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- » Name: Meka Soul
- » Location: Los Angeles, CA
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- » The Art Of Fruitinization
- » Is T.I. A Snitch?
- » Age Is More Than A Number
- » What Happened To All The Latino Rappers?
- » Legends Of The Fall-Offs: Marion Knight Edition
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Slap-Boxing With Jesus
The Art Of Fruitinization
As always whenever it comes to this topic, before I begin I must say that in no way, shape or form endorsing nor insulting the homosexual community and lifestyle, as it personally has not affected me in any way, shape or form. This is simply a heterosexual male’s perspective on the homosexual community.
Now that that’s out of the way…
Since I am in the music journalism game, I do have to keep up with the Joneses in today’s popular scene. Sure, I could write about the music I like all day long, but I’m pretty sure more people would give a shit about that Lil Big Yung song my blogging sister from another mister aliya ewing posted up a month ago than, say, anything by Jazzanova.
I ain’t gonna front though; “My Swag” is catch-as-catch-can catchy.
Anyways, after I woke up from my daily depression-induced nap the other day I decided to 86 my plans of watching yet another rerun of The Simpsons and flipped to a show on a channel I can’t even remember when I watched last: B.E.T.’s 106 & Park. Ignoring my id’s request to dive headfirst into the shallow end of my apartment’s pool and my ego egging it on, I sat through about an hour of the show before I got completely bored and went back to looking for more Charley Chase flicks flipped to the Lakers game.
If what I saw is supposed to be indicative of today’s hottest music, then I – to paraphrase reclusive poet laureate Cam’Ron – am in for a real cold winter. Where the fluck is Cam anyways?
However, it was a small, random-ass segment on the show which stuck out the most to me, where the cooned-out guy and the slorish Puerto Rican chick asked a chick with a Lil Wayne-influenced lip ring – also another shocking new trend I’m just now waking up to – and a guy who looked like he jumped into a vat of DayGlo in the audience what they thought about skinny jeans on men.
Pause, no Wanda Sykes at me even sitting through that segment.
Regardless of the answer (although the guy had no problem with it while the chick said that only women should rock skinny jeans), it was the manner of which the guy answered the questions that stuck out, or more specifically, his mannerisms , which bordered on the threshold of quasi-fleeciness. This all had my inner conspiracy theorist come out of hibernation and start really wondering if the gay community is slowly influencing the urban culture’s train of thought about gays through its clothing.
Think about it: none of these rappers, singers, producers, whatever, dress themselves because they’re too lazy crafting shitty songs and coming up with dumbass slanguistics like “That’s my Obama;” they leave that non-arduous task to their stylists. Case in point: at the end of shows like 106 & Park and in magazines alike there’s a small blurb giving props to the subject’s stylists. And almost always the stylists are either – you guessed it! – gay or women. So like mindless lemmings these public spectacles just rock what their stylists tell them to wear.
But what if they’re convincing them to rock such wears as a means of revenge, retaliation and getback from the years of homo bashing? I’m inclined to think that since these artists are so influential, cats start running around thinking the shit is sweet and start biting off them, which in effect will cause a bunch of cats who are straight dressing in a non-straight manner, and ultimately they may form an unconscious, unknowingly gay acceptance because they do that shit too.
Does any of that make sense?
If this in fact has some sort of validity to it, how mind-blowingly hilarious would that be to see how some of these cats who dress this way yet bash the fuck out of gays react? Think about it: I’m pretty sure Cam’Ron wasn’t the one who decided to start rocking pink fur stoles. What if it was a gay or female stylist that somehow convinced him that if he wore that shit he’d be the hardest thing out, which ultimately convinced a legion of followers to do the same once they saw him doing it? I swear, it any of this shit is true I’m gonna use Nigerian voodoo and try to resurrect the corpse of Biggie Smalls. But seeing as how he’s rolled over in his grave so much from all the fuckery Puff’s done in his absence, I’d probably get tired and quit halfway through trying to dig him out of his grave.
This whole thing reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
Is T.I. A Snitch?
Y’all pretty much know my stance on snitching, but if not fuck you I’ll reiterate: if I’m in a position where myself and/or my family were put in harm’s way for any unwarranted reason, I’m definitely doing whatever it takes to make sure our livelihoods were safe, including – yeah, you guessed it – cooperating with authorities. I use the term “unwarranted” in regards to certain yet everyday scenarios like, say, a family member getting raped or a close friend getting shot without provocation. Unless the person had it coming, I see no reason why I wouldn’t talk to the fuzz.
This whole “snitching” phenomena is definitely an interesting topic in hip-hop. Apparently since I – and I know many others – are less than willing to go all Charles Bronson and take the law into their own hands than rather have licensed professionals do the arduous task, my supposed, all-important “street credibility” comes in to question. But seeing as how I spend more time plastered in front of two computers than on the block and am more worried that I may die of a heart attack at the ripe age of 31 thanks to about my family’s history with hypertension at an early age than a bullet, you can say that I really don’t give three shits about street credibility. I’m pretty sure my future employers wouldn’t care neither, hence why I can’t put that shit on any résumé either.
