^ Butching up for the 2009 Handsome Boy Modeling School calendar [ll]…
Excuse me for getting back to the column so late. It wasn’t like I was doing a victory lap for being in the Vibe.com top 50 Hip-Hop Bloggers list. I know better than to be hyped for that shit. I still need some money to pay my light bill. My fat ass was camped out overnight at KFC with a fistful of coupons trying to come up on some free chicken. What on God’s green Earth is better than free KFC? Free pr0n you said? Hells chea!
Avoid ‘Pr0n & Chicken’ though
So what did I miss other than the leak of Eminem’s latest album? For all that consternation about white dudes taking over Hip-Hop I am hyped for Em’s return. He’s one of the dudes that you have to press rewind to grasp, and even then you hear some new shit on repeated spins. This is good news for the rap game. Not so good news for the rap game is the fact that the Grand Hustle record label has more confidential informants than they do platinum selling rappers.
Have we all come to grips with the fact that T.I. sang like T-Pain on autotune when the Feds put the squeeze on son? Let’s be grown-ups in our understanding of how the Feds play their game. Plus, I don’t know anyone who ever got pinched for arms trafficking that got sit in his livingroom while the trial was ongoing and make video clips and records while in his boxer shorts [ll]. That is a luxury reserved for embezzlers and money launderers like Bernard Madoff, and well, snitches.
Rap music adopted so many of the cultural nuances of the mafia lifestyle why wouldn’t rap then be filled with a grip of snitches just like the mafia? Anytime you read the news about a racketeering case the Federal government’s lead witness is one of the thugs, or one of the mobsters, or one of the bosses. Sometimes its an accountant too. Everyone becomes a singer when the Feds push up on you. And why not? Even Fed time is a bitch being away from your family. Unless you have a family like Gotti. Not Irv, the studio gangster using the stage name Gotti, but the REAL niggas that made the name infamously famous.
As far as mafia trends go snitching is pretty high on the list. Kissing other men on the mouth with your eyes closed? Not so much. But certain mafia tribes have certain customs I’m sure. Throughout the history of organized crime we have always seen the rat.
Most kids always confuse the rats with the dead meat. In Black communities the ‘dead meat’ was the person who had no affiliation with the mafia biut reported their dealing to the police as if that would help restore civility in the neighborhood. After the police ‘ratted’ this person out to the mobsters it usually meant a visit from the thugs and funeral music shortly following. The snitch has to be someone who profits from the illicit activity they are reporting. Most people don’t know the difference between a snitch and a dead person so I just wanted to plug that in as a public service announcement.
T.I. should have kept Alfamega along for the ride. It’s not like Alfamega snitched on him. That was some OTHER dude in the Grand Hustle band camp. Plus, how sick official is it to have a studio filled with rappers wearing wireless microphones, rapping on wireless microphones using Wi-Fi service to download season 5 of ‘The Wire’? Some shit like that could have broken the time-space continuum and unleashed a Bizarro reality onto the Earth. You know, the reality where people actually do what they say. Fantasy is reality in rap music, and snitching done been the new rap ever since a rapper talked about how many drugs they had sold.
Why is T.I. trying to ruin the fantasy with reality?
Parliament featuring GLEN GOINS – ‘Fantasy Is Reality’
I see Gotti’s grandsons with consistency around my way. Our first encounter was on some mild stand off shit, but then it came to be that they though I was a pro athlete and was trying to figure out who I was. After they spoke up, we exchange pounds, talked shit for a while and since then we’re on a whats up basis. Although OG Gotti paid the ultimate price for his life choices, I respect that (most of) kids and descendants are chillin’ despite the fact the Feddie Gov has it out for them.
Rappers telling on themselves… EGAD. Thats whole ‘nother prahlem like you said DP.
Was TI actually pinched for arms trafficking though? And with the expiration of the automatic weapons ban, didn’t this amount to a gun charge? I thought the big issue was “strikes”. I didn’t follow too closely, but that was my take.
