Dear Black People, Your Anger is Killing Us, It Turns to Rage and Poisons the Babies. I Love you. You are Mine - Senator Obama

Apparently, I can't catch Bronchitis in an election year.

I went to sleep with a 101 fever on Tuesday, and woke up a day
later and Obama apparently went TRUTH and RECONCILIATION
COMMISSION on us.

I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE, THAT THIS MAN used the term WHITE RACISM
and addressed the divisiveness of Affirmative Action in an election
year speech.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

====
====

GAME. FOR. FREE.

Its so funny. Ironic even. At Glide on Sunday, where you hug
the person next to you at the begining of service, I swear I
hugged this dude that smelled like not ONE but two cans
of OLD E. I was like, errr, what part of the game was that?
Then I had to remind myself that THIS IS part the reason why
I come here. Less Pretentiousness More Acceptance.
There are all kinds of people in the congregation.
From the Lawyer mommas to the Baby mommas and
everyone else in between.

Senator O's statement about anger hit my small of my back.

My position with SJ about why I can't come back
is that my NY trip showed me I need to be able to hear
god, and I need to be able to hear my voice, and anything
that keeps me arguing, agitated, frustrated and flustered, which
is what our relationship was doing at the time,
was going to prevent me from doing that.

So Senator O, I know about the anger, it ain't even the anger
that has me shook, its when the anger turns to rage.
It's the rage that the kids take on like its nothing. Then WE
turn around and wonder"what happened to them?" As if they
sprouted and grew like weeds that had no need for or contact with us.

All last week, I was thinking, If I had the opportunity to design and
implement rage retreats, what would they look like?

====
====

My other favorite part of the speech.

Dear Blue Collar White Folks,

Affirmative Action and
Negros ain't take your jobs, the Corporations did.
They took the negro jobs too.

-Senator Obama

====
====

I wonder how much of the speech was influenced by
John Edwards.

Can you believe Obama had the courage to say
what he said?

The Hope Machine is in the Building AND on them 'Roids.

====
====

Thomas Jefferson, The Original American Gangster

My fascination with Thomas Jefferson crystallized recently.
I have been checking for him since last fall. I was researching
the subprime crisis and I came across the following quote,

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)

Then I learned that he founded the University of Virginia.
U of V, the flagship state institution which, as of 2007, retained
and graduated a higher percentage of Black students than
all other high ranked state schools in the country.

In the conclusion of the book, Trapped, Daniel talks about
how conflicted Jefferson was over the enslaved Africans that
he owned. Some of which were the children that he had with
Ms. Sally Hemmings. The personal was always political for
Jefferson, no?

I am fascinated by the idea of being a more human human,
and reconciling that notion with the dark side the comes
with being a simply being alive.

One day while struggling with these ideas, I thought of
how having love for a dude that hustles is really no
different then having love for slave owning president.

We need to see the humanity in both individuals.
(Believe it or not, I ran this idea to by a few friends,
from the most radical to the politically neutral, and they were ALL kind
put off and intrigued by the connection that I was trying
to make).

I realize that the same way white folks have a
hard time seeing how folks in the hood could have love for d-boys,
i.e., Denzel in American Gangster. It is similar to how many
Americans employ patriotic deference towards Jefferson, but
many of us just see him as another slave owner who was a President.

In reading Daniel's book, I came across some of Jefferson's
thought's on his critque of slavery, and his unwllingness
to free the enslaved people he possessed when he felt so
conflicted over it. Daniel writes,

Jefferson was no Saint. When the rules of society are unjust, saints follow their own sets of rules. They answer to a higher authority. A Saint Thomas surley would have freed his slaves, martyring himself in the cause of equality, impoverishing himself and his family in order to do what was right. But Thomas Jefferson was unwilling to unilaterally free his slaves because it would put him and his family at an economic disadvantage relative to his contemporaries who would not free theirs. Instead he endorsed changing he rules to that no one could own slaves, setting a baseline of ethical behavior beneath which no one could sip, no matter how alluring the profits.

===
===

Humanity for all?

D'boys, Slave owners, and everyone in between?

Have I been drinking some of that hope Kool-aid? Lil' bit...

===
===

I have been terribly under the weather this week blog fam.
It feels great to connect with you. I am locked out of AIM as well.
I dunno what happened. Whutareyougonnado?

Some Thoughts on the Police, Accountability and the Internet

I noticed a little piece on Wired's site about Go Daddy.com
removing a police watchdog/ rating website from its server.
The rationale they used was, "This may endanger the
police officers". Kevin Poulsen of Wired writes,

A new web service that lets users rate and comment on the uniformed police officers in their community is scrambling to restore service Tuesday, after hosting company GoDaddy unceremonious pulled-the-plug on the site in the wake of outrage from criticism-leery cops.

