Lupe Fiasco: Why I Like Lil B

I have a problem. It’s something that I noticed a while ago and I think its something that has to do with my introduction to a wide array of musical genres as a child. My problem is is that it’s really really hard for me to dislike music. I have such an appreciation for it in all its forms that I sometimes find myself listening to a schizophrenic range of sounds in the whip or on the iPod. You really have to go out of your way for me to just completely despise what someone creates musically. Now in the midst of this self-awareness I have discovered there is a certain context within music that I gravitate to more than others and that context is something that I have defined for myself as “Liberation Rock”. It can be described as music that is subversive, revolutionary, political, challenges the status quo, mostly positive and even militaristic. A few examples of this would be “Know Your Rights” by The Clash, “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao, “Gentleman” by Fela Kuti, “Do It Like A G-O” by The Geto Boys, “Confrontation” by Damian Marley, “Rush Of Blood To The Head” by Coldplay, “Everyman For Himself” by Billy Blue, “In One Ear” by Cage The Elephant, “The Catalyst” by Linkin Park, “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday and the list goes on. I guess up against my political and social upbringing songs and artists like these strike a chord with me. Now this affinity for “Liberation Rock” doesn’t negate or take away from songs and artists that don’t necessarily fall under that personal category for me. Dependent on the environment, I have the uncanny ability to sit and universally enjoy whatever is coming through the speakers at almost any given time. But songs that express the qualities of my very own genre of “Liberation Rock” definitely get more burn in the system by far. And as it happens through their music I develop an interest in the artist him or herself. Sometimes the journey into the world of the artist outside of the music they create can be fruitless and even disheartening. Quite literally your hero’s musically can be real assholes or morons in almost every other facet. But in all honesty that is a rare occasion. And even sometimes it’s the inverse and the personality and mentality of the artist outweighs the music they create and the person becomes more of an interest than his or her art. In regards to Lil B I must admit I’m somewhere in the middle of those extremes.

Happy Birthday Champ! Complex’s 20 Favorite Mike Tyson Rap References

Michael Gerard Tyson is without a doubt the most hip-hop athlete in sports history. Dude’s humble beginnings, astonishingly fast-paced path to become the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history, subsequent self-destruction after his peak, and reincarnation as a pop culture icon decades later is a script unlike any other. Iron Mike turns 45 today, and as a salute to the champ we’re listing the illest lyrical references from Nas, Pac, LL, Jadakiss, Spoonie Gee, and a slew of others. From slick lines about his ferocity and skills in the ring to the rape charge and controversies outside of it, we give you Complex’s 20 Favorite Mike Tyson Rap References…

1. Puff Daddy f/ Notorious B.I.G. & Busta Rhymes, “Victory” (1997)

LYRIC: “Real sick, brawl nights, I perform like Mike/Anyone — Tyson, Jordan, Jackson/Action, pack guns, ridiculous” (Notorious B.I.G.)
COMPLEX SAYS: Frank White delivers one of his most timeless lines, still relevant today just like Iron Mike. Good enough for a top spot here and good enough for a high place on another lil list we did.

click here

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40 Things Tupac Shakur Would Have Done By 40

June 16, 2011 marks what would have been the 40^th birthday of rap’s late, great fallen son, Tupac Amaru Shakur. His short but polarizing life – mixed with brilliant music and acting, personal triumphs and tragedies, and mysteries yet to be unraveled – is still fodder for media hounds and fans across the globe even today.

 

On June 15, 2011, a Jimmy Henchman associate named Dexter Isaac made the iconic Tupac a global headliner again when he gave his alleged confession to AllHipHop.com about committing the first Tupac shooting in 1994. Some speculate that the ensuing rumors and beefs may have led to both Tupac’s Vegas murder in September 1996 and Notorious B.I.G.’s L.A. murder the following March. Truth is, we may never know the full story.

 

All told, Tupac is a real-life persona who lived his life to the fullest. His name is nearly always listed among the Top Rappers Dead or Alive by just about everyone, and he left behind a catalog of thoughtful, controversial, raunchy, and political albums that will live on for generations to come.

