3.Eskay redeems himself for past transgressions by posting this for my enjoyment:
Original, superior (those drums at the beginning and horns on the break, OMG, yes please), but video-less original version here.
4.2 among my large collection of boyfriends of Judaic persuasion are theItsTheReal boys Jeff and Eric, who are so self-aware and ironic it hurts and bust on themselves for being pale-faced rap music aficionados and think they're funnier than they actually are. So basically they are pretty much me, except Jewish and cute and with boy parts.
Yay for the removal of clothing on the Lord's Day!
(Please please check the sexy-parts area on your person if this does not amp up your swagger and fill you with inspiration to fornicate.)
In other news, holy hell, Edwin Starr album cover designer, you're all the rage in my K-town apartment right now.
In other other news, dear lord how I love a chorus-less rap music gem from Los Angeles! Rak's delivery feeds the children and turns water into wine!
i trip on microchips and ponder transponders and feel the radio waves and satellites upon us zoom on the earth, zoom on california zoom on los angeles, zoom on me warning ya...
why do we* raise our middle finger to express anger/contempt/"fuck you"-ness?
It turns out it's a phallic thing. Ah, of course. (You boys and your penises, I swear to god...)
"The first written record of the insult occurred in ancient Greece [2500 years ago], where the playwright Aristophanes made a crude joke mixing up the middle finger and the penis. Even back then, the bird was considered an aggressive, phallic put-down.
It has been argued by anthropologists that the finger is a a variant of a classic "phallic aggressive" gesture used by primates. By jabbing a threatening phallus at your enemy like a wild animal, you aren't just belittling him, but also making him your sexual inferior.
When the Romans imported the art, music, and culture of the Greeks, the finger came along, too. Roman Emperor Caligula, a pioneer in perversity, frequently shocked his citizens by forcing them to kiss his middle finger instead of his hand. One of his subjects, Cassius, who Caligula often taunted as being too effeminate, finally had enough humiliation and assassinated him."
During the Middle Ages, the Catholic church did all it could to bury the gesture and convince people they were upsetting God by using it, since the middle digit was supposed to be holy in the Mass. With the invention of photography in the 19th century, however, it enjoyed a new surge in popularity that has not waned to this very day (why hello there, 8 jillion debauchery documentation websites!). So basically we all are witnessing a magically intimate moment, a sexual-performance/penis-size-off every time 2 dudes say fuck you to each other with nothing more than their hands.
NO, NO, Lyor. Your form is ALL WRONG. Smiling is not allowed in conjunction with the gesture. Best believe that I will need to address this with you when you meetme and Russ for dinner at Cipriani.
*not me, of course--it's not ladylike. But I like it when you do it.
"Just so no one gets it twisted: the Lakers are winning the NBA Finals."
- Wayne, in a really transparent attempt to get me to go out to dinner with him. (I didn't want to hurt his feelings by saying no, but then I remembered those 162,000 other skinny female Caucasoid types who are ready to step in)
"Someday, I will move to Los Angeles and live out my destiny to become a true loyal Lakers fan at every home game like Jack Nicholson. I will live next to Hugh Hefner[there's that endless stream of willing female Caucasoids again!] and I will be at the Staples Center nightly, because that is my destiny."
(I wish he had said "density," like that part in Back to the Future)
The mind reels at the stuntery and unabashed wackness depicted above; I'm not sure where to begin. Let me just sayNICE JERSEY, Morrisville. #33. Bird. Of course. Of course. Mother fuck gentrification.
OH ASHHH, even your jersey selection game is the opposite of tight! Take me to new heights of wackery and don't you dare stop! Pack it up/pack it in, cuz the only acceptable options in NBA Caucasoid Jersey family are McHale, Laimbeer, West and Maravich (the BAWSS).
I go to NahRight twice/thrice daily and I am gradually learning that you ain't hip-hop in oh-nine unless you know the latest in Joe and Tahiry's 10th-grade-style love affair and Ash Roth's kleptomaniacal tendencies and fondness for slippers. Word life.Thanks, Eskay*!