Obviously there’s a bit of a difference between myself and someone like T.I., and it’s not only because what he spends in a day at a Louis murse store I earn in a year (damn economy). As essentially the complete antithesis of me Clifford has to deal with the snitching stigma, as it could definitely affect his fan base. His sales not so much, because we all know thugs bootleg and steal shit while females and unassuming YTs plop down duckets for it, meanwhile Internets nerds like myself and everybody reading this shit (Don’t front. I can see through that faux e-thugging bullshit) simply wait for the latest Sharebee link to sprout up. But with Clifford going to stand trial for last year’s murder of his BFF (I’ll refrain from calling homeslice a salaried cheeba cache, but just this once. But then again, you guys know how little I value weed carriers’ lives sometimes), his urban credence will almost certainly come into question.
Yesterday I was asked if I thought T.I. is a “snitch” for this particular scenario. To be honest, I don’t think he is at all. I mean, only getting a year and change in the bing coupled with glorified adult detention – a/k/a a slap on the wrist – despite being a supposed multi-time felon who was caught with all kinds of Gears Of War gats? Yeah, that reeks of suspicious behavior to me. And he does rap about murking the shit out of people on songs like “Hurt,” which would lead some to believe that he should remain to his street ties no matter what, and understandably so. But let’s get serious, people: this is the wireless age, not the Wild Wild West (no Kool Moe Dee/Will Smith), and that Dirty Harry shit only works in movies and fantasies (hell, even Superman of ended up in a wheelchair). So the chances of anybody – especially someone with as high a profile as T.I.’s – trying to pull off a vengeance caper without po-po shoving all kinds of nightsticks down your sphincter are slim to none. The way I see it, not only is going to the cops for this particular situation the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do as well.
Age Is More Than A Number
It was all good just a year (and some change) ago.
See, back when this site had the crazy idea to round up a bunch of random-ass people from all over to start up their own weblog section, it was designed to broadcast the low end theories of writers, photographers, rappers, artists and – most important of all – hip-hop fans from all over the country to provide their beats, rhymes and life on a semi-national stage. Men and women, young and old, everyone had their own story to tell.
So when they tossed yours truly a slot, I’d already known what I’d do when given the chance. Coming off a two year long sabbatical from scribing, my state of mind was a far cry from the “ideal hip-hop enthusiast” most of youse would probably wanted me to be. You know, the one who talks about what musicians, executives and even us could do to make this rap shit more enjoyable, perhaps even changing the current doldrums of sound for the better. You know, all that happy-go-lucky, I-care-so-dilligently-about-hip-hop-culture, berries and creme stuff.
Sorry, that guy checked out of his hotel room a long time ago.
See, for every cheery, politically imbued, stream-of-consciousness talker out there’s its nihilistic, sarcastic, shit-starting equal. Perhaps that’s what my former esteemed Gotdamned Editor envisioned when bestowing me with this spot. It probably helped matters that my hibernation increased my steadfast beliefs to the point where I’d willingly cyber-squab with any and everyone at the drop of a hat. Where the hell are Ketchums and Burnett anyways?
But that was all just a year ago. Granted that fire starting is sill within me and it still obviously fucks with the likes of this spot’s visitors (which still amazes and flabbergasts me to this day), but things have changed, albeit somewhat. Being essentially the last of the "originals" here - something I actually didn't plan on being - I’ve long since realized that squabbling it out over the Internets is about as mentally fulfilling as a lead pipe to the base of the neck, especially considering most of the baiting tactics have gotten more gayer by the comment. Add on to the fact that most cats still try to instill a moral dilemma – a/k/a the infamous “What if?” proposals – as a form of a trump card, despite the fact that it’s been done more times than I care to remember, and that I’ve been told worse, and you've essentially got a quasi-burnt-out-with-blogging blogger who doesn't care if I get five or 500 comments now. Hell, even this site’s message board camarilla infamously tried to get me off this site and “blackball me from the ‘music industry’” as a whole, and all they “succeeded” in doing was preventing me from saying but three words on this shit (um, First Amendment anyone?). Now I don’t even think anybody visits that section anymore, what with the copious amounts of NSFW content that was usually restricted suddenly being so prevalent there.
I’m not saying that the message board section fell the fuck off, or that I had a hand in that shit. I’m just pointing that shit out.
It also could deal with the fact that I’ve gotten older and thus have to deal with bigger, more pressing issues that I really stopped giving a shit about what I do sometimes. See in my world, keeping my phone, home Internets and cable on is just a little more important to than e-pride, and – oddly enough – I think that everybody should feel that way. I once asked earlier this year who really gives a fuck about what I say over here. From the looks of it, more than even I envisioned which, while in its essence is a backhanded compliment, is still pretty fucking sad.
What Happened To All The Latino Rappers?
