July 2007 Archives
briefly.
we are banning the word / concept of "melisma," now. that shit hasn't been relevant since before mary met kendu. seriously. let's retire it.
Better yet:
Day after Tomorrow fan fiction. It exists. Speaking of nerds, you can now train how to be Spiderman in the privacy of your own home. Speaking of nerds, here is an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario and Zelda (!), talking about the Wii (!!). God bless that man. Speaking of nerds, you need to read the NY Times magazine cover story on robot emotions from Sunday. Speaking of nerds, you have to read the NY Times mag piece on the etymology - and racialization - of the word "nerd." Shout to Black Nerds Network. Shout to James Hannaham.
Side note. At some point in probably 2003, I was at this dismal outdoor BBQ / frat bar in Austin, TX (which is now apparently being sued by ASCAP for having DJs) with James Hannaham, cringing/gawking at the most ill-advised /amazing rock-rap performance by none other than Vanilla Ice, when he (Hannaham) turned to me and said:
"The problem with rubbernecking is that sometimes you actually see the accident."
I'll never forget it. The man's wit is withering.
and for everybody who didn't come to my block party saturday - you missed the world's best Aunt Jackie contest among 14 eight-year-olds ever. more on that when i'm not on like five deadlines. you definitely want to come next year.
love,
j escobedo shepherd, MD (a smooth operator)
DJ Paz aka Matt Paz read my crazy old post linking Sarah Jessica Parker and the fall of Jane magazine and put some sense into it, via email:
The root of the problem is this, I think: In the "trad media" world, there was what economists call a barrier to entry - i.e. you had to have $$$ to buy a printing press and get yr mag distributed. Therefore, anything that surmounted that barrier and made it to the marketplace had an imbued legitimacy or authority - this must be good if the gatekeeper/publisher is willing to commit precious capital to it.
The web destroyed that barrier. Absent that barrier, that commitment, no information source stands out as any more legitimate than another, and WE get to/have to sort out truth from fiction, quality from not-quality, TMZ from Perez Hilton (uh…) ourselves. This is half-awesome and half-disheartening. Because it's incredible to tap into the wealth of talent that's out there and it's refreshing to hear from regular people who happen to be experts at niche stuff. There is precious little New Jack Swing coverage in the mainstream media, and more than I could ever read on the internet.
But that's the trouble too - a lot of the Johnny Kemp coverage on the internet sucks, or just repeats what someone else says. It's inefficient for me to read through all of that crap. So I sort it out by relying on a few names I trust. There's an argument that while elitism is ugly, we do truly need an elite. People who are QUALIFIED to judge what's good and bad. I can't know everything, so I need to rely on other people to be experts about things and decide what's good, so I only have to consume what's good and can leave the rest to rot. I need a smart Google-by-committee that returns search results based on Excellence and not just Popularity. Right?
This whole thing reminded me of a book I have on my NYPL reserve list, which I couldn't remember the name of but found by googling "cultural elite expert death web 2.0". It came up right away and is called (wait for it): Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur: How the democratization of the digital world is assaulting our economy, our culture, and our values. Zero points for guessing which side of the argument HE's on.
This is the most excited I've been about something in a very hot minute. Jeff Chang wrote the piece.
Plus I got to interview our old friend Gaius Charles. Love what you do, boo-boo. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS!
4:59 pm: There is currently a 10-foot-tall speakerbox at the end of my block. The DJ is playing Apache right now, but it's a mix of contemporary snap music, dancehall, mid-90s R&B and classic hip hop - and just now, sam cooke! a change is gonna come! if you are not wack and enjoy fun, you will come through - text for details or email jawnita@gmail.com with your phone number. Dance party begins at dusk.
also if you do not like the song "shawty is da shit," i am not sure we can be friends.