Visitors to RateMyCop.com on Tuesday were redirected to a GoDaddy page reading, "Oops!!!", which urged the site owner to contact GoDaddy to find out why the company pulled the plug.

RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto says he was given no notice of the suspension. When he called GoDaddy, the company told him that he'd been shut down for "suspicious activity."

When Sesto got a supervisor on the phone, the company changed its story and claimed the site had surpassed its 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, a claim that Sesto says is nonsense. "How can it be overloaded when it only had 80,00 page views today, and 400,000 yesterday?"

Police departments became uneasy about RateMyCop's plans to watch the watchers in January, when the Culver City, California, startup began issuing public information requests for lists of uniformed officers.

Then the site went live on February 28th. It stores the names and, in some cases, badge numbers of over 140,000 cops in as many as 500 police departments, and allows users to post comments about police they've interacted with, and rate them. The site garnered media interest this week as cops around the country complained that they'd be put at risk if their names were on the internet.

The entire time I am thinking of how information
gathering, contribution and distribution is incredibly powerful.

====
====

Then I thought of this video of a police officer tasering a man
and thought hmmm, I wonder what the CEO of GoDaddy would
think if the tasered man were his son.
(sh-t hits the fan @ 2:41seconds)



His wifes screams are heartbreaking.

===
===

I wonder what the CEO of GoDaddy would think if his daughter
was the woman assulted in a housing project on Thursday morning
in Brooklyn, on a night where two police officers lied about making
their rounds:

In investigating the rape, detectives from the housing bureau spoke to two officers who said they were doing “vertical patrols,” walking up and down the stairwells of the building, at the time of the attack and had marked it in their memo books. But investigators who reviewed the videotaped images found no evidence of the officers’ being there.

As a result, the officers, whose names were not released, were placed on modified assignment on Thursday and stripped of their guns and badges, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. The investigation of the police officers was reported on Friday in The Daily News.

===
===

Any interactions with officers lately?

Thoughts, reactions?

===
===

Buckshot /9th Video was Made for This Blog. Sorta.

I just had to feeling that this video was made for this blog.

Buckshot being the epitome of boom-bap, and all.

Is it me or is Buck getting more mature and starting
to favor Rakim?

No wonder I have always flirted with his grimey @ss when I've
seen him.

====
====

New Living Legends. I am so glad these cats are still rapping.
I use to go to their shows as a teenager and try and get my
"hip hop photographer" on.
(via Grand Good)



===
===

Wendy Day has written about how to put out your own music.

Regardless of the reasons, controlling your own project and proving to the world that your music is marketable, while making money, is very attractive. There are many successful examples of self-released artists and labels who have come before: Too Short, No Limit, Cash Money Records, Esham, Slip-N-Slide, E-40, Luke Records, 3-6 Mafia, Big Oomp, Swisha House, Lil Boosie, Webbie, Young Jeezy, and many, many others.

There is a lot of money and prestige in owning your own shit in this industry, provided you have the financing and staff to do it correctly. It isn't rocket science, so provided you have the proper tools and determination, you can make it happen for yourself. That's our focus: doing it correctly-- meaning profitably.

I like how most of the independents are in the South and the West.

====
====

Some of the most honest sh-t I have read about the music industry
in a long time. From the Blenders 20 Biggest Record Screw Ups of All Times:

#19 The industry kills the single—and begins its own slow demise
In the early ’80s, the music industry began to phase out vinyl singles in favor of cassettes and later, CDs. Then, since it costs the same to manufacture a CD single as a full album, they ditched the format almost altogether. But they forgot that singles were how fans got into the music-buying habit before they had enough money to spend on albums. The end result? Kids who expect music for free. “Greed to force consumers to buy an album [resulted] in the loss of an entire generation of record consumers,” says Billboard charts expert Joel Whitburn. “People who could only afford to buy their favorite hit of the week were told it wasn’t available as a single. Instead, they stopped going to record shops and turned their attention to illegally downloading songs.”

====
====

I have been on a Mobb Deep twirl. In fact post break up, I have moved from
Erykah, Mary and Donny Hathaway to...........Mobb Deep.
It's 4:23am and I am listening to The Realest from Murder Muzik.
I guess the poetry is so rugged and dark, its matching my "get my soul
clean" mood. Besides I haven't listened to them for a while
and it reminds me both of Filthy and of wanting to live in NY as a teenager.

That being said, imagine my surprise to find the Mobb Deep Originals
for the songs Tip produced on The Infamous at From Da Bricks.

