Boss on Deck

Runnin' Game

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 19:52:09 -0500

I'm on a roll so lemme just jump into it. As we start moving into our fall issues, can't help but have the NBA and the Grizzlies on the brain. (You try planning sports pages for the winter months - if it ain't football, it's basketball, 'cause, seriously, who plays hockey?) Anyhow, so I'm a day late on this one, but I'm pocketing my dollar 'cause after mulling some NBA shit around all day yesterday, I started to get the sinking suspicion that this year's Draft Lottery was definitely fixed, and not just 'cause the Grizz lost out on both Oden and Durant. Lemme take you through it, and let's start with the biggest story of the lottery: Boston's slip to fifth pick. After a horrible season that started to feel like the end of a franchise or at least the beginning of a new dark age (and just for the record, Beantown bawlers, try rooting for the Knicks this millennium), the Celts throw the rest of the season in the hopes of landing the first, or at least second pick, and a new franchise player as a result. The result? Fifth pick. Stern ain't playing that shit. Can't have teams, especially ones in major/storied NBA markets landing rewards for hardly showing up for the second half of the season. It'd set a horrible precedent and just give even more stones to the NBA's critics (magnets, anyone? I mean, point shaving?). So the Celts are spanked to the back end of the league's elite losers and forced into crisis mode, which fortunately led to some interesting trades and should keep things interesting in the East at least until they realize they have no bench (and, in fantasyland, Penny makes the Heat, somehow learns how to play D, and watching games in South Beach gets rocketed up to whole new level - again, fantasyland). Then you've got the Grizz and the Hawks, two teams that completely by accident (well, the Hawks by birth) managed to have horrible, horrible seasons. Looking at the math, the Grizz and the Celts were damn near locked to lock up Oden and Durant. No dice. Grizz slip to fourth, the Hawks grab third, and here's why: neither city has a strong NBA fan base. For whatever reason, the Hawks can't bring people out to games, even though the city is flourishing in a way it never has before. Maybe folks would start going to games if they could put a winning team on the court with a marquee player at the helm? Maybe? But after years of failing to bring anyone out to the games, why would the league even want to risk it? Oden goes to the Hawks and no one goes to the games anyway cause everyone's saving their money to go see the Falcons (or at least they were until Vick let the dogs out, but how was Stern supposed to see that coming?). And as for the Grizz - here's a franchise that's also suffering in the attendance category, but honestly, more because it's unclear whether the local economy can support a professional sports franchise. Folks ain't particularly well-off in the M, and tickets aren't particularly cheap, which is why the Titans ended up in Cashville and not the Home of the Blues. Now don't get me wrong, Memphis folks love their ball, and if there was a winning squad on the court, I'm confident folks would rob and steal to find a way to get into the games. But the city doesn't have an NBA legacy, it has a basketball legacy, particularly a college basketball legacy (again, what up, Penny? And what up pre-season #1?!?), and with rumors already swirling about possibly relocating the Grizzlies yet again, well, that's not a market where the league wants to bank on their next 10 years, either. All of which leads us back to Seattle and Portland, the least probable teams to land the second and first picks, respectively. But of course, that is what happened, mainly because they're both rich cities with thriving local economies - plenty of money in the Northwest to purchase plenty of season tickets (gotta love the Internets). Both cities have storied NBA legacies, and fans who will troop out to support a winning squad, without a doubt (even with a horrible team, Portland was still posting solid attendance records). And then there's the Sonics' push for a new stadium to the point of threatening to leave town if one doesn't materialize. If Durant lives up to the hype, my money says they get their wish.

Tape Worm

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 23:57:25 -0500

Three videos hit worth talking about this week. Let's start with this one: Fif finally delivers a semblance of a hit after a bunch of really lukewarm records this spring. Can't say I'm really into his performance - hearing him over this simply serves as a stark reminder of how well T.I. fit into the Justin/Timbo mold - but it's clear this record will win enough for Curtis to finally come out. There's money behind this video and track, it will get radio play and it will become a popular record whether folks like it or not. I will say this, the other thing that strikes me about this track is just how great of a team Justin and Timbaland make. It's a 2007 MJ and Qunicy. Impressive stuff. Oh, and I ain't mad at the women (got a hard spot for long-legged ritzy chicks in stockings - and for those taking notes, no pause neccessary). One of the biggest records of the summer finally gets a video. Say what you wanna say about Soulja Boy, this record, and the South as a whole, but this is one of the most hip hop videos I've seen in awhile. What I realized watching this today was that instead of hating on all the snap music coming out of the A, what folks need to do is rethink the whole situation: translate this whole scene to the East Coast and all these kids would be b-boys, b-girls and old school call and response DJs, it just so happens that "Crank That" is a million times more accessible than a break record. And thank God for that. (And for the record, I'm not really checking for a whole Soulja Boy album, but I'm psyched that this dude is out there, making records, and that there are folks who are that excited about an artist and a dance rooted in rap. Folks, hip hop lives in the South. The kid's got his name written on his sunglasses - aka, what's more hip hop than that?!?) This one just speaks for itself. As my man Young Scav said, NOW I'm ready for the weekend! Enjoy.