 

On this bittersweet Hip-Hop born day, AllHipHop.com pauses to celebrate Tupac’s life and to imagine – in both a funny and nostalgic way – what he might have accomplished had he lived to see age 40:

 

The Secret to a Happy Marriage

In the current issue of Uptown Magazine Jada Pinkett Smith shares the secret behind the success of her 14 year marriage…

Pinkett Smith admits that the couple’s public perception is vastly different than their reality.

“People think that Will and I don’t spend a lot of time together. Too much time, actually, if you ask me,” she says with a laugh.

“It’s always nice to have a little time apart. Sometimes you need that.”

 

The Earth Is Full

You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?

 “The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.” “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”

Gilding cites the work of the Global Footprint Network, an alliance of scientists, which calculates how many “planet Earths” we need to sustain our current growth rates. G.F.N. measures how much land and water area we need to produce the resources we consume and absorb our waste, using prevailing technology. On the whole, says G.F.N., we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. “Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,” says Gilding.

This is not science fiction. This is what happens when our system of growth and the system of nature hit the wall at once. While in Yemen last year, I saw a tanker truck delivering water in the capital, Sana. Why? Because Sana could be the first big city in the world to run out of water, within a decade. That is what happens when one generation in one country lives at 150 percent of sustainable capacity.

“If you cut down more trees than you grow, you run out of trees,” writes Gilding. “If you put additional nitrogen into a water system, you change the type and quantity of life that water can support. If you thicken the Earth’s CO2 blanket, the Earth gets warmer. If you do all these and many more things at once, you change the way the whole system of planet Earth behaves, with social, economic, and life support impacts. This is not speculation; this is high school science.”

the mind of dreydnero

 m.o.d.

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Lupe’s Lasers: The Death Sentence for Major Record Labels

“This remote, public, and, as it were, principled, bondage is the indispensable justification of their own: when the prisoner is free, the jailer faces the void of himself.”

—James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work

Speaking last Tuesday at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg, on the night of his fifth solo release, Shaolin Vs. Wu-Tang, legendary artist Raekwon listed a few pillars under which “real Hip-Hop” must fall—wittiness, slang, real-life value, lyrical worth, and a non-commercial edge. In case the concert audience had slumbered through the last item, he repeated with emphasis: “It’s got to be non-commercial!” On the same day, another prominent artist was living the reality of a music industry whose iron fist often tightens around the necks of those who refuse to submit and do as told. Lupe Fiasco’s Lasers dropped, following a tumultuous three-year delay no one saw coming.

After two superb albums released in the winter months of 2006 and 2007, all eyes fell upon the Chicago native to invade a territory only few have ever trudged; and for most fans, this represented less a demand and more an expectation. The last ten years had produced in Rap no fresher voice, no wittier mind, and it just seemed inevitable—that time would do him justice, and the ladder of quality would stretch higher on his behalf (especially since the sophomore curse had so eluded him in an age of ephemerality), and that with a third album he might possibly accomplish in ways a predecessor had tragically failed (Illmatic, It Was Written… I Am), successfully dodging the deadly commercial darts flying his way: darts which pierce with determination, rendering great artists casualties of early success; more importantly, repeated success which upset the logic of cemented probability, which undo tried and true equations record labels have built castles upon: Street Consciousness + Social Courage + Lyricism = Billboard Disaster.

Fans, it turns out, were wrong; and just like his predecessor, Lupe is now staring at an impasse, unable to reconcile his third effort with the two classics of a not too distant past. And his fingers have for the last few weeks been pointing in one direction—the record label, Atlantic Records, which signed him in 2004 to a rumored six-album deal. This is the label’s album, Lupe has been chanting to music websites for a few days now. Even when the success of his first official single, “The Show Goes On,” is raised, Lupe seems hardly moved, explaining to Chicago Sun-Times columnist Thomas Conner: “It’s their record. My words, their music. They forced this song to be a No. 1 single, and that’s what they got. I can’t take any credit for it.”

Raekwon Breaks Down His 25 Most Essential Songs

Raekwon the Chef has cooked up some marvelous shit during his illustrious rap career. Since he went to “war with the melting pot” on Wu-Tang Clan‘s first single “Protect Ya Neck” in ’92, Shallah put out a string of memorable solo albums (including the classic Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… series), made outstanding co-starring appearances on countless stellar Wu releases (most notably with his Co-D Ghostface Killah), and spit darts on tracks with everyone from the late Big Pun to teen twitter-throb Justin Bieber.

