Posts (page 2)
If you're sober right now you'll laugh. But if you're high you'll laugh louder. Laugh louder.
courtesy of Son of Baldwin
Could this in fact be the greatest Potter movie? The trailer is shaping it up to be...
When The Source headed by those idiots Dave Mays and Benzino set out to "destroy" Eminem they in many words destroyed the greatest hip hop magazine ever created.
In the beginning their covers were classics. Who could forget the image of Biggie in front of the twin towers? Or the first Power 30 cover? Or the fact that any hip hop head with the munchies for music often started in the coveted music review section, where the rarity of a 5 mic cd told the greatness of a powerfully skilled mc. And lest we forget the incredible Unsigned Hype section where some of the most storied MC's got their first shot at stardom. Their layouts were brilliantly beautiful, with music, politics, fashion, and interviews organized in a way that only the most skilled art director could present. The writers are now amongst hip hops most elite journalists. They crafted articles that didn't just talk about the artists they breathed life into the pages and made up and coming writers at the very least check their pens at the front door or at best influenced many young writers to dig deeper and try harder.
But then it crashed.
Dave Mays and Benzino lost their minds. They lost the creativity and then they tried to ether the biggest hip hop star alive on the basis of Benzino's own failing hip hop career under the guise of Em stealing hip hop from the black community.
There's no doubt that even Em himself knows he will be looked at by critics as the Elvis of rap. Elvis has long in the black community been considered to be a man who took black style, language, and art form and became the King of Rock n Roll all the while allegedly debasing black folk. He has been oft quoted as famously saying, "the only thing a black person can do for me is shine my shoes." But Em, isn't really the Elvis of rap. He's not ignorant to the fact that he's an anomaly in hip hop and he owes his success to his mentor, a black man. Yet, when a tape of him clumsily rapping a racist rhyme surfaced in The Source's pages it seemed like his coffin was about to be built and nailed. But he prevailed. Black hip hop artists came out in seemingly droves to accept Em's apology and to confirm his hip hop visa---in essence he was a welcome part of the community, Vanilla Ice he was not.
The sound of The Source's death bell was ringing loudly as upstart XXL, who at one time trounced Em in their reviews, became Interscopes go to mag for all things Fiddy, Dre and Em. It was a gentleman by the name of Elliot Wilson aka YN aka Yella Nigga (former Editor and Chief) that was killing then Editor-In-Chief Kim Osario in his monthly intro. All the dominos fell. XXL was doing higher numbers on the stands and in subscriptions. Kim was fired and then sued doofuses Benzino and Mays for sexual harrassment amongst other things and then they were fired.
In all honesty, The Source (Mays and Benzino free) should have been a reawakening..in fact a rebirth for the magazine that once truly held the crown as The Hip Hop Bible.
It didn't.
What followed has been an amazing display of true incompetence. The articles are mostly lame, the layout is as if they send their sheets to a middle school yearbook class, and the coveted reviews are well let's just say their best days are behind them. The magazine is at the very best sloppy, disorganized, and cluttered but with a ton of white space. At its worst its really only fit to line a litterbox.
And of course I kick myself every month for buying it, hoping that next months will be better. Hoping that someone on the staff digs into their collectable crate of the heyday of The Source and finds one where the design and feel of it was heavy and beautiful. But every month it seems to get worse.
This months could have been a great one. Hip hop going green. And yet, even with the always wonderfully insane Busta gracing the cover the mag has moved closer to its one page pamphlet roots more than ever before. It's now flimsy next to its strongest competitor XXL, who has taken their status and squandered it to the point where they're just basically the big brother of the now defunct male jerkoff King magazine. The only thing great at this point in XXL tends to be their freshman mag and Chairman Mao's reviews of true hip hop (i.e. underground).
I feel sad about The Source. I am a collector of the magazine from around the early 90's. I have two tubs full of their glossy covers, even the ones I despise. I have made a commitment to myself after this month to stop collecting them. Until they get their shit together I can't. I can't waste my money and I can't see the magazine that I loved slowly go down the drain.
What I recommend to The Source:
1) Dig in the crates: Figure out how to incorporate the old layouts into a new understanding of the industry.
2) Politics: Dig in the crates and check out the old articles about politics. They weren't lite. They were in depth, well researched, and well written. They were also broad and fascinating. It was as if you actually cared about all forms of journalism.
3) Take some chances: You can put Jay-Z, Nas, Jadakiss, Em whatever number one name brand is out there now on the cover all you want but the inside should have (well written and well researched) articles about all forms of hip hop and new artists.