* Stop it, Eskay
And also-- This one isn't really his fault cuz he's just the messenger, but I must deduct points from Eskay's overall score for injuring my hip-hop nerd soul by posting the news that there is now an "Uptown Anthem Pt. II." Aw damn, see, and I was having a perfectly nice Friday until now.
There's already 1 Naughty anthem in my world, it comes from a magical, happy land called Hip-Hop From 1992, and it sustains me and makes me whole. Please leave it be.
We gonna break, we gonna bash, we gonna roll, we gonna smash.
Ummmm except that you are not breaking, bashing, rolling, or smashing when you try to revisit perfection and prevent the past from living in a dignified manner by putting your hands in it again and dirtying it all up. Classic perfect '90s hip-hop song do-overs will slowly kill me if you people do not stop it. This is what it sounds like when doves cry.
The gravity of the situation compels me to bring this up with Treach at the show. "When you pull stunts like this," I'll tell him in a sassy tone, "I might have to alert Radames to the situation and you will be sufficiently dealt with for bringing shame upon the crew."
Hi there, blogosphere massive. Hey, you know what? Industry rants just bore me to tears. However, because I have transition skills something major (i.e., Magic no-look pass to Worthy circa '88, or Tip to Busta on "Scenario" circaaaaa....oh god, when was that? '91?), I should be able to parlay this into a post about the hip-hop music--maybe via a picture, or perhaps a YouTube video. Let's get started.
Siouxsie Sioux is the rant-er this time, as she hasrecently said some stuff about early punk vs. current punk*--that the movement in the '70s was more open-minded, creative and industrious, and "Now it's all labels and consumerism." Lovely, my dear, but you're getting dangerously close to "No Fucking Way" and/or "Things You Did Not Need to Tell Me" territory.
*this exists?
"I think it’s harder for women now (in music) than it was 30 years ago. When you look at the pressures on women to never age and always look physically perfect, and in a very traditional, Barbie, male-oriented way, you’d think that punk never happened. Punk was very empowering for women. And now it’s all gone back to finding a rich footballer*."
Yeah yeah, life's tough when you don't look physically perfect and when you have breasts while existing within the terrible machine that is the music industry. (Sorry to make light of it, Siouxsie. You're a goddess and worship-worthy and I thank you for ruling for so hard and for so long.)
In order to escape from the unfortunate/sexist reality of industry politics, I turn to my sweet, precious record collection as it always saves the day. "Kiss Them For Me" we're all too young to remember, but c'mon, we've all listened to the '80s hour on the radio at lunchtime so we're all well-versed in this super duper knocker like E-40 would say, a stunning, sparkly slice of sitar goodness and Schooly D '80s-ness on what would otherwise be a boring Friday morning.
Tibetan Freedom Concert in '96, Thurston Moore absolutely killing it to an undeniably high degree on the cover. I stared at this CD overandover in my '90s bedroom in the family home, all '90s poutyfaced, bemoaning the fact that I was not at the show in SF because stupid Mateo didn't tell me about the trip up there until it was too late and I couldn't go. I still carry the pain of that experience around with me to this very day. They say tragedy helps make us stronger though, you know?
Spent some bank, I got a high powered jumbo Rolled up a wooly and I watched Columbo...
I figured I might get a dude to actually look in my direction if I tightened up my Place Names Etymology game. Today's word:BROOKLYN!
Dutch settlers in the 1600s named Brooklyn after a town called Breukelen in the province of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Breukelen = "broken land" in Dutch.
I like today, especially because it is the day following an evening in which a team that is not my team lost, and because on this day I can somehow combine that glorious, triumphant feeling with some VA & New Orleans coke raps. Make um say cohesion.
Like everyone else, I prefer a shirt-wearing, low-key, non-camera-whore-and-content-with-just-a-brief-cameo-in-someone-else's-video Weezy F.