Q-Tip’s contributions to Mobb Deep’s seminal sophomore LP are without a shadow of a doubt some of the very best examples of his work behind the boards. Nestled in amongst the dark and grimy soundscapes created almost exclusively by Havoc, The Abstract’s three additions to The Infamous are priceless, aptly providing the listener with moments of melodic respite in the midst of a collection of songs that are otherwise deeply shrouded in the shadows of the Queensbridge housing projects. With ‘Give Up The Goods (Just Step)’, ‘Temperature’s Rising’ and ‘Drink Away The Pain (Situations)’, Tip not only provides the LP with a depth that it would otherwise have lacked but also solidifies his status as a producer who was able to effort.

BUGGED OUT.

===
===

Boom Bap Lives.

===
===

Birkhold Sonned Me on Spitzergate: The Hillary-Spitzer Connection

Yesterday, I mentioned to Birkhold that I felt bad for Elliott's wife,
Silda Spitzer. He asked why?

M.dot: Because, its embarrassing.
B: F-ck that. She has agency (an ability to act on her own behalf. In this
this case, acting would have meant leaving Elliott).
M.dot: Yeah, but still.
B: Listen M. A man who is married and getting prostitutes
is not treating his wife right at home.
B: I am waiting for a woman, some woman to stand up, and point
out all the kinky sh-t he has done so folks can see exactly who they
elected.
M.dot: Dude, isn't that a puritanical, witch hunt?
B: Hell naw. Think about it. This is about the compromise that women
make with their dignity in order to remain with certain cats.
M.dot: Like Hillary who sat by and watched her husband screw god
knows what, because she wanted to be president?
B: Exactly.

Then I turned around and read this and while it wasn't directed
at me, I was like, sh-t, I just got sonned. When I reflected on my
rambling Spitzer post yesterday, I felt like a lame feminist. He writes,

Our society expects so little of men that we see Spitzer’s involvement with a prostitute as normal male behavior. We live in a society where men commonly refer to sex in violent terms like “beat it up” and “hit it.” Consequently, we minimize the seriousness of sexual violence towards women. In truth, if our society were to examine Spitzer’s misogyny, it would be like holding a mirror up to the politically powerful men calling for his resignation.

I couldn't help but think of the notion of the "Soft Bigotry
of Low Expectations" and how it plays out in
both our political and school systems.

It became clear how low expectations are toxic to our democracy.

This idea will fortify me the next time someone tells me that
I expect too much.

It became clear to me how accountability just isn't a word,
it is a rigorous, daily action, that requires the moral nimbleness
of a ninja. (I like saying moral nimbleness of a ninja).

====
====

Why do we deny people the right to agency?

Why do we, reflexively, think of people as victims
not as folks who are capable of acting?

I guess as a victim, you are automatically someone
who is acted upon, not someone is committing an act.

Don't forget the school of thought that counts INACTION
as an action as well.

====
====

The Demise Music Industry is Like the Demise of Our Cities

Noz's post on the end of KMEL has me thinking about both
the decline of the cities and the record industry in general.

In order for any partnership to work, there has to be
a meeting of concerned parties, so that everyone with
a vested interest has an opportunity vet, discuss, criticize
and new plans or procedures.

Functional cities and record labels follow this process.
The ones that don't, well, you can predict their demise
with precision.

The notion of demise brings me to Eric Arnold's recent piece on the
end of the Hyphy movement in SF Weekly.

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

The article is interesting in that it points how how
a record company can afford to be profitable
and major, while steadfastly refusing to include
local voices in its programming.


What better way to kill a vibrant city by bowing to non-local interest
for short term gains.
Think about it.

Payola?

Ball stadiums hyper subsidized with city taxes
with promises of jobs for the community?

In another twist on the future of the music
industry R.M. London speaks on bootleggers
at Rhymehouse,

I got in touch with, Krooked1, one of the main contributors of HipHopBootleggers, the most popular hip hop album download blog on the internet that has received an amazing 1.5 million hits since the summer of 2006, and asked him that very question, he confidentally told me: "Well, if you look at hip hop at the moment the record labels do not do enough to get their artists the promotion they want and need. We get artists asking US to promote them, and they even resort to sending there albums to us to post. I don't think we're doing anything wrong. If it wasn't for the internet a lot of people would not know about what has been released, or what is due to be released. Yes, we are doing a service to the artists who do not get what they deserve (promotion wise). If you are signed to a record label, your album is about to come out, and the label is not doing shit about it before its release-- what is that? What is the artist to do at that point to get their name out? Yea, we put it online, but if we like what we hear we will purchase. Artists moan about their shit getting leaked on the net-- they should just not send it to the press."

This in turn affects how artist, the most out of the trunk guerrilla artists
remain regional, but get can't catch that one Big Break
which would allow them to go national.

Another example of how local support can be used as leverage to
do other things.

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

I can't imagine how it feels to another city and asked why
your music isn't played on your local station.
A city, like the record industry is a delicate ecosystem.

But then again, arn't all ecosystems, by their very nature delicate?

