WOW. FINALLY.

http://www.sexolympia.com

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THIS MATTERS AGAIN:



I NEED NEW TOMORROWS... TODAY!

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HOLY FUCK, SHE'S AWESOME AND BRILLIANT. I NEVER KNEW:

Jesika Joy is a Toronto-based artist and theorist for whom art-making is an act of bodily faith. Joy uses gesture and movement to produce sexually-explicit, conceptual performances for live audiences and the camera. Through exaggerating normalized social practices, she creates works that remain emotionally dynamic, honest and raw. She believes good art appears as if it were inevitable.



Gallery: Re-signifying Female Sexuality
Video performance: Untitled (Camera Blow)


Q: What drew you to produce sexually explicit, conceptual performances for the camera?

A: My answer to this question is always changing but I think my primary interest has been and continues to be a desire to re-signify female sexuality. I identify as a feminist who retains political commitments while making art and theory using critical tools. This is to say, with regards to (hetero)sexuality, I am concerned with the basics – how it is that women continue to be represented as objects of desire for desiring male subjects – but I address this concern through postmodern strategies of ambiguity. When I first started producing sexually explicit material I was a pro-pornography feminist (or at least I was not anti-pornography). This is not to say that I didn’t have my criticisms but I had much more faith in the pornographic image as something recuperable and open to multiple interpretations. I felt the pornographic text (even when heteronormative or depicting domination) had no inherent meaning and that feminist attempts to position it as such not only opened the door to censorship but to gender essentialism. Now I am not so sure. My academic research and heteronormative readings of my practice have led me to believe that most commercial pornography continues to be produced and read along the lines of male activity and female passivity and sexual “availability.”

Q: Which artists do you admire?

A: I love the work of Orlan. I think she bit the jugular with her body modification work in rendering explicit the horrors of beauty. I feel a real resonance with Hannah Wilke, both her early work where she played heavily with desire and her later work that was so honest about her illness. I’ve always loved Adrian Piper, not only does she have gigantic femme-balls (as exhibited in her street interventions) but like me she is an academic who has had to learn to negotiate her two practices (writing and art-making). I also really like Hermann Nitsch. His work appeals to my existential interests through the use of the animal body and sacrifice.

Q: You’ve used seductive dance in some of your performances, involving various animal parts. How do you conceive the depictions of your exposed body with animal parts?

A: While the use of animals definitely speaks to my feminist concerns – the female body and meat production as pornographic – it is more about my existential concerns. It brings us back to primal body – the body prior to identity (even while such a body has never and could never exist). While the specificity of the body is crucial to how it is that we experience the world, there is still something more fundamental – our shared human condition, our time-based existence and the inevitability of death. I’m also very attracted to the abject. E. M. Cioran once wrote that whenever he is romantically interested in a woman he imagines her in a high state of putrefaction but alas he continues loving her. There is something poetic about this. It reminds us that no matter how pathetic it is to be human (our need for love, the frailty of our bodies, the inherent meaninglessness of existence) there is also a beauty in our will to love, life and meaning. In this way, my use of the abject interrupts the viewer’s experience of my own beauty while highlighting our shared beauty as humans.

Q: Some men have reacted to some of your work with attraction and others disgust. How do you perceive divided responses to your art?

A: I find that responses to my work amongst non-art-going, non-academic, non-feminist communities are quite divided along the lines of gender. Men outside these communities tend to fixate on what is desirable within the image. In this way, those elements that are abject become re-inscribed within a narrative of desirability to become “dark sexy” or kinky. There is rarely an acknowledgement of the work’s feminist orientation. Women, on the other hand, tend to understand my intentions without being immersed within art, academic or feminist discourse. There is often an instant “a ha” reaction or affinity to the work. There are also those women who turn up their noses mumbling “crazy” or “dirty slut” under their breath but that's of little concern to me. Reactions amongst men and women equipped with feminist and conceptual reading skills are not divided along gender lines but are more varied and nuanced. I feel my current task is to find a means of interrupting the viewing experiences of the aforementioned group of men.

Q: In one of your performances, you were wrapped in a bedsheet on the Eaton Centre floor. You did another ritual involving yourself riding the Bloor subway line, obsessively marking your face. How do you see these action involving you in populous public spaces?

A: On the one hand, these sorts of actions operate as public interventions – they interrupt conventional use of public space, bring art outside the confines of the gallery, and force the position of viewer onto those who might not otherwise encounter this work. On the other hand, this work is site-specific. I chose the Eaton Centre to roll around in a bloody sheet as a means of speaking to the manner in which consumerism is so closely tied to sexuality, desire, acceptance and love. A new sweater or home-entertainment system does not, of course, deliver the goods through which they are sold. Many women (myself included) do their makeup on the subway which is why I chose the Bloor line for "Public Ritual #3." But instead of marking myself beautiful I make the mark explicit and thereby mark myself out of existence. This is not only a feminist commentary but one that is existential. It speaks to the continuous repetition of the individual mark through which the individual is rendered anonymous.

Q: Some of your performance imagery involves perhaps Catholic imagery – your use of a topless Madonna Pièta. Do you feel a certain eros in days deemed sacred?