All the Way Live

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 18:02:35 -0500

Note to self: step your blog game up. (Shameless) Note to you: Check out our September Juice issue, Obama on the cover. It's a beast. Moving on… A coupla weeks ago I headed back down to the M to sit back, relax, puff a square, sip a Becks (or, in my case, Bud), and to duck into the 5th Annual Crunkfest. To mark the occasion the show relocated from the essentially crumbling Mid South Coliseum to the newer and much more massive FedEx Forum, and as we headed downtown the streets were packed with everyone from folks looking to get into the show, cats shilling CDs, regular drunks milling about on Beale taking novelty pics and getting henna tattoos, and cops. Despite having made the trip basically just to catch the show, my ticket situation was still a lil sketchy as the show got underway, that is until Joe Wiggins, Yo Gotti, and Peppa stepped in to make sure that folks were straight. Thanks to their efforts, non-existent floor seats became backstage access and the rest of the night was a celebration of the current state of Southern rap. Sure Lil Wayne, T.I., and Jeezy didn’t make it, nor even some of the biggest homegrown talents – Eightball & MJG, Three 6 Mafia, and Kinfolk Kia Shine – but outside of Wayne, whose name was on the bill at one point (and had a show to perform in NY the next day), the missing acts were hardly, well, missed, mainly because there’s so much bubbling down South and below the national radar that’s got folks open. We missed the first half of the show due to the ticket drama but were posted up in time to see how bright Boosie’s star truly shines, watch Soulja Boy Tell ’Em do it, take note of Gucci Mane’s once again flourishing career firsthand (it’s impressive, considering) not to mention the skills of young hot spitter All Star, and witness Playa Fly’s first show since he got out of the pen earlier this spring. The crowd was riding hard for damn near e’ryone of ’em, though All Star is still too busy establishing his mic rep to truly keep a crowd crunk (and I ain’t mad at him -- if he gets a break, he’s got the promise), and the only person who put the place on it’s collective ass was Baby Boy Da Prince. Not from lack of trying, either, I just don’t believe it’s ever gonna really happen for dude. But the night belonged to hometown hero Yo Gotti who capped the show and turned the place out with a short set that was tight and tough. It’s crazy to be in a stadium-sized crowd so immersed in a set performed by an artist who’s virtually unknown in the rest of the country. And because I’m a Gotti fan just like my folks, it was the best live show I’ve seen in years. Back to the Basics: Crunkfest Edition Kinfolk missed the show, but popped up on Beale just as my iPhone was going dead (before you try’n get your hands on one, check out my full review here), so that worked out well. Ended up kicking it with him and Wifey all night, and although he was crazy pissed that he missed the show due to some shoddy private jet service, you gotta give the man respect for walking up and down Beale, shaking hands, signing autographs, and generally showing the hometown love. We ducked into the Plush Club long enough for a shot, a beer and an impromptu Kinfolk set and then kept it moving long enough to see some dude walking his pet kangaroo down Beale at 3a. Exactly: pet kangaroo. Try wrapping your beer goggles around that. At the end of it all, shouts to Kinfolk, Frost, Wifey, Blink (and his Memphis or Die DVD), and the rest of that squad for extending the hospitality and just generally being good folks. Shouts again to Wiggins, Gotti, and Peppa for getting us in the backdoor (and congrats to Peppa for throwing a crunk ass event without any crazy ass motherfuckers fucking it up). Frog, as always, thanks for holding me down. Devin, for being one of Memphis’ few kings – we’ll get up soon, I’m sure of it. My boy Ed and his new home and wife. And the M in general, for just being there. Kinfolk’s album, Due Season (Universal), in stores now. Keep an ear out for the second single, “W.O.W.”: Gotti’s showstopper and reigning Memphis street anthem, “What Up,” from Back 2 Da Basics (TVT), in stores now: And an All Star record, "A to Z," for the hell of it: Also, my dude Dart’s got a hot single and a hot video on his hands. You know Cashis. You probably know this song. And you may or may not fuck with him. Watch this video. It changed my perspective entirely and I’ve been bumping the shit outta this track ever since. Sometimes things have to be seen to be heard. I know it ain’t got shit to do with this, but I just thought I should mention. Cashis, “Lac Motion,” off the EP, The County Hound (Shady/Interscope), in stores now.