Then there was a post at artstechnia where Nate Anderson
discusses why Music 1.0 is dead. He writes,

An anecdote in a recent Economist perfectly summed up the problems facing the major music labels. After EMI, the smallest of the Big Four, invited a teen focus group to its London headquarters in 2006, it wanted to give the teens something for their time. The response is worth quoting in full.

At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. "That was the moment we realised the game was completely up," says a person who was there.

He then goes on to discuss independent movement and their
current and growing market share.

Greg Scholl, boss of indie label The Orchard, pointed out that the music business is not just four companies, and that indie music's market share is now approaching one-third... and it's growing. Indies have also been more open, historically, to experiments such as selling music without DRM. If the major labels take more than a decade to turn the ship around, they risk running a ghost ship with little in its cargo hold but a valuable back catalog.

So we have independent gaining more of a market share
and millennial's disinterested in taking free cd's.

Perhaps there is hope.

====
====

30% for independents?

Thats a good look.

Local food, Local music, Local......Power.

====
====

Spitzergate

Man. Elliot. I liked you dude. You went after the white collar cats
with a vengeance.

Bill- Clinton. Monica.
Kwame- Detroit Mayor. Had an affair with his assistant.
Gavin- SF Mayor. Really offended men by sleeping with his best
friends, wife.
Ted Haggert- Republican. Denied having sex with young boys.
Antonio- LA Mayor. Had an affair with TV news reporter.

Men and sex with women who are not their wives, or in Ted Haggerts
case, young men.

Perhaps we need more women mayors?

Just read in the paper that.
Peep game. Gavin is getting ready to run for governor.

As a politician, when you hold yourself out
to be a morally accountable, the definition of
political accountability at work, you are all the more delicious
of a target.

Perhaps like so many people, politicians an non politicians alike, he
believed the hype and got zapped.

I am uber curious about one thing.

This man has been in public life for years.
He has presumably been doing this for years.

Why the investigation now?

===
===

Spitzergate.

===
===

Back to the My Life Album

I was suppose to go to Dallas this weekend.

I called SJ last Wednesday.

The ticket was purchased during the post
break up "lets see" era.

I asked him if I could still come. He replied
neutrally, "ummmm, don't know if you want to do that.
I would love to see you but, it just may not be..."

I told one of my homies I wanted to go.

M.dot: I want to go to Dallas.
Homie: Ok. Why?
M.dot: I want to say goodbye in person.
Homie: Hmmp. I can see that. But....
M.dot: But what?
Homie: Its natural to want to do that. What do you
expect to get out of it?
M.dot: I want to see him and say good bye in person. But...
Homie: yeah...
M.dot: He prolly gonna make me mad, and we will fight and I
will end up at the airport early.
Homie: Ok....
M.dot: Whhhhhhhhhhhat?!?^&?& ***Gets irritated. Say it!
Homie: Don't you think by going to the epicenter
of the pain you may hurt yourself further?
M.dot: Yeah. You have a point.

Sunday evening I caught it. I was good until about 6pm.
It was warm all day. About 62 degrees and sunny.

My momma stopped by the Whole Foods
to kick it with me. I thought she was gonna clown me
about how boogie it was, but she didn't. She liked my hat.

Around 7pm, walking home, after I blogged, I just felt
unshakably blue.
Upon reflection, I should have posted this last night.

I mean I had quite a weekend. I got my stuff out of storage.
Old clothes can be like old friends. Snug and comfortable.

I saw dig dug. Mis favorito, even though those Gemini's in him
drive me nuts.

And I learned that Filthy is coming to visit Cali, he got people
in The Bay.

Then at 7pm, it was like the sadness socked me in the grill.
I missed him. I missed my friend.
Not because I wanted to talk to him per se, but because so many
things happened this weekend that, in the past, it would
have been so natural to share.

Spiritual things, transformative things. In a way, Sunday night was
about accepting that they won't be shared, at least not the
way they were before puddle Friday.

In a lot of ways, I imagine that the conversation
that I had with myself last night is the same one
that cats have when they are about to serve a bid.

Hold ya head.
Even if your in pain, its temporary.
It's uncomfortable, but it will pass.
This isn't harder than anything else you have done before. (~gotty)

Erykah's joint couldn't hold me down anymore,
I had to take it back to the My Life album.

And I'm good better now.

Black Wonkett on Why You Need to Read "Trapped" by Daniel Brook, Part II.

Now that we have established that $250K is the
new $100K.

Let's revisit why our social workers, teachers, and
filmmakers are choosing to go into finance.

Daniel suggests that young people
don't want to be investment bankers because they
want to be rich, they want to do it because they want
to live in the city and and they are scared of being poor.

Thats real talk.

Daniel posits that tuition costs are high because
the trustees can set them high. When he wonders
aloud, "Where is the sticker shock, and refusal to pay?"