A: I am less interested in Catholic imagery than I am the figure of Christ but because there is so much easily identifiable Catholic imagery it works well. Also, the Madonna Jesus Pièta has been popular in the history of Western art. Jesus is a spiritual interest for me while his representation often gestures towards sacrifice, asceticism and ethics (themes that also re-emerge in my practice). I do feel a certain eros around days deemed sacred. I have a compulsion around marking personal moments of passage – days that therein become sacred. This is a ritualistic activity – something I am drawn to – even while this is not congruent with my principles. I am more interested spiritually and philosophically with contextual ethics – ethics that move away from rule-based morality towards making the best decision possible within a particular set of social circumstances even when one’s decision might seem to some unethical on the surface.

Q: Do you find your performances relate to sacrificial modes?

A: I am very fascinated with sacrifice. My interest in sacrifice proper (the sacrificial killing of animals or Jesus) is a curiosity for me, in part, because it speaks to personal sacrifice. As a doctoral candidate I am well acquainted with sacrificing lesser desires in the interest of a larger goal. While this has been my story for the past five years, sacrifice is inherent to the existential condition. As Kierkegaard explains, all of life is a series of choices that irrevocably alter the course of our lives forever. To chose "a" is to preclude the possibility of "b" (at least for the time being, depending upon the nature of the choice) and in this way "b" has been subject to sacrifice. But while this might seem depressing, we need to remember the meaning of "a" is tied to its opportunity cost – the price of a forgone "b."

Q: How do you think your academic interests relate to your continuing body work?

A: My academic and artistic work are intimately tied. There is a persistent and reciprocal dialogue between the two even while they follow their own trajectory and maintain their own autonomy. My academic and artistic interests often fall in and out of conflict and confluence. This has been productive in that my artistic practice has forced me to reconsider my academic work while my academic work has been shaped through my practice. After producing my "Video Object" series, for instance, I realized I needed to rethink my sex-radicalism. I came to realize that while I had sympathies for sex-radicalism (particularly as a response to second-wave feminism), it was not perfect representation of my politics.

Academics in relation to body art is particularly interesting. Even when intellectual work is interested in the body, desire or corporality, the truth is that the production of theory requires a different relationship to the body than does body art. Yes, in writing one tenses the body, periodically stretches, ingests substances to aid the thinking process, and even experiences the emotional resonance of thinking in the body, these often feel like conciliatory gestures – a pacification of the impatient body. In contrast, body art asks the body to be exposed, smothered, extended and contained. Body art demands a certain athleticism wherein the artist forces the body to move beyond its usual limits while surrendering to the body itself as the final arbiter of how a performance unfolds.

Q: In the course of your work, you’ve come to question pornography. How do you see explicit body aesthetics and how pornography functions?

A: The position I am about to forward is highly contested. I understand mainstream, heteronormative, commercial pornography to be a strategy of generating profit through the production and sale of pleasure as a narrowly defined product. In contrast, explicit body aesthetics has contemplation as its motive. This position is has been critiqued (by Laura Kipnis for example) for drawing a distinction between different forms of sexual representation on the basis of class-based morality. Those representations that make no effort to conceal the body as a messy, uncontained desiring machine are understood as porn while those that aestheticize sex and sexuality become erotica. While I sympathize with this position, it falls flat with artists such as myself whose work pushes the bodily boundaries of even explicit pornography. I have yet to see pornographic work that involves a woman penetrating herself with a dead pig’s heart.

Q: You’re interested in building a performance album with some of your work. What relationships do you see between your performances and what your body is enacting cumulatively?

A: If I understand the question, I would say the body as a tool of artistic expression is in constant training and that the capacities of any artist’s body are continually changing, often improving with time. I am thinking here of marathon runners. Most marathon runners are in their late 30s or early 40s. This is not because the body is strongest at this time but because they have developed the psychological tools necessary for success. What they lose in strength and endurance is made up for by intellectual fortitude.

Q: Are you interested in how intimate physical expressions can interrupt orderly public processes in your everyday?

A: I’ve always had a propensity towards exhibitionism as, for instance, when the Graduate Programme Director for my department walked into the bathroom outside our lounge to catch me urinating in the sink. I do find, however, that I become less interested in this sort of thing when I am making work consistently. It is far more satisfying to situate your actions within a generative discourse than simply act-out as a form of muffled speech.

Q: Would you want to see more sexuality manifested in Toronto's public spaces?

A: I am not necessarily interested in “more sex” manifested in Toronto publics. As Foucault would argue, we do not live in a society that represses sex and sexuality, rather, we are obsessed with the idea of revealing sex on the assumption that it has been concealed. We are, in reality, swimming in discourses and representations of sex. We can’t go to a restaurant, buy shampoo or sign up for a gym membership without being reminded of the relationship this bears to the liberation of our sexualities. Consumer culture is obsessed with more and more sex. There is nothing liberating, affirmative or revolutionary in this particularly because these discourses and representations are reproduced along such narrow terms.