The Short Bus

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 20:55:38 -0500

Holy Christ. A man tries to keep up a blog and even talks about how he encourages the folks working under him to bust their ass and keep theirs up and then what’s he do? Disappears for months from the Internet discussion with nothing to show for it ’cept a coupla more issues of this here magazine. All I can say is that I hope you’ve been at least enjoying the book (shameless self-promotion, T.I. issue out now, interviewed by yours truly, pick it up, if just for the pics – shouts to Ben Watts, the Shore Club, and of course Tip and crew for making the shoot a success.) So let’s just jump back into it, right? Last Thursday, the freshly conservative Supreme Court (you gotta love that President we’ve encouraged to run our country into the ground) ruled against public school busing programs designed to maintain racial diversity. Whoa. What a hot-button topic, huh? By now, tons and tons of folks have weighed in on this decision from all sides of the spectrum – I was on vacation, sue me – so I’m gonna try to keep this a lil brief while offering whatever insight I have. The bad news is that racial diversity is always a good thing. Personally, I’ve benefited from it in all aspects of my life – Memphis, where I was born and raised, the Memphis City School System, where I received all of my primary and secondary education, all the sports programs I participated in over the years, New York, just as a place and where I’ve lived for the past decade, and of course, my job/the business I’ve been doing for the last nine years. You always learn more by being around different folks, no matter their race, culture, or socioeconomic background. I’ve learned as much from the poorest white guy as the richest black dude, and there were a gang of Indians (as in Punjabi not Sioux) who I met in college and showed me all sorts of shit, not to mention the Japanese skate crew I literally used to roll with and my French set that holds me down whenever I make it to Paris. Every single one of ’em taught me something about life, love, happiness, depression, capitalism, socialism, Buddhism, Christianity, being a Sikh, hell, you name it. It’s a big world, seeing it, or at least seeing people who have seen more of it, or a different side of it, than you have is about the best schooling you can ever get. Which brings us to diversity in schools themselves. While I was coming up in Memphis Public Schools, a busing system was definitely in place. It’s the South, racism is very real, etc. However, my mother, like a lot of parents, busted her ass to get me into the best public schools in the system to the point of camping out over night at the school board to sign registration forms until things were good. It was ridiculous. Point being, I came up in what was called the optional program – essentially kids either from or not from the neighborhood who lobbied and tested into an accelerated program specific to that school; we weren’t the kids from the neighborhood in school essentially to be babysat, we were there to learn. And I was lucky because from K-7 I attended schools in which the classrooms were incredibly diverse, at least in terms of black and white kids (probably 60/40). And the diversity had nothing to do with busing, it was just the way the city was constructed: they were schools in the middle of the city, folks from all walks of life wanted their kids to get an education, and so that’s what all of us went off and tried to do. But things changed when I hit middle school. As my folks continued to track the best schools in the city and then petition the hell out of the board to get me in the programs rumored to be the best, I transferred out to a school a little bit closer to the ’burbs, ironically (or really not even ironically, blatantly) called White Station. (Memphis can be ridiculous like that.) For the rest of high school, the majority of my classmates were predominately white even though busing programs helped to technically maintain a racially diverse student body within the school as a whole. All of which gets us to the point: during high school, I thought the busing program was problematic. While seeing folks of different races in the hallways is at least a little bit better than being completely unexposed to other races, segregation within the school was rampant: most of the black kids were in one program, most of the white kids in the other. And it just so happened that the racial makeup was split along educational (and for the most part economic) lines as well. The generally well-to-do white kids were in the civilized, studious classes while generally more economically depressed black kids were in the classes teetering on the verge of chaos. To me, the situation did little to promote integration and instead fostered resentment – it’s like asking a young Marshall Mathers to live in a trailer on Bill Gates’ lawn, of course his whole damn family is gonna be pissed. So all of that to say I’m not so sure putting an end to busing to encourage racial diversity is necessarily such a bad thing, especially since the ruling doesn’t say anything about busing to increase socio-economic diversity, a solution already being applied in several school districts nationwide. Arguably in 2007, the biggest problem tearing at the social fabric of the country isn’t rooted in race but in economics. There’s no doubt that the distance between rich and poor, across racial boundaries, continues to grow. Socially, on the other hand, a strong argument can be made that we continue to collapse into a more unified sense of 21st Century American (and for a variety of reasons, the wide-ranging influence of hip hop/rap not being the least of them, though MTV definitely deserves credit here as well). Yes, it’s still imperfect, but progress has been made. Look, the point is that diversity needs to be preserved, in whatever way possible. But simple quotas of any kind are not a solution. You could bus in Martians, but if you locked them in a basement all day, you’d never learn a damn thing about Mars. Diversity, or at least the benefits of it, is something that needs to be encouraged on a day-to-day, hands-on basis. Folks need interaction with folks from different backgrounds, not just proximity. How you actually pull that off in schools is a whole different problem because ultimately it’s not how you get different kids to the building, but what you do with them once they’re there. Back to the Basics, Stax Bundles (R.I.P.) edition: Yes, folks, I did finally get a vacation. And I headed back to the hometown, for a not so unusual change. Shouts to everyone who made my trip a great one: moms, pops, Frog, Caroline and the good folks at James Davis, Drew over at Mister Hats, Kevin Johnson at Ramses Shadow, Computer and that crazy chick from Printers’, Keyshia and the rest of the crew from EP’s, Danielle, Fat Brad, Lauren and her beautiful daughter, Jessica for the pool, the good folks at the City Office of Mapping and Central Records for the wall maps, and last but not certainly not least, Cary over at Conqueroo, who came through with tickets to the Stax 50th Anniversary concert, which was truly a night for the books. Hosted by Chuck D and American Idol’s Randy Jackson, this was a night of standing ovation after standing ovation. And without recounting every track by every artist, I’ll say that Eddie Floyd, William Bell (who was slick as shit all night), and the Soul Children were everything you’d want in a Stax show – passionate, gifted, and aware of how cool it was to be well into middle age, on stage in some loud ass throwback gear, while belting out soul classics, that they all put on great sets (the Soul Children were amazing at this, with the whole hand-wringing “I can’t go,” “we gotta go,” routine made famous by James Brown). Mable John killed it with an intimate performance of “Your Good Thing is About to End” (she looked great as well), Booker T and the MGs tore the place into pieces with two tracks (“Green Onions” and “Time is Tight”), Angie Stone was good (though I’ve seen her better) as was Mavis Staples, and Rance Allen was crazy (who knew? Look him up, he’s great). Isaac Hayes closed the night, and while it’s unfortunate he’s been slowed down a bit by some recent medical concerns, simply seeing him live, in Memphis, on the Orpheum stage was a moment I’ll never forget. Thanks again to Memphis for a great trip. I’ll be back later this month for Crunkfest. And I just might have to buy a new hat. Records: Keep telling fools this Boss Hogg Outlawz album is criminally slept on. One track I killed in Memphis: BHOH, "Recognize a Playa" One of my favorite Stax records: Isaac Hayes, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" And one record just for the hell of it: Kriss Kross, "I Missed the Bus"

Lost One

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:41:25 -0500

Jay-Z, f/ Eminem, "Renegade," from The Blueprint (Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam, 2001): At my Sat night run this weekend (shouts to Chino), someone was killing a Jay-Z mixtape and somewhere between all the arguments about what is and what is not a foul, caught a few mins to pay attention to this record all over again. Reminded me how much of a beast it is/was. Two of the biggest figures in the game, of all time, trading verses that seem to speak to the whole issue my last post explored (esp considering the racial divide, which they both speak to) – years before the current discussion. Aiight, so it ain’t really a lost one – everyone knows this record to the point that Nas even referenced it in his own song (tho I don’t necessarily agree with his take, Em kills it, but one doesn’t seem better than the other, just different). But us rap fans often have a short attention span when it comes to music so figured a refresher course was in order. Check it out one more ’gain and think about Rutgers, Imus, Russell, me… and, well, you. Back 2 the Basics: Saw The Host (Showbox) this weekend. Good lil monster movie with an interesting subtext about the lack of transparency in government and military operations. Plus the monster's pretty cool. Gotta give it up to the Warriors. Playoffs are def a hit this year. Gotta say I'm pulling for GS, the Suns, the Nuggets, and Houston out the West. I don't really care about the East, but def like watching the Bulls play, but I'll leave that whole playoff discussion to my man, Young Scav.