I think of the "keeping up with the Jones's
syndrome" and how that can impact a family's decision to give
their children the "best education" even if that means saddling
the child and the family with $150K worth of debt.

I understand that school is expensive.
However, Daniel wonders out loud why Dartmouth and Harvard's
tuition is within $500 of each other when they are both located
in two different states, with two different costs of living.

And don't get me started on their billion dollar endowments
and their rarely criticized tax exempt status.

I am obsessed with school finance. But, you knew that.
So it was interesting to learn from his book that
U.C. Berkeley used to be free.
Yes. Cal was tuition free for 100 years. It was only in the
the late 1970's that Cal instituted in-state tuition.

It wasn't that long ago -- not as long ago as you'd think -- that UC Berkeley cost $212.50 a quarter. When it went up to $236, there was serious debate in the Daily Cal as to whether it would cause the unfortunate to drop out, at the least, or cause blood in the streets, at the most.

It's a quaint story that doesn't mean much in the post-Proposition 13 world of public education. But these numbers mean something: Spread over 30 years, from 1975-76 to 2004-05, Cal has gone from $637 a year to $6,730, an increase of about 1,060 percent. Then as now, education at the University of California is tuition free for residents, a tradition since 1900 that was reaffirmed in the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education. What students pay are "fees," a sleight of hand similar to the way executives who are fired have always decided to "spend more time with family."

CUNY was free until New York's fiscal crisis in the seventies and the city
and the state decided to charge working and middle class students tuition.
According to Wikipedia,

CUNY has historically served a diverse student body, especially those excluded from or unable to afford private universities. CUNY offered a high quality, tuition-free education to the poor, the working class and the immigrants of New York City until 1975, when the City's fiscal crisis forced the imposition of tuition. Many Jewish academics and intellectuals studied and taught at CUNY in the post-World War I era when Ivy League universities, such as Yale University, discriminated against Jews.^[2] The City College of New York has had a reputation of being "the Harvard of the proletariat."^[3]

Filthy astutly pointed out, that a city that decides to charge
poor and working class students tuition, in the middle of
a recession INSTEAD of charging more to corporations,
is pretty clear about its priorities.

Accessible, high quality k-16 education is
connected to health of a city, and the health of the
families that reside within.

Daniel closes his book with a reflection on Thomas Jefferson's
vision for this country. He writes,

"Jefferson understood that his Aristocratic birth and private eduction had given him the ability to pursue his talents. Cognizant of his good fortune, he understood that a just and dynamic society should not leave th flowering to talent to chance. The gifted, not merely the high born must be able to contribute, both for their own sake and for the sake of society and humanity."

====
====

College debt makes investment bankers
out of teachers, social workers and it's
a problem for all of us.

We need teachers, bankers, lawyers,
filmmakers and social workers.
They are the thread that hold the cities
together.

New York and SF is looking
at a New Gilded Age and it doesn't
have to be this way.

We can change it.
They have ideas.

====
====

The Silent Treatment

Tonight I saw The Savages.

Great Movie.

Horrible audience.

Seeing a neurotic movie about putting your dad in a nursing
home and preparing to, as if YOU CAN prepare to, watch
him die, should be seen in with particular kind of audience.

I felt loud in the movie because I laughed. I chuckled at, cheered on
disagreed and identified with the characters.

I was on some "hell naw dude" and "she did THAT sh-t blood?"
and it was like crickets.

Watching that movie was like quiet, bad, sex.

Whereas movies in New York are a cross between
church and theater. Call and response and audience
participation are in full effect.

For instance, the last movie I saw in the theater
was "Vantage Point" at one my top 5's spots to catch a
film in NYC- the jawn on 17th and Broadway.

At first the movie seemed intriguing like a espionage
laced version of 24.

Then half way through it went dumb over the top.

Two thirds through, people were actively smacking their teeth,
talking sh-t to their homies, not rudely, but loud enough
to express their discontent enough for the rest of us to
nod in agreement.

Filthy stanky a*s fell asleep two thirds through.

I realize now, that going to concert, can be like going
to the movies, in that the audience can impact
the overall experience of how we perceive the event.

====
====

Bad crowd experiences anyone?

Awkwardly quiet movies are like bad, quiet. sex.

My homie Slinky cracked the f-ck up at that analogy.

====
====

From E-40 to the Juice Crew

Apparently the Juice Crew is reuniting & performing. I was just geeked at the
young Masta Ace flick.
courtesy of young Brandon @ Urb

"I don't care who first or who's last but all I know is that y'all better rock this at the drop of a dime, baby!" It's been roughly 17 years since the original Juice Crew last performed together, but this month in Atlanta, GA at the A3C Hip Hop Festival, you'll be able to witness history as Biz Markie, Big Daddy Kane, Marley Marl, MC Shan, Craig G and Roxanne Shante reunite to perform some of the songs which steered the course of Hip Hop music as we know it today.