I do believe, however, that public sex acts have a disruptive potential depending upon their execution. This is, of course, why I engage in public interventions. But certain acts are more recuperable than others. Two men holding one another and kissing in downtown Toronto is more important as an action than two leather daddies engaged in S&M play at Bay and Bloor because the later is so easily rescripted as what “typical gay men do.”

Q: Your performance work involves various disquieting qualities. Do you think sexuality is heightened when there's elements of tension?

A: We receive a charge from linking sex with a variety of different elements. I have often used danger – sex with strangers, public sex, being the only female in a male-only sexual space. The thing is, however, that dangerous sex is only sexy until it becomes dangerous – until we are verbally abused by our phone-sex clients, until we have to push off a man who wont take "no" for an answer, until we encounter unwanted pregnancy, an STD or feel used because we were treated as less than human. One of the reasons women often seek out danger with sex is because of the conflation between love and rape as seen in romance novels (as you mention). Due to this, I now find dangerous sex to be a boring reproduction of patriarchal discourse – one that is damaging to the self and social relations more generally. I’m interested, rather, in linking sex with intimacy, trust and respect. Under these conditions water sports, role play, spanking and bondage are transformed into acts of love. When these conditions are not met even vanilla sex has the potential to be hateful.

I feel I am transformed through my performances mainly because they are so hard on me. It's hard to find the courage to become a public object of scorn. Making this kind of work has forced me to learn to be a little more caring with myself.

Louise Bak is a poet, with books including Tulpa and Gingko Kitchen. She co-hosts Sex City, Toronto’s only radio show focused on relations between sexuality and culture (CIUT 89.5 FM). Her performance work has appeared in numerous spaces and in video collaborations such as Partial Selves and Crimes of the Heart.


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WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS AND HOW DID I NEVER KNOW ABOUT IT!?!?!



MICHAEL JACKSON AND EDDIE MURPHY DID A SONG TOGETHER?! WHERE ON EARTH WAS I WHEN THIS HAPPENED?!?!?!?!? LOL

WELL, HERE IT IS.

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THIS KIND OF IGNORANCE STILL CAN FIND A PLACE TO EXIST? HOLY SHIT... WHAT A WORLD.

'Stunned' white supremacists keep low profile in campaign
By Jim Rutenberg

WASHINGTON: A tall, extra-hot mocha in his hand and a .380-caliber pistol on his hip, Bill White sat near the window of a Starbucks in Roanoke, Virginia, last month and discussed his political predicament as the leader of one of the nation's more established neo-Nazi groups.

"Right now," said White, head of the American National Socialist Workers Party, "we're facing the potential of a half-black candidate financed by Jewish money going up against a white candidate financed by Jewish money, who are both advocating the same policy. So you've got two terrible choices."

On Friday, about three weeks after that interview, White was jailed on suspicion of making threats against a juror who was on a panel in 2004 that convicted a white supremacist of plotting to kill a federal judge.

So stands the state of organized racism in 2008, paralyzed and at a crossroads in what would presumably be a pressing moment of action - the possibility that Senator Barack Obama will become the first black president of the United States- but has so far not been.

There have been sporadic reports throughout the country of Obama signs vandalized with swastikas, windows smashed at local Obama campaign offices and racist pamphlets dropped on doorsteps. Overt and thinly veiled racist comments about Obama have been caught on camera at rallies, and a Republican women's group in California - the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated - has made headlines for a flier that showed Obama's face on a faux food stamp that also included images of watermelon and fried chicken.

But party officials and organizations that monitor hate groups, always concerned about the specter of violence, report far less activity from the more traditional sources of open racism late in this race than they had expected.

"What we really haven't seen is white supremacists really rallying over an Obama presidency," said Mark Potok, director of intelligence at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups. "Hate groups are in a more or less stunned position right now. They haven't been able to figure out how to proceed just yet."

Some attributed the relative lack of activity so far from white supremacist groups to the same cultural shifts that led the Democrats to become the first major party to choose a black presidential nominee.

"It's not like we're finally reaching Martin Luther King's promised land," said Michael Gehrke, research director for the Democratic National Committee, whose unit monitors such activity, "but as a political force, they've been marginalized."

In one sign of shifting mores, James Knowles, a former Ku Klux Klan member who was convicted for a 1981 lynching, said in a Discovery Channel documentary by Ted Koppel that Obama was a potentially acceptable candidate. "People need to vote for him because of his ideas and the veracity that he displays in what he does, and not because he's African-American," Knowles said.

There have been only sporadic reports of racist mailings, though Democrats say they are on the lookout for more. And there has been scant evidence that Obama's candidacy has helped hate-group recruitment, unlike the recent debates over immigration policy, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

White supremacist leaders, while threatening some political action before Nov. 4, similarly attribute their relative lack of activity this year to demographic and societal changes they cannot stop. But they also point to a Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, whose liberal immigration views and staunch support for Israel are against everything they stand for.

On top of that, the leadership is plagued by scandal and infighting in the absence of a unifying group like the Ku Klux Klan, which is no longer pre-eminent even among open racists, or figures like the former KKK leader David Duke, whose power waned after he was convicted on fraud charges early this decade. Duke has, in fact, written positively about the prospect of Obama's being elected, though arguing it would stir a white backlash and "result in a dramatic increase in our ranks."

