world’s population? Does she see feel any sense of accomplishment letting everybody from Spliff Star to fucking Bill Maher run up in her proverbial hot spot like some random-ass Queens-bred goonie goo-goo from the 30th floor of his high-rise HUD apartment does an unwilling towel head in his bodega [2]?

I’ve never understood the fascination with Superhead. For one, this woman (and I’m using the term ridiculously loosely here) essentially fucked her way to the top of the food chain, becoming a Brazillionaire in the process. Call me out of touch but technically, isn’t what she’s doing more or less prostitution? Then again, I’m watching a porno while I’m typing this shit (because I can multi-task like that), so it’s not like I’m one to talk about morals.

The obvious dilemma of this is, of course, the image she gives the actual aspiring “business women” who are “only using ‘modeling’ as a stepping stone to further their career,” not unlike the bevy of thick-bodied (damn Persian!) ladies that grace the Beauty and Brains section of this site. Not to say that any of them are money-hungry skeeze-bags like Ms. Stephans, but it makes me wonder if the rest of the world won’t see them in the same light, no thanks due to her exploits. But let’s face it: these women have chosen a profession where they’re made to appease to the red-blooded, hetero male’s (or dyke’s) carnal lust for all things sexual. So while I know that they’re not indicative of how all cola bottle-shaped women are, can they really blame us for responding in a manner like B&B comments All-Star 420westcoast’s rants? Shit, when I was younger I couldn’t stop thinking of sex, and half of the chicks who were doing this shit back then more or less resembled Kelly LeBrock circa Weird Science. Imagine today’s teenager seeing this shit, and they’ve more or less turned into mutants because of all the hormones in those Chicken McNuggets & shit.

***

Yes, I know about the fact that men do the same shit on a daily basis. But does that make the shit any better? Not to get all preachy, but this whole “we do it because you do it” rhetoric is a little flaccid. Step your respective games up, men and women; the "eye for an eye" theory is getting sad.



[1] It’s OK if I call this one a bitch, right? Isiah Thomas has essentially fucked it up for the rest of us, so I really can’t foot any kind of sexual harassment bill at the moment.

[2] It’s nice to see I can still fuck with people like that. I was starting to worry there for a second.

78 Comments             

Queens Lost

“For people to say, ‘He snuffed P,’ first of all, that’s what happens in a fight... People get hit. I been hit plenty of times in my face in a fight.” – Mobb Deep’s own Charleston P on the eye jammie he caught from Saigon last week

You don’t say.

In the heyday of East Coast hip-hop, no other town had more talent coming from its gum-infested streets than Queens. From mash-out posses like Onyx, to the thugged-out theatrics of Kool G Rap to its perennial All-Pro representative Nas, Queens, alongside Brooklyn, were a force not to be fucked with.

Even though the shitty radio stations played the aural violations of The Dove Shack, Kausion and Twinz, I found myself instantly attracted to the rhythmic lyricism of the East (North?). To this day, no other borough [1] could touch that city in its prime.

But leave it to the East to go and fuck shit up for everyone.

I guess I should have seen it when KRS-One was tossing Prince Be’s fat ass off his own stage [2], but I refused to believe it. But even after Daz of all people started punting their skyscrapers in that one video, New York began a subtle, yet steady, descent into the downward spiral it’s in now. Bad Boy crashed and burned worse than Dale Earnhardt’s whip in the Daytona 500, Cam’Ron is either losing his running mates to God, transsexuals or Curtsy and although he recently bailed him out of the claws of the IRS, Jay-Z yoked Damon Dash for damn near everything, leaving him to make fake-ass Air Force Ones to keep his bench warm in Marcus Garvey Park.

The worst thing about this is that I was more or less expecting this chaos to happen to Queens rappers, what with Sticky Fingaz getting punched out by some corn-fed YT rocker on MTV a few years ago, and Nas essentially reaching his peak with his first album. But it kinda pains me to see a city that produced Illmatic fail so miserably. Now everybody is (literally) taking shots at Prodigy, which in a sense ain’t saying too much nowadays. Shit, if I slapped out Prodigy that shit might ruin my bottom line here at DX. And I sure as shit don’t want that to happen.

Oh, and Nas? You’re about 3 years late on the “rappers peddling ugly-ass shoes” craze.

