Archive for August, 2006

The Re-Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 (2006 B.W.A. Nominee)

Saturday, August 19th, 2006

ralph kramden

It didn’t take too long for the great American pretext of race to show its face as the Transit Workers Union in New York City bargains to maintain their quality of life. The city’s Mayor, MICHAEL BLOOMBERG has called the Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers “thugs” and the Governor of New York has deemed the strike illegal.

Mayor Bloomberg’s chief argument against these workers is that there are people that want to sell things to New York City’s consumers whose bottom line is being inconvenienced by the strike. WTF?!? I used to biggup MICHAEL BLOOMBERG to anyone that would listen to me because he appeared to be the most progressive politician I had seen in a long time, but now that all the votes are in the Mayor has sided against his own NYC constituents. MTA workers live in the city, they raise their families in the city and they too consume retail goods in the city. If the Mayor was keeping it real he would have blasted the MTA management for their MIS-management of the BILLIONS of dollars of cash that flow through the system. The MTA attempted to give away their billion dollar surplus in order to wash their accounting books before they sat down to contract negotiations with the Transit Workers Union.

I support the MTA workers and I feel sorry for them that they have to bear the figurative cross for the nations’ workforce. From greedy multi-national telecommunication companies like Verizon to barbarous retailers like Wal-Mart, the American worker has been kicked to the curb by capitalism. Who will stand up for our rights to fair wages? Who will stand up for the families of these union members who must also attend schools and work and consume?

Too bad for America that the MTA is filled with so many people of color that it prevents the proper framing of these workers demands for a fair living wage. Like DE LA SOUL said, “the stakes is high” and we are all at a socio-economic-political crossroads. Your phone is tapped, your azz is in debt and your dreams of entering the middle class are evaporating as quickly as the thin veneer that hides the racial and class schisms of New York City.

A LETTER FROM THE MANAGEMENT

Friday, August 18th, 2006

the greatest

I have to keep it one hundred with y’all and tell you that I wasn’t really feeling this Black Weblog Awards joint when it popped off. I was like, “Mayne, fuck a BLACK weblog. My shit is universally futuristic. I’m like the thirteenth planet up in this biatch. I’m like that DWIGHT GOODEN white pudding bubbling up in a Pyrex crockpot.” The truth is that I have a severe inferiority complex that I mask with a rambunctious superiority complex.

I have a lot of fun working with everybody that comes to this website. This Black Weblog Awards shit had me a little anxious because I don’t know the weblog world that well. I fucks with a few cats out there… BOL, FRESH, ANGEL.LA, ZILLA, ESKAY, TONY, RAFI, ROBBIE, GLAM, TAM, SOUP, AMADEO… a few of y’all, but mostly I sit here typing away in my parents’ basement, while in my drawls and I sip on PathMark raspberry ice tea from my favorite cup with my crazy straw. It’s vain and narcissistic for me to imagine that anyone would really give a fuck what I think.

jazzbo

When I was writing for that shitty Hip-Hop mag and hitting my friends up with my bi-monthly e-mail blast everything was real simple. I knew the folks that responded to me and more importantly they knew me. They knew everything that I had been through to get to this point and they knew I loved to tell the story. I prah’lee did half the dumb shit that I have told y’all about just so that I would have a story to tell someone later on. If there was one thing that I was born to do it would be to tell my story. I just didn’t think that anyone would really want to hear my story. I am deeply grateful that you have said that you want to hear the story.

jazzbo

I don’t need to win any Black Weblog Award at this point. Just being nominated by y’all is the greatest validation that I could ever ask for. The best part of my story is yet to come. We have discussed my family and my foilbles in New York City. It’s time to continue the journey with me as I take my car thief game O.T. and I even travel up and down the East coast as a drug mule. There were two instances where GOD could have called me back to the essence, but instead I was granted more time here on the planet. I returned to my father and mother like the prodigal son. I saw my parents for who they really were. I was transformed again.

Please make sure that you place a vote for CRUNK & Disorderly, Concrete Loop, Nah’Right and Zilla Says on the 2006 Black Weblog Awards ballot. They have all been tremendous friends to this site and have contributed to the programming that we feature on a daily basis. I don’t need your votes at this point. I am thoroughly satisfied with my nomination. You folks wouldn’t want me to get a swelled head and trade my octaroon girlfriend in for an actual white broad.

fab four

COMBAT JACK: My Gunshots Will Make You Levitate!