...so pre-Tanya Harding rich-titch "Natalie" spat at baby-faced and thoroughly crimped dancefloor sirens Shannen Doherty, Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. The trio, mischievous and contrarian, shat on Natalie's super-sweet-16, in the form of fake invites sent to previously uninvited Twisted Sister fans, and also a blueberry pie in Natalie's fat-pocket pops' silver weave. The lesson: you just have to laugh in the face of mfucers who think they know you, who think they can best you, because that way you get their goat. Good may only sometimes prevail, word to JK Rowling, but Girls taught me - when I was but a young girl bearing no discernable parental figures but steady-rocking a shit-hot boob toob - the best way to piss off any evil person is to giggle in their face... (and, if situations require, boom! get their boyfriend! especially if he is your partner in the citywide dance-off!)
Over the past approximately four years, I have been privy to a number of showdowns (nee: meetings) between representatives of what they're now calling "traditional media" and what they should stop calling "new media." In many cases, new media people devalue the trappings of traditional media (i.e. "stories" that are "written" in the classic sense of the word) because in new media, aka the internet, everyone has a voice, it is a populist exchange of ideas, everyone can be a "star" (that part is when my acid reflux kicks in). On the other end, some traditional media people necessarily blanche at this notion, because: a. print mags are just so touchable! and b. is the role of the critic, the trained journalist, the specialist dead? Who will cherrypick from this supposedly broad-representation of the populace, where is the quality control? Would you let a candy-striper perform surgery on your brain? And what will become of the culture if the opinion of Johnny Tom-Bob over in Des Moines - who has never seen the entire oeuvre of Spider-mans but thinks part III is dogshit - is given the same weight as Spider-man connaisseur Anthony Lane? BOO-YAH!
I personally sit in the middle - i think there's both gross elitism and truth to the notion of "not everyone can do this" -this meaning the combo of cajones, drive, talent, narcissism and editing it takes to sculpt a strategic mag-ready piece- and am both excited (as a lover of both equality and free shit) and slightly dismayed because, like, if the opinions of a thousand Johnny Tom-Bobs are available free on the internet, I definitely have a sparkling future as a shot girl at the fake Irish pub around the corner. The main concern is economics: if a thousand people on myspace are willing to blog about shit for free, rendering previously employed writer types expendable, then who gets the money from the web-whatever? I'll tell you: ONE 19-YEAR-OLD HARVARD UNDERGRAD WITH SCURVY, and/or A CONSORTIUM OF UNDEAD WALL STREETERS and/ or THE SHADOW GOVERNMENT.
The rift between these apparently warring thoughts/philosophies, though, is the five-alarm freakout that most magazines have been petey-pablo-helicoptering for the past year, and "new/not new" media is totally winning, for now, or at least that's the perception by stakeholders and those all-white-suits-but-never-white-parties who only read Forbes online, anyway. Perhaps erroneously - there are more problems with this but, as I write, I'm starting to feel the weight of my own tedium. If anyone gives a flying feerrljkaslkjasdfl, I'll continue this train of thought in a second post. Until then, WORD OF ADVICE TO ALL - learn HTML to tide you over until net boom 2.0 implodes, si? TILL THEN, I'LL BE THAT FREAKONOMICS BITCH SERVING YOU AMSTELS. TALLY-HASSEE HO!
*yes, I know my writing this for free defeats my "thesis."
Saturday is my block's annual block party. According to Mister Frazier, my super / the mayor of said block, there will be an inflatable castle, a water slide, a BBQ, a DJ and a baby shower for the kid that just got born three doors down.
This is why I live in Brooklyn. There are lots of kids in my neighborhood and last year they had a snap-off and my usually nice neighbor was pissed cause the party went way too late and way too loud but no one else cared. And this year? "Ay Bay Bay" is out, and the preferred dance track of all 14 year olds everywhere. Case fucking closed.
If you know where I live you should come through. If you don't and you still do, email me for directions.