The other day as I was walking from the laundromat, I walked past one of the gayest displays of fisticuffs I’ve ever seen: a pair of Mexicans duking it out in the middle of traffic. Actually, for them to be “duking it out” they would have had to put less of a fruitier effort; if I can compare it to anything, it’d definitely have to be akin to those old Greek fights way the fuck back in the day where, after seeing half-dressed men parade around with swords and such, everybody would join in on one, big, fagtastic orgy.
There isn’t a [||] button big enough for that last quip.
Anyways, these Mexicans were essentially grappling each other and kicking at each other’s shins, presumably because one of them took the last churro that was for sale on the street, or at least that's what I’d like to think. So I’m wondering, “If these two random-ass Mexicans are willing to scrap it out over a Spanish doughnut, why isn’t their rap counterparts as gully?”
Most people don’t realize that if you looked past that entire fence hopping thing and such, you’d realize that Latinos are one of the toughest peoples around, particularly in Los Angeles. Aside from their willingness to work for less than minimum wage and using inner tubes to cross oceans, they’ve formed two of the largest and most dangerous gangs of all time: The Latin Kings and MS-13. If you have children you may want to stall out on taking a vacation with them to Central America; they may end up coming back without an appendage or worse. The fact that any body would inject a child’s heart with acid ? That’s got to be one of the gulliest things ever .
Which comes to my point: if Latinos themselves are raw as shit, how come their rapping representatives aren’t as much? Cypress Hill is more of a White rock band nowadays, I haven’t even heard of anything from Kid Frost, Mellow Man Ace and A Lighter Shade Of Brown, and Fat Joe really hasn’t been the same since Pun’s heart gave out in 2000. I will give him credit for giving Cuban Link that buck-50 across the face, though. I didn’t even know he still had that in him.
If anything, it actually points to one person: Big Pun. I’ll be real: Pun was one of the illest rappers of all time (tell me I’m wrong) whose career was cut way too short. If anything he could be considered the Latino Biggie Smalls in terms of impact in the Latino rap scene, perhaps setting the bar so high for Latino rappers that no one has ever been able to even come within an eyelash’s length of it. For a minute I actually thought Fat Joe would have used his tragic passing as inspiration to become a top tier MC, which some of it actually showed around his “Lean Back” days. But then duke got up with DJ Ali Baba, moved to Miami and his skills regressed faster than you can say horchata . Or maybe he just ran out of rhymes to use from Pun’s stash. Whatever.
Say what you will about N.O.R.E., but he fell the fuck off. Lloyd Banks Juelz Santana and Fabolous are only half-Latino. And I really don’t give three-eighths of a shit about Immortal Technique’s angry-man rap either. None of them will ever be as marketable, bankable and especially as lyrical as Big Pun. And with the way things are going now the chances of a Latin rapper to baffle my skull are slim to none.
Legends Of The Fall-Offs: Marion Knight Edition
Ask any person living in Los Angeles, and they’ll probably tell you that Suge Knight fell the fuck off way before he got punched out at a party by a barber, slapped out a chick in a parking lot, had Death Row swacked out from under him by some crotchety cracka-ass YT, sued Kanye West of all people for getting shot at a party and other such random acts of fuckery. Hell, ask any person living in Los Angeles and they’d probably tell you that Suge Knight is more than deserving of every form of bad luck he’s had coming to him for the past decade-plus or so. And some would probably say that he’s long overdue for this shit.
Inexplicably though was the fact that, during his reign of terror on the music industry, nobody would say shit while he was in charge of the Left Side’s rap scene, be it the fact that he was associated with Bloods, that he financed Death Row by dangling one Rob Van Winkle by his ankles over a 20th-story balcony the way Michael Jackson did his botched, diseased offspring Blanket, that his urban legend tales reached nigh-Freddy Krueger levels or a combination of all three. Where you think the inspiration for Deebo came from?
But in reality, what were the chances of Suge Knight coming to our cribs to smack the flames out of us in front of our moms? That’s part of the reason I didn’t give a shit about duke in the first place, so long as the hits kept on coming. “New York, New York” was my shit, especially when it used to come on back-to-back with The Luniz’ “I Got 5 On It” on The Box. Tell me I’m not the only one who doesn’t remember those chicks in that video. Thank God(Dess) for YouTube. But I’m steering off course right now.
If anything, I blame Suge for kick-starting this awful trend of raping corpses for their royalties. Look at what’s happening to Lesane: on top of the fact he’s dropped more albums dead than he did alive, duke has his face plastered over that ugly-ass Makaveli clothing line that covers the walls at your local Burlington Coat Factory. I don’t know about you, but if my legacy were a pair of acid-wash jeans with my likeness screen-printed across the dick and ass area, I’d fight Jesus, Allah, Buddha or whatever multi-armed deity Apu from The Simpsons prays to for my soul, win, reanimate myself, then go head butt a speeding Mack truck for being quasi-involved in that fruity bullshit. Homeslice didn’t have this coming to him, even with all his ranting and hissy-fitting about getting plugged in the bozack.
