We hemmed and hawed about dropping this video.
What the fuck does Vh-1 even know about Hip-Hop?
Does Vh-1 even deserve our coverage of their event?
At the end of the day we discovered that it was, and will forever be so much bigger than just Hip-Hop.
Enjoy.
Congrats to the people at WDISL (What Do It Smell Like) Records on the launch of their new magazine and line of scented underdrawls inspired by Fox Boogie (doodoo) Brown.
This is the kind of forward thinking that you need to be a successful crap music mogul. Your not going to make money anymore on the sale of media. What you will make money off is the sale of a lifestyle. The image you convey to your listeners is what will convince them to consume the products you endorse for your lifestyle.
To that extent I asked the crap music moguls participaating in the Q4 cMFL to answer a few questions regarding the lifestyle they will convey to their audience. The point of the exercise was to see how many label owners knew how to keep their shit crappy. I’m proud to say that almost everyone had the same answers even though some of the music moguls are from places like Georgia, Holland, Canada, England, Texas and even Detroit.
I think that it’s the universatility (my word bitches) of cRap music that allows us all to use one crappy mind when we think.
1) What side businesses do you own along with your record label?
The overwhelming majority agreed that nail salons/barbershops were the way to keep the label cake stacked. How about buying a strip mall where you had a nail salon, rim shop and sneaker store in operation during the day and at night you hired the nail techs to cook up that chinese food, and manage a strip joint/massage parlor out in the back by the pool?
2) What will you do with your first million dollars?
Somebody said some crazy shit about starting a non-profit that would donate broken cell phones to crazy homeless people so that when they walked down the street talking to themselves at least they could have a phone to hold up to their heads. Most of you correctly answered that you would ball out until the wheels fell off.
3) Should T.I./Tip be set free?
Everyone seems to want T.I. to be set acquitted of charges that he illegally possesses firearms, but strangely enough they want Tip to be sent to prison to prevent T.I. from getting in any more trouble. Split personalities are taking over in 2008. I suggest you all develop one or twenty.
4) Should Foxy Brown be set free?
Foxy Brown should be set free inside of nail salon with a case of BlackBerrys because that is where she scores the most points.
5) Which is worse, getting raped or being arrested?
Getting arrested is good for crap music points. Getting arrested for raping someone like 2Pac is good for even more points.
Getting arrested for raping someone, and being raped while you are in jail[ll] is NOT what’s really good.
It costs the taxpayers $12,000 per year to educate an NYC high school student, and $140,000 a year to jail one.
The investment in expanding the prison industrial complex directly parallels that of the ascension of accessible narcotics within the center city. Heroin and cocaine, even marijuana to a certain extent, were considered only for the wealthy. Poor people would have to medicate themselves with alcohol and other various sundry household products. The accessibility of narcotics within the center city also caused a sharp increase in the instances of violent crimes.
Combine all the violent offenders along with the non-violent (sellers, users) and you have a system that is bursting at the seams because it can’t lock people up fast enough. The question you posit now is a fair one.
“What do the NY State Rockefeller drug laws have to do with this movie?”
These laws create different mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for those arrested with illegal narcotics in their possession. The laws established an awkward inverse proportion of jail time for those people found to have relatively small amounts. As we learned earlier, cocaine and heroin were traditionally the vice of the wealthy because of their price point. More accessible narcotics meant more arrests and more bodies in prison for long stretches even though many of those receiving multi-year terms were in fact narcotics users.
So it was possible for a drug abuser to receive the same sentence as his corner dealer depending on the amounts in their possession. Both parties would receive greater sentences than someone convicted with fifty times the amount they held. The Rockefeller drug laws were just a spoke in the wheel of supremacy and the destruction of the center city. These laws would not have had the effect they did if cocaine and heroin weren’t made accessible to disenfranchised communities in the first place.
The movie ‘American Gangster’ will focus its fiction on the exploits of one person, but the larger system will remain under the radar and out of the spotlight. There is a numbers game that is being played and the residents of the center city exist simply as pieces on an abacus to be slid from right to left and back again. Frank Lucas didn’t create this. He is more pawn than player.
Am I the only Black person alive who hasn’t seen the film ‘American Gangster’? Is this almost a renouncement of my ghetto pass? I’m certainly not going to the movie theater to see that shit because you know fools will shoot at the screen, but I haven’t even considered hitting my dude Ahmed the African off. He’s got the joint directly from the studio along with the official artwork for only a five spot.
I mean, I will eventually watch that shit. Its just that I have a gang of ‘Bionic Woman’ to go through along with ’30 Rock’ and ‘Heroes’. Do I feel like giving away two hours of my money to watch that bullshit? Fuck the price of a movie ticket, or even a clear as day bootleg copy. I’m considering the value of my time and energy being wasted by just sitting somewhere watching some straight up bolshevik.