Yesterday he released yet another solo album, Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang, which sounds like some of his best work to date. So we felt it was the right time to go chop it up with the Chef to break down what we feel are the 25 most essential songs in his never ending catalog of crack. And you know Louis Rich Diamonds is always down to connect, politic, ditto. Put your shoes on.

School Em Saturdays: Who Killed Martin & Malcolm

H. Rap Brown ( JaMil El Amin )
Famous Quotes : Here
“Die **** Die”: A Political Autobiography by H. Rap Brown : Here
Location : U.S.P. ADX /  Colorado  SuperMax 
Conditions in ADX : Here & Here

Mailing Address Here 😦99974-555) 
Send Funds for Federal Inmates : Here
Along with  other Political Prisoners like Mutulu Shakur (83205-012 ) ,  & notorious inmates.

Currently serving life in prison for the fatal shooting on March 16, 2000, in Fulton County, Georgia, Sheriff’s deputy Ricky Kinchen
(  BHM – R.I.P. )

Jamil El Amin is the Former Minister of Justice for the Black Panther Party  during the FBI’s war on Black nationalist Groups like The Republic of New Afrika.

Mutulu Shakur and H.Rap Brown / Jamil El Amin supported the concept of the Republic of New Afrika along with their goals for Reparations and Sovereignty for the Black / New African Nation. 
AKA: Black America

You can show support by sending funds , letters or sharing the story of their heroic struggle.

When the news broke that Martin Luther Kung Jr’s  photographer , Ernest Withers was FBI informant ME338-R ,  and the man kneeling over Martin Luther King JR., pointing in the wrong direction , in the photo taken by Withers ,  was undercover Memphis Police Department officer Marrell McCollough , that worked with the CIA :

You were asked: “ Who killed Martin Luther King Jr.?:
 
Monday , the 46Th anniversary of Malcolm X’s death together with the news that Malcolm X’s bodyguard , photographed performing CPR on Malcolm X after he was shot , was undercover NYPD Detective Gene Roberts:

You are asked: “Who killed Malcolm X?”

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An Open Letter to Neil Portnow, NARAS and the Grammy Awards

In this Sunday’s New York Times, I have purchased a full-page ad as an open letter to Neil Portnow, NARAS and the Grammy Awards. Here’s why.

Over the course of my 20-year history as an executive in the music business and as the owner of a firm that specializes in in-culture advertising, I have come to the conclusion that the Grammy Awards have clearly lost touch with contemporary popular culture. My being a music fan has left me with an even greater and deeper sense of dismay — so much so that I feel compelled to write this letter. Where I think that the Grammys fail stems from two key sources: (1) over-zealousness to produce a popular show that is at odds with its own system of voting and (2) fundamental disrespect of cultural shifts as being viable and artistic.

As an institution that celebrates artistic works of musicians, singers, songwriters, producers and technical specialists, we have come to expect that the Grammys upholds all of the values that reflect the very best in music that is born from our culture. Unfortunately, the awards show has become a series of hypocrisies and contradictions, leaving me to question why any contemporary popular artist would even participate. How is it possible that in 2001 The Marshall Mathers LP — an album by Eminem that ushered in the Bob Dylan of our time — was beaten out by Steely Dan (no disrespect) for Album Of The Year? While we cannot solely utilize album sales as the barometer, this was certainly not the case. Not only is Eminem the best-selling artist of the last decade, but The Marshall Mathers LP was a critical and commercial success that sold over 10 million albums in the United States (19 million worldwide), while Steely Dan sold less than 10% of that amount and came and went as quietly as a church mouse. Or consider even that in 2008 at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards, after going into the night as the most-nominated artist, Kanye West’s Graduation was beaten out for Album Of The Year by Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters. (This was the first time in 43 years that a jazz album won this category.) While there is no doubt in my mind of the artistic talents of Steely Dan or Herbie Hancock, we must acknowledge the massive cultural impact of Eminem and Kanye West and how their music is shaping, influencing and defining the voice of a generation. It is this same cultural impact that acknowledged the commercial and critical success of Michael Jackson’s Thriller in 1984.