N.W.A. or Those Three Magic Words

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:26:30 -0500

Another week, another media crisis, and another call for hip hop to take the blame. By now y’all prolly already know way too much about the whole damn Don Imus situation – Rutgers’ women basketball players are a bunch of “nappy headed hos,” Imus is an idiot, Al Sharpton’s pissed, Imus is unemployed, Oprah’s searching for black souls, Russell’s banning “bitches,” “hos,” and the N-word, fans are like, “What the fuck, I thought this was about some ol’ white dude?,” and rappers themselves are like, “Don’t look at me, I handle mine.” And yet, as convoluted as all that, it still ain’t as simple as all that. See, Imus is an idiot – that much is clear. And we should all thank God, Martin Luther, Malcolm, or even our folks, for finally creating a cultural climate that ensures that when some racially/culturally insensitive asshole shows (or in this case, speaks) his ass in an incredibly public forum, he’s thrown, well, out on his ass. ’Cause while I, and any of you out there with an inkling of intellect should, ride for free speech in all its forms (even folks saying retarded shit should get the opportunity to say it – it’s America, people), there’s no excuse for allowing that kinda language or perspective free reign on mainstream national airwaves. Granted Imus ain’t come out and say, “I hate black bitches, their mammy asses should all be burned at the stake,” but, you ask me, opening his mouth to say what he did belies an attitude that ain’t too far removed. And of course, and again thankfully, I ain’t alone in that assessment and the plug on his mic was rightfully pulled. Much respect to sponsors Proctor & Gamble, Staples, GM and Sprint, not to mention MSNBC for doing exactly that (and what CBS shoulda done from get): kicking his ass and his show to the curb. Seriously, shit ain’t perfect up in this piece of golden plains, but this is definitely progress. To a degree. In the aftermath of the whole controversy, the idea that what rappers put out there in terms of lyrics and imagery is pretty much along the same lines, if not worse, than what Imus got canned for saying has become a talking point, especially in light of the fact that the big four (EMI, Universal, Sony, and BMG), if not the rappers themselves, eat a lot of cake off of that kinda trash talk on the daily (roughly $10 billion annual, to be a lil more precise with it). As has been pointed out, shifting the discussion in this direction is a lil’ like being interrogated by the police over a crime you committed and then pointing in the air like, “Oh shit, it’s Superman!” as you try to make a break for it, or being busted for a misdemeanor and being like, “Yo, my man’s and them been burying bodies in the basement for years,” but it’s happened, and as a result rap once again finds itself in the middle of a cultural maelstrom, and on the defensive. Russell’s calling for something akin to censorship, T.I. and Fat Joe say that’s retarded cause cultural change starts at home, and all sorts of folks are like, it’s art/poetry, you can’t censor it and leave it at that. But the question remains: is rap/hip hop, or more specifically, the language spit by so many of today’s best and most popular rappers, as bad, if not worse than Imus’ off-color and off-hand remark? More to the point, is rap and/or rappers somehow responsible for the destruction or at least degradation of social equality both at large and especially within one segment [read the black community] of our society? Well, here’s the thing: Russell’s right. All discussions of free expression aside, the power of language in terms of emotional impact and shaping perception can’t be denied – it’s the root of our communication, and as anyone who speaks another language will tell you, the language you’re operating in actually changes how you think (there’s that whole classic, Eskimos got a bunch of words for snow thing). What you know how to say changes the way you see and process the world. It just is. And while rap, which is rooted in the spoken word more than any other music form out there, has infinite potential in terms of possible talking points, there’s no denying that the majority of it revolves around something one wouldn’t necessarily call a sunny worldview. And the continued dissemination of negative rap music, especially now (or at least over the last five to ten years) as rap continues to put a stranglehold on pop music culture, can’t be good for us. I mean, these days, living in a cocoon of rap music (as most fans do), is a bit like living in an emotionally abusive household – you might not realize all the shit you’re hearing on a daily basis about yourself and your potential ain’t exactly good for you, but when you grow up, get out, and start trying to figure out how to have healthy relationships with the world you’ll either quickly learn how fucked up you are or you’ll just fall into a bunch of unfortunate situations your damn self (tho in truth most folks will land somewhere in between that). Point being, if “bitch,” “ho,” and “nigga” somehow disappeared from the lexicon, you’d have a harder time thinking of folks as bitches, hos and niggas cause you wouldn't be able to grasp the concept. And while I realize as a white dude there’s a level that the word “nigga” operates on that I’ll never fully understand, I will say this: as a Southern white dude, I know how completely fucked up this word is. And (you guys are gonna love this) from where I sit, there is no positive way to re-appropriate this word. To me, using it as a term of endearment only further denigrates the race – it’s establishing you and yours as outlaws, like wearing a scarlet letter that separates folks from society, but to what end? Or as Cee-Lo put it on the Goodie Mob's "The Experience" from Still Standing “the only reason you’re a nigga is because somebody else want you to be” – and, considering the history of that word and what it actually means, is that something to strive for? As many, predominantly black, intellectuals have pointed out, if the black community were to really embrace the idea of letting the word lie, it could die from the language like some obscure Latin word, and would that be such a bad thing? Webbie, "Bad Bitch": Which brings us to “bitch” and “ho” – now these words, no matter what folks wanna say, are not rap’s problem. As many academics have pointed out, when men across the board are economically or socially handcuffed, either by their own doing or for systematic reasons, women often bear the brunt of their frustration. It’s the have a bad day at work kick the dog phenomenon put to practice between genders. Personally, I think doing away with those words ain’t necessarily gonna fix the problem – men can be assholes, and speaking from experience, if we get it in our heads to act an ass, we’ll figure out a way regardless of the words are available to us. Of course, the flip side is that not being a woman myself I can’t imagine what kind of effect those words have on women, especially young women. Certainly makes sense that the same nigga argument outlined above holds here: if a woman hears herself called a bitch or a ho countless too many times, she just might begin to see herself that way. And next thing you know, daddy’s little girl has become a stripper. And as any halfway responsible man will tell you, strippers are great, until your daughter’s working the pole. But here’s the thing: Russell’s also wrong. The real debate here should not be about what’s wrong with the language being tossed around in rap, or in the black community in general, but what the hell’s wrong with America that over 140 years since the abolition of slavery and 40 years since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the most vibrant form of popular black expression is a music form/culture has such a negative undercurrent? To take it back to the abusive household analogy, it’s not the words or actions themselves that need to be curbed, it’s the conditions that create those words and actions that need serious consideration. What Russell’s proposing is a band-aid, and while they’re great for stopping the bleeding, if the knife is still out there, one band-aid ain’t gonna do it and we’re still fucked. Bitch, ho, nigga, black on black crime, economic inequality, educational inequality, disproportionate crime rates and prison populations, these are not rap’s problems, they’re America’s, and not just white America’s but the America that exists, at least in theory, for all of us. The most fucked up thing about this debate is that it’s still just a distraction from the larger issue. And it’s up to all of us, Russell, Sharpton, you, me, hell, Obama, to remember that and put this discussion back on track. With all ears on us, now’s the time to make them listen to what’s really going on in these proverbial streets. Back 2 the Basics: Looking for that DF quote, I started digging through old DF records. Never found it (anyone?), but I was reminded of how good OutKast really was. For those that missed it, from 1998... "Return of the G": "Liberation": My dude, D. Lemon just sent over the Goodie Mob record, so shouts to him. Goodie Mob, "The Experience": And even though everything Wayne's doing right now might seem like it completely contradicts this post, the man's on fire and you gotta respect that. Lil Wayne, "King Kong" from Drought 3: Lil Wayne, "Boom" from Drought 3: Lil Wayne, "Back on my Grizzly" from Drought 3: And Larry Brown to the Grizzlies? Could be something. Shit, anything at this point would be better than this year.

