Archive for the ‘When I Reminisce…’ Category

The Champ Is Here…

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

sean p

Sean Price is the Hank McCoy of the rap game.

Sonn is a beast.

The Kimbo Price mixtape will roll out on the streets after DuckDown Records releases the ‘Survival Skills’ LP featuring Buckshot and KRS-1. I’m hype for y’all to hear this joint. For those of y’all that fux with hard beats and even harder rhymes Kimbo Price is gonna be the antidote to the skinny jeans emo rap that plays all day every day on your radios.

The Kimbo Price mixtape is the precursor to the next Sean Price album ‘Mic Tyson’. Give Sean Price credit for introducing his music with the dopest concepts. From Donkey Sean Jr. to the Monkey Barz abum, from Jesus Price Superstar to the Master P album. All of these projects are consistently great music. Sean Price is the best rapper on the internets.

The Kimbo Price mixtape boasts features from Boot Camp Clik stalwarts like Rock from Heltah Skeltah and Ruste Juxx as well as Duck Down members Torae and Skyzoo. There are also appearances from Poison Pen, Royce da’ 5-9 and production from P.F. Cuttin’. This mixtape is going to have some of the hardest rhymes you hear this year. Make sure you wear the proper headgear or you might get knocked the fux out.

sean p


DuckDown featuring Skyzoo and Torae


MegaSean (Hail Meg!)


Boostin’ Mobiles

sean p

pix courtesy of JazminMillion

NYC Will Be Ecstatic…

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

ecstatic

Mos Def along with Jay Electronica will be making a stop at NYC’s newest outdoor concert venue – The Beach @ Governor’s Island.

Governor’s Island was a former Coast Guard station as recently as the early 1990’s and is slowly being retrofitted to become a sort of Coney Island type amusement park within New York harbor. I’ve visited the island previously and it is an excellent place to spend an afternoon away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. I imagine that concerts on the island also take on that laid back feel.

Mos Def will be performing songs from his latest album ‘The Ecstatic’ along with some of his other classic joints. Opening for Mos is Jay Electronica. Mighty Healthy spokesmodel 40 Diesel tells me that at this juncture in rap music Jay Electronic >>> Jay-Z. I’m gonna have to put that statement on the line and check out this show. You can follow this link to come up on tickets. The setting is right for some special guests to appear as well.

@mosNYC 4th Anniversary Jumpoff…

Friday, September 4th, 2009

atmos

NYC is so wild I have to laugh to myself sometimes. I ran into my homey Dominican Chris on the subway Wednesday afternoon. Chris gets it in hardbody for the kicks. He used to work for Dr.Jays. Chris is a super SFU All-Star. He asks me if I’m going to the Harlem @mos (at-mus) store for their anniversary party the following night? Now I am. Sheeeeeeeid. @mos throws the best parties on 125th Street second only to the Apollo Theatre. All I know is that this joint is def gonna be an obama and it might even have grub. An obama is one thing, but a 2-4-none?!? Drinks, food and no cover? Act like you know internets.

I decided to boogie uptown directly afterwork. I figured I could play the strip and people watch until the doors cracked. 125th Street is one of the greatest people watching areas in the city. Madd folks hustling and bustling. 25th is still 25th even with the big box retailers putting their footprints on the sidewalk. Street vendors have their turf also and the uneasy alliance continues. There was a huge crowd on Lenox for some vendors pushing MICHAEL JACKSON memoribilia. If MICHAEL JACKSON could just die once every fiscal quarter Black folks might get economic footing straightened out. Harlem seemed a little danced out but then when I walked past the state building on 7th Avenue I understood why.

Harlem Week had just finished. What had been only 7 days of negro nonsense just twenty years ago was now Black bullshit for the whole month of August. Some people consider that to be progress. The truth is that Harlem is the heart of the American Black body. New blood always fills the arterial avenues and the capillary concourses. And it don’t stop. It’s only just begun. Peace to DJ Disco Wiz. He made sure I got into the building real early. Actually, the @mos staffer that I politic’d with at the Air Yeezy release saw me and let me fall through. The biggest lesson I have learned in this city is that you better be respectful to everyone because you will see them again and you might need them to co-sign your shit.

The scene inside the @mos store is high-end retail design. It’s a veritable downtown gallery on 125th Street. The sneakers on display are framed like pieces of art. The scenesters are all dressed up like SoHo hipsters or lower East Side punks. Everyone’s underwear is showing. Even mine, by accident(natch) due to my silly oversized shorts. The night featured an actual art exhibition that confirmed the gallery layout of the space. Graffiti legend JamesTOP had more than a dozen original pieces hanging throughout. The old and the new was all together thanks to @mos. Big up to Fab 5 Freddy. The godfather of Hip-Hop. He’s everywhere you want to be. If you don’t see Fab 5 then wherever you at ain’t really live.

