The Source - A Pillar of the Hip-Hop Community

I gotta give it up to my niggas Leroy "Bum" Peoples and Alvin Childs, two big dogs (a General Manager and salesman) from The Source for holdin' it down. Some nigga try to step to you about his bullshit little cd, you gotta clap that nigga - AND his mans and 'em, son, no questions asked.

I mean, it ain't nothin'; with circulation numbers like The Source has (370,000-ish), and the kind of bank that comes along with those numbers, you can hire yourself a good lawyer/magician, preferably one associated with the Congress of Racial Equality, and let him handle that shit.

Shit, nigga - it prolly don't even matter if you got a gender-discrimination suit already hanging over your head - handle your business.

New Rules for Hip-Hop

You've seen Bill Maher's show, where he does a little segment called
"New Rules" where he points out the bullshit that's going on in the
world? Well, this is "New Rules" for the world of Hip-Hop, and it
will be an ongoing thing, as I come across the dumb shit that rappers
do.

New Rule: thugged-out, hardcore street niggas like the Jadakiss and
Styles P are not allowed to say shit like "We belong together like
peanut butter and jelly", even if they're on a song with Mariah Carey.

Murder, Sink

That's a really shitty pun, but Murder, Inc. really doesn't seem to be doing too well these days. They're almost as fucked up as Tha Row.

murderated redesign

Okay, so I was feeling industrious this Saturday afternoon, and decided to remix the murderation blog template - which, up until this point was shamelessly generic (considering, after all, that this web shit is kind of my bread-and-butter...).

Still not particularly ambitious or anything, but it's a start...

Diamonds...

Damn, that remix with Jigga is just to friggin' hot, man.

Jay throws a nice, subtle little swipe at Fat Joe, too:

The pressure's on but guess who ain't gon' Crack...
Pardon me, I had to laugh at that

Fatty Koo?

Forgive me - I'm a little late to this party - but what the hell is a fatty koo?

Hip-Hop Colony

A new documentary about Kenya's hip-hop scene called HIp-Hop Colony is about to be released. According to the synopsis, the film raises the point that while Africa is now mostly free, it continues to be colonized culturally by hip-hop (and other American/Western influences). On the other hand, there's something that can be said here about things coming full-circle; after all, hip-hop definitely traces its roots back to our African culture. 

This piqued my interest - especially because the background music in the trailer and on the rest of the site seems to be very high-quality, and made me want to hear more. I hope the movie will be available in the US at some point.

Ol' School Murderation

I was digging through my hard drive (using OS X's new Spotlight feature) and came across this bit of vintage vitriol from yours truly:

Mon - April 21, 2003

I have a great idea to solve rap artists' problems with expressing coherent thought.

Rappers can't talk, I've decided. It's becoming a real problem as these guys are being thrust more and more into the mainstream. It's okay to speak in the most fragmentary of sentence fragments if you're just on your grind, and tryin' to do your thing, nahmeen? But if you're on some corporate shit, tryin' to take yo' shit multi-national, you got to step up yo' diction, dog.

I bring this up because today I decided to try and get an update on the hip-hop world. I first cruised over to The Source's web site, and took a peek at their editorial page . "Hip-Hop Under Attack - Round Table Discussion" it said. Well, shit - that sounded promising, but as I started to read, it just became more and more unintelligible. In fact, the only thing that's clear from that whole article is that hip-hop is indeed under attack, and that attack is coming from within. The only thing that is attacking hip-hop is the inability of any of its luminaries to put a simple thought together. Fabolous might have summed it up the best:

Fabolous: "Um, I just wanna kinda state, like for the younger generation or hip-hop, like, we don' t feel like artists, really, man, I feel like a hustler. I feel like I'm here, you know what I'm sayin', to get as much as I can while I'm here, like as far as like, Dame sayin' do other things and that's what I do. Like, I'm tryin' to you know what I'm sayin', I feel like the kid that's on the block, and you tryin' to get rich on the block. I'm tryin' to get rich in this game really like... "

Are you serious? If hip-hop under attack, that's some Shock-and-Awe right there, man.

Well, after perusing some more barely interesting or relevant Source content, I abandoned that site, and switched over to XXL. There I read an interview with Biggie circa 1995 that had never been published. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am the biggest Biggie fan in the world, but that guy seriously struggled with his ability to express a thought in normal conversation:

"I don’t be givin’ a fuck, dog. Straight up and down. If that’s the shit that I’m feelin’, this has to be said. And it has to be said in order for the song to make fuckin’ sense. It don’t make no sense makin’ up no shit."

The conclusion that I've come to is that most rappers shouldn't be allowed to speak. Period. If you can't say it in a rap, then shut the fuck up, because nobody knows what the fuck you're talking about.

Wow. You know, I still feel the same way...

The Littlest Rappers

Just for fun, I decided to take a look at the "Lil's" listed in the
iTunes music store.

How many more Lil's can you think of? I see that Snoop's homie Lil'
Half-Dead isn't there....

Bonus Challenge: How many "Youngs" can you think of? Young Gunz,
Young Bloodz, Young Jeezy (wtf?)...