[1] Yeah, I know. Brooklyn’s the only one that comes closest, though.

[2] Why is there no YouTube of this one?

199 Comments             

Damn You, OJ

I’ll be honest: I’ve purposely refused to throw my own gauntlet down when it came to the case of the Jena 6 because quite honestly I can not lean towards one particular side. On one hand, I can’t help but feel some remorse for all the teenagers and families involved, as it was ridiculously insipid to attempt to try kids who haven’t even developed enough fur under their chins to be considered an adult as adults. For no legal action to happen to the idiots who thought that throwing nooses in a tree was a joke was retarded, and essentially gives that city’s denizens the notion that it’s also alright to chain someone to the back of a rusty pickup and drag them a few miles.

At the same time, I don’t really feel sorry for the shit the Jena (Gina? Jenna?)  6 are going through in the first place. Call me heartless, but the simple fact of the matter is that these kids stomped out the ever-loving shit out of another human being. Whether the victim was white or not, that’s still wrong on all kinds of levels. While the initial punishment was extremely exaggerated and unnecessary, comparing the following protests to the Civil Rights Movement four decades ago was just idiotic. I never saw Dobermans biting chunks of ass out of those protestors, but then I’m fucked up like that.

In actuality, the entire fiasco brought back memories of the circus act that was Detective Nordberg's murder case that happened in my city some thirteen years ago. I’m not comparing the two trials, mind you; I find it interesting how people will instantly jump to conclusions on some random-ass issue when it’s glaringly obvious they don’t know the half of it in the first place, like the time all those asscunts ran up on the freeways holding “Free OJ!” signs during his rather fruity low-speed chase. The fact that every channel broadcasting it cancelled out my TGIF programming, but I digress.

Interestingly enough, as soon as OJ was acquitted, many of his supporters were quick to push duke – who had long ditched Blacks for White people and Hertz commercials, before he went all liquid swords to Nicole’s tonsils – to the left, once they realized they let a killer walk free, disowning him like deadbeat parents do their children. And now with his latest foray into the Ski Mask Way not really helping matters, it makes me wonder if they start to ignore Mychal Bell, now that he recently got sprung from the pokey, once Sweet Daddy Grace inevitably decides to direct his wallet toward the next “racially motivated” case. Not to sound like a racist or anything, but in the rare case I get sent up the river on some pent up, exaggerated charges, I wouldn’t want A Pimp Named Slickback trying to get me off the hook. I can barely afford my rent sometimes; Lord knows I couldn’t even spot his premium.

52 Comments             

God(dess) Bless The Dead

If there were ever a reason not to trust those who are supposed to serve and protect this country’s denizens (read: chow down on doughnuts and gun-butt the shit out of some hapless Negroid every now and then), this would definitely be the case.

A note to all the non-minority demographic (read: honkies and Chinks) who read this particular section of the Internets: be glad you haven’t waken up one day looking like C. Thomas Howell in Soul Man, lest you’d actually welcome the overall sense of fuckedoverness jungle bunnies such as myself tend to face every now and then.

And it’s not like today’s Black “representatives” are doing anything to quell matters, what with them impersonating cops, slapping fire out of Whites at parties and the like, and this year isn’t even over yet. While the reasonable half of me shakes my head in disbelief at this shit, the inherently coon side that all Blacks have (don’t front) is more or less enthralled at watching my fellow man make an ass out of himself, because I’m a cynical asshole like that.

But with this latest development in Biggie’s case, one has to wonder why the fuck this random-ass inmate would wait ten years to say he’s been lying the entire time. His deposition would have you believe that his conscience was getting to him, but I’d like to think that of all the violent entries his asshole has received since being locked in the bing essentially made the bitch in him come out. Perhaps he’s trying to score some petroleum jelly to ease the insertions by doing this, but whatever.

You have to wonder what all of this means to not only hip-hop, but Black people as well. Think about it: some random-ass nut diddle has allegedly been lying to the fuzz for the past ten years. Now thanks to this hump, I can’t help but be even more paranoid for fear of some random-ass police officers ready to fry the (literal) shit out of me a la Nelly's number-one cheeba stasher Ali all because I asked, “What seems to be the problem, officer?”

But maybe that’s the conspiracy theorist in me once again talking. At the same time, Phil Spector literally shot a bitch in her mouth and he go