Long lawyer dough should have had it play out just the way it did, without snitching. That said, I’m not wholly convinced he did. That too is how the Feds play, “everyone snitched and we know everything”. Maybe I want to believe that if he did snitch, there would be no question on it at this point.
Excuse my shitty formatting on this drop. I think I have it all fixed now.
Polo,
I don’t see how the Feds couldn’t go in hardbody against T.I. from the gate. They didn’t want him anyhoo, but his supplier. He had some official guns too on some military Blackwater exclusives so I imagine the Feds wanted his connect.
I refuse to believe any of these dudes have that much scrilla. They do have the potential to make a shitload of bucks for the tall Israelis though so that fact keeps them outta the clink. Did T.I. snitch? Does water get you wet?
That’s kind of my point. They didn’t want him like that. Sure they’ll FRONT hardbody (we’re gonna give you 1000 years for trafficking)…but who’s going for that beyond the super rookie? I just can’t believe that he felt he was under that much pressure, to the point of snitching. It would not take dream team defense $ to get to where he got. (although they have no problem getting you to sell 1or 2 of those pretty necklaces if need be).
If anything, he kicked it back into the court of the cat that snitched him out in the first place, when under investigative pressure.
*wipes rose colored glasses*
and what supplier? The gov’t sells them things south of the border (and wherever else) and sometimes they come back. If it were that deep, they’d hang out more often on those militia compounds.
I don’t agree. I think they can still pressure that dude with the threat of giving him them 1000 years (he is in the south mind you). Why do you think he has the money himself to pay for dream team ESQ services. He doesn’t. If anything he mortgaged all his future album sales for that opportunity. You heard the last album? It sold a grip and was so fucking watered down you need to wear scuba gear to listen to it. That Justin Timberlake shit makes me wanna kill my car stereo.
So let’s say he didn’t have any info for the Feds which is totally plausible since I believe he doesn’t do dirt anyhoo. Why is he telling the kids that crime doesn’t pay and then reversing his course to oust his muscle/weed carrier because he was helping to reduce crime as well? There is this I am not in the streets, but I observe the code of the streets fantasy storyline being played out. It’s corny, and boring. It’s coring.
It’s more like a gangster to snitch if you ask me. Word to Sammy the Bull and John Gotti walking right past me, you, Kenny and Drew on Mulberry Street after we sold them chains to the jewelers on Canal Street. We might as well have been invisible to them dudes.
Damn. If that ain’t the truth. They didn’t even look at us once, much less double-take. We could have been famous…even if we couldn’t get off the block after.
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We’ll agree to disagree. They had him dead to rights, so there wasn’t much for those lawyers to do but spit. Not free, but if you don’t have that, what are you doin? And up against that wall, he’d auction everything in a heartbeat.
I recall the issue not being having the guns (It’s not NY) , but having the guns and being a felon. If he couldn’t deal with that (without snitching) then…just kill yourself. The PSA route is what he went to lighten up the pressure. Who was really buying all that? In his heart, he believes he’d hold true to codes (street, man of the house, or whatever one he was subscribing to). Otherwise, go w/ security detail in the first place, cause you were never gonna squeeze anyway.
I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
And nah, I didn’t hear the last album…not a fan. Although I’ve dug a few tracks and he put on a decent show. All that sounds better when you’re down there, but no spins at the basecamp.
This is probably above my pay grade given that I only listen to TI stuff that’s on the radio.
However, I will say that somebody should start some kind of preemptive successful rapper protection program wherein guys who get paid in the rap game can cut their connections, start hanging out with only white women and stay the hell out of street where all this snitching stuff actually matters . . . Seriously, like a social club away from the drama and what eventually has a platinum selling artist playing fake tough guy and dealing with guns for short money.
A few NFL dudes would benefit from the service as well . . . Call it the “sellout social calender solution” and the benefit will be to bang as many broads as Wilt but still remain a free man.
This comment will suffice as my business plan.
Awesome stuff as usual Dallas.
“Rap snitches, tellin all their business
Sit in the court and be they own star witness
Do you see the perpetrator, yeah I’m right here
Fuck around and get the whole label sent up for years”
Rap irony, gotta love it.