Friday, August 18th, 2006

jimmy jump

Editor’s note: Internets veteran Combat Jack returns to the website to drop some fire on a young writer from XXLmag.com named Sickamore. It seems that the online publication’s writing staff have been given orders from their T.I. bosses to create a civil war between Hip-Hop fans born in the 1970’s and those that were born in the 1980’s. Some more fratricide that Hip-Hop surely doesn’t need, but if the young’n wants beef he’ll quickly see that Combat Jack isn’t the uno. I hope that this reply ends this beef thread once and for all. We shall see…

“You Gotta Have Style, and Learn To Be Original”
-quote from a 70’s baby

Being a true “70’s” baby, I’ve somewhat given up on the dismal state of today’s Crap Muzik as it is endlessly being churned out of all Hip Hop oriented media outlets (radio, television) like pork sausage out of a meat grinder. Understanding how the corporate monster operates, (exploitation until the point of oversaturation, or ‘point of diminishing returns), it’s clear that in our capitalistic society (eff a democracy, never was, never will be), the cause for the genre’s demise is far more complex than simply blaming one sole source. The factors leading up to Hip Hop’s current state is numerous and evolutionary, but also portrays the essence of everything under the sun, nothing stays the same, everything is impermanent. Adapt and evolve or get left the eff back. Understanding how EVERYTHING nurtured in Black culture (jazz, rock & roll, r&b , hip hop, soul food, style of dress, slang, sexy ass women of color, etc) has and will eventually be consumed, reinterpreted, remixed, cannibalized, dictated and spit out by our mass culture circus, it’s more than obvious that we’re all riding together in this church van to hell.

But lo’ and behold, the more things change, the more things stay the same.
I recently came across an example of some jig eager to get props by
attempting to create a “civil war” in the form of “80’s babies” vs. “70’s
babies” beef, thus upholding the tenets of the old Willie Lynch speech.

Peep game: “They Should’ve Never Gave You Niggas Corporate Cards”: How The 70’s Baby Executives Shaped Hip Hop Today For Better AND Worse

Dick-some-more’s thesis claims that the dismal state of today’s Hip Hop is in no way the fault of the ’80’s generation, but that the responsibility lies at the hands of cats like Hova and Damon Dash (Roc-a-fella), Irv Gotti (Murder Inc.) and other numerous music execs from the “Me Generation” that were instrumental in creating mad employment opportunities for idjits like him. Suck-much-more even gives a weak excuse in claiming that “us “crack babies” are only a product of our environment and upbringing” thus rendering him and his generation totally helpless from having any type of redemptive influence in resuscitating this Crap shit or in creating new types of art forms to bang to. That’s weak dude, last I heard, “excuses are tools for the incompetent”. But hey, let me, for a moment, bitch up and subscribe to this lame’s theory that today’s environment is too eff’d up and oppressive to create new, hyped unprecedented shit. Comparing today’s environment to yesteryear, us 70’s niggas faced, experienced, lived through the following (in no particular order):

welfare in abundance, the explosion of the crack epidemic, the introduction of a deadly new disease by the name of AIDS, effd up polyester suits, the tail end of bad exploitation flix, fug ugly ghetto chicks, no shortage of blowed up tenement buildings in our urban cities, Reaganomics in full effen effizect, Billy Dee Williams, White boys and rock music reigning supreme, effeminate r&b dudes heating up the charts, disco, Son of Sam, shags and jherri curls, NBA niggas rocking nut hugging briefs on court, effed the effed up subway systems, no cable TV, the 77′ NYC Black Out, no West Coast (or Dirty South) dick licking, (shit, no effin West Coast), original NYC gangs like the Jolly Stompers and the Tomahawks, Olde English 800, trey bags, no MTV Cribs just cracker jack ass Life Styles Of The Rich And Famous, Dallas, Dynasty, The A Team, Fantasy Island and Love Boat, no lap tops, no cell phones, raw unprotected sex (yes!!!) , no Rolex, no Bentley’s, no MTV, no corporate Black Cards, no Hip Hop publications, no Hip Hop videos, no Hip Hop radio, no Hip Hop clubs, no Hip Hop blogs, NO EFFIN” HIP HOP !!!! Now, if my memory serves me correct, niggas didn’t waste their time getting their boxers all up in a bunch and cryin about shit and their environment, niggas manned up and evolved.