"There's a real problem," White said in the interview last month, "in what's called the 'white movement.' One, there's a lot of people who are just mentally ill, and we deal with those a lot. No. 2, there are people who have serious sexual problems."

White, 31, who says he has a following of at least 1,200 people, considers himself a reformer in the white movement. A landlord of low-income tenants of all races, he devotes as much of his energy to attacking rival leaders he hopes to purge from the supremacist leadership as he does attacking Jews and blacks.

His Web site recently featured a blog post reporting that a fellow white supremacist, Curtis Maynard, was "married to a mestizo and raising half-breed children." Maynard, in turn, has written that White is "a Jew and an agent of the ADL and SPLC," the initials of the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

White's Web site abruptly went offline this month. On Friday, The Roanoke Times reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had seized his computer equipment as part of the investigation that led to his arrest. White told the newspaper he had posted the address of a juror who served on the panel that convicted the white supremacist Matthew Hale of plotting to kill a federal judge in Chicago. But the newspaper quoted him as saying he had not called for any particular action against the juror. Arrested late Friday, he is being held without bail.

Another leader, Alex Carmichael of the League of American Patriots, has sued White for linking him in an article to what White called the "pedophile sex network" of Kevin Alfred Strom. Head of the now-defunct white supremacist group National Vanguard, Strom was released from prison after serving time for possessing child pornography.

Last month, Carmichael's group became the first to deliver racist leaflets about Obama, distributing them to homes in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in a small effort that drew wide news coverage.

In the interview last month, White said his group was planning a similar but larger effort. With a donation of about $8,000 from a supporter in Michigan, he said he was planning to print and distribute to white working-class neighborhoods 20,000 copies of his party's latest magazine, The Nationalist Socialist. The newest edition has on its cover a photograph of Obama with a rifle's crosshairs focused on his head and a headline using a racial slur and seemingly calling for his assassination. White said the cover was satirical and pointed to a subheading that read, "Negro Deification and the 'Obama Assassination' Myth."

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IS IT REALLY A WONDERFUL WORLD?



PEACE JAMES. THANKS FOR TRYING.

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MARCH 2009 FOR CUBAN LINX 2? HMMMM.... WE'LL SEE, RAEKWON.

TSS Presents Smoking Sessions With Raekwon

The way rappers blatantly swagger-jack each other and recycle beats like tin cans, its hard to believe that “biting” was once unacceptable in Hip-Hop. Whether duping another artist’s graffiti or swiping someone’s slang, it was never a good look to be labeled a “biter.”

It was during this creatively-fertile era that Raekwon The Chef, a respected street disciple and founding member of the storied Wu-Tang Clan, dropped Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… a trend-setting album regarded as one of the best in rap history. With phenomenal beats by the RZA and his trusty wingman Ghostface Killah in tow, Raekwon gave gangsta rap a new language and illustrated the fast life like no other emcee before him. Although Rae has dropped two other solo albums, countless mixtapes and appeared on a slew of records since then, fans have faithfully waited for Cuban Linx 2, the sequel to The Chef’s masterpiece. Other than Dr. Dre’s oft-delayed Detox, there may not be another album as coveted or highly-anticipated. In his exclusive interview with The Smoking Section, Raekwon insisted that Cuban Linx 2 will soon see the light of day.

Meanwhile, a straight-to-DVD documentary titled Wu: The Story of The Wu-Tang Clan will be released by BET and Paramount Home Entertainment on November 18th. The film is an authorized account of the pioneering collective’s rise to power, boasting never-seen-before archival footage and unearthed interviews. Loud Records/Legacy Recordings will drop the film’s soundtrack album, a compilation of the Wu’s most memorable group and solo joints, also on November 18th. In light of the nostalgia, The Chef recalled his past, but also touched on his present and near-future.

TSS: Talk a little about the Story of the Wu DVD. What can fans expect?

Raekwon: The DVD is a cinematic documentary of brothers’ trial and error through the music game. It just an opus of all the things that we’ve been through and you know… just the good times, the bad times and the ugly times. The tragedies as far as my brother Ol’ Dirty Bastard passing and how that affected some of the guys in the crew. This is being told from the standpoint of a fellow that actually lived in our neighborhood that did the documentary. He was somebody that was pretty much familiar with our whole career from day one and he created an opus of the Wu-Tang Clan, as far as everything we’ve been involved with through the years.

TSS: You’re a bonafide legend in the game with timeless albums. When you first began, did you ever think that you’d be where you are now?

Raekwon: Nah, I didn’t think it was going to be that big. You know, our thing from the door was basically just to be able to let the world know that there’s talent in Staten Island and we just wanted to represent. We were a bunch of kids at the time that were basically Hip-Hop fanatics. We had a situation similar to the Hit Squad back in the early 90’s, with Erick Sermon. He had his little crew; Redman and all these cats. We kind of felt that the way Erick and them built their situation was the same way that we had built our situation on Staten Island. So we just put our minds together. Brothers was still fresh off the block, some brothers were just coming home. It was a good situation at a time when we needed it, you know what I mean? We just basically pursued our dreams of being heard… we didn’t know we’d affect the world the way we did. All praises due, though. We’re here.