* no way to tie this in with the overall theme of the post, but c'mon. (It was a tie between this line and the "ox blood colored Porsche" line)
Aw, you know I can't resist a room full of crabby old people talking about back when times were good and music really meant something! Who's comin with me? Goddammit if I'm not strangely fulfilled by being caught up in a crowd of fellow pale-skinned college graduates in a dark room, watching old people clutching microphones, reciting couplets into them, and walking to and fro on stage. Also, I enjoy being stared at like I have 3 heads for being 1 of like 7 humans with lady parts at a hiphop show.
In closing, people of Earth and the blogosphere: if I am not in attendance at this show I will be filled with sorrow and regret for the rest of my days.
5ft, Evil Dee & Buckshot! (Brothers who Lyrically Act and Combine Kickin Music Out On Nations. It's an awful, awful, terribly wack anagram. Sorry to have to bring you this information.)
PS, I need to post this before I pass out from an overdose of "Clothing Item That I Must Own"-- Hi there, Dawaun Parker!, Dr. Dre protégé (YAY) and "Relapse" producer (NOPE), and my newest BFF who will let me have this shirt so I can lounge around my apartment in it and practice being extra hiphop in it and sleep in it:
"Well, I thought. This is how the world works. All energy flows according to the whims of the Great Magnet. What a fool I was to defy him. He knew. He knew all along."
1."Fear and Loathing" board game!! (+83 more exclamation points to really drive the point home)
Reggie + Clifford = win for all involved, except for when there's hating in the general vicinity.
Superhater for May '09 award goes to you, Dude Sitting In Chair in video below, reading periodical of some sort, absorbed in periodical, while Reg and Cliff are live and in person and being hilarious and amazing about 10 feet from you. I believe it was the late, great Christopher Wallace who encouraged me to "spread love/it's the Brooklyn way," but umm, he gave me special permission to openly share that I hate you, sir.
Additional comedy from Brick Citaay below. PS, for what purpose does the Iron Lung need a wine corkscrew? (and no, it's not for wine) Somebody inform me, post haste.
I would also like to submit that if you create a series called Jumpoff TV but you do not alert me to this situation and then have me make some sort of appearance as the official, contractually bound jumpoff, that is not appropriate and I'll thank you to act right in the future. That's like making something called Terrible, Wack Person TV and not invitingAsh.
NYC P.S. 22 elementary school chorus, doing "Landslide" and making me even more of a teary-eyed sensitive music girlnerd. I'm in a glass case of emotion!
Vibe.com: on stubbornly not listening to your woman's advice, even though she is super smart and probably just trying to be helpful:
"Busta played a huge role in the making of [OB4CL2]. He’s a very good friend. Busta is a five-star general. You don’t have too many artists who are 20 years in the game and still spit like they been out for two years. But he was a huge motivator when I was making this album. Sometimes you have to listen to those that are close to you to get the truth. Sometimes you can deal with advice better from your friend faster than you can from your woman. Your girl will be like, Well, I told you that a long time ago! [laughs]."
the best hip-hop analogy thus far in 2009:
"Well, when you talk about going back to what we did 15 years ago, those were big lyrics we were shooting. I come from the school that maybe might have been that era of the best MCs ever. We came after Big Daddy Kane and Slick Rick. Not just talent, but art. Niggas was making murals and shit. Now you may get a regular 5 by 7 and that’s cute [LOL, Corey Woods!]. But we made our art big. And I think that this album reflects that."
"Part of OB4CL’s mythology is its references to ’hood fashion. What’s the one shoe you had to have as a kid growing up?
The Gucci joints. Those shoes were a form of you making it. Those sneakers back then were about $180. You wore them and people knew you had some kind of style. The first thing women look at is what’s on your feet [UMMM negative, if your woman's name is Logan. Dudes wear shoes?]. We were always into clothes and that sneaker meant a lot. That goes for the Clarks as well. We got all our style from the older brothers. They were always fresh."