I don’t know about you kids but I value my time at over $100 per hour. So the time I spend being unproductive is like giving away my money. I already have a day job that taxes the eff out of me, along with my need to be twisted a minimum of four days a week. That doesn’t leave a window wide enough for me to give DENZEL WASHINGTON or RUSSELL CROWE my $250 dollars. Its not like I’m going to learn anything from this film that selling drugs myself hasn’t already shown me.
Maybe it will. Maybe it will show the story of an ambitious and enterprising young businessman who resorted to selling narcotics to help his mother pay her rent. Maybe I’ll get to watch a film that discloses who refines and manufactures these narcotics so that they can be delivered to the distribution outlets? The fact that narcotics are so prevalent in western culture might be one of the themes discussed in this film. I doubt all the above, but as ‘Ye Tudda would say, “that shit might could happen.”
‘American Gangster’ is the story of how man had decided to destroy his community because of his lust for money. I don’t even mean Frank Lucas, the real person or the fictitious character being blamed for Harlem’s heroin epidemic. I am speaking on the man that was formerly part of humanity. The United States is filled with millions of Frank Lucases, Oliver Norths, and George Bushes who will kindly join forces to terminate people indiscriminately. Those of us left in the wake of their hurricanes of greed can only fight for scraps or pick up the pieces.
Hollywood isn’t hardbody enough to print the real ending to an American gangster’s fairytale.
This drop is brought to you by Colt 45.
GABEROCKKA would argue that he isn’t my weedcarrier, but he and EON of the everlasting zoot do carry that good green white boy weed.
DOUBLE DEUCE?!?!?! I blame Hip-Hop.
Me and GABE were fucking around[ll] in Brooklyn a few weekends ago hitting up all the spots in Crown Heights (now called Prospect Heights) and Fort Greene (now called Clinton Hill). Gentrifying real estate agents rename these neighborhoods so as to confuse people into thinking that they won’t get mugged when they walk down the street on a mental lunch break. Trust me folks, this is STILL Brooklyn. You will still get mugged. Please believe it.
Be that as it may, it doesn’t stop us from having a good time. DP x GABEROCKKA + Colt 45 + collie bud = Where the ladies at? If you’re hitting up these Brooklyn streets this weekend, here’s how I would rate the scene.
First stop: Brooklyn Museum of Art – First Saturdays is always filled with art whore cutie pies wearing high heels and sipping white wine. RICH MEDINA was spinning this night so there was an even better mix of trendies coming through. Never a cover charge and if you do like I do with my flask you will be a winner every time.
Atmosphere: 10/10 (Free museum + foxy ladies)
Music: 7/10 (Rich Medina is really good. The Hillbilly Jazz band? Not so much.)
Ladies: 10/10 (College educated, disease free with decent jobs. Single man jackpot)
Second stop: Ripple Bar on Washington Avenue – What is up with ME not being served for like fifteen minutes?!? Let me find out that SYRON went Hollywood.
Atmosphere: 6/10 (Typical local B.K. spot. Drew from Island Records gets the red carpet. Billy X. Sunday? Not so much.)
Music: 6/10 (Imagine bringing your radio into a bar and playing the Funkmaster Flex show.)
Ladies: 6/10 (Hoodrats and bar skanks that don’t dance.)
Third stop: Soda Bar on Vanderbilt Avenue – This is a funny spot because they occupy two spaces and their crowd remains segregated. The back room spins the hot shit while the front room plays some honky tonk crap for the area’s newest residents.
Atmosphere: 6/10 (Racially segregated Saturday night partying = so 1957.)
Music: 5/10 (Pretty good on the jig side. The other side? Not so much.)
Ladies: 6/10 (Pretty good on the honky tonk side. The jig side? Meh.)
Fourth Stop: Habana Outpost on Fulton Street – Bathroom break.
Atmosphere: 7/10 (I took a dump here.)
Music: 4/10 (Someone’s CD collection centered around 2001)
Ladies: 6/10 (I took a dump here and I didn’t bother to look anyone in the face.)
Fifth stop: Frank’s Cocktail Lounge on Fulton Street – Franks has been here for forever, ever, ever, ever, ever. I been to brown bag parties at this bar the spot is so ‘hood. With Fulton Street going upscale now even Franks has a velvet rope in front of the door, but don’t be dissuaded. Your ass will get in as long as you pay that five dollar cover.
Atmosphere: 1/10 (What a dump!? It’s beautiful.)
Music: 10/10 (You would be surprised at who spins here some nights on the humble.)
Ladies: 10/10 (‘Hood rats that like to dance close on every song.)
For those of you going out tonight have a fun and safe Halloween.