4) Ditch Letters to the Editor: Until you have more than two letters cause your readership has virtually abandoned you...ditch it. It makes it even more obvious that you are suffering.
5) Reclaim the prestige of the 5 mic: Yeah I loved Lil Kim's cd like the next person and I was happy that FINALLY a female got the 5 mic. But let's be honest, there was no fucking way that was a 5 mic. Your credibilty was murdered on that day. Take it back. XXL is killing themselves with their rating system...they used to be the voice in the wilderness, unafraid to tell big boys (artists and labels alike) that their shit sucked. Now that they're playing the political game its time for you to step in and show them who's King (no pun intended).
6) Find the old Mind Squad: If they're willing; ask, beg, plead to get them to sign on again. Now you don't have the Mays/Benzino fuck up squad you can truly reclaim the brillliance that was hip hop journalism.
7) Stop the Dimepiece shit: Really? Really? I mean I understand that this is for the niggaz in da pen but back in the day your magazine had a pretty credible reputation and that didn't have half naked vid chicks in the pages. Those pages were for actual journalism. Now I like a hot chick like any other red blooded lesbian but that's truly a waste of space...save it for the webpage.
8) The Webpage--Retool it: Seriously. Why does your webpage look like an amateur threw it together? Are you giving a first year graphic design major a job? I got some names for you who can hook your shit up. They may cost but they are good. Your webpage looks like trash which I guess shows some continuum with the inside of your mag so I guess that's a bonus.
9) Put your all into the magazine The Source no spin offs: Hey, listen your one magazine is struggling so turn away from The Source Sports and any other spin off you want to try. Incorporate that into the magazine like you did in the past. Its a great way to fill up space that is now occupied by dumb shit.
10) Don't let The Source become Bad Boy: Remember the Bad Boy era? Everything Puff/P Diddy/Diddy/King Tool touched turned to gold. Now he's selling the souls of poor hapless kids who can hit a few notes but have zero star quality a dream while sending them uptown for cheesecake and making them future I Love Money stars. Yeah, it's bad when you and Bad Boy are becoming ubiquitous with the unremarkable hip hop era that is today. Just like Bad Boy your time came and has gone. But unlike the incredible unlikable ego that is Puffy; you can rise like a phoenix. Get out of the rut and actually create again. Diddy can't see past his ego. You should at least try. Here's your first ego adjustment:
YOU ARE NOT THE HIP HOP BIBLE ANYMORE
That ship has sailed. XXL, no matter how much they want to be, is not the hip hop bible either. They, as I said before, have managed to take a piece of a good thing and are slowly shoving it down the toilet. So that title, the one that you were dubbed with in the 90's is still around and it's yours for the taking.
Until The Source gets it's mind right I can't support it. I want to. God do I want to. I mean I'm ready for some good old fashioned intelligent hip hop journalism. XXL is barely holding on to hip hop journalism. But as the influx of male enhancement and big booty bitches ads increase in the back of their monthly glossy they are slowly tipping into the same oblivion that The Source finds itself stewing in. They were never really that great to begin with they were just simply lucky. If The Source hadn't held on to the double trouble twins (Mays and Benzino) they wouldn't be around to speak of and The Source might still be the hip hop Bible.
Hopefully, The Source will wake up and smell the scent of declining subscriptions and lackluster newstand sales and really rethink the magazine in a way that incorporates the best of the old school with a new school mindset.
We'll have to see. Until then I ain't got 5 on it.
In the past I've worried about Asher Roth sounding like the suburban version of Em. But after watching Em's new vid "We Made You." I have to say...Asher might not have anything to worry about.
Sure "Crack a Bottle" was decent. I could've done without the intro and the whole "17 rapes..." line but the song was decent enough. It was clear that Em pretty much wrote and "ghostwrote" for everyone on the song (including 50). But hey, it was a decent, "hey i'm back song." I hoped that he wouldn't slide into the gimmick that got him notice in the first place. Hell he didn't need to. This is Em we're talking about. Slim Shady, Marshall Mathers...Eminem. His return was impatiently waited on by his fans. And then...
He releases this mess of a song with a video that is just lackluster and frankly not clever but annoying:
Has greatness been lost by Em? I mean he had probably the worst past couple of years anyone could have and there werre rumors that life for him was really falling apart. Did the creativity fall apart too? I mean the goofy parody shit was old on The Eminem Show and it was certainly lackluster on Encore. But this latest incarnation is just pitiful.