====
====

It's rare that I come across someone with an appreciation,
greater than mine, for Bay English, but it happened.

40 is single-mindedly fixed on linguistic contrivance, on the verbal play of game, on “the gift of spit” as he calls it. He’s ridiculous sometimes, but that quality is of a piece with his charm; he’s always willing to risk silly for the sake of invention. There’s never been a rapper as in love with language as 40–never, none, not one. And by way of long-term contributions to rap aesthetics, only Kool G. Rap and Mikah are competitive.

**peep how g rap is in this post twice already?

====
====

Real Talk. Im bout to start a side hustle as a fact checker.
I mean this woman writes about and lies to kick it about
growing up in the hood and hustling and her sister turns
around and rats her out. Keep Snitching?

(NEW YORK) — A memoir by a white woman who claimed she was raised in poverty by a black foster mother and sold drugs for a gang in a tough Los Angeles neighborhood has turned out to be pure fiction, a newspaper report says.

In Love and Consequences, published last week by Penguin Group USA imprint Riverhead Books, author Margaret B. Jones writes about growing up as a half-white, half-Native American girl in South-Central Los Angeles in the foster home of Big Mom. One of her foster brothers, she writes, was gunned down by Crips gang members outside their home.

I am seriously contemplating creating a list of White women, who
over the last ten that have lied on Black people to Popo, to the media
or just in general.

I mean. For certain.

====
====

Why did I have a neurotic Mobb Deep moment.
I woke up this morning, with the beat playing.
A while back, Filthy was playing this blend tape with girl
singing over a Mobb deep track that I had long since forgotten.
Man. I woke up, this morning and spent 20 minutes looking for
the joint.

The song is Trife Life.



Queens story telling at its finest.

So dark and ominous. I don't know if anyone since,
perhaps Pac, has matched their criminal mentality,
sense of dred. Oh wait, Ready to Die, duh.

===
===

LA's Skid Row is Vegas for Junkies. Damn Homie.




Man.
He just blew my bird back. "How we do anything, is
how we do everything".

The City of LA/State of California needs to be sued.
Skid row has to be violation of their Civil Rights.
Thats my emotion's speaking.

I know, with my limited understanding Con Law,
that that sh-t is legal.

But we can do it the OTHER way, and make it illegal
by enacting legislation that says so,
and get it cracking like that.

Good Video's Are so Euro Money, just good.

Its like. 4 minutes. Blam. My mind is spinning.

===
===

Mick Boogie got a fresh as*s blog.
I am surprised at how good it is.

On a recent post he interviews Pete Rock,
who breaks down his career, song by song.

On producing “Shut ’Em Down” by Public Enemy...

Pete Rock: This was when I was born man. Big up to the Bomb Squad, Keith, Hank Shocklee, and Chuck D for even giving me a shot to do this for them. By the time I matched the tempo, and matched the beat to the vocals, I fell in love with it. I just started mixing it down, I did it all in one day. They didn’t think I’d get it done in one day. The shit was incredible.

“Down With The King” by Run DMC...

Pete Rock: I thought I was dreaming working with Run DMC. It was like ’92, ’93. I really worked with [Jam Master] Jay and D [DMC]. I had a little difficulty with Run in the beginning of the song. He didn’t really like it, and we had to convince him to like it. When the beat was done, D put his vocals down, but Run put his vocals down after CL put his verse on it. I think CL inspired him to jump on the joint.

====
====

Passion of the Weiss is one funny dude. Often times he light weight
offends me, and he is also funny as sh*t at the same time so I
appreciate it his work.

Case in point. His post on the Bone Thugs titled,
first of the month Why the "First of the Month is the Greatest song
ever written about Welfare".

Sometimes, I feel sorry for the 13-year olds of today. I can’t even begin to imagine how disgruntled my adolescence would’ve been had I been forced to listen to “A Bay Bay” and “Low” everywhere I went. We got “Regulate,” and “Hip-Hop Hooray,” they got the Soulja Boy dance. And of course, there was “1st of Tha Month,” a song that pretty much defined the summer of 1995. Those were a weird couple of months. O.J. tried on the infamous “if it don’t fit, you must acquit” bloody gloves, Jerry Garcia died, and really not much else happened. It was the 90s,

The thing I like most about Bone Thugs is how completely untethered from any sort of reality they seem. Somebody at their label had to be advising them not to release a five-plus minute paean to welfare as their lead single. The beats, provided by the terminally underrated DJ U-Neek, are as anti-pop as possible, with sinister, sinuous synth lines and slow hard drums. And I can’t imagine that anyone thought it’d be a good idea for them to pose as male fortunetellers staring into crystal balls (unsurprisingly, Bone’s short-lived 1-900 psychic hotline had very little success). But while Bone always seemed completely unconcerned with any sort of commercial compromise, they still managed to sell roughly 20 million CD’s worldwide in the 90s alone. “1st of tha’ Month” is as good a record as they ever made, one of the decade’s finest singles and a perfect distillation of what made Bone great: the fact that they were willing to wear Mark Price jerseys.