The reports, the rhetoric, even the reviews linking Lil Wayne / Ja Rule's alleged gun possession arrests and their music are conjectural and off base, and when you think about it - generally play on the same premise that fuel the hip hop cops - that "lyrics" in fact equal "reality." Obviously I'm not denying that sometimes lyrics do equal reality, and say what you want about their music, but I think it's especially important to note that, in this case, Wayne and Ja Rule (WHO BY THE WAY already HAS A FILE IN THE NYPD'S HIP HOP DOSSIER) were so clearly sniped out by police even before the show began, I have a really hard time trusting the initial reports about what happened. I know it's not a journalistic standpoint to say so, but it's just an instinct. And logic: why would you, a rapper so clearly at the center of a stake-out, where your friends have already had minor run-ins, then knowingly get into a car with an unregistered gun in it? Or keep a gun in the bag in your lap? It doesn't really make sense. And also, I was outside the Beacon Theatre, right outside the stage door where performers entered, where Jim Jones, Juelz Santana and others were initially not allowed to go into the venue, despite being performers. I witnessed the cops mounted on horses - at least two, maybe four - several police trucks and cars plus a roadblock, strategically placed. The roadblock was not so terribly necessary to keep out fans - the fans were many but mostly young and tame, actually far less excitable than, say, the fans at the Omarion-headlined Scream tours I've attended. The cops were situated inside the roadblocks, patrolling the street between the sidewalk where the stage door was, and the sidewalk where about 5-6 dudes, including Jim and Juelz, were fuming about not being allowed in. Watched the cops talk to them and they bounced. I didn't even think the show was going to happen at that point - Wayne was still in his tour bus then. Further, to enter the venue, everyone had to get frisked, bag-searched and walk thru a metal detector. I couldn't even get my costume jewelry through the metal detector. I am talking like, jewelry fashioned from a tin can and a doctor's reflex hammer. Metal detector: no go.
PS. The show was great. At least the parts I saw - the Weezy / Mac Maine part (p.s. Mac pulled heavy breath control duties for when Weezy was wheezy, but "hustler muzik" was a diamond), the Weezy / Ja Rule part (hey who brought his mojo back? did I sleep on "New York New York" last summer because of the lame ubiquity of the lake-trawler of his delivery on the hook?) the electrifying Weezy / Juelz part (truly the best part I saw... they have amazing charisma together and about that point it started feeling like a real hip hop show - like in the olden days style hip hop - cause that was the point when the whole crowd seemed INVESTED in this shit -). And everytime he said, "we wouldn't be shit w/out ya'll. please don't ever stop believing in me."
Then this napoleon complex of an f-bag, wearing a beacon theater polo, ushered me up the aisle because I had a photo pass, and photographers were not allowed to stay for the rest of the show for... no reason. I argued with dude "IM REVIEWING IT" he was like "I DONT HAVE ANY REVIEWERS ON MY LIST" i gave him my card "NO REALLY I AM A JOURNALIST" he was like "GIVE ME YOUR PASS AND LEAVE." i spent the rest of the show outside waiting for a car and answering annoying texts (i.e. "KANYE!") from Jon C, who sat safely and comfortably inside. walked around the corner, bought a can of diet sprite. ($1? I guess upper west side bodegas can stick it to people like that.) oh one more thing:
DJ KHALED, why did you play like three jay-z tracks before weezy came on? really?
Anyway this was the first big Manhattan show of probably the most important rapper working. (And probably the best - that's debatable - but certainly at this moment the most important - from an artistic and cultural standpoint.) The first show in which the South brought it so big to New York since the city started going down. And I had a lot of expectations. but like sean said, it didn't seem as brain-brightening as it should have. It was great. Slurred words and all. My life was not altered immeasurably. Measurably, definitely. But I have to think the NYPD's before-the-show welcome wagon, with Weezy on night watch, didn't help the experience.
Memo to hip hop promoters: stop booking at the Beacon.
How a NYC make-up hub explains the demise of magazines: free shit.
So I was in Sephora today (full disclosure: I felt stanky and was seeking a spritz) (Stella in Two: Amber - because I love a fragrance with an addendum - in case you're buying) and thinking about how many NYC chicas I know pop into the chain make-up hub for a lipgloss touch-up en route dates, parties, shows, or the office. (Bacteria: don't ask, don't tell.) When i went in for the perfume, there were about 40 other chicks doing the same thing. Some people check in and put on their entire face. Beeline for the bourgie shit - Chanel, Nars, Dior - and bounce w/out buying a thing.
= User generated content!
Ok this idea is half baked.
Now that Vixen's gone (rip and love to you chicas)... if Teen Vogue goes out of business... what the f am I supposed to look at? where am i supposed to be fashion inspired? seriously. i'm only wearing all tap-dance costumes from now on.
