This is Irrelevant!

I’m Finally ging to graduate from Bradly Tech High School. I can’t believe how I’ve come. To be honest it scares me. I don’t think I’m prepared to go off into the real world. I didn’t really do the greatest job that I could have done in high school. And that’s my biggest regret. Do you you know what it feels like to be one of the most intelligent and intellectual people among your pears and not being able to show becase you don’t apply your or because you are in consistant. Well I do. But I’m not going to let it back me into a corner. You see I am a Survivor. I am a independant man come June 20th(my !8th birthday). I have know choice but to succeed. It’s “Hit or miss with this one”. It’s cruch time ladies and gentelman. And I aint going down.

Jay-Z Deal With Live Nation Reportedly Completed

Live Nation will reportedly contribute $5 million each year in overhead for five years and offer $25 million to finance Jay-Z’s external acquisitions and investments, plus $10 million per album for a minimum of three albums within the deal’s term. Jay-Z will also receive another $20 million for other rights including publishing and licensing. Live Nation is already producing the current Jay-Z/Mary J. Blige tour, which is putting up sellout numbers.

Full Story: BillBoard

Jay-Z has also set up a trust fund for the children of Sean Bell, Full Story.

Article On Gang Hand Signs

Sports blogs and talk shows exploded with speculation on whether the sign was a “b” for Blood (or perhaps Boston), a “bk” for Blood Killer, or just a team signal meaning “blood, sweat, and tears.” Pierce, in his one public statement on the matter, denied that he was making a gang reference but didn’t specify what he actually had been trying to signal. Celtics executive director of basketball operations Danny Ainge said it was a “blood, sweat, and tears” sign that Pierce made often - but then became fuzzier when asked directly about the other meaning, saying he wasn’t sure there was a gang connection.

Full Story: Boston Globe

For Video: Paul throws up the “B”.

Witness Claims To Have Had Relations With R.Kelly & Underage Girl In Kelly’s Rumored Sex Tape

A woman is set to testify at R. Kelly’s upcoming child pornography trial that she had a sexual encounter with Kelly and the allegedly underage girl shown in the video at the heart of the case. As part of the case, prosecutors claim to have identified the girl in the videotape. This alleged victim is now in her 20s. Kelly’s lawyers plan to argue — and the alleged victim will reportedly testify — that she is not the girl in the tape.

Full Story: Chicago Times

Does anyone out there really think that R.kelly is going to do time in jail?

U.K Border Agency attempts to ban Snoop for third time?

After two failed attempts to ban Snoop Dogg from the country, the UK Border Agency has filed an appeal and is again trying to have Snoop banned.

Last week Judge George Warr ruled against the Agency’s last banning attempt, saying they had failed to provide sufficient evidence that Snoop was a threat to public safety.

However The Guardian hs reported that the agency filed their second appeal on the case on Wednesday.

“We maintain that the immigration judge in the initial hearing made a material error in law,” said the Border Agency. “We will continue to oppose the entry to the UK of individuals where we believe there may be a risk to the public.”

Snoop was initially banned from the U.K on 2006 after a reported altercation with his entourage and authorities at London’s Heathrow Airport.

Video footage shown last week showed Snoop was in fact playing with children at times during the reported altercation.

Common discusses upcoming album “Invincible Summer”

Common recently spoke with Billboard to talk about his upcoming album “Invincible Summer,” which is slated for a July release.

“I created this music for the summer time, it’s about feeling good,” Common told Billboard.com during a recent preview of tracks appearing on “Invincible Summer.” “This is the type of music I felt was missing from my body of work.”

Frequent Common collaborator Kanye West is absent from the new album this time around.

“Kanye was focusing on his ‘Glow in the Dark’ show, so he hasn’t been able to make it to the studio to weigh in,” Common said. “But it worked out well, organically. The Neptunes & Mr. DJ came up with a fresh sound for me.”

Why southern rap music sucks so bad…

Let me again qualify myself by saying that I am not a vegetarian, Free Mumia, Black Power rap music fan. That type of rap hasn’t been good since Public Enemy and it won’t ever be that good again. I do think that today’s rap music lacks a component that inspires the listener to think outside of the box and critically analyze their surroundings. The question remains to be answered as to whether it is the listeners tastes that caused the shift or the controllers of media that shape one’s tastes.

This is where I use southern region rap music as my example. For as long as I can remember there was only one theme that came from rappers who lived south of the Mason-Dixon line. It was all about partying. Before Luke Campbell became a household name there was a cat called DJ Jimi from N’Awlins who had all the Atlanta strip clubs dancing to his song ‘Where They At?’. If you ever heard this song it was complete jibberish. The hook was garbage talking about “I might buy you a starter if you dance right”(I don’t know”). Since this was the late eighties I imagine that DJ Jimi was referring to a Starter team jacket. We had stopped wearing those in New York several years before, but the south was popular for copping old New York styles like they shopped at the Bowery Salvation Army.