Once everybody else started thinking in a similar fashion as I, Suge became about as expendable to the West as my colleague Charlamagne is to Wendy Williams nowadays (I couldn’t resist). Perhaps the reason all his posts have been in tiny blue print lately is to try to secretly convey his sadness to us. Whatever, I don’t give a damn. And in an ironic twist of fate not only has so-called gangsta music become tepid and obsolete, but now the only people who really give a shit are maybe Spider Loc and those Whoo Bangin’ rejects, and all they can get is YouTube play. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Suge Knight running around in neon streetwear and a faux-hawk signing all kinds of skateboard rappers, and nobody would still care about his fat ass.
What DO I Like, Anyways?
The recurring themes that keep popping up in the almighty c-section below are usually the gobbledygook plays on my name, wise cracks at that old-ass picture of my eye, which apparently gives readers the ability to automatically know everything there is about me down to the type of lotion I use (Shea butter, bitches) and my personal favorite, the inquiries about my tastes in music. Apparently, everything I’ve said on this damn thing for the past somehundredandchange posts has been nothing but pure, unadulterated hatred for all things living (and some dead).
I had no idea you people were so inquisitive.
But seriously though, go back and read the small print under the title of this post. Why the fuck are you people interested in my personal tastes anyways? It’s not like it’s going to change your “on-point” views about me, it’s not like I’m going to convince the latest retard c-boy to not say something that’s not homophobic and chances are this is probably going to get, like, eight comments on this bitch at the most. Twelve if I pepper in some politically incorrect non sequitur somehow.
Unfortunately since the rest of the rap world was doing absolutely nothing I ended up watching my partner in crime at the side hustle get shitfaced and inexplicably put his arm through a BMW windshield this weekend, hence leaving me with nothing to really talk about. So I figured, “Fuck it,” and scribble some half-assed post on the certain things I actually do like so I can needlessly verify my reason for having this blog or whatever, because it’s not like I have any published works on this site or in rap magazines anywhere to do so. In an effort to combat coastal bias, I’ve decided to pick an act from each coast. Let this be the last time I do you yaki tossers a favor.
U-N-I, Pacific Division . For as much chagrin I have toward the Left Coast that most people have seen on television, I’ll admit some of that shit was pretty catchy. Except Mad CJ Mac: he stunk to high hell. Anyways, there’s actually a few artists like the two mentioned above that are out in this, my soon-to-be former, direction, whose bohemian sense have caught my ears, thereby proving to me that everybody can just get along and chop up these bitches.
Heltah Skeltah, Fresh Daily . Similar to their Pacific Coast counterparts, New York’s Fresh Daily and the AOK Collective are definitely a current favorite of mine for the past couple years now. Meanwhile if you don’t think Sean Price and Rock should be in your top for greatest groups of all time, go Shakir Stewart yourself. Immediately.
Elzhi, Royce Da 5’9” . J Dilla has become the Dr. Dre of the Midwest, except not as steroid-ridden, where every artist can be Kevin Baconed back to him somehow. Even I think I can, and I've never even been to Michigan. Meanwhile, every halfwit nincompoop who managed to stumble upon a throwaway of his claimed to have worked with him. I’m just glad there are some artists who actually don’t need a Jay Dee beat to mask their suspect rhyming ability, as they can already rap circles around everybody else. Maybe that Detroit water and air didn’t get to them yet.
Holly Weerd. Yeah I know, only one entry from the South. In case you haven’t noticed, I tend to steer my attention from as far away from that place as possible. Word to all this ice and tattoos I got when our slave masters dragged me from a life of spear-chucking and topless women for a cat-o-nine-tails across the back if I looked at her underachieving paleface counterpart. Just be glad I don’t hate everything from there. Besides, y’all got the best titty bars in the country. You can be proud about that.
Legends Of The Fall-Offs: Curtis Jackson Edition
I’m sure every two-bit schmuck who reads this thing knows about the “Class Of 2009” freshman artists that currently grace the cover of XXL this month. While everybody is hotly contesting their latest entries (and I somewhat spoke my piece earlier this week), I’ve moved past that discussion and flipped the page to the next article, which ironically queried about the state of “gangster” rappers now that the neo-bohemians have taken over.
Don’t front like they haven’t, people. Just because they’re (willingly) shilling their music for free over the Internets and not in stores doesn’t mean their influence isn’t somewhat prevalent. Look at Lil Wayne for example… just not for too long, because he tends to look like his breath can curdle Gouda. Back when he was doing that silly “wobbledy-wobbledy” bullshit, he was running around in 5-for-$20 nightgown tees and Reebok Classics; now he fancies purple jeans, lip rings and fedoras like some of my cracka-ass neighbors. Birdman (I will never call a grown-ass man “Baby” anymore) of all people tried to defend their gangsta because of the tattoos on their face, but I just chock that foolishness up to them being the products of a public education system that’s still floating in the Gulf Coast some three years later, probably next to the Swiss Cheesed remains of Soulja Slim.