====
====

From 40 to G Rap.

Vallejo to Queens.

====
====

Black Wonkett on.....Why You Need to Read "The Trap" by Daniel Brook Part I

Raise your hand if you have college debt.

Raise your hand if you can't buy a house
in the neighborhood you were raised in.

Raise your hand if you don't have health care.

In his new book, Daniel Brook discusses how all of these
issues are intertwined and are disproportionately
affecting young college graduates and the middle class.

Daniels general premise is that 25 year olds, living Brooklyn,
San Francisco and Los Angeles are graduating with
$100K worth of debt , and consequently are choosing to
work in finance instead of public service because they
need to eat and pay off debt.

He goes on to say, that if they founding fathers, based this country
on rebelling against the British Aristocracy, then a system
that forces our best and brightest, especially those that are low
income and poor, to become investment bankers, then
we have lost. This flies in the face of what America's original
purpose and vision.

To me, it just rings of the Systematic Removal of the
Middle Class from the Cities.

So much of what we see with the inability to
raise a family middle class in the city was brought to us
by Ronald Reagan. He killed unions, de-funded the Legal Services,
under-taxed the hyper affluent and deliberately underfunded
government positions so so that our best minds would
be more inclined to join private industry instead rather than
serve the public.

The Freddie's of the World shouldn't be turned into
Alex P. Keaton's in order to remain living in the city.

The issues crystallize when he focuses on the
challenged facing college graduates and young
families such as exorbitant rent/housing costs,
health care, child care, egregiously low minimum wage.

For the record Bill Clinton continued these policies.
Daniel writes,

" Most American don't connect tax cuts that favor the rich to the countries
growing inequality...because no one- that is the Democratic Party
is not making the point."

One of the first thing President Reagan did was publicly disable
the air traffic controllers union. Wiki provides the short explanation
stating that

Only a short time into his administration Federal air traffic controllers went on strike, violating a regulation prohibiting Government unions from striking.^[72] Declaring the situation an emergency as described in the 1947 Taft Hartley Act, Reagan held a press conference in the White House Rose Garden, where he stated that if the air traffic controllers "do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated".^[73] On August 3, 1981, Reagan fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored his order to return to work,^[74] breaking the union.^[75]

It hasn't always been this way. FDR believed in progressive taxation.

FDR instituted the first minimum wage.

As a result this country experienced some of its most broadly
share prosperity ever seen by this country.

Think about it. Six figure family education/housing debt is a recent
phenomenon. Similarly, the notion of the double digit college
tuition is a post Regan phenomenon.

Daniels rational is that university Board of
Trustees, who set tuition standards, are wealthy,
so they don't see why students would be unable to
afford $35-$50K per year.

With this context, the move to offer more
financial aide to Harvard students
whose parents make less than $150K
per year makes sense.

$150K is the new $75K.


=====
=====

Six Figure College Debt.
Young people making career decisions based on
whether they will have healthcare.

Assets (Housing, Stocks) being taxed at 15% while
wages (our bi-weekly pay checks) are taxed at 28%.
(The above stated tax info is crude, but peep Warren Buffet,
he speaks on it as well).

What part of the game is that?

Priced out of the Mission, Harlem and Forte Green.
It will take a visionary leader to address this. Our cities
and the future of our country depends on it.

=====
=====

The Clipse Called Me a Tree-Hugging-Ass-B*tch.

I am a really big Clipse fan. Naturally, I have been listening
to We Got it for Cheap Vol 4.

Last week, I had a moment where where I asked myself, did Pusha just
call me a "Tree Hugging Assed B-tch"?

At 13:58 Pusha says,

"Tree Hugging Assed Bitch came up to me the other day on some
Yo, yall nice and all but, how come yall only talk about
dope? How come you only write about street shit?
Come on?

I was like Tree Hugging ass bitch please! I rhyme for
my niggas on the corner, all 20,000 of them. 20 thousand
money making brothers on the corner. Lets go.

It reminded me of the blog post on where we discussed
what it means to be a feminist who sing's "Ain't no Fun"
in the club.

Brandon Soderberg brings some in analysis about
the skit as well. He writes,

This kind of defense or half-defense met with an angry assertion about “street niggas” or “niggas on the corner” isn’t new to rappers’ attempts at sounding “real” but it seems more glaring because well, the Clipse simply aren’t rapping for those “street niggas”. Maybe they are in the sense that that’s their intended audience, or maybe they mean it in some instructive way, but in terms of whose ears are open to Clipse, it is not who they claim to be rapping for; if this were true, Pusha wouldn't even be confronted with a woman offended by their crack rap, you know?