TSS: On 36 Chambers you had some classic verses, like “Can It Be So Simple” and “C.R.E.A.M.” As dope as you were on that first album, you took things to a whole new level on Cuban Linx. Your lyrical skill elevated greatly in between the two albums. What happened in that period that made your skill level rise so high?

Raekwon: First of all, Kha, I want to say I appreciate that. I’m honored for you to even tell me that. I was just a street cat, man… that’s all. I had a lot of trial and error growing up and all the things I was subjected to, so I basically just came in with what I know. Like I’ll tell anybody, I’m just a cloth of Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, Slick Rick, Biz… you know what I mean? Just that era; I’m just a marble cake of that. Growing up in Hip-Hop and still dealing with my own trials and tribulations, I applied everything that I knew from the influences that I had around me as well as being involved with the music. I just felt like, “Yo, Rae, you’re a writer. This is what you love to do.” You know, I’m very cinematic when it comes to my vision sometimes and I think it was just energy, man. It was just something that I really had the passion for and I just pursued it. I jumped on it like how a real dude is supposed to jump on it. If you love something, you go for it and that’s all I did. Just surround myself with the best energy and the things that I respected about Hip-Hop and the people I liked and I used that as a platform to get where I have to go right now.

I’m a real street cat, so anything I talk about is definitely going to be in relevance of my lifestyle and the things I was going through. As far as the Cuban Linx album is concerned, that was something that I always wanted to express to the world. Like, “Yo, we move like the Mafia,” na’mean? Not based on their principles, but based on the real principles of morals and how important family is. So I just constructed that into my movement and we came with the names. Me and RZA was working on a lot of stuff ahead of time, before Cuban Linx was actually even made. So I had a lot of shit in the cabinets already; I had stored food already. So I just came in with my heart, B. Just really took it serious and did my thing, you know? All praises.

TSS: Regarding conflicts you may or may not have had with certain rappers back in the day, Method Man was once quoted as saying, “Rae and Ghost don’t like nobody.” Was that true then and if so, is it also true now?

Raekwon: It’s definitely not true now. Like I said, one thing about me is when I’m playing for one ball club, I’m playing for one ball club… you know what I mean? You know, it’s just a competitive sport. It ain’t never to where I felt like I had any drama with anybody so… Meth tends to exaggerate sometimes. But I guess by the same token, when you’re with Wu-Tang, yeah, it’s all about Wu-Tang. I’m a team player. If I was on Roc-A-Fella, it’s all about Roc-A-Fella. It was just constructive criticism and that’s something we all grew up on. We all grew up on challenges and things of that nature. So, I never really had no drama with nobody like that. To me, a beef is a beef. But as far as in this rap game, yeah, I’m down to war with anything that ain’t with me. So yeah, I guess that makes sense a little bit, you know?

TSS: Speaking of waving the flag for Wu-Tang how is your relationship with the other members; particularly with the RZA after you two had words not long ago?

Raekwon: Me and RZA, basically we’re brothers. I know that it affected him, because it affected me. One thing about me is that I’m the type of brother where I’m so loyal to the family as far as whatever we go through, that at the end of the day I’m going to be there. But that situation… it kind of was getting ugly for a minute. But me and him, we stopped and we talked about it. He knew I voiced my opinion the right way; I wasn’t trying to be like disrespectful as far as not looking at him as a piece of shit. It wasn’t never like that. It just that I feel that brothers are being stubborn sometimes, even myself. So I just had to say what I had to say but we built about it and at the end of the day we laugh about it right now. Because we know, at the end of the day, family is thicker than anything. So we cool.

TSS: How often do you get stopped in the streets or in a club and get asked about Cuban Linx 2?

Raekwon: That’s like walking down the block and somebody asking you what time it is or how to get here. That’s regular, you know? Like I said, I laugh about it because I feel that out of all these artists in the game, I think I’m probably the one that everybody looks more to do more with. I guess that’s just from coming with a classic album, but… that’s a regular, B. It’s like I never had an album and people are waiting for something that they heard, but they didn’t hear it yet. So, I walk down the street and everybody is Cuban Linx-fanaticked out. So I’m saying, “Damn, they know I still got it in me.”

It just gets repetitive; sometimes I get upset because I want to be able to cater to the audience faster but politics is a muthafucka. And it puts me in a situation sometimes where I got to look at the future of my family before I can sit here and just try to put something out that ain’t going to stick on the wall. Anything I do, it has to be done in a structure where I feel like it’s a growth and development stage; the people I’m doing business with got to know my worth. People sometimes try to make you change your philosophy, you know what I mean? So for the most part, it’s an honor, man. It’s an honor to still be here and people be like, “Yo, where’s that album at? C’mon, man, you’re playing!” It gives me a sense of motivation and I just feel like a lot of artists don’t really have these kinds of walls to climb.