I know this is like real high class turmoil right now - the blog equivalent of retail therapy. And the shopping-mall smell is so fucking mesmerizing. I can almost feel the scent of Cinnabon seeping into my skin.
Permanently.
Ok, open-air bong hits might not be the best look when you've been scoped out and felt up by a cop on a steed. But seriously. Police were waiting to pounce.
weez last nite at beacon. thanks to tiffany shepard (no relation) for flicks and finagling me a photo pass, even tho i had no camera and the fucks at the beacon theatre hustled me and all the other photographers out right before kanye, for no real reason other than power.
where the FUCK is my bandana
holy fucking fucktown
I accidentally left my alarm on this morning
and hot 97 played this remix
f. tallahassee pain
which is how i woke up to r kelly transforming himself
into "snappin jackson"
claiming one more rung on the ladder
to the top of the world
a conquest!
watch out curtis.
kells annexes.
you know i had to get up then
even tho it was like 7:45 on a sat
only to hear it transition into the part where kells turns the song
into an advertisement for
his album
double up
NOW IN STORES
exactly eight blocks away from the office. we walked calmly down all five flights. the whole block standing outside, the smoke was pluming up. people outside, yelling : run! run! run! a whole gang of folks who remember what to do when the steam fans down the street, i presume. some were standing around, photo-opping, but we didn't know what it was and i wasn't taking any chances. thought grand central station had finally hit the big time. i walked in the opposite direction of the smoke to a previously scheduled engagement. the phones were clogged. when i got to my destination building in wash square, the people inside were none the wiser. i was somewhat disturbed that the air conditioning had made the room so calm. a weird chaos, it was.
Saltines crumbling, that is, not white people humping. Or maybe white people humping, too. Thinkin bout Will C's all-country, all-the-time dictum, I downloaded some sex-love-and-aching-heart classics by that H-Town stunna, Barbara Mandrell (vague early '80s memory: my tia Luce used to bump that shit on eight track in her gold Cadillac and me and my cousin Amy, we'd have singalongs, loud). They include:
- Sleepin Single in a Double Bed (loping, near-comedic bass line and jovial delivery betrays the tragedy of this break-up track)
- Santa Bring My Baby Home (another tragedy: xmas appeal to kris kringle to bring back her lover from the... war? coal mine? comics convention? it is unclear)
- You Can Eat Crackers in My Bed Anytime (very proto-sex in the city: "we had a fight over something petty, you bounced, now i miss you and regret imposing my nitpicky rules"... although there is something to be said for not eating in bed.)
-Married, But Not to Each Other (proto-sideline ho)
mucho lil kim
In retrospect, Barbara Mandrell, she wasn't that consistent of a singer, but seemed to get over on chutzpah, personality, Aquanet and her resemblance to Krystal Carrington for the Dallas generation.
this is sort of amazing and terrifying:
= basically the only word I know in German. It's phonetic, and it's functional. Gotten me through some hard times on Berlin vacations. Not sure if "Floss" by German cirque du soleil rocksemble Mia (not MIA!) is a direct translation. Think it's probably about dental hygeine and Berliner patriotism. Here is a live performance of the song, which I am obsessed with:
and the album cut.
saw em live in berlin few years back. performance included a ladder, a megaphone, a tuba with a distortion pedal on it, not to mention Berlin's official city marching band. the lead chick B. had her head shaved and A. had her eye shadow swooped, A. like Nina Hagen and B. like there was a cockatiel growing from the right side of her skull. For awhile they were lambasted for their fervent nationalism, though they defended themselves as simply being proud Berliners, ich bin ein auschlander (sp) et cetera. not sure how that turned out. hope they are not fascists, partly because I love their music, mostly because they seem to have an extremely large fan base.
More reports from Sarah's new life in the middle east:
"Haha, perezhilton is banned in The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Good. I don't need to look at that shit anyways."
Ezra sent the above. I'm not sure where he got it, but wouldn't be surprised if he made it.
FRIENDPPRECIATION STATS #245: EZRA ACE
FRIENDS SINCE: 2001 (2002?)