The White Rapper Show

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:02:52 -0500

Paul Wall's new album, Get Money, Stay True (Swisha House/Atlantic), leaked this week - in stores next Tues. Def the South's favorite white boy (not that there's much competition - what up, Lil Wyte?!?), and gotta say, the album's got some shit on it. Wall's taken a slightly different approach to his flow - sounds richer, more confident, and a lil bit more tight-lipped. Makes his raps sound frozen, which to hear him tell it, they just might be. Anyhow, more to the point, Paul Wall will always be Paul Wall (there's only so far that he'll go, or even needs to go, in terms of subject matter and such), not that that's necessarily a bad thing. And there's some equally cool production on this album, largely provided by Mr. Lee, tho JD comes through with some fire as well. So lemme cut the critical crap and just deliver the goods that have kept the album knocking doors down in my office ever since it came over the 'net: "Get Your Paper," f/ Yung Redd, prod by Mr. Lee "Call Me What You Want," F/ Yung Redd, and, unfortunately, E Class, prod by Mr. Lee "Bangin' Screw," album standout to me, prod by Russell "Aaddict" Howard Back 2 Da Basics: Reading is Fundamental Edition Mentioned this book (Cormac McCarthy's The Road) back when this whole blog thing started, but now that Oprah's made it the next selection for her book club, maybe a whole bunch of other folks are gonna pick it up and check it out.It's an impressive piece of literature from one of America's most impressive living authors. Hearing rumors of a Pulitzer Prize. It'd be deserved. I'd say enjoy, but the story's one hell of a downer so let's just go with: appreciate.

Comin Out Hard (Again)

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 19:50:47 -0500

I’ma keep this one short for once. Just got a press release reminding me that this year marks the 10th anniversary of Master P’s monster 1997 project, Ghetto D (No Limit/Priority) - a beast of an album (tho not his best-selling, at least according to the RIAA – that goes to the following year’s MP Da Last Don (No Limit/Priority), with four million sold, tho credited twice since it was a double album), that pushed P’s far beyond the Bayou and the Southeast and into the national consciousness, largely thanks to the single above. All sorts of arguments can be made here – without Ghetto D there’d be no $30 million Cash Money deal, no talking doll, no Lil Romeo, no Lil Wayne "just might be the best rapper alive," and no classic moments on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” – but I’ll just leave all that alone and for you to debate. Truth be told, I never really F’ed with P like that. But you can’t deny the Army and I gotta give it up to him for a few reasons – the first work I ever got was reviewing Silkk the Shocker’s Made Man for BLAZE back in ’99 (good looking, NCB), I always respect a man who’s on his grind, and I bumped plenty of records coming outta the camp, a few of which I’ve included below (unforuntately I don't have my C-Murder ish at the office, so we'll just have to go with a trimmed down list). Oh, and the anniversary, deluxe, super special reissue edition of Ghetto D drops May 8, and featuring a few previously unreleased tracks (including "Weed and Hennessy" w/ C-Murder and Silkk and the "Make Em Say" instrumental)... as if any of you were still buying albums. Working the Track: P was always channelling Pac, but he sounded good doing it. Master P, "We Riders" (also off Ghetto D): Pac sounding even better, because, well, he was the original. 2Pac, "Pain": No Limit's most criminally slept on artist. Young Bleed, "Pull It Off": Young Bleed, "Lil Poppa Got a Brand New Bag": And the Medicine Men had a good production run. Mystikal, "I Rock, I Roll" (produced by the Medicine Men): David Banner, "What it Do" (produced by KLC of Medicine Men): Back 2 Da Basics (bonus points): Cause I also used to skate, Jamie Thomas is the shit, and the clip goes with today's theme. Heading back to the M in three weeks. Can't wait. And one last thing, Wendy Williams will be interviewing C-Murder, I believe today. Shameless self-promotion, VIBE recently published his book, Death Around the Corner, and I hear it's much better than you would ever think (tho I ain't had a minute to read it myself). You can check out the website here: www.deatharoundthecorner.com, or on the blog list here.

