If you are going through hell, keep going. - Winston Churchill

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Brother Ali's "Uncle Sam Goddamn". Ya daaaamn right:



Talib Kweli's "Everything Man" video (peace to Mos Def, nice to talk to you last night, homie! Good show, chap :)



I'm totally not following this beef, but here it is, Joe Budden Vs. Ransom. Words from Def Jam's fall out boy:



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Necessary.

A Eulogy for Donda West:

By M.J. Rosenberg | bio

My kids are both hip hop aficionados and have been since they were small kids (they are both adults now) so maybe that explains how badly I feel about the death of Kanye West's mother. Kanye is one of the real good guys in the rap world, managing to become one of the top two or three rap artists in the world without indulging in paeans to violence, guns, and too much emphasis on bling.

To me, he always seems like a sweet kid playing the role of tough guy, and not that convincingly.

A subtext to the Kanye West story has always been his relationship with his mom, Dr. Donda West, who died at 58 the other day after minor surgery. She was a professor who gave up her career to manage her son's. At the time of her passing, she was involved in pretty much every aspect of his life and career. Of course, prior to Kanye's rise, she was a single mom balancing family and job and successful at both.

Kanye West not only owes his life and success to his mother but he let the world know it at every opportunity (one of his biggest hits is a tribute to her). Like Elvis Presley, Kanye was almost over-the-top as a loving son -- which hopefully gives him some comfort now. She sure knew how he felt about her.

But Donda West was about more than being Kanye's mother. Her passing reminds us of the amazing accomplishments of African-American women.

Slavery may be ancient history for some of but for African-Americans, it is yesterday. It was only a half dozen generations ago that African-American men, women and children were sold on the auction block.

Beyond all its other horrors, slavery by definition destroyed the family. How can family exist when its individual members are bought and sold? What authority can parents have when they themselves are chattel? And slavery (unlike virtually every other horror of modern history) was no passing thing. It lasted 250 years in this country, certainly long enough to eradicate the black family as an institution.

In fact, African-Americans were slaves on this continent for about a hundred years longer than they have been free. Imagine. And yet African-Americans (like the Jews, another miserably oppressed group) have managed not only to survive but to pretty much define American culture.

So many of the good things this country represents to young people around the world comes from the African American community.

And that is thanks to women like Donda West who, somehow, managed to build great and strong families despite the residual effects of slavery, racism, poverty and all the ugliness white America has inflicted on black America.

As I said, I feel terrible about a good kid like Kanye losing his mother. But, as an American, I am grateful to her and to all the other women like her. I hope Kanye West survives this loss. I know he will because of what his mom taught him and his faith. But he is also blessed because he can recall his mother without guilt. He never missed an opportunity to tell her not only that he loved her but that he owed her everything. A good lesson for us all.

Lyrics to Hey Mama By Kanye West

Hey Mama), I wanna scream so loud for you, cuz I'm so proud of you
Let me tell you what I'm about to do, (Hey Mama)
I know I act a fool but, I promise you I'm goin back to school
I appreciate what you allowed for me
I just want you to be proud of me (Hey Mama)

[Verse 1]
I wanna tell the whole world about a friend of mine
This little light of mine and I'm finna let it shine
I'm finna take yall back to them better times
I'm finna talk about my mama if yall don't mind
I was three years old, when you and I moved to the Chi
Late December, harsh winter gave me a cold
You fixed me up something that was good for my soul
Famous homemade chicken soup, can I have another bowl?
You work late nights just to keep on the lights
Mommy got me training wheels so I could keep on my bike
And you would give anything in this world
Michael Jackson leather and a glove, but didn't give me a curl
And you never put no man over me
And I love you for that mommy cant you see?
Seven years old, caught you with tears in your eyes
Cuz a nigga cheatin, telling you lies, then I started to cry
As we knelt on the kitchen floor
I said mommy Imma love you till you don't hurt no more
And when I'm older, you aint gotta work no more
And Imma get you that mansion that we couldn't afford
See you're, unbreakable, unmistakable
Highly capable, lady that's makin loot
A livin legend too, just look at what heaven do
Send us an angel, and I thank you (Hey Mama)

[Chorus]

[Verse 2]
Forrest Gump mama said, life is like a box of chocolates
My mama told me go to school, get your doctorate
Somethin to fall back on, you could profit with
But still supported me when I did the opposite
Now I feel like it's things I gotta get
Things I gotta do, just to prove to you
You was getting through, can the choir please
Give me a verse of “You, Are So Beautiful To Me�
Can't you see, you're like a book of poetry
Maya Angelou, Nicky Giovanni, turn one page and there's my mommy
Come on mommy just dance wit me, let the whole world see your dancing feet
Now when I say Hey, yall say Mama, now everybody answer me (Hey Mama)

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
I guess it also depends tho, if my ends low
Second they get up you gon get that Benzo
Tint the windows, ride around the city and let ya friends know (Hey Mama)

[Verse 3]
Tell your job you gotta fake em out
Since you brought me in this world, let me take you out
To a restaurant, upper echelon
Imma get you a jag, whatever else you want
Just tell me what kind of S-Type Donda West like?
Tell me the perfect color so I make it just right
It don't gotta be Mother's Day, or your birthday
For me to just call and say (Hey Mama)

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/nov/14/passing_of_kanyes_mom_and_the_heroism_of_african_american_women

~~~

SP-1200 Worship, by Hip Hop's Best Producers:

The Dirty Heartbeat of the Golden Age
Reminiscing on the SP-1200, the machine that defined New York hip-hop
by Ben Detrick

In the summer of 1987, E-mu Systems released the SP-1200, a drum machine and sampler designed for dance-music producers. An update of a previous model known as the SP-12, the souped-up edition allowed for the recording and manipulation of a 10.07-second sample with gritty 12-bit sound quality—now you could craft a complete instrumental on one portable machine.

Just as the Stradivarius or the Fender Stratocaster were standard-bearers by which other instruments were judged, the SP-1200 quickly became the tool of choice for East Coast beat-makers during rap's so-called "Golden Age," a period during the late '80s and early '90s, when sampling laws were still being meted out in courtrooms. Such artists as Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, Gang Starr, Main Source, and the Notorious