ROAD TRIPS: 1
One March, a few years ago, Ezra and I took a road trip: Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Louisana. He was an affable driving partner, a formidable mixtape compiler (although, suspiciously, I seem to recall listening only to Blood of Abraham... 100 times in a row...) We had the same poorly accomodated vegetarian food needs. I remember eating a lot of melted cheese. Particularly in Texas. In Louisiana, I remember being afraid of getting murdered at night while we slept - it was the spring of the Louisiana State University serial killer and the low light of swamps cast unfamiliar shadows. I remember a grey morning, sitting on a bench, drinking a cup of chicory, looking out across the flatness of the Mississippi River as it lulled. It's true, you can't (or couldn't?) see across to the other end. Endless. I don't think we spoke as we sat there, looking upon it. Now I will tell you it was for solemnity, for reverence, for the idea of what might happen and what did occur. But in truth, our silence was based on the fact that I am nigh incapable of speech before morning coffee.
this performance is phenomenal. 1964, man...
I remember our hotel room in New Orleans was wallpapered with fleur de lis, but that we spent the first night in a bar on an aftermath-empty Bourbon street, two fortuitous days after Mardi Gras had ended, dodging straggled-behind pukers and sidestepping gullywashers littered with plastic beads and streamers, and drinking blended, chilled concoctions from hurricane glasses. We spent our days walking around in the heat, looking at architecture in the fancy parts of the city. Just walking, thinking about shutters and pointy wrought iron fences. Every stoop lorded by a cat. We walked outside of the fancy parts and the cats weren't so many there, or at least they weren't hanging around outside. The last day in NOLA before we took off for Texas the humidity painted the land in a grey-yellow - that area of the country has the strangest light - and we finally found a good old graveyard - a city of the dead - St. Louis # 1 on Basin Street. We parked the car outside an abandoned building - hung around for a minute so Ezra could examine the font etched into every part of the glass. (Designers!) Marie Laveaux was buried there but we didn't know it. We found her grave marked with pencil XXXs and a stake nearby, and scary angel-baby statues with eyes bleeding rust or covered, terrifyingly, with hoods.
I love the idea of doing something physical and corporeal to reconcile mental and spiritual gaps, to seal cracks:
My preoccupation with swimming across rivers started in 2001. A close friend had died, my own half-century mark was approaching and my 12-year-old twin sons were in an adolescent landscape furnished with clothes, language and activities all incomprehensible to me. There was little I could do about any of these things. But for that reason, it occurred to me to find a divide that could be crossed. And more and more I came to imagine that swimming across a river might be a way to do this.
When I first started seriously jogging about three years ago, I was freelancing for magazines and writing the first chapter of a book, and the daily two-hour-long run through Prospect Park was a way to clear my head, organize my thoughts, let my ideas course through and breathe. (And a way to quit smoking, among other vices.) It was a silent time. I began in May. By July and August, when Brooklyn heat and humidity are at their most tropically asphyxiating, I was serious about it, committed to it, and the tactile motion of my sneakers rowing along the blacktop started to become very emotional - Prospect Park is 3.75 mi. around its circumference and every day at about the 3-mark, just beyind the gazebo where the same two old be-hatted men would peer at me over the stone wall with lazy curiosity, ya mami would shed a tear. I didn't know why at the time. For someone like me who trie(s)(d) so hard to front like I'm indestructable, like nothing you lobbed would land and crack, the whole motion of it was confusing, like, wtf, I am a gangsta boo with a hard attitude ... and now I sob when I jog? I don't even live in Manhattan for chrissakes! I was breaking my "only cry during Lindsay Lohan movies" clause and it fucked me up.