Now before I get dismissed as being a “grumpy old man, living in the past and hugging my De La Soul Is Dead cassettes”, ain’t no T La Rock, Just-Ice Jordache shit over here son. To all my new niggas repping the 80’s baby set
correctly, no stray shots aimed your way (whaddup Bol, Eskay?). This ain’t
about East vs. West, 70’s vs. 80’s, old vs. new, it’s about niggas and bitches, money and power, and a grown man learning one of his son’s right and proper in the middle of the street.

Now, I can understand Dick-some-more’s frustration with 80’s Babies supposedly having a tough task at hand, but yo, that’s life dun. Buck the eff up or get the eff out of the way! For the life of me, I can’t understand how niggas like you allowed Laffy Taffy and Yung Joc niggas to run ya’ll ragged like track meets. Seems to me it’s waaaaaay past time for yellow purty mouthed ijgs like this kid to stop their blood clot cryin’. A good start would be to remove cracker jack’s nutt sacs from yer tonsils and getting Saigon’s unit from being stuck waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay up from inside you!

Nullus.

SNEAKER FIENDS UNITE!

Thursday, August 17th, 2006

sneaker fiend

ATLANTA STAND UP!

Been waiting for this event all year. Don’t get caught sleeping. Sneaker Pimps, the world’s largest touring sneaker and street art based show stops through Hotlanta on Friday August 25th, 2006 and your boy will be in the building with a few pair of select goodies to display to the peoples. Check the link later this week to see who the performers will be. I smell a Big Boi/Outkast performance.

sneaker fiend

sneaker fiend

sneaker fiend

Sneaker Pimps

OH WORD Almost Got A Random Nigga Kill’t!

Thursday, August 17th, 2006

dilla

I was going to wear my special J DILLA tonight to the Gnarls Barkley concert in Central Park when i was reminded of this story…

CHOCOLATE SNOWFLAKE and I were coming from one of our movie dates when we decided to take a stroll on the Duece. That’s only referring to 42nd Street here in NYC for all you raging scat-o-philes. We just came from seeing ‘My Super Ex-Girlfriend’ and ‘Talladega Nights’. Both flicks are worth your money even though we did the two-fer with free movie passes.

That’s why I love C.S. I don’t have to put expensive food in her belly everytime we go out. Sometimes it’s all about doing free shit and that suits my budget just fine. So here we go just walking up Broadway past the Virgin record store and some dude jumps out on me, “YO! YO! YO! Yo fam, would you like to buy my CD? I produced it myself with 20 tracks of straight up Hip-Hop!”

“Nahh mayne, s’aiight tho”, was my reply and I looked dude dead in the face as a symbol of respect and not a straight up dismissal.

“Whatever man, I seen’t your shirt and I thought you was into real Hip-Hop.” was his follow up.

I had to look down at my shirt for a second because I forgot what I had been wearing. It was my JAY DEE shirt that I copped from the OH WORD store. The shirt reads “J DILLA CHANGED MY LIFE” with an image of a record crate at the chest. I had to stop right there. This nigga just shitted on me like I don’t love Hip-Hop because I didn’t want to buy his wack azz CD.

I turned around and I told dude, “Yo I love Hip-Hop. The reason I don’t want your joint is ‘cuz its prah’lee wack.”

The young dude walked away and made the ‘fuckouttahere’ sign by waving his hand. I feel proud of myself that I gave that young aspiring rapper a taste of the music industry apathy. Although sonn did look like his CD was going to be wack anyhoo, by telling him that his music wasn’t shit is going to do one of two things for him. He is either going to quit rapping and just get a job working for the Transportation Safety Administration or he is going to get back into the lab and perfect his flow.

In any case, that J DILLA t-shirt changed his life.

(shop at OhWord.com in a few days and tell ’em BILLY sent ya’)