But I guess for me, being the kind of product that I made before, I guess it sits in its own box. I just take the good with it, and like I said, this is nothing for me. I’m one of them real cats. I’m not a ringtone rapper. I’m not somebody that’s just doing an album for a few cuts and to be on BET, or even to go platinum. You can’t outdo yourself when you already did your thing. All you can do is try to grow as a scholar. That’s all I’m doing, man. I’m just going to give brothers the business again with a classic and hopefully my real fans that’s really rocking with me, they’ll be able to relate. As far as the young generation coming to the table, hey… if you can’t feel me, then I understand that too. Everybody ain’t always going to feel everybody so that’s what it is. But you know me; I’m doing it for the ones that’s down with me. Hopefully the young youth, which is definitely on my agenda… I can’t never forget them. I’m always going to try and drop a jewel or even give them something that I feel they need. But for the most part, this record is a movie and I’m just getting on some Martin Scorsese, going-back-to-my-roots right quick, you know?

TSS: Indeed.

Raekwon: It’s not a problem because this is something I love to do. I think a lot of people just got me a little misconstrued because they always want to try and put me in one box. But I’m a conceptual emcee; I like to talk about plenty things and I don’t always want to talk about the dug game or something that’s related to negativity because I know that’s not my walk. But by the same token, I am a writer. I am a storyteller. And I am a person that actually seen everything that I go through. So I guess it ain’t really a bad thing to go back down that lane if that’s what people want. I got to do it for the fans too as well as do it for myself. So I take all of that into consideration and I try to balance it.

TSS: It’s interesting that you brought that up because that brings me to my next question. You say you spit what you lived. There’s a lot of artists nowadays, and I won’t mention any names, who are getting caught out there because of their backgrounds and their pasts. So how important is it for an artist to spit about what he really lived?

Raekwon: I think the importance of talking about what you live is, you have to be real with yourself. We know that we turned this business into a billion dollar industry and basically there’s people that really recognize other people’s talents and then you got people that really know how to copy your situation and run with it the same way, but don’t necessarily live it. I would tell a G that’s really about it, that they got to come from the heart. And real people knows when it comes from the heart, you know what I mean? You could sit here and look at TV and tell, “All right, this is a two-year old rapper or this is somebody that just basically got a shot.”

For a real emcee it’s like, you have to stay true to yourself all the time. And whether you was this kind of way of that kind of way… even with the Rick Ross situation, I’mma shoot on that. I respect Rick Ross — he’s is a good friend of mine. Everybody’s chopping him up about the C.O. thing. I feel like overall, I’m sure he grew up in Hip-Hop but… you really don’t have to front if that’s what you did. Because back then if I would’ve had a job, any kind of job… whether it’s a C.O., a mailroom or whatever, I’ma walk with dignity behind that because I was able to have something back then. Like I said for myself, all we did was grow up selling crack all day.

I just feel like at the end of the day, I think the world would’ve still respected him even more if he would’ve just been like, “Yeah, I was a fortunate cat at the time to have that job.” And then on top of it, he may have looked for a couple of people in there. So it ain’t that necessarily he was on some police shit, it’s just that he had a job back then. I think if he would’ve probably hit everybody in the head like that, they probably would’ve been like, “That’s real.” Because the way we came up, like I said, I was hanging out with [C.O.’s] back in the days… a couple of cats or whatever. They was hood cats but they were fortunate too. One cat may have been a C.O. but that ain’t change who he was; he was still criminal-minded (Laughs).

But what it’s all about to me… being real, man. Whether people accept it or reject it, you know what you been through and you know how you took that to the next level by just using your mind. I just say that’s the key thing; don’t change who you are, just change for the better. If you don’t know where you came from, you might not know where you’re going.

TSS: How has the rap game changed since you first entered?

Raekwon: Things have changed a lot. Things have changed for the good; things have changed for the worse. I got the passion for Hip-Hop, but at the same time it just seems like Hip-Hop is being sold off like politics now, na’mean? You got the Bush’s, you got the Dick Cheney’s; you got all that going on in this right now. For the most part I think people is not really using their creative side all the way. There’s a lot of replicas out there… a lot of people caught up in the politics side instead of being caught up in the art side as well. But I guess that what happens when you got successful youth coming up and just opening their minds to do so many different things. Now people don’t even look at the talent no more, they look at the outside of it. They look at the frame instead of looking at the picture. You’ve got a lot of artists that make good records, but don’t get the same kind of quality run that a ringtone rapper may get…and everybody’s not a ringtone rapper! So everybody kind of thinks Hip-Hop dropped off to this young generation, but I think it’s just that Hip-Hop is being looked at by the younger generation because it’s their time to come up.

Everybody’s getting older. Us being in our mid-30’s we look for a certain kind of rapport when we pick up something that’s supposed to be Hip-Hop. And I think that affects a lot of things. I can’t really knock who downloads your music but if they really love you, they’re going to go get your album too if it’s worth getting. But if I got to sit here and hear you say the same thing on nine different tracks and you’re not showing me no growth and you’re just standing in one spot, I can’t really go out there and get these kinds of records. I want to get something that I’m excited to get; it’s like going to get an outfit. If you keep seeing a bunch of regular Levis and you got five pairs of them, you don’t want them no more. I need something with a zipper or a mean pocket. We want to enjoy what we pay for.