I remember one shining fierce hot day in particular when the weeping, the sweating, the men-peering, the vein-pulsing, the muscle-aching all converged at a moment when John Lennon's "Oh Yoko" came on the ipod mini (the old dead pod, Lil Pink RIP). I got feverish day-shakes fierce, the sweat inducing cold shivers, the emotional temperature and the physical one irreconcilable. But jah bless John Lennon, wherever your gentle heart may be: that was about the time when everything fell into place, love, purity, what it means to stay innocent and how to do it in the face of so much awfulness. In the middle of a dream. In the middle of a dream I call your name. I knew the jogging wasn't really about writing my book (the old dead Courtney Love, RIP), but it was about writing the things I have yet to finish, en proceso, the things that are so powerful they live both in my heart and in the tattoo I have an appointment to get, Guadalupe Gomez Escobedo, the things I can't reveal here because they are special and deserve paper and ink, old-fashioned, in some vain and human approximation of permanence. And after years and years and years of escaping miserable places and soul-squashing situations, it was a powerful thing to realize now I was consciously running towards something, and that I knew at least the shape of what it was.
America's best lawyer/DJ/writer/pundit, Will C., sent this from the Washington Post. Makes some excellent points - particularly the part about Hillary pointing out racial disparity in AIDS-afflicted women - and I wonder whether some of the topics and plans Obama has been less detailed in discussing (irt Edwards, H-Rod) relate to the "tightrope" the writer details.
Obama's Tightrope
By Amina Luqman
Friday, July 6, 2007; Page A15
The world felt topsy-turvy as I watched the presidential debate held at Howard University last week. Up seemed down and everything was out of sync as the front-runners for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, spoke. In this debate, as in others, we watched Obama remake the traditional persona of the black candidate and someone else take what might have been his place.
From the outset, it was clear that Barack Obama wasn't going to be Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. For every rhythmic alliteration Jackson would have offered, Obama gave us pauses and sentences in paragraphs. For Sharpton's quick wit and scathing candor, Obama offered even tones and grave calm. There was no push toward applause-filled endings. He begged for contemplation and understanding. Simple became complex, demands became propositions and "they" became "we."
The average black American onlooker can't help feeling proud but also just a little hurt watching Obama. Proud of his ability to traverse minefields on a national political landscape and hurt by what America demands of black candidates seeking public acceptance and trust. During the debate, black Americans in the audience sat, hands poised, yearning to applaud a black candidate able to articulate our passions and sense of injustice. We wanted to hear that he understood and loved us -- not in the general, "we the people" sense but in the specific. Yet we know that with each utterance about injustice, each puff of anger or frustration about racism, we lose the very thing we seek: a viable black candidate. The closer Obama comes to us, the further he would be from winning the nomination and the presidency.
That is a reality of race and national politics in America. Part of Obama's appeal to white America lies in his hopefulness. It's in the way he looks toward a brighter future, and it's in his promise to bring us all along.
Yet the subtext of his appeal is in what he does not say. It's in his ability to declare that things must get better without saying who or what has made them bad. It's how he rarely chastises and how he divides blame and responsibility evenly; white receiving equal parts with black, poor equal parts with rich. The "we" Obama has created leaves blank the space traditional African American candidates would have filled with passion or a clear articulation of the state of black Americans. It's left some black voters unfulfilled and some white voters with a sense of acceptance and absolution from past wrongs and present-day injustices.
We are all watching Obama's tightrope walk, his attempts to appeal to the white majority while maintaining some semblance of integrity regarding the plight of black Americans. It's a heavy burden. In contrast, Hillary Clinton is on relatively sure footing. Obama must tilt away from clarity and passion about issues disproportionately affecting blacks while Clinton is free to perform the black candidate's role. In last week's debate, it was she who took on the traditional black candidate's persona, she who was both passionate and rhythmic in her cadence. Her endings built to crescendos. Be it real or pandering, Clinton can openly connect and show solidarity with black Americans in ways that Obama cannot.
There is no better example than Clinton's comment about the disproportionate effect HIV has on black communities. She said that if "HIV-AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country." For Obama to have said the same words in the same fiery manner could have been political suicide. By forfeit, Clinton essentially becomes the black candidate; it's not a space America would allow Obama to fill.
Not long after Obama announced his candidacy, the buzz in the media was, "Is Obama black enough?" Many black Americans privately laughed at this question. We know that it takes only a slip of the tongue about slavery's legacy or reparations, a hiccup about institutional racism or paying special attention to the needs of black Americans, and suddenly the love would be gone. We know that the question has less to do with black America than with whether white America trusts that Obama is not too black for its political taste.