Aside from that incident with me and my roommate in the shower during '04 spring break as captured by Joe Francis and his camera crew, this is the greatest thing Jäger and Grey Goose have made possible.
"Frank, who left Brown after one year in the late 1930s because he couldn't afford to stay, gave the school a $100 million endowment in 2004. He stipulated that the fund's income go exclusively to covering all tuition and expenses for the neediest of Brown's admitted applicants. For this year's graduates [the Sidney E. Frank scholars], tuition and expenses came to a four-year total of about $180,000 each. The median annual income of the recipients' families was $18,984.
The school intends to give 30 to 35 Frank scholarships per year. Most recipients are the first in their families to go to college. 'He really wanted kids who were coming from very economically challenged backgrounds to have the chance to make it all the way through,' said [daughter] Cathy Halstead."
"[After leaving Brown, Frank] eventually got into the liquor business, [marketing] Jagermeister and Grey Goose vodka in the United States. He took up Jägermeister in the 1970s, sending attractive young women to bars to persuade patrons to try the drink(HOLLA!)and coming up with the Jägermeister tap machine.
(He later obtained importing rights to Jägermeister and promoted it heavily, advertising it as 'the best drink in the world'(LOLz!), turning a specialty brand into a mainstream success. In 1997, he introduced Grey Goose vodka, made in France, and was so successful in promoting it that he sold the brand to Bacardi for $2 billion in June 2004.)"
WAIT A GODDAMN MINUTE SO THAT I MAY THROW THE PENALTY FLAG. Holding, offsides, interference, roughing the passer, illegal use of hands, tripping.
She is a British actress (28 Weeks Later) who is attempting to one-up me with the stuntery below.
Elle, April '09
Fine, except the thing is, come see me when you get yourself an original copy of Ghetto Music*, Imogen! Yeah I said it. You are not, in fact, as vinyl-nerd-ish as me, nor are you even close to being as hiphop as me, and you damn sure ain't as BDP as me.
Here's the door, here's your hat, coat, and mitt Cause here we read from the blueprint
1.M.I.A. on Real Time, which you're probably seeing on nine thousand web logsbut who cares. Look at this human, bein all kinds of beautiful and smart and amazing. Pull up the people/pull up the poor.
I must also assign points to Bill for finding new and hilarious and brilliant ways to point out that Americans are dreadfully dumb and have a hard time understanding global strife. GET 'EM, tortured/brilliant guy whose brain I have a crush on!
3.Germany loves the hip-hop music and that's about the extent of my knowledge of Germany. Here we have Heltah Skeltah being oddly watchable on German TV as they sit and smoke and watch stuff. The part about Biggie outsmoking Rock is worth the price of admission. "For the first time, in the rap world....(somebody) smoked me under the table. Like, I needed to go sit down."
4.The greatest pic of shopping pals Chris Rock & Rick Rubin you'll see all day, I promise:
[In other news, a) whuttheeHALE and b) I'm confused yet filled with a warm, peaceful feeling and can't get enough]
5.Reason #5,392 why Brasil is badder than you: Suco de Laranja 100% fruta! Ingredientes: Laranjas fresquinhas, funk carioca e uma pitada de bom-humor.
Do Bem, Diplo is on Line 1 for you re: that upcoming tour with Buraka Som Sistema. (I don't think he realizes you're a juice company. OH WES.)
Caramel complected/body like heaven (ummm no). Your favorite nerdy bikini-clad sarcasm peddler.
Tomboyish tendencies in a girly package.
Music nerd making my way in the world. The more emotion I put into it/the harder I rock.
I bow at the altar of Phil Spector, Rick Rubin, and Large Pro.
I find that I can amuse myself to no end. I got front & back, and side to side. I am a real person and NOT viral marketing for Stones Throw. I also have a government job so please don't tell too many people I'm in my bathing suit on the Internet.
Nothin else to tell, really.
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