Wu-Tang Forever > Young Forever…

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

wu tang forever

Who among us doesn’t know that these are bees? Forget the fact that I have assembled them for the photo, are you telling me that the American education system is no longer providing student the tools to recognize one of the hardworking animals within this planet’s ecosystem? Unless that is LatinoHeat was educated abroad and then I can understand shit. People with foreign education generally consider the Americas to be one continent and they totally disregard Antartica.

And speaking of education I imagine that all the Jigga fans watched their boy on the Bill Maher show last weekend? Jay-Z came off as bright and a bit effusive while noticing that Bill Maher obviously didn’t know a damn thing about him or his work. I like that Bill Maher had an intern transcribe all of Jay-Z’s lyrics and place them in a leather bound book. Jay-Z looked totally surprised that he had created that many lyrics. I think Jay-Z judges the volume of his efforts by the things he acquires with them. There simply a collection of songs that has allowed him to buy a Maybach or ten.

I remember when I was the only dude on the web that criticized Jay-Z for not writing down his lyrics. Tons f Jay fans rushed to defend his creative process as one where the editing benefits of the paper and pen were negligible against the outcome of songs that made them dance and go to the mall to buy shirts that were “button ups”. It was the end result that made all the difference and not the journey it took to get there that mattered. Who was I, a broke ass writer, to condemn someone who was wealthy beyond all imagination for not writing. If anything, being a rich non-writer does seem to be better than being a fiscally challenged writer. Sheeeeeeid, I can even agree with that logic.

My argument wasn’t really about Jay-Z not being a writer as much as it was about the process that one takes to achieve their maximun potential. There is no way that Shawn Carter could have ever become Jay-Z without accumulating volumes of rhymebooks. For him to deny that is the heresy. And now we have a generation of artists that have come after him that don’t recognize the benefits of being able to visually and physically edit themselves so that their content can match their mind’s eye. I’m sure Lil’ Wayne would be a decent rapper if he used a pad and pen. For crissakes, the dude was signed to Ca$h Money when he was 9yrs old.

When I was 9yrs old I was hell’a into comicbooks. I was always hoping to find a character that I felt like I could embody. Black characters in comics used to suck back in the days. Everyone had to be called ‘Black’ something, even if there wasn’t a white counterpart. I always wondered what would have happened if Misty Knight decided to become an international spy like Natasha Romanova. Would they have called her Black Black Widow? I ask the questions that no one else asks mainly because no one else really gives a fux. Shout to iFux. But I digress…

Jay-Z is officially Jordan in the Wizard’s jersey. The Hall of Fame nomination was secured a long time ago. During the Dynasty period in my opinion. It has been past the time for the torch to be properly passed to the next one. At least Jordan in the Wizards era knew this and was busy seeking to draft and cultivate young talent to help his team win. He wasn’t hogging the ball or taking too many ill-advised shots. Jordan was definitely a mortal without his homey Scottie Pippen to take some of the pressure from him. Blueprint 3 won’t be the last Jay-Z album but I hope its the last one that he decides to record without the assistance of the pad and the pen, or even the Blaxberry.

Even Jay-Z can’t be young forever.

To Kill A Mouse…

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

punisher

I can’t front when I tell you how sad I was that Marvel Entertainment was being acquired by the Disney Corporation. I felt like Marvel had just turned a corner with their motion pictures production company and I was very hopeful that I would see more media that lent itself to the renegade storytelling capacity which their comicbooks had possessed for decades.

The Iron Man movie and the latest Hulk feature film were the proof positive as well as Marvel’s animation department which turned out some great features earlier this year. That Hugh Jagoff Wolverine P.O.S. (piece-o-shit) wasn’t totally Marvel’s fault because their studio didn’t have final say. Actually, Wolverine was the kind of film I could imagine coming from the Disney camp.

The final details for the acquisition stil haven’t been made public but the language that has been bandied about so far is foreboding of what you can think a multinational corporation does when they takeover a property. The deals that Marvel has made with other movie studios can’t be altered. Yet. But don’t think that Disney’s lawyers won’t be hands-on for everything.

balactus

You can rest assured that Balactus will never see the light of day again. Disney lawyers are infamously venomous in protecting the iconography they own. They have no reservations about taking candy from babies or slapping women on a Sunday. With almost 4 billion dollars on the line they are going to be extra aggressive in making sure they get their money’s worth.

Maybe I’m just a horrible cynic though? Maybe this was the deal that STAN LEE always wanted in the first place? To have his body cryogenically frozen in the same icebox as racist ass WALT DISNEY. Too bad that JACK KIRBY went to the blue side of the moon several years ago. This pic of STAN LEE makes me think of HUGH HEFNER [ll]. Now I wonder when Disney will purchase Playboy?

playboy