We laugh at the question of Obama's blackness because we live with a version of Obama's tightrope dance every day. We do the same dance in our workplaces, with our supervisors, our neighbors and our college classmates. In that way we know Obama couldn't be more like us, he couldn't be more black. We along with Obama know that even the most skilled tightrope performance may not be enough to ensure that you land on your feet.
Amina Luqman is a freelance writer. Her e-mail address is amina.luqman@yahoo.com.
Kanye West's "Stronger" video. I wonder if Spank Rock is salty that homeslice is totally jacking his flow. Granted, he sounds like Spank Rock on a particularly self-censurious day. And bored. Sampling daft punk. Donning slat glasses. He sounds like he would rather be ordering oysters and salted caramels from the bar. Or like he is rapping from the inside of the New York Times Magazine. Or like he has just asked Candi to turn up the banana spray on the Hawaiian Tropics and he's like, half faded off a appletini. Here's a little free advice: if you wanna ride fully upon the Spank Rock Jock-Steed, you gotta step up the anatomical diagrammage in your rhymebook! Naeem raps about the flaps of vaginas and shit and the KIDS LOVE IT (presumably because they got their "sex ed" classes slashed along with "art" and "gym" when Bush stopped funding the schools). Kanye, we know you know the names of all the right fashion houses. Now familiarize yo'delf with the parts of a woman:
(In the constructs of this video paradigm, does that mean
=
?
Dear Clive,
You have a pretty good track record but if what they're saying is true, you were wrong this time. Kelly Clarkson's album is fucking awesome. Did you read her interview in the latest Elle magazine? She is a serious role model. The kind of mettle that makes stars. More soon.
Yours truly,
J. Escobedo Shepherd
The stereo situation in my private abode is currently in the process of an upgrade, so in the interim, all I got is the Boot Camp Clik DVD coming out the computer speaker. I mean really, it's all I listen to. And watch. The boys are wily in hoodies, mugging on BK rooftops not yet scrubbed clean. Heltah Skeltah "Operation Lockdown." A heat you can't replicate. Buckshot played the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Fest on the waterfront and I missed it because I was wandering around, looking for Ebenezer, and when I found him he wanted to perch on a bench by the water anyway, and chomp on little rice crispy treats wrapped in a fancy box. While we were sitting there I saw this guy wearing a graphic t-shirt that said "I MISS THE OLD NEW YORK" and I think he meant Beat Street on Fulton. RIP. Sure I pray every night to the spirits in the down-south subwoofer, but when I write with Black Moon in the background I catch a feeling in my gut and the rhythm just locks in. And fuck a shiny suit, Who Got da Props is the best posse video ever. I love the days, pre-lean (shoulder-, awkward-, cholo-, and -back), when most everyone dancing had flailing, airborne arms. (2 Way & Webstar and Jason Fox, please stand up/ Harlem walk it out!)
PS It has come to my attention that some denizens of the internet, the outer boroughs and "the fifth borough" believe I am only ever attainable on the dancefloor, like some punchline in a Yung Joc song. Seriously? Here are some other places you can find me: loitering behind a desk, walking into union square in awe of agile skaterboys, being a fake mom in the catfood store, cheesing in dance classes and running in sneakers on the street, and: on the first floor of the Brooklyn Public Library (new releases), all museums, all farmers markets, most movie theaters, many parties, the mall, and lots of other secret locations I can't divulge. I know, my famous dancefloor prowess implies I am the Lady in the Lake of the DJ location - Door-to-the-Floor, an apparition - but in actualement, my shit is full spectrum like roy g biv. If ya wanna put a hole in a pigeon holler at the Supreme Court. P.P.S. Fuck the Supreme Court. The 5 in the 5-4 anyway.
Bossip wins with this paintshop illo.
This demon-baby plus Wii technology are two early signs of the pending apocalypse, which is 2012 according to the Mayan calendar. Your neighborhood curandera is now taking appointments for the winter 2011 season. "Crack an egg" is the new "scrub the ground" - but so is "leaping hurdles" on that wiimazing cow-racing game.
this youtube was provided courtesy the righthand sidebar on the urbanhonking homepage.