The Devil Made Me Do It

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 23:54:33 -0500

Three Six Mafia made their MTV debut last night with Three Six Mafia’s Adventures in Spring Break, a prelude/teaser to their upcoming reality series, Three Six Mafia’s Adventures in Hollyhood, which makes it’s debut in two weeks. For the Spring Break episode, they grabbed a few white cheerleaders from USC and headed down to somewhere in Mexico (I was only half paying attention, it’s been a long coupla weeks) to basically get drunk, try to get the chicks to take their clothes off, and act a damn fool – basically get their Memphis Walk on. Now here’s the thing, I love Three Six Mafia. As a Memphis dude, I’m pretty much down to support most anything coming outta the M that gives us shine. Hustle & Flow (MTV Films)? I supported it – even though plenty of Memphis folks I know, particularly rappers and other music industry types, thought the film made the town look real ass-backwoods. Three Six’s Oscar win? I supported it (seriously, in that category – Best Original Music From a Motion Picture – no other track played as significant a role in shaping the story of a movie as “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” so I thought it was no contest from jump), even though tons of folks, including Denzel Washington, thought the whole ordeal was degrading, both to women and the black community in general. And the Memphis Tigers? Well, they ain’t quite in the same category in terms of cultural shifts, but Texas A&M better get the F outta the way tonight (especially now that Wisconsin’s gone and busted my office bracket all to shit), and I’ll leave it at that. And Three Six getting a reality show on MTV? Well, hell yeah, I support that. I ain’t never had the apparent displeasure of making records with them (when an army of cats gets cut down to the two dudes who call themselves “Da Checkwriters,” it ain’t hard to guess what’s up on the frontlines), so I’ve got no reason to hate. Plus Juice and Paul (and even Pat) have always been cool to me – it’s Koopsta Knicca that I ain’t so high on – so I wanna see them win. But… ….The problem with watching Three Six do, well, just about anything, especially anything on television, is that it’s often hard to tell if they’re in on the joke. And the problem with that, either way it shakes down, is that you either get a corporate system that’s laughing at the black folks acting the fool, while egging them on to act even more the fool, or you get a group of black folks acting the fool because they think that’s what the system wants them to do – essentially playing into, and perpetuating, some sorta antiquated stereotype at both their own expense and at the expense of an entire demo (and if you wanna split the hairs of the demo even finer – it’s not just the black population that runs the risk of being damaged by the broadcasting of such imagery, it’s the hip hop, or even more to the point, southern hip hop that catches the bad one). But… Here’s the thing: I thought the show was wild funny. On top of that, I’m looking forward to the upcoming series. Then again, as I like to say around the office, I do this. I mean, seriously. This is my job, but it’s also come to define my life. I’m a white dude from Memphis who’s spent damn near the last ten years working in, writing about, directing the conversation about and basically living with rap. I’m not just some record exec flying back to Connecticut on the weekends like, ‘Tell that black guy we’re not putting his album out until he poses with the gun. Alright, Jeeves, I’m off to see Muffy…’ I’m not friends with the artists I cover, but I do consider them peers. We’re all working to shape this culture – they make the music, I help make the magazines. And we’re all working to keep the culture alive and vibrant, both for all of you out there and for all of us, cause ultimately, we all love it and we all (you, me, Three Six) define ourselves by its very existence. See, I’ve spent time around Three Six and while they might be hamming it up just a lil’ bit for the television crews, they’re legitimately funny guys who basically just like acting a fool because it’s funny and they don’t give a fuck. And just to tie it back to MTV, isn’t it the exact same thing that the Jackass and BAM crews are up to, and have been up to, for years? Technically, shouldn’t that simply be enough? Like Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O, DJ Paul and Juicy J simply like acting retarded. It’s not playing into some racist construct, it’s not detrimental to anyone but themselves, it just is. And that should be okay. But… All the white kids, all the spring breakers, all the MTV viewers who don’t know shit about Three Six, who don’t know the history, who don’t know that they worked their asses off to get to a point where they could be lighthearted at every public appearance, basically everyone who’s about to get to know, or who’s just getting to know, Three Six off the Oscar and the new MTV show are just gonna think they’re a bunch of ignorant ass black folks. And they’re going to be laughing AT them, not with them. And it is/can be problematic. And that’s why Dave Chappelle quit. Back 2 the Basics: I went to California with my man, D. Scott, and stopped by Flight Club, my dude Damany’s great sneaker shop on Fairfax. Shouts to the team (below) for taking care of us. Look for the accompanying piece in our June issue. It’s ridiculous. Rich Boy’s album has some shit on it. I love this record cause he raps like the mic just told him he’s not fresh. "Hustla Ball Gangsta Mack": Listen to the Boss Hogg Outlawz Serve & Collect and get familiar with Killa Kyleon. Some highlights. Killa Kyleon, "Badge on my Neck": Boss Hogg Outlawz, "Wood Wheel": Boss Hogg Outlawz, "I'm Fresh":