Please. You know good and damn well that cat’s under the sea chilling with Sebastian than under the earth spooning with Camouflage right now.
The only one not falling for the okie-doke ironically happens to be the guy who can’t even will a song to gold sales nowadays: 50 Cent. And while I was watching his latest video for a song whose title I can’t even remember right now, it’s just amazing how duke fell the fuck off in such a short amount of time. Think about where you were when “In The Club” first hit: that song was a fucking epic that successfully attracted both the streets and clubs. Fast-forward to now where that G-Unit that dropped this year didn’t even go gold, although he was mired in another Interscope-sponsored squabble with some crybaby tax evader.
Critics will blame Curtis’ current losing streak on his oversaturation in music, so much so that people are flat out tired of his antics. While part of that is true, I’m going to also point out that he’s the only one a: trying to still push that faux-gutter shit even though his dumbass reality show just came on MTV the other day (did anybody watch that shit? Thought not); b: once guys started realizing that his singing while rocking brassiere tops was kinda fruity looking they started his questioning his manhood and c: he just doesn’t fit the neo-alternative rapper aesthetic. Think about whom he lost to last year: a guy with both a doofy moniker and hipster fashion sense. At this point if Curtis started running around in snug-ass yellow Levi 511s, those Revenge Of The Nerds glasses, gaudy Dunks and Crooks & Castles shirts spitting idiot savant rap, I still don’t think he would do numbers at this point, since he’s essentially pigeonholed himself as a surly bully. All respect to Jay Electronica, but maybe Curtis should just go on and fuck Erykah Badu a few times to get whatever heebie jeebies she possesses in his system. Then he can run to Pharrell and Chad for some of their beats, and instead of rapping about hoes and shit he can whisper sweet nothings about making chamomile tea, lighting nag champa and all that other Maxwell-soft bullshit. Shit, it worked for Common and Andre 3000.
We Don’t Need It
Quiet as kept, 2008 has been a pretty good year for music. Or should I say, good in comparison to the Black Ages that was the influx of minstrel-esque jigaboo jingles from the South and Midwest, combined with the grumpy old men aesthetic of New York rappers, mixed in with the nonexistent Game-is-not-nor-will-ever-be-our-savior, sauce-ass West Coast scene earlier this millennia.
You see what I just did right there? I shitted on all coasts. Now none of you dumbasses can say I’m being biased in the c-section.
Anyways, I expected this year to be as spectacularly crappy as 2007, and it started off heading that way with a Young Jeezy clone who takes his rap moniker from a Nickelodeon cartoon I used to watch in junior high school, my current favorite New York rapper Cam’Ron getting kicked out of the very crew he created and being forced to sell timeshares to make a living and The Game being, well, The Game. And all that happened before my born day (which, for the second time in my life, landed on MLK Day. I’m beginning to wonder if that actually means something. Whatever, though).
Interestingly enough, it was when I interviewed a duo with a burgeoning buzz out of my former city way the fuck back in January that I began to notice a somewhat disturbing trend within myself: I actually started liking Left Coast-based hip-hop again after nearly a decade of preferring boom bap over beach cruiser rap, so much so to the point where my partner in crime and I helmed a West-themed mixtape in September. Not only that, music from the likes of Mickey Factz, Jean Grae, Heltah Skeltah and what’s left of the Re-Up Gang dropped this year as well, each of which getting steady burn in the iPod. Even Q-Tip, who was a part of the first hipster rap collective in the Native Tongues, dropped a surprisingly good album yesterday, even though it’s on pace to sell a whopping 14 copies. But who’s counting numbers?
And since most of the aforementioned dropped music was free (and almost legal!) to obtain – even DX’s newest columnist/target Amanda Diva sent me her CD – I’ve saved on time and, most importantly, hard drive space. With these powers combined (no Captain Planet), they’ve taken a major bite out of the hype that’s usually reserved for major releases. Nobody’s really checking for Curtis’ upcoming epic fail, Kanye songs keep dropping out of the sky yet none of them have really stuck and I thankfully haven’t heard shit from Jay-Z after that mess of a first single. Dare I say it: has the general public finally caught on to the bullshit they’ve been force-fed for years, and is nobody looking out for these top sellers anymore? I’m going to stick my head out as always and say yes to both, because artists have finally got it stuck in their heads that since nobody buys anything outside of Pigeon Dunks and fast food, why even bother trying to sell a song that will end up on the Internets faster than you can say “cunt rapist?”