Now, I firmly believe that contradictions are make people interesting.

If you have no contradictions you are either lying to yourself
or you have a pleasantly sheltered life.

Remember when Pac was on some Dear Momma and
Wonder Why They Call You B-tch.

I mean here was a dude that had so much love for Black women
but talked a whole lot of sh-t about us as well.

I mentioned the idea for this post to Jase last Friday because I
was so conflicted on writing. My rationale was that
so many other people trash hip hop, why should I add to the chorus.
At the same time, we criticize what we art. Thats part of the process.

I know that The Clipse aren't the only cats that rap about
being street dudes. Jay, like The Clipse, talks about hustling as well.
But, part of Jay's appeal has been his remorse, ambivalence,
certainty about the both up and downsides to hustling.

In fact, there is a element of remorse and self awareness
on Hell Hath No Fury, such as "Momma I'm So Sorry"
that flies in the face of "I rap for my twenty thousand n-ggas
on the block".

And the fact that 1 in 100 Americans are in the prison system,
and approximately a million of the people in the prison system
are Brown and Black, I can't help but think of the REAL lives of these
20 thousand n-ggas on the block. It ain't sweet.

In many ways, is WGFT Pt 4 is JUST music, but it is also crazy
real in the same way The Wire is just entertainment,
but also borderlines on a documentary for me. I haven't watched
it past the first episode this season.

In a lot of ways The Clipse music is a soundtrack for The Wire.

====
====

Art is Reality. Reality is Art.

=====
=====

I Can Only Listen to the New Erykah: Part I

Time: 3:39 pm.
Date: Saturday, March 1st.
Spot: Cafe on Valencia in the Mission. SF,CA

The only thing that has my head sane right now
is the new Erykah. Telephone, My People, Me, The Healer
have been on constant repeat. Oh and the joint
from Mama's Gun, Green Eye's.

Oh, I got some of that new Pete too. That Jim Jones collabo
is by far one of the most grizzliest, soulful joints I have heard
since.....I don't know when. Hip Hop is Dead, maybe. The Black
Album, perhaps?

Remember the I Can't listen to Nas post? Well, I don't think
I would be upright this weekend without Telephone.

Erykah is going so hard on Telephone, Its like she is talking to me.

Sometimes its hard to move/ you see when your growing publicly
But if I have to choose between/ I choose me

Had two babies different dudes/ and for them both my love was true
This is my last interview/ Can't miss me

This year I turn 36/ Damn it seem it came so quick
Ass and legs have gotten thick/ Its so me
-Me New Amerykah 2008

This time last week, I was fielding calls and coordinating
text messages from the Tea Lounge in Brooklyn.

It pains me how personal these post are going to be.

Filthy stays on me about the fact that
when you are honest when you write, the more likley
you can take the reader to another place.

So I press on. The moment my plane landed there was 2 feet of snow on
the ground.

It was a winter wonderland.

The snow symbolized that other things were in store for me.
The trip showed me a couple of things. The first was that
with prayer and asking for help from friends, anything is possible,
anything.

It also confirmed that I would be single, real soon,
whether I wanted to admit it or not, and that hurt.

Today I am.


====
====

Being forced to reconsider your truth is real.

Erykah is underrated.

====
====

72 Hours of New Amerykah: Part II - First I was Malcom, now I'm El Hajj

Last weekend, in BK, I resided with Mean Sexy's sister,
Flybug Starski. We had one of those 4am, in the gristle
conversations. We discussed our paths in life, whether
we where we wanted to be and coping and planning for the future.

It was awkward, painful and necessary. She demonstrated
to me how my people can hold me down if I actually plan
ahead and ask for help.

I met Filthy Dubois in person for the first time and that
sh-t was bugged. You ever been caught off guard by how
easy it is to chill with someone?

I think we had an entire dialog using
Illmatic lyrics. Man. That sh-t had me gone.

Filthy ain't Black. So, I caught some sideways glances from cats
while I was walking with him in Harlem. He was not
phased. I was just like "ay, blood, these dudes are tripping".

But then again, chilling with him, forced me to confront my
own issues of seeing Black men with White women.
White parents with adopted Asian daughters.
My issue with Black men, who get degrees,
and then say that they are not dating Black women
anymore, because we "have too much mouth".

In fact, SJ continually got on me about how careless it is
for me to make sweeping statements about some
white folks, or about any group in particular.
We all human, no?

Clearly, I have a lot to ponder.


====
====

Last week, I wrote on my hand,
"I hate these, I am going to meet my fate moments".

We are entitled to our truth, but that confrontation
process is not what the streets want.

I am really rethinking the racial lens through which I see things.
Like first I was Malcom, now I'm El Hajj.

====
====