For a brief moment OutKast had brought a soul to southern Hip-Hop and I thought that there might be the genesis of a new mindset. With all the young Black teenagers attending schools in the Atlanta area it looked as if there would be a moment when all the people who had been marginalized by mainstream society would finally push off their mental shackles and move themselves forward out from the clubs. The next thing I knew Jermaine Dupri said, “Money Ain’t A Thing” and all the co-eds were back working the night shift at Club Nikki’s. Little John came in with his dance anthems and so did Ludacris. As a side note, after all of the dancing jams Ludacris has crafted isn’t it ironic to watch him go to the Grammys with a song about some chick running away from abuse?

And speaking of the Grammy awards… T.I. was favored by some of you      (fill in the blank) to win because of his album titled ‘King’. This dude comes from Atlanta doesn’t he? The only King I know that comes from Atlanta doesn’t do Chevrolet commercials nor does he throw bricks of money up in the air to make it rain. What do you know about that? In a short window of time the controllers of mainstream media have subverted the messages and iconic imagery of what might arguably be African Americans greatest generation. They didn’t do it by themselves though. They had co-conspirators working with them from the inside. They used children, and the adults that refused to grow up.

In the thirty plus years that Hip-Hop and rap have been recognized as an art form you would imagine that Hip-Hop and rap would have had the sense enough to grow up. If you had thirty years of experience wouldn’t you be wiser for it? Then why isn’t Hip-Hop allowed to grow up? Why are you fans constantly being offered stupid lyrics and soda pop? Somebody doesn’t respect you for your intelligence and they are selling you the stuff off the bottom of their shoes. I would ask you “what you know about that” but I already know you don’t know any better. Southern Hip-Hop and rap reflects today’s consumer markets aspirations and dreams. Rap music is over thirty years old and it is still looking to escape responsibility and find a party. Hip-Hop died long before the Godfather did. People are keeping themselves busy by selling you parts of the carcass.

 

PS: I know this my upset some my viewers, but I have to Expose so that I can Dispose!

Hip Hop Sales May Be Down, But The Influence Of The Culture Remains The Same

Although originally formed in the inner-cities, hip-hop culture has crossed over into suburbia. More than half, or 57%, of Urban Youth, age 12 to 34, are white, although the proportion of African Americans and Hispanics who are Young Urban Consumers is greater within their own ethnic segments than is the case for non-Hispanic Whites.

This group is important to the U.S. economy. Aggregate income of these 37 million young urbanites will grow from $594 billion in 2007 to $684 billion in 2012, much of which will be spent on luxury items. At the core of the trendsetting power of Young Urban Consumers is their ability to influence the consumer choices of their friends. This demographic is among the first to try new things and spend their income on favorite product brands.

“Urban Youth shoppers put a high priority on brand loyalty, and brands achieving the greatest success have formed a connection with hip-hop artists,” comments Tatjana Meerman, Publisher of Packaged Facts. “Significant sales can be attributed to products prominently featured in lyrics, spontaneously embraced by the hip-hop world and products that appear to be genuinely used by an artist prior to the relationship.”

Source: PackagedFacts

 

People want to call Hip Hop dead due to lower sales, but they fail to see how influential the culture is to consumers. Artists just need to learn how to use their influence to generate income outside of record sales. These ulterior avenues of income must be well thought out, you can’t just make a website or clothing line and think it will automatically be a success.

A Call For the Mainstream Hip-Hop Community to become Political in the Wake of the Sean Bell Verdict

“If Malcolm or Huey had the outlets our musicians have today, it’d be global. I have to figure out a way to do it myself.”
Alicia Keys- “Alicia Keys Unlocked”
Blender Magazine-May 2008 edition

 

Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1964 book, “Why We Can Not Wait”

When I saw Jay-Z, the biggest artist in Hip-Hop, could put out a record dissing NBA basketball player Deshawn Stevenson two days after the Sean Bell verdict, but yet could not put out even a statement on the case, I said enough.

 

Hip-Hop music and culture is an often criticized, highly stereotyped art form and cultural movement. Gangsters; ignorant; selfish; destroying the Black community; perpetuators of the word “Nigga;” and vulgar, incendiary rebels without a cause—these are among the many charges routinely hurled. And typically in the dead center of the attack are Black and Latino youth; and more specifically, the Black and Latino young man.