Sadly, those damn tall Israelis are still thinking that consumers will still buy albums to finance their falafel and WMD budget, trying to do whatever it takes to clog up the leaks. While I was exploring Denver a/k/a Land Of The Lost back in August for Rock The Bells, the now-infamous “S.L.U.” song was unleashed unto the masses, and the whoreporate mongers at Atlantic Records were so aggy they actually had my partner and myself locked out of our own website for nearly two days, thinking it would ether our momentum. Fast-forward to now, and not only have we become more infamous, the site’s daily hits have increased by about 25%, and now the wankers at Atlantic are having their lowly interns email me wondering why I refuse to post any of their artists’ craptastic music.
* Gets up from desk, goes to my couch and stands a la Randy Orton
If things continue like this, I may not need a reason to move to New York next year. Then again, I traded in a bunch of rowdy bums in Inglewood for a bunch of drunken Mexicans grappling in the middle of rush hour traffic in Koreatown, so then again…
Nike Doesn’t Give A Shit About You
Hello, kids. My name is Slap-Box M, and I dig the fuck out of fashion.
Despite the fact that no idea’s original anymore and essentially the only way to truly be an individual is to make your own shit (although since we’re all a bunch of lazy dingbats who are too sloth-like to hold our dicks to piss straight into the toilet most times), I believe that one’s fashion sense is a pathway into discovering their uniqueness. In layman’s terms, if you’re looking like you copped your style because some shitbag rapper is doing it, chances are that you’re nothing more than a member of the sheeple community and your whole style is chump. But whatever, that’s not the point.
The only thing with my infatuation with fashion is that I am in no way, shape or form willing to drop a shitload of duckets on most items unless I either feel I deserve it, it’s worth the price or a combination of both. So instead I look to cheaper alternatives, whether it’s scouring the discount rack at a gear shop, copping something on the cheap at the local swap meet or – and yes, I’ve done it – copping fakes.
Now, I know a lot of yentas will ask why some would willingly buy phonies instead of the authentic, and while there’s a variety of personal reasons for many there are essentially two universal theories: why in the blue hell would I cop something for a rent check when you can find a replica at a fraction of the price, and why in the blue hell would somebody care about what I do with my own money to begin with?
I bring this up because of the essentially random acts of Fagitry that goes down throughout the urban fashion industry where some people are ostracized by what I consider to be elitist schlubs due to their holier-than-thou arrogance which is both annoying and reeks of the bitchmade disease. A case in point would be this one sneaker website I started frequenting where a person actually did a YouTube asking why people would care that he’d cop a pair of replica Pigeon Dunks at a quarter of the price (the same price which, ironically, has been jacked up thanks to said dingbats), only to have a plethora of dickheads respond by threatening to slap the earth, fire, wind, water and heart out of duke in the accompanying c-section.
Oh, really?
Now, I understand why some people will put up the money for an expensive materialistic bauble, and I don’t see the problem with them doing it at all as, after all, it is their own choice to make. However, why is it a problem to them when others or I purchase fakes? Think about it: you don’t get the person you’re insulting any pussy, you don’t get the person you’re insulting any money and the person who does it is not offending or affecting you or your lifestyle in any manner. For someone to antagonize and/or want to throw hands at another because of their own choices is not only a desperate cry for therapy, but just flat-out fagity to begin with.
Slap Box M’s November 4th Album Release Predictions
One of the few sections I check on this site (aside from the cyber-debauchery that is the Beauty & Brains c-section) is the hip-hop album sales segment that drops every Wednesday, if anything to see how both elitist “real hip-hop” dwyckheads, Southern rap varmints and everybody in between congregate to talk shit about which rapper sold blank amount of copies and how hip-hop is dead (that term is about as played out as a M.I.A. sample) because a rapper who hadn’t done anything significant since the one-pant-leg-rolled-up days did Dy-Lan numbers.
While I was uploading my special press release copy of Q-Tip’s new album into my iPod I looked on the Wikipedia entry for the album cover, and lo and behold if the shit wasn’t dropping the same day as the elections. So I figured, “It’s three in the morning; I might as well actually attempt to put some effort into this bullshit,” and decided to skim through the Billboard releases of Super Tuesday. Seeing as how there are hundreds of albums from all genres dropping that day, I thought I’d highlight a few notable ones and provide my one-of-a-kind analysis of their chances of success.
Little Brother - Separate But Equal: Drama Free Edition. I figured that since a good chunk of this site’s readership are the unsupporting North Face backpack type, what better way to unsupport former DX vagabond blogger/Gordon Gartrell podcast (which actually kicks ass) host Phonte than by not buying yet another under promoted Little Brother album that already dropped in 2006 as a mixtape? I got my theoretical money saved up already!
Download-to-purchase ratio: 50,000-1
Q-Tip – The Renaissance. Remember when “Vibrant Thing” and “Breathe & Stop” came out, and everybody ripped the shit out of Kamaal for falling into the jiggy trap? Well, this is supposed to be the album that was meant to drop in 1999. Unfortunately it’s 2008 and not a lot of people are going to give a shit, including the ones who paid all that money to see Tribe reunite at Rock The Bells this past summer.