TSS: I saw you and Ghostface at Jones Beach for Rock The Bells and I enjoyed it. Which Rock The Bells city was your favorite? Do you have a favorite moment on that tour?

Raekwon: To be honest, Kha… I can’t even really say which one was better, man. All of them was really rockin’, man. I’m sitting there flippin’ out ‘cause I’m saying, “Ya’all are really turning it up like this and we’re artists that’s been in the game for so long.” But how can you sit here and have 80,000 people you’re performing to every day and you’re not on TV or on the radio every day? So like I said, it’s a beautiful thing but I can’t even say one spot like, “Yo, it always goes down here.” I can be anywhere, man. I’m a traveling cat anyway. I travel the world. When you ain’t hearing nothing up with Rae, Rae may be in Austria or here or there. The people around the world is really still for the real Hip-Hop, man. So, I can’t say. We do six shows out of seven shows in a week and every show is goddamn 30, 40 or 50,000 deep at that time, we gonna look at all of them like every show is ill.

TSS: That’s whassup. Any parting shots for the The Smoking Section readers out there?

Raekwon: Definitely. I just want to tell all of the real fans that I’m coming. I know I put ya’all on hold for a minute, but always remember that you got brothers that work hard and brothers that work harder. I just happen to be one of them brothers who work harder. [Cuban Linx 2] is definitely in the mix. It’s a beautiful record, it’s a classic again. Whether you may feel like it’s a classic, it’s a classic to me ‘cause that’s how we made our music from the door. Get ready. It’s a lot of things I’m working on with this project, that’s really going to blow people’s minds. The album is coming out in early March, or the middle of March, so get ready for the excitement, man. The Purple Tape Part Two… it’s going down! You’re going to have the formula that y’all wanted plus some and like I said, it’s a classic. Trust me on that.

Wu: The Story of The Wu-Tang Clan DVD & soundtrack release on 11.18.08.

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SHAUN BOOTHE IS THE MAN:



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SURPRISE! THE UNITED STATES ARE STILL RACIST! NOWAI:

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - Two weeks before an election that could install the first black U.S. president, scattered ugly incidents have reflected a deep residue of racism among some segments of white America.

A cardboard likeness of Barack Obama was found strung from fishing wire at a university, the Democratic presidential nominee's face was depicted on mock food stamps, the body of a black bear was left at another university with Obama posters attached to it.

Though the incidents are sporadic and apparently isolated, they stirred up memories of the violent racial past of a country where segregation and lynchings only ended within the last 50 years.

And some feared that Obama could be a target for people who reject him on racial grounds alone. The Illinois senator leads Republican rival John McCain in polls ahead of the November 4 election and has a big following in many sections of Americans, from liberals to conservatives, black and white, poor and wealthy.

"Many whites feel they are losing their country right before their eyes," said Mark Potok, who directs the Southern Poverty Law Center that monitors hate groups. "What we are seeing at this moment is the beginning of a real backlash."

Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said the incidents were disappointing but he said there were fewer than some had predicted.

"We've always acknowledged that race is not something that's been eradicated from our politics," said Axelrod. "But we've never felt that it would be an insuperable barrier and I don't think that it will be."

The latest incident occurred on Monday when the body of bear cub was found on the campus of Western Carolina University in North Carolina. Obama campaign signs were placed around the dead animal's head. School officials said it was a prank.

Earlier a cardboard likeness of Obama was strung up with fishing wire from a tree at a university in Oregon and an Ohio man hung a figure bearing an Obama sign from a tree in his yard. The man told local media he didn't want to see an African-American running the country.

ANGRY INDIVIDUALS

Potok said the displays of racism did not appear orchestrated as part of a campaign of racial intimidation, but were rather the acts of angry individuals. Their voices are often heard in radio call-back shows or letters to editors.

Many Americans "see the rise of minority rights, gay rights, women's rights as a threat to the world they grew up in and that their parents grew up in. They see huge demographic changes," he said.

"They see jobs disappearing to other countries, and now they see a man who is African American and who will very likely become president of the United States. For some of those people that symbolizes the end of the world as they know it."

He estimated there were as many as 800 white supremacy or nationalist groups in the United States, with at least 100,000 as "an inner core" of membership and many more on the fringes.

One such group, the League of American Patriots, last month distributed literature about why a "black ruler" would destroy the country.

Michigan State University professor Ronald Hall, writing in his new book "Racism in the 21st Century," said racism remains one of the most pressing U.S. social problems, though it now takes forms that are more subtle than the lynchings and mob violence seen decades ago in some parts of the country.

Some groups tagged with racist acts deny the charge.

In California, a Republican group said it intended no racial overtone when its October newsletter depicted a fake food stamp bearing a likeness of Obama's head on a donkey's body surrounded by fried chicken, watermelon and other images evoking insulting stereotypes about African-Americans.

Some acts have targeted not Obama's black heritage -- his father was Kenyan and his white mother was from Kansas -- but the false notion that he is a Muslim.

A derogatory billboard in West Plains, Mo., went up last month showing a caricature of Obama wearing a turban.

