Put this on your sched for Columbus Day weekend…
The Aboriginal Indigenous Conference of the Americas
a/k/a “What Was You Called Before 1492?”
National Black Theater
2031 Fifth Avenue, Harlem
(btwn 125th & 126th Street)
October 9-11, 2008
6pm-until
FREE TO ALL!
‘Ye Tudda releases the video for ‘Love Lockdown’ and sonn totally reads my mind.
Except for the part where it gets premiered on ELLEN, but at the end of the day what does it matter?
The video has spaceships in it. ‘Ye Tudda has on the Air Yeezy shoes. Someone kill me.
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‘Ye Tudda says… Yo fam, I be on my spaceship shit. |
BILLY X. SUNDAY out on the town…
If you like getting fucked the fuck up, and who amongst us doesn’t? You need to take your ass out of the house on a Tuesday night in NYC. Fridays and Saturdays are for the chumps. Tuesdays are the real Saturday night.
Last night was this mega-party popped off by Smirnoff. Yes, Smirnoff vodka. I know what your thinking… Isn’t Smirnoff that shit in a plastic bottle that you see bums keeping in their back pockets? No, that would be Georgi. Smirnoff was pretty indistinguishable from the lower lower tier of vodkas because they had a shitty advertising presence.
So what does Smirnoff do to increase their profile? They throw a free concert with NaS, N.E.R.D., Buckshot Shorty, Spank Rock, Dizzee Rascal, Grandmaster Flash, and WTF!?! Gravy? Smirnoff went all the way out by renting this spot which was a classic architecture bank building. There was free food and as you can imagine hell’a free Smirnoff drinks.
I love the fact that just 10 blocks away from this bank building Wall Street is melting down like a cone of Carvel left for dead on the summer sidewalk and we are partying like there is no tomorrow. I love rap music for its ability sometimes to be oblivious to social deconstruction. Rock music can do that shit too. Hell, pop music does that all the time. I took this as my cue to go in double-fisted all night.
When I tell you that I might have smashed more than ten drinks then I honestly might have banged off twenty. I got inside the venue early by enterprising with one of my folks. My homeys a/k/a the ‘Go In Crew’ were still online outside. No, they were not on the internets, they were standing on line. By the time they got in sonn was twist rock. I don’t remember too much from the rest of the party and I ended up getting kicked out after I was caught in my attempt to abscond the venue with a bottle of Smirnoff.
F.Y.I. Smirnoff is distilled three times. Belvedere is distilled four times. Absolut is made in a dirty bathtub in Sweden. I liked the taste of Smirnoff in the mixers but my litmus test for vodka is two parts spirits and one part tonic water. I just got my digit from the X spot so I think I will look up Smirnoff tonight in my favorite liquor store. If the price point is significantly cheaper than the Belvy I will copp a bottle. Otherwise why sacrifice your taste?
Too bad I didn’t get to to leave with that joint tucked in my sweatshirt.
On another note…
Gravy?
What if someone told you that you couldn’t come into the music industry unless you imitated someone else? Wouldn’t that make you want to kill yourself?
Your boy was supposed to go to the Hudson Hotel last night to big up my homey from Giant Step for his born day. Pete Rock was going to be on the 1’s and 2’s doing his thing. I was really going to hear T.R.O.Y. which might be Hip-Hop’s greatest tribute song evar.
I usually make a pit stop in this community college across the street from my day job before I go into the city. I use the internets there and check my e-mail and shit. Sometimes I write a column for the X spot, you dudes know the deal. As I was walking through the school to the computer lab I saw a poster advertising Danny Hoch and his new one-man play ‘Taking Over’. The play was going down last night for free and bong I was there in the building.
If you don’t know this cat Danny Hoch then you need to step up your Hip-Hop game. Danny Hoch might be the most Hip-Hop white dude of all time in the history of all time. He is even more Hip-Hop then about 92.375% of Black dudes who are Hip-Hop. One of the main reasons he is so Hip-Hop is that he has this incredible play ‘Taking Over’ and he is performing this shit for like three straight months for free.
Yes bitches, for FREE. I know some of you internets music thieves love that word. ‘Taking Over’ is this masterful piece of storytelling that takes you through the characters that occupy Danny Hoch’s New York City. From the real estate sellers to the slumlords to the disenfranchised Puerto Ricans we see the viewpoints from a cross section of people affected by the real estate boom in New York City. The theme is universal in that all around the country the ghettos are being transformed by the wealthy, while the suburbs are being made into ghettos.
That reminds me of my trip to Paris. I stayed in the center city right across from the Notre Dame chapel and I had to go into the suburbs to see Black people and do my sneaker shopping. This will be the same fate for New York City as it becomes a playground for only the uber-rich and the tourists who hold Euros and Sterlings. Danny Hoch expresses this idea in the play more than once through his incredible ability to instantly change characters. Hoch is a magician at this with way more talent than bullshit David Blaine. You can see he is a white dude, but he speaks so Black!?!
I said Danny Hoch was more Hip-Hop than most because he is actively fighting against the forces that created Hip-Hop. He rails against the prison industrial complex and poverty. He speaks all across the globe about their effects on people. Danny isn’t some half baked communist revolutionary in a Che Guevara shirt. He’s just a poet, ne a griot, who illustrates the world and culture we live in through words. I’m going back to see the play on Thursday night because the story is that good, and its FREE. If you live in NYC, if you grew up in NYC, if you LOVE this place called NYC then you should see this play as well.
When I hear T.R.O.Y. in the club again I will reminisce over my first love, NYC.
Danny Hoch’s ‘Taking Over’ and the Hip-Hop Theater Festival schedule
Politics as theater was always the situation since the times of the Greeks. Can you imagine some of those dudes delivering their monologues and speeches after a night of deflowering some poor kid from the countryside? The life of the intern still hasn’t improved either. Has the body of CHANDRA LEVY turned up yet?
Roman senators were fiery, passionate orators, but they were also cunning and conniving manipulators even moreso. Politricks haven’t changed one bit except that now we allow women and Blacks the chance to occupy the podium. The best performers have been the women and the Blacks too. I don’t think that we are tired of hearing the white men speak although AL GORE and JOHN KERRY were both as exciting as watching a game of underwater golf. I think that the most inspiring orators have been the Blackish dude and the women.
You have to love SARAH PALIN for her use, or lack thereof the ‘g’ sound which would end words like ‘looking’ and ‘being’. There’s no way in hell BARACK OBAAMA could have come through without pronouncing that ‘g’ sound and he would still be on this stage. BARACK speaks so well I always have to look at his collar to make sure he doesn’t have on brownface makeup. SARAH PALIN is so perfect for our substance-less soundbite culture. TINA FEY has also done a remarkable job endearing her to the American public.
TINA FEY could have a career in politricks if she wanted one. During the Writer’s Guild strike last winter TINA FEY broke the lines so she could finish the season for her red hot television show. The Writer’s Guild didn’t step to her on it since she came out publicly in support of the writers. That’s the type of shit that good politicians do. They rail against banking system deregulations while they take vacations paid for by bankers. In TINA FEY’s case she won herself a few EMMY awards. I wonder what SARAH PALIN will receive for her performance?