Download-to-purchase ratio: 7,500-10
Illa J – Yancey Boys. Speaking of Amplified, a lot of people didn’t really know that Jay Dee oddly enough was an unwitting catalyst in the downfall of ATCQ’s musical quality, as he was doing the beats on the group’s last two albums and Q-Tip’s first solo joint. Now that he’s under the earth thanks to rotted-out kidneys (seriously) and all the sudden people who used to get him confused with Jermaine Dupri (and I know some of you are reading this right now, don’t front) are touting him as the greatest thing since the Kegel exercise, all kinds of rappers are looting his corps… errr… using his beats on their albums. Next up to bat is J Dilla’s own younger brother, whom I’ve never even heard of much less knew he was a rapper until a few weeks ago. I figure the only people who are gonna buy and download this thing are people from Michigan (Ketchums, I’m looking at you).
Download-to-purchase ratio: 500-1
My prediction for the week? T.I. will have gone past platinum, Wayne will still do numbers, nobody will give three shits of the aforementioned artists above and I will probably have died a little more on the inside from gorging on wild unhealthy food, having poor sleep habits and – God(dess) willing though highly unlikely – a round of premarital sex that ultimately leaves me empty and emotionless.
Two out of three isn’t bad.
Don’t You Trust Them New Ni**ers Over There
A lot of cats will say that successful rappers got it made. They make a crazy amount of cheese (although in today’s economy that shit’s like the equivalent of rocks, nuts and berries in some nondescript fourth-world country… of the Fifth Ward in Louisiana), the general public adores them, guys are envious at them and women toss their panties in their direction. And in a sense, said successful rappers do have it made, as many of them came from fucked-up beginnings to prove the opposite of what their teachers, parents and society as a whole told them.
Only problem is, most of them can’t ever get that hood mentality out of their system, even when they do (or in some cases, don’t) move up in social classes. It’s kind of like this story my friend just told me while she was in Texas, where some Katrina refugee got relieved of his just-now-cashed FEMA check (um, why?) and vehicle twenty minutes later, or, in another similar manner, the meteoric rise and epic fail of one Earl Simmons. This past Sunday my small cabal of rabble-rousers were reminiscing (i.e. taking shots) at how DMX tried to unsuccessfully convince a random-ass bystander to give up their car when he told them he was a federal agent.
Really Earl? Really? If anything you should have said you were Axel Foley, but saying you’re a federal agent? That’s just reaching for the stars. Cocaine is a helluva drug.
Where was I…
As with the joys of copious amounts of money and pink, the lack of privacy and constant public scrutiny are the unfortunate tradeoff of being a media monkey. And being under a spotlight means you can’t really do much as take a shit without someone taking it wildly out of proportion.
Like me, for instance.
On the other side of the coin though, some cats start thinking their shit doesn’t stink, and that the world revolves around them. So with the advent of YouTube, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, emails, message boards, forums, c-sections and various other bullshit everybody and their moms – not just my “racist” ass – returns the favor by ethering their every move or exposing them. A good example would be Lil Wayne’s run-in with a paparazzo he previously bad-mouthed, which, admittedly, was hilariously fucked up, considering duke was going in on Wayne while Wayne was on his way to court.
That shit would be topped by some random-ass video of a random-ass former weed carrier for Soulja Boy lambasting the little fuckhead for choosing money over his piff pocketer when said piff pocketer was supposedly held at gunpoint by some other fuckhead who threatened to ether his family if he didn’t come up with the money. In Soulja Boy’s defense – and perhaps the only time I’ll ever do this – the kid is an underage high school dropout who obviously doesn’t know his knee from his rectum. Shit, if I were in Soulja Boy’s shoes I’d do the same exact thing! The fuck would I look like having to baby-sit a weed carrier when I still haven’t removed my damn self from my absentee mother’s proverbial teat?
But I’m straying from the situation at hand.
If there’s something to be said of this bullshit, it could be the fact that those cats in question all came from the South, which would be another long-winded diatribe. But shit, what was the moral of this story? Don’t ever play with matches, I guess.
Give A Fluck About A Louie Duffle Bag Anyways
Real talk is, I wasn’t even gonna write shit this week due to a few things that need finishing up, as well as there not really being much in the news in hip-hop outside of regular ass, doofy shit like Lil Wayne’s piff pocketer dropping dime (bag) on his employer in court. I guess because today is National Day Against Police Brutality, errr, Day, hash honkies are doing the exact opposite of what they’re paid in groupie punany, – and subsequent penicillin prescriptions – to do: snitching. In a way it makes sense because they don't want to catch a nightstick up the ass, Abner Louima-style. But on the flip, isn't that the same shit rappers swear they don't do? No wonder Jim Jones says nobody has (dirtball) swagger like he does, because we all know him and his Harlem goonies would never tell cops that the killer is in apartment 4B.
So as you can see, my Latino neighbors who insist on blaring their banda music in the dead of the night are making more noise than rap. But since one Rayne215 asked so nicely I figured why the fuck not?