 

For all the racially-tinged hatred disseminated from the narrow-minded faction of the political right, or the equally narrow, grossly misinformed analysis of the Black conservative cohort (the John McWhorter’s and Stanley Crouch’s among others), there has been an identical amount of advocacy and support for Hip-Hop. Whether it be from religious, political, academic, or grassroots sectors, people like Kevin Powell, Rosa Clemente, James Braxton Peterson, David Kirkland, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, Trica Rose, Joan Morgan and numerous others have articulately, comprehensively, and thoughtfully commented on the full spectrum of the music and culture. They have ardently and courageously defended it’s legitimacy to legions of Americans who see it as a one-dimensional, hedonistic, pesticide in America culture.

 

But now is the time for mainstream Hip-Hop to stand-up and defend the same community of folks who help create it, support it, and maintain it.

 

The claim of “We’re just rappers” and the like is no longer valid.

 

In a music and a culture that is heavily populated and controlled by young Black and Latino men who many times laud themselves as being the authentic voice of an urban Black experience that while is extremely harsh, vulgar, self-indulgent, and misogynistic but yet claims to be “real”—it is time to talk about this realness.

 

It is time to speak on a how the United States makes up less then 5% of the world’s population, yet has almost 25% of the world prison’s inmates. AND 1/9^TH OF THOSE ARE YOUNG BLACK MEN.

 

During the 2000 and 2004 Presidential Elections we have seen Black votes be treated as if they were meaningless in Georgia, Florida, and Ohio. We have seen increasing attempts to demonize our largely Black African and Latin American immigrant population without understanding how our state-endorsed, government-supported, private- corporate sector’s role in globalization is helping to profit from and perpetuate, not address, this issue.

 

We have seen how the lives of Blacks in New Orleans, Mississippi, and Alabama were not primary but secondary concerns in the face and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina—and how we still have no national agenda to address the displaced peoples or comprehensively rebuilt their cities. We are in the mist of seeing historically Black sections of cities like Chicago, Flint, Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, and Trenton suffering through staggering high school dropout rates (and correspondingly, significantly low high school graduation rates) and economic stagnation.

 

We have seen how the NYPD could stop the Bushwick 32 from going to a friend’s funeral. And now we see how no amount of bullets to an unarmed man warrants excessive force by the New York City Police Department…again.

 

Now we need mainstream Hip-Hop to talk about it. They need to tell America how they see it.

 

While R&B superstar Alicia Keys has come under great scrutiny for her comments about “Gangster Rap” in the May 2008 issue of Blender Magazine, the most profound statement she said has been lost. Keys talks about the women empowerment anthems of Aretha Franklin and the soulful, yet explicitly political songs of Marvin Gaye as being examples of the power music holds: the ability to impact society. She goes on to express how she wants her music to bridge the politically & musical gap in an effort to raise awareness on important societal issues.

 

It is in this spirit that I call out the most talented and successful Hip-Hop artist of our society to rise. Brothers and sisters are being killed, disrespected, and belittled to the point where many now are saying our lives are meaningless.

 

This is directed at your “favorite rapper” and your “favorite rapper’s favorite rapper.” It is a call to go against the inclination towards profit-driven commercialism and mass media appeal. It is a call to step away from the “music is just fun,” “music as a way to escape reality,” “we’re artist, not politicians,” explanations. It is a call in the mold of Dr. King and many Black leaders of the past to look beyond your image or your bank account and into the heart and soul of our society; to look at injustice and stand against it. It is a call to use our largest communication and cultural medium to talk about the pressing issues of our community right now. It’s time to break from our regularly scheduled programming, because our community is in a state of emergency.

 

It is not a call for the adults of Bakari Kitwana’s Hip-Hop Generation, or the activist of our past movements, or the Hip-Hop artist of today that are “underground” but making music in the “backpacker,” “conscious MC” tradition. This is a call for the biggest of Hip-Hop’s stars to stand up and say something. It is time to answer the call. Our people can not wait any longer.

 

We need our Hip-Hop stars to stand up beyond being artist, but as responsible men and women that are needed. Because right now, it’s bigger than Hip-Hop.

Plot to shoot officers in Brooklyn exposed ( Could this be karma from the Shawn Bell case)

Dozens of cops were pulled off the streets in Brooklyn Saturday night after NYPD officials were tipped off to a plot to shoot patrolmen, police sources said.

Officers were taken off their foot patrols in East New York, and cop cars were positioned to block a route to the 75th Precinct stationhouse on Sutter Ave. for fear of a drive-by shooting.

The extraordinary measures were taken after a confidential informant - who works with the Brooklyn narcotics squad - told police around 6 p.m. there was a plan to shoot up the Brooklyn stationhouse, sources said.

Full Story: Daily News

Threatening cops that had nothing to do with the Sean Bell case is pointless. A few cops make some bad decisions and now every cops is out to harm people?