"There are a lot of Republicans and McCain supporters who find it hard to believe that a black guy whose middle name is Hussein is going to be the next president of the United States," said David Bositis, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

David Wolff, a 52-year-old white Pennsylvania voter who plans to cast his ballot for Obama, said he commonly hears racist comments and thinks such sentiments are deeply rooted across America.

"One thing that could speed up the eradication of racism would be to have a charismatic, inspirational, transformational, generational black president," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE49L7D020081022?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=10112

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OH, WE LOVE YOU RAKEEM!



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Gnarls Barkley will be releasing a digital EP on Nov. 11 via Atlantic. The EP, titled Who's Gonna Save My Soul includes four versions of the song of the same time, as well as a live version of "Neighbors" from the 40-Watt Club in Athens, GA. and the non-album track "Mystery Man."

"It's the first song we did for the new record. There was that nod of agreement and sigh of relief that we're starting, and ... we're off!," said Gnarls Barkley member Cee-Lo to Billboard.com of "Soul." The song appears in its original version, as a demo, an instrumental and as the audio from MTV's "52 Bands."

"The song was written about James Brown -- from an admirer's perspective ... someone who had truly personified everything that we are," he says. Gnarls Barkley played a 2006 show in London, and had the opportunity to meet Brown. However, the timing, and subsequently the plans, did not come together. Brown died a few months later.

"It disappointed me so bad," Cee-Lo says. "It was almost like he was about to pass a torch to me. It's my assumption but that's also my aspiration. When I say, 'I lay my own soul down,' it's like, I will have to be my own hero. I will have to save my own soul. Therefore, it is very painful, but there's also a silver lining."

"This song really showed that we had other places to go and things to do," Danger Mouse adds. "We tried it a couple different ways, and each time it still had a really great impact."

The group describes "Mystery Man" as "a song we weren't sure what to do with. We didn't know how to finish it, but we still liked what we had. It's half instrumental and half vocals." The live version of "Neighbors" is one that Danger Mouse is particularly fond of, as he went to college in Athens.

As for future plans, Gnarls Barkely plans to wait a little before they release another full-length album. "We really want people to hear this song, and hopefully this EP will carry it on," says Danger Mouse.

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REDEMPTION SONG

I’m sorry to hear that you’re sounding so down and struggling with the pressure that you’re under. I’ve been thinking about your situation most of the evening and the best I can come up with is that you are rich beyond your wildest dreams. Money really isn’t the issue here, it’s your sense of worth that’s causing you pain.

For me how I measure my worth and meaning is around contribution. How many people are alive now that might not have made it without me? How many people have better lives as a result of the work I do or advice that I’ve given? I keep reminding myself of the numbers of people that think fond thoughts of me and the things I’ve given them. Then I think about the people who they pass that onto and the whole thing is like a pebble in a pond.

You have no idea what you’ve done for people and how much you touch them and that’s part of why you’re in pain right now. You’ve forgotten all the lives you’ve made so much better, all the people who talk about you being a great person, loving friend, inspiration and sometimes just a place to lean and feel human again. If all you’d ever done was make one person’s life that little bit better, or eased their pain a fraction, then I think you’ve accrued enough merit or credit with the powers that be to never earn another cent and still be proud.

You’re generous with your time and energy and insight. You celebrate people’s success rather than compete with them, and you do your absolute best to make them even better than you at what you do.

Let me share a few things I try to keep in mind when it feels really bad.

1. Your darkest hour will only ever last 60 minutes
2. That which is to burn brightly must be able to endure burning
3. Your success will be measured only in terms of the love you leave behind when you’re gone
4. This too will pass
5. Breath in, breath out - repeat as necessary

Personally I think it’s a miracle that you’re still standing. But I know that when people have said that to me, I think it ridiculous, as it’s not like I can ever afford to give up or fall down.

You sound very down right now, trust that it will pass. Sometimes when on top of a hill I’ve looked across the valley and seen a huge black cloud’s shadow passing over people. It occurs to me that they can’t see the edge, so for them it’s potentially going to stay dark. Given a bit of perspective though, we can trust that this too will pass.

I’m really, really glad that you’re alive, as are so many others. You’re going to get through this and you’re going to shine again. Here’s a song for you by James Morrison, it’s been a theme tune for me that has helped me through some of my downs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apb-kHZ5vto

Take some care of yourself, I’ll be meditating on your situation and healing you from a distance. That’s my way of saying you’re in my prayers. Thanks for reaching out to me, I’m always happy to make a difference.

Your loving friend who really cares,

Michael

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I LOVE KARDINAL BUT WHY IN GOD'S NAME ARE THEY NOT DOING THE VIDEO FOR THE T-PAIN SONG?!?!? PURE FUCKORY, THAT SONG IS A NUCLEAR BOMB WAITING TO EXPLODE!



IS THIS THE END FOR THE 'NOT 4 SALE' CAMPAIGN? WRONG. SO, SO WRONG.

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MAYBE THIS WILL MAKE UP FOR '50 CENT: BULLETPROOF' BEING SUCH A PIECE OF SHITE:



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I'M ABOUT TO GO GET SOMETHING THAT SHOULD CHANGE MY LIFE.

MINDBENDERSUPREMERADIOTV IS COMING SOON!
LOVE, ADHIMUSIC