If only she asked me to deliver something else instead, but a guy can dream. She has nice lips by the way, gentlemen.
Honestly, the only thing that’s occupied my mind as of late has been, well, girls and gear. With the weather getting colder and my pockets getting slimmer, I’ve eschewed most brand names for, well, cheap ass shit (i.e. vintage) and keeping my current crop of clothes from getting nasty. It also helps that I sometimes get free shit in the mail (as opposed to an actual check, but whatever) as a thanks for posting their music over at the side hustle.
Just don’t expect me to be shilling that shit like it was ambrosia, because not only do I not care about how other people dress (unless you’re a woman. And unless she’s only wearing a scrunchie in her hair and a pearl for underwear), but whoreporate Amerikkka doesn’t really give three shits about what I do as long as it doesn’t hurt their bottom line. That’s why TI got his music video blocked by Louis Vuitton and Gucci, and we gotta listen to that “Numa Numa” shit with Rihanna donkey-braying over the damn thing now.
Weren’t the Italians and French pro-slavery anyways? Just a thought, people…
The whole thing is reminiscent when the t.I. who runs Cristal told rappers to stop name-dropping his shit, presumably under the guise that the sight of a bunch of mush-mouthed minstrels with gaudy baubles and their pants hung low Fleece Johnson style would bring their credibility as a high-end, bourgeoisie moonshine manufacturer down, which caused Jay-Z of all people to start proclaiming Ace Of Spades as the new icon of black bourgeoisie-ness, which us urban folk foolishly believed even though this is the same guy who’s in bed with a company that got its own money through slave trading.
Where’s Edgar Pearce when you need him?
Maybe now that Louis Vuitton and Gucci officially hate rap – and by extension, black people – people would be more like, well, me, and don’t give a shit about these brands. Besides, weren’t these brands the harbinger of the whole “dude looks like a lady” look anyways? When I was younger, the only people who wore Louis Vuitton in my family were women. It’s like grown-ass men raid their sister’s closet for that Gucci blouse she just copped and have the gall to call it “fashion forward.”
Shit’s disgusting.
Shame In The Game
We’ve all made some pretty dumb decisions in our lives, from buying some gear that we’ve instantly regretted (I copped a pair of ugly-ass sneaks from New York a few years ago that haven’t seen its way out of the box in about a year now) to, say, putting an idiot in the White House for the past seven and change years. I either read or learned somewhere during my junior college years that it has something to do with the average person’s natural, self-gratification impulses which compels us to sometimes make silly judgment calls.
I may be a little off with that theory, so if there are any economics majors who are reading this feel free to correct me in the c-section below.
Anyways, the one thing I actually did remember from junior college (outside of honing my skills on Marvel vs. Capcom 2) was this ideal called buyer’s remorse, where we actually feel like shit and wonder why we sometimes purchase things we otherwise would not under normal circumstances. Lord knows I’ve essentially styled some lucky chap the way I toss out the clothes in my closet sometimes.
Anyways, the reason I bring up these concepts up are because of, oddly enough, a random-ass video I stumbled across last night of some guys trying to start an anti-murse movement. Hilariously homophobic as it came across (to me, that is), I was at a bit of an odds about the entire topic; on one hand rocking a man-bag as a fashion statement is just plain wrong no matter how you slice it, yet on the other being so steadfast about it to the point you’d make a rap song and accompanying YouTube about it is as equally retarded.
Similarly questionable was this video of that SOHH Gyant guy getting a tattoo of a computer keyboard etched across his arm LL Cool J-style (he even said that in the video!) as a form of testament to his, errr, blogging prowess. I would provide a link to the entire scene, but seeing as how what’s left of that site is still a competitor for both this spot and my side hustle it’s best if you search for the shit yourselves. In any matter, I’m not saying that the tattoo itself is suspect since I’m actually an advocate of using body art as a means of self-expression and individuality, but I’m wondering what in the blue fuck was going on in duke’s mind when he decided to get that shit, and if homeslice will be content with the thing in, say, 20 or some odd years later. Think about it: how would he explain to his “future” [1] kids that shit:
Son: “What does that tattoo mean, daddy?”
Gyant: “It represents my number one blogger status on the Interwebs, son.”
At least in my case I can explain what all my tattoos mean without getting a blank stare from someone. It’s whatever though.
Think about it like this: you know Yung Berg is having severe buyer’s remorse for that Transformers chain that he got slapped out for it by Trick Trick’s goonie goo-goo brother (by the way has he gotten that damn thing back yet? I mean, Tyga got his chains back and he’s a bigger panty waste than Berg is). And the way this economy is, anybody buying some shit for the fuck of it has got to be out of their Plymouth Rock minds.
* sees red patent leather Skytops in closet
I rest my case.
[1] I say “future” because duke looks more likely to swallow kids from a five-dollar footlong than make them himself. If you see that bugged-out, Corky from Life Goes On look on his grill throughout the video you’ll understand what I mean.