Get Buck

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 21:40:03 -0500

You juggle a million things and the blog just falls by the wayside. But as I tell my team, that ain’t no excuse, so I’m back at it with the automatic… Gotta love Young Buck. Yeah, he’s outta his damn mind – seriously, the man’s a loose cannon (“the Glock stays on me and the knife’s for backup, I’m comin’ to the VIBE Awards, dare ya ta act up”) – but in a way that makes him a great rapper, both to watch and listen to, if not to hang out with. He’s a rock star in the best sense, which is exactly why the video for “Get Buck” sells the single so much better than the single itself. It’s one thing to hear Buck deliver simple lines about being tougher than everyone else he can possibly think of over a sparse beat. It’s another thing to see him lock down Nashville and literally stomp all over town. I like Buck (tho didn’t love Buck the World – shouts to Sha for coming through with the preview goods), and because I have some wild faith that one of these days he’ll come through with a true classic (Straight Outta Cashville was great, but it was no __[fill in to your taste]__), I hope this record wins, the album sells, and he gets another shot. Then again, with Fif’s whole music making approach making me nervous these days, I ain’t even confident that the third Buck album will make me, well, wanna get buck. One of those time-will-tell things, I figure… Time – and just a short bit of it, too – will also tell if Craig Brewer’s new film, Black Snake Moan, is able to put bodies in seats and critical acclaim back in his ear. Moan, the Memphis-based director’s first project since the impressive, and Academy Award winning, Hustle and Flow, is a challenging film, both in terms of storytelling and payoff. Full disclosure: as a Memphian, I’m a Brewer supporter. I’ve interviewed him multiple times, been in touch with him for several years now, know folks who know him well, the whole deal. And yet, I can’t say I like this film. Monday night I attended the movie’s NYC premiere and checked it out for the second time (I’d seen it last fall at a press screening). The stars were all there – Sam Jackson, Christina Ricci, David Banner, producers John Singelton and Stephanie Allain, Brewer himself (no JT, tho) – but the flick, well, it fell/falls a bit flat. Not nearly as funny or as campy as the trailer suggests, this is a movie about a nymphomaniac who gets chained to a radiator by a farmer hoping to break her of her sex craze. Read that description again. Does that even begin to make sense? Unsurprisingly the movie struggles to turn such a ridiculous conceit into a story – one with character growth, conflict, resolution, and all that. Brewer’s too arty to be a B-movie director. He believes in his shots, he believes in his actors, and he believes in his stories, so he lingers over all of ’em, which can be tedious when he’s chasing the wrong tail. Hustle and Flow told a story we all knew but had never seen. Moan tells a story that we would have never known or seen if Brewer hadn’t dreamed it up. And Star Wars it ain’t. There are some cool things about this movie, tho. The individual performances, excluding JT’s, are all amazing (something Brewer clearly has a knack for). And the subversion of American ideas of race and sexuality, and where those ideas intersect, is also worth noting with a fucking asterisk – the big black man is trying to cure the white woman of her raging lust, not thrust his upon her, and he attempts to do this by physically chaining, i.e. enslaving, her to his chasteness (wrap your mind around that). Fnally, there’s the scenery and the music. Like with Hustle, no one is shooting this part of America and these aspects of American culture (rap and now the blues – shouts to Scott Bomar and his Making Easy Money suits!) with this much heart. All of that said, I feel the same way about Brewer as I do about Buck – I hope he wins and I can’t wait to check out the third studio project. There’s a lack of great art out there attempting to flow in these veins – and because my heart is tied up in all of it for all sorts of reasons, I have to keep the faith. Back to the Basics No great new music this week, so I'll just throw this out cause my man put me onto it awhile back and it bumps: Mack Maine F/ Lil' Wayne & Dizzy -- "Ride With the Mack"

Only Killa Cam Can

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:38:04 -0500

Shouts to FenRock - the lil' homie is on his grind. Respect that.

Bang, Bang

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 17:59:13 -0500

Today's a Don King day, as in hype, hype, hype, pay me, pay me, pay me! 50 vs. Cam is the show of the century! They're both nuts! (Say what you will about his music, but 50's about as focused on his grind as any rapper yet. And Cam, well, he's damn near running a cottage industry on being focused on himself.) The Diplomats are NY's people's champs! 50 is NY's biggest seller! It's a Clash of the Titans! Heavyweights! Retarded taunts on-air! It's great! It's a three ring circus! It's everything rap needs right now! And then, it's... lame. 50's so-called dis track and accompanying video ("Funeral Music") ain't even a killer. What up, Mr. Jackson? Did you really lose your edge, or is it just so much easier to knock off pretend contenders - anyone reading this with half a brain coulda shut down Ja and Game - than a fully realized rap star like Mr. Giles? I mean, I have a love hate relationship with Cam - love him on this: Hate him on this: But I gotta say this, the man unapologetically does him at every turn. And even when it's ridiculous, you gotta respect it. But Fif ain't come with it. "Funeral Music" ain't "The Takeover," to say the least. As my man, FenRock, put it - once again Fif's ramblings at the end of the record are better than the record itself. At least he gives props to Jones. (How could you not?) I can only hope Cam will come correct and that Fif's just sitting on some real heat to throw out there in response. But... well, I ain't even gonna waste the words. Back 2 the Basics: Get familiar: Slick Pulla, featuring Big Kuntry and Young Dro, "Drop Top, Porsche it Out" '07 Theme: Big Kuntry feat. B.G., "Fuck Being Famous" Holla at me.

White Power

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 19:42:21 -0500

Running wild late on this, so lemme just jump into it: I know it won't be the first time, but go ahead and tell Joe Biden to pull the plug. Now. He needs to hear it in his head like a damn Vanilla Ice record until the day he drops out, if for no other reason, cause it’ll save all of us the misery of watching yet another out of touch white politician try to make his complete lack of understanding of the actual country he’s supposed to be running sound like it’s an okay thing. I mean, really? Back 2 the Basics: Slopes of Snow edition Sundance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Unless you’re into fighting your way into the club – even ballers were having trouble at the door – and freezing your balls off. I will say this, tho, Grace Is Gone deserved the Audience Award and the $4 mil Weinstein deal. Look for it in theaters this year. It’s profound and it’s life. Impressive all around. Weapons, starring Nick Cannon and Paul Dano, is a train wreck but will probably garner some attention cause folks love to get all worked up about kids and guns. That said, lemme say this, just ’cause a few folks under 25 have sex, get high and get got don’t think it’s a socially significant statement. Often, such plot twists are just a cheap ploy to get folks talking about something that otherwise ain’t worth wasting the breath. And if someone can please tell me what city they’re actually supposed to be in, I’d be appreciative – Screw music, “whoady,” and mountains, wtf?!?!? The good folks over at 5WPR treated us well, so shouts to them. Their lodge was retarded, the food was unfortunate, and the house parties (starring Nick Cannon, Patron and plenty of Budweiser Select) were fun – two out of three ain’t bad. Gotta give it up to our hosts as well – Club Lespri. We stayed in the Deer Lake Village development, which was about as winter wonderland as you could want.