When Em came out I was one of the few gay people that I knew that liked him. Oh yeah, he cut across all the shit that I got pissed off with people about all the time. From his mysogyny to his homophobia it was all really out there...but it was all really...creative, innovative...he was a lyrical MC on the level of a Jay-Z, Nas, Rakim, Biggie, Snoop I mean his voice was original and he was flipping rhymes with a precise and delicate yet slipknot delivery that few could argue was amongst some of the best. He was brilliant. Brilliant in a way that no on thought a white MC could ever be. Sure there had been some before him who were decent. But he melded into the folds of hip hop almost seamlessly.
He's been out of the spotlight for a few years now. As well he should have. But he's not the newest or best white lyricist in town. I wouldn't put Asher at this point anywhere near Jay-Z in a list but he's creative, funny, and fascinating and get this kids...the dude can flow. If his underground stuff is any indication on where he might go, well Em might have a Bubba Sparxxx moment (i.e. where is he now?).
Em, I'm hoping that you come out with something a bit more meaty than these first couple of things we've heard but if not...there may be a new white boy in town. Asher, you might have nothing to worry about.
Funniest shiz from SNL in awhile!!
Recently (well maybe a month or so ago) Clint Eastwood made a comment to a German magazine about the PC'ness of our world and (I'm assuming) the US in particular:
"People have lost their sense of humour. In former times we constantly made jokes about different races. You can only tell them today with one hand over your mouth otherwise you will be insulted as a racist. I find that ridiculous. In those earlier days every friendly clique had a "Sam the Jew" or "Jose the Mexican" - but we didn't think anything of it or have a racist thought. It was normal that we made jokes based on our nationality or ethnicity. That was never a problem. I don't want to be politically correct. We're all spending too much time and energy trying to be politically correct about everything."--Clint Eastwood to Der Spiegel magazine.
Clint, I sort of agree with you. I hate political correctness. But not because of the bad rap its gotten but how its being used to NOT talk about race and racism. It's pretty much the same reason why I hate multiculturalism being used to lump all people of color together with this whole umbrella of "we are the same" motif. Its actually pretty insulting to the wonderful differences that make society a great patchwork quilt.
Old white dudes like Clint are probably thankful that they grew up in a time when saying what you wanted, doing what you wanted, and treating anyone how you wanted was relaxing and well...if you were white and male...encouraged. Hard drinking, smoking, chasing skirts and ragging on colored (or "non white" aka Jews) folks was the norm. It wasn't sexist or racist. It was just being a man's man.
I suppose as time goes on and now you just can't say whatever you want to say without people up in arms it must really be taxing. How are you supposed to remember at 78 that Jose doesn't want to be referred to by his ethnicity or shit as a wetback? I mean damn. Or what about Sam that lovable Jew he probably doesn't need you to remind him that you don't see him as white but as an "other" and I'm pretty sure he hates it when you say someone "jewed you down" on that sale.
Personally, I do get it. It's hard to not see race or ethnicity. It's hard to only judge folks on what they show you rather than poke fun at who they are as indivduals. I mean when white men are the base for serial killer profiles it's hard not to get scared when you all come into my personal space. I mean you guys are pretty creepy. And this whole AIG deal, wow, white men are really fucking greedy. You'd slice up your own mothers for another dollar huh? And don't have a whole bunch of white men together walking down the street, I don't carry a purse but if I did I'd grab it. Shit, even though I consider myself pretty hardcore but my heart pounds just a bit more whenever you are in packs together. When I see white men, what I think is racist, sexist, homophobe who hates me cause he ain't me.
So yeah I can see how hard it is to not judge folks on what they show you rather than what they look like.
And yet, I also at the same time feel sorry for white men. Jesus, the world that white men have striven to conquer and oppress has now turned on their own greed. Rather than I don't know, go into the US and say, "Hey Indigenous folks is there anyway we can share this land?" Oh no, white men used and abused Indigenous peoples untill they were decimated. All the while raping and pilaging the people and the land along the way. Then with black people it wasn't, "Oh black folks we got some land over yonder we'd really like some help. Can we give you a free ride to help us build. And if you do us, the indigenous folks and you can share the land." Oh no, drug across an ocean and forced into slavery again white men raped and destroyed black people until we are unrecognizable to one another and to our brothers and sisters in Africa. We are so unrecognizable that Africans seem to actually hate Black Americans and vice versa.
So now since white men couldn't keep their dicks in their pants and their so-called divine expansionist greed they are seeing a world growing not only more brown but also more insistent that the old ways are bullshit.
The problem is that we don't see that while we, as people of color, are taking a stand against the political incorrectness of the "old boys club," we have allowed them to weasel out of resposibility. Clint's whining about how he has to spend so much time thinking about when, where, and to whom he can tell a racist joke puts the blame square on the shoulders of the victims. It's our fault that black men don't like to be referred to as "boy" or that an asian person isn't really that interested in being referred to as "chink."
So while people of color are insisting on political correctness we are also allowing folks like Clint to think that its all our fault rather than the fault being on a society built on the very foundation of racism. The victims in turn are the reason why institutions and systems are inherently racist and we're just bellyaching.
But Clint is 78 years old and well, I actually kinda give him a pass. He's old. Yeah that's totally ageist but still I couldn't imagine what's going through his and most 78 year old white men's minds. They are probably fucking freaked out right now. An increasingly brown world, a world of women who vote and speak up for themselves, and a fucking BLACK President. I'm pretty sure they're thinking, "what the fuck has this world come to? and when am I getting off the crazy train?"
The problem is there are a lot of white people half Clint's age who think those things. Sure, alot of white young people came out and voted for Obama. Many of them truly believe that we are post-racial. Many of them saw him and that wonderful beige man who sounds so different than my grandfather who's the spitting image of Bush and who I am rebelling against, "down with the establishment." Yes, many of them are good liberals who woke up every morning of every day as a kid with the multiracial sesame street blaring from their tv's. And yet, they still think racial jokes are funny and they still think that people of color over react to instances of racism (but they'd never say it out loud), and they are still scared shitless of a world that increasingly is less white and more and more brown.
Why do you think that buzz words like, "multiculturalism," "diversity," "social justice" that came from the academy are filtering down to mainstream Americans? In many ways they are really codes to avoid talking about racism. If we all pretend that we are alike we don't have to talk about slavery or indigenous holocausts or shit we don't even have to talk about sexism or homophobia.
Almost every PC type conversation starts like this, "Yes, we are all different that is the wonder of diversity BUT we are all the same...we're all human. We should be kind to one another..." Ummm yeah. I mean don't get me wrong we should respect one another's differences. And we definitely shouldn't walk around referring to one another in the most derogative terms imaginable. But we can't negate the pain that people feel around their race because folks like Clint wonder why they can't say whatever they want to say regardless of the pain and the reinforcement of the racist instutions and systems that keep people of color blaming themselves (and one another) for historical oprression.
PC exists in essence to control the psychopathic impulses of white men specifically and white people in particular. But Clint is sort of right to hate all this PC mess cause actually it doesn't work. It only serves to stress white people out who in turn fly out of or avoid any situation that makes them the "minority." They still wonder why we're all sitting at the same lunch table and yet, never bother to look around at themselves sitting at their lunchtables. They adopt children of color and avoid conversations and confrontations so much about racism that the kid comes to college confused, sad and frightened by their own face and the identity that is thrust upon them by equally confused, sad and frightened white folks. And when conversations about race get tough, when it feels like its just too much there is a tendency to blame the victim (ala Clint) or point out their own oppression never once reflecting on the privilege that a society built on the lie of whiteness as superior has given them.
PC is used more as weapon than salve or stitches for a slashed way of thinking. It is the sneer of the voices of the right as they critique crybaby liberals and "coloreds" who don't pull themselves up by the bootstraps and stop "bringing up old stuff." It is now almost the dirtiest of acronyms if said with a sneer, "Oh you're so PC."
The funny thing about PC is when did it become politically correct to just be compassionate?
But compassion has never been a strong suit of the wealthy white "old boys club" establishment. Who gives a fuck about the little guy or gal (ha! PC pun) when I can continue to grab, control, rape, pilage, destroy, demean and satisfy all my glutanous intentions while simultaneously lining my pockets with gold (again see AIG bonus scandal for more recent examples of this).
So, I guess, I sort of agree with Clint. PC, being forced through manipulation, to be compassionate is bullshit. Why can't we be honest with each other on issues of isms and phobias? Why do we have to tiptoe around every damn thing just to get to a completely unsatisfying and ultimately divisive ending? Cause folks inevitably walk away from those conversations, because of PC, feeling like nothing was actually settled, that there was no resolution and that the white people in the room were pacified at the expense of the feelings of people of color.
PC is a manufactured device used to avoid any topic about the isms and phobias that could create truth and enlightenment. I'm not about PC. I'm about honesty and truth. If you think racist jokes are funny then say that so we can have an honest dialog. I'm not out to tell you that you're wrong. I'm out to talk about how those jokes have been used as tools of oppression for not only my people but yours as well. I'm not out to make you into the devil. I just want honest conversation. I want you to be honest about history. That's it.
So I ain't about PC either, Clint. But I am about compassion which kinda seems you're sorely lacking. But hey, that's kinda what I expect from a 78 year old white man. Yeah, that shit ain't PC.
