Blue Is The New Black?
"But the more women have achieved, the more they seem aggrieved. Did the feminist revolution end up benefiting men more than women?"- Maureen Dowd
Full story HERE on how studies show that successful women are getting increasingly unhappier.
“More Than a Game”-The Lebron James Movie
More than a game is slated to hit theaters this fall. More about the movie here.
[Kanye/Joe Wilson]Recent Signs that Race is Still an Issue…
I'm sure we all saw Kanye West's foolish antics at the VMA's last night, and were all repulsed by it. I personally think Kanye was 100% in the wrong for stealing that girls shine, but his assessment wasn't to far off. Then of course Beyonce won video of the year so he looked silly anyway. But I find it unnerving when I go on Twitter after wards, white people are just calling Kanye "Nigger" like we just watched the premiere of Roots. [Click here for more]. While Kanye was wrong, the fact that people resort to calling him a "Nigger" so openly, lets me know racism is alive and breathing in this country.
Racism was also very prevalent in President Obama's health care speech last week when Republican politician Joe Wilson began screaming at the president mid speech. Would this ever happen to a white president? We've never seen such blatant disrespect at a presidential event, until the the man in charge had brown skin.
SMH
New Q&A With Stic Man of Dead Prez
Sitc Man
Recently we had some time to exchange dialogue with the super ”conscious but gangster” Stic Man of Hip Hop Duo dead prez. Simply put… the conversation was nothing short of enlightening. Dead Prez is known not only for their music but using their cultural and historical consciousness to educate the community on anything from politics to a holistic lifestyle. There most recent records, Stimulus Plan and Runnin’ Wild are amongst some of their most socially aware work. We asked Stic Man about some of the purposeful decisions made to not fall into the shallow river of mainstream Hip Hop but swim in a pool of consciousness and edification. He gave us some great insight.
Is “Hip Hop” dead? Or is it just underground?
Hip hop is a reflection of the power and lack of power in our communities. If we wanna see more liberation consciousness in Hip Hop, It has to start in the same communities that produce the rappers.
It’s been said that a big part of your political and social ideologies comes from an early influence of the Black Panthers. The late 80s early 90s sparked the formation of the NBPP (new Black Panther party). Do you guys have any involvement with them? What’s your take their ideologies vs. the original Black Panthers?
I am familiar with the NBPP and have seen the comrades at work in the streets for many years organizing and striving to do the work the way they feel is most effective. I salute their sincerity and dedication to fill the void of leadership in our hoods. The original Panthers wisdom and analysis could surely benefit the new formation if there are ways the two eras can see to coincide to move forward it would be ideal. There is always a need for new approaches and fresh ideas but also balanced with tried and true experience from those who have ‘paid the cost to be the boss’ so to speak. Long live the Panthers in spirit and in deed and free the Panthers that are U.S. political prisoners like Hrap Brown, Sundiata Acoli, Mumia Abu Jamal, Mutulu Shakur and many others, wrongly locked up to this very day!
They say if you do what you love, you’ll never work another day. It seems as though you guys are definitely doing that. Literally speaking your mind from a major platform (Music). What would you say to a nation full of people who instead of searching for their true calling spend their time consumed with greed and material things?
That’s a loaded question but I say Poor people have a long overdue right to have daily needs met, to provide nice material needs for their families just like rich folks have. The material aint’ the problem. It’s the denial of the wealth that the system and the ruling class steals from the masses of poor people everyday that is the problem. We should all have. Not just a few of us, ya dig?
…So Far, On the Blueprint III
….So far, on the Blueprint III…
…“And I don’t wear Jerseys I’m thirty plus, give me a crisp pair of jeans nigga button-ups”...I’m sure Jay-Z didn’t expect every young hip hop fan to throw out his $200 George Gervin throwback and go to Bloomingdales and pick up a closet full of button ups, but they did. We did. We listened to Jay like he was the headmaster at a boarding school. The only thing was he really wasn’t trying to convince us. He was merely telling us what he did and thought was fly. But with the official release of Death of Auto Tune and Run This Town along with the unofficial leak of Off That featuring Drake off of the highly anticipated Blueprint III album, it seems as though he is now telling us what to do.
Everything evolves, and musically the last two years in Hip Hop have been considerably evolutionary. The Hip Hop scene moved out of New York and into South. The revolutionary but gangster rappers like Public Enemy and NWA were replaced with the more lyrically conscious sounds of the Native Tongues Era. They in turn were followed by very urban/mainstream fusions for a long span that became redundant and sparked the recent uprising of more conscious positive minded acts. These processes are organic and necessary.
With the Death of Auto Tune, Jay is saying very simply, stop listening to auto tune. No subliminal here, it’s very overt. We all know the use of auto tune, although somewhat criticized has been very successful in recent times. It’s built the careers of T-Pain, Ron Brownz and others not to mention that Kanye West recorded his iconoclastic genre breaking album 808 and Heartbreak in complete auto tune and received critical acclaim. DOA seems to have had an invisible “gag order” on the use of auto tune. What was once a musical “Do” in 2007/2008, became an immediate musical “Don’t” in 2009. Should one man have this much power? Run This Town screams, “Look at me, look at me”. He’s Jay. He doesn’t have to tell us that he runs the town. We are all well aware of his relevance and accomplishments. But after your lead single bashes the “In thing” of 2008 and you second single screams “I run this”, eye brows can only begin to raise.
The single Off That is a very dope record. In fact all the songs are great musically. But what is he saying? “Cris we off that, Timbs we off that, rims we off that” Poking fun at lifestyle “don’ts”, almost purposely showing us how powerful he is when the domestic sale of rims, Timbs, and Cristal drop next quarter. Because Jay is so methodical and purposeful with his music you have no choice but to pay close attention to all of this. The point that remains is, if these observations are true, why does Jay feel the need to try and exercise his influence on Hip Hop culture? He used to put people in a frenzy by unconsciously saying things that navigated the direction of Hip Hop. But now it seems forced. Isn’t Jay above an industry wide diss record or another song telling us how much money he has or how powerful he is? Content aside, the songs are all pretty dope and we look forward to the album.