Nothing beats sitting in an outdoor hot tub in the freezing cold. Except, maybe steak at Club Lespri’s Cellar Prime Steak – much thanks to the dude at the desk for the recommendation and the wait-staff for keeping the drinks and the jokes flowing. 'Course at some point, you gotta expect nothing less. Vegas is gonna be nuts.

Babel-On

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:56:47 -0500

--Saw two flicks this weekend: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Babel (Paramount Vantage, 2006) and Yimou Zhang’s Curse of the Golden Flower (Sony Pictures Classics, 2006). Those of you who follow things like the 64th Annual Golden Globes already know that Babel took home the crown for Best Motion Picture – Drama, beating out Bobby (MGM, 2006), The Departed (Warner Bros., 2006), Little Children (New Line, 2006), and The Queen (Miramax, 2006). Now, I ain’t a certified film critic, but I’ll criticize anything, and lemme say this, Babel was not the one. Granted, I haven’t seen all of the films on this list, word on Sunset was that Bobby was a mess, and I gotta say, director (?!) Emilio Estevez doesn’t inspire the most confidence, and The Queen just ain’t my cup of tea (so to speak). The Departed was a sick film – you can’t mess with Scorsese, and all the hype about the performances of Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Alec Baldwin was well-founded. Unfortunately Jack Nicholson’s caricatured character and the story’s all-too-tightly wound twists and turns were a bit too much for me to swallow (not to mention that it was a remake) making this movie a highly polished action adventure that was too close to pulp fiction for me to really get behind it. (I like my gangsta flicks a bit more conflicted.) And Little Children, well, I ain’t even think to see it, but I’m always down for some sexual intrigue and just checking out the trailer makes me think this film may just be messy enough to hold my interest… But back to the point at hand. Ask me: Babel was retarded. This is a film that’s beautifully made and well-acted but of limited use: if you have a hard time thinking of a world existing beyond your block, go see this movie. The settings – predominantly Morocco, Mexico, and Japan – are a good reminder that there are a million, or make that 6 billion, ways to live your life on this planet. And the majority of the people out there aren’t even thinking about 22s. Only other reason to see this flick: if you have a completely ass-backward grasp of the decision making process. By the third or fourth completely insane decision by one of the film’s main characters (somewhere at about the 2 hour point in a 2 1/2 hour film), I decided that I’ve learned enough from my own bad decisions that I had no need to watch some fictional asshole prove how much of an asshole he could be. And I walked out, which at $11 a ticket I don’t do lightly. This is another case of American audiences/establishment over-hyping a film with some global consciousness simply because we’re so ignorant on the subject that if someone rolls out a globe and points to it we’re all like, oh, damn, the Earth is round. Buy a book, pay attention to the news, and start taking this type of “we’re so aware” crap to task. As for Curse of the Golden Flower, this was a cool flick that admittedly ain’t for everyone. Before this, Zhang was behind the lens for both Hero (Miramax, 2004) and House of Flying Daggers (Sony Pictures Classics, 2004), and if you saw either of those films, you know what you’re getting with Curse: beautiful, elaborate set pieces, all sorts of Imperial China intrigue, some impressively choreographed slow-mo fight scenes, and massive armies raining arrows and spears and grappling hooks and whatever else onto each other. Curse was a bit heavier on the Chinese metaphors – loyalty to the family, mother and father/state (pretty much in that order) – than the previous two films so there’s a bit more drama and less action. But if you’re down for it, and you still have a soft spot for the Wu-Tang Clan and the Shaw Brothers films that inspired them, you won’t be disappointed. Back 2 the Basics: Return to the 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Shaw, 1980)

King

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 21:56:54 -0500

I gotta write today – it’s only right. See, I’m from Memphis, a sleepy city on the banks of the Mississippi that has had a surprising, subtle influence over the nation in which we live today. Talk to people who know me, and they’ll tell you that I won’t shut up about the damn place. But how can I? We all know what it’s like to be from somewhere and to rep that city like it’s the only thing that mattered, sometimes more than life itself – folks get killed over repping sets all too often, as you and I both know. Well, down in Memphis we can claim all sorts of –ish. Some of it is completely bananas (the town was built on cotton money – New York and Chicago banks did business in the M as the white stuff was weighed, traded and then sent upstream, the Confederacy posted up heavy in town, and Nathan Bedford Forest – known Confederate leader and first Grand Wizard of the KKK still has a statue in a public park in the middle of town – WTF?!?!?). And some of it completely integral in everything that we do here (and chances are that you’re about). The legacy of black music in Memphis, hell pop music in general, stretches back so far that there are few American-born tunes tracking today that can’t trace at least one or two notes back to the Bluff City. But it was the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., while he was staying at the Lorraine Motel supporting a city-wide sanitation worker strike in 1968 that shattered the city’s shaky stability and set race relations aflame. Even today, damn near everyone in town will tell you that nothing’s been the same since James Earl Ray pulled the trigger. Even folks like myself who weren’t even on our parents’ minds, much less kicking away in mom’s belly, when the shit hit the fan will agree. Today, Memphis is a society built on a foundation of underlying distrust. In terms of day-to-day interaction between the races (and here I mean black and white – the M is one of the most almost exclusively bi-racial towns I’ve ever seen), I can’t think of another city allowing, hell necessitating, more face-to-face time between folks. And yet, the amount of true social mixing between the populations is damn near nil. Folks work together, do business together, acknowledge each other and all that, but hardly ever become friends. You ask me, it’s a tragedy, especially since so much of the distrust is founded on economic inequality. Nothing gets folks riled up like watching one side of the population succeed while the other struggles simply to make it. Then no one likes anyone. That said, time continues to march on. And at some point, somehow, you figure something’s gotta break. Right? Of course, how it breaks, and what that would even look like is beyond me. All the more reason to take the day to honor the legacy of a true leader. No matter your thoughts on MLK, he was walking a road. And if I’ve learned anything in my time it’s that sometimes simply having someone show you how to take that first step is more important than the shape of the journey to come. Back to the basics: Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign Black Snake Moan Kinfolk Kia $hine Yo Gotti 8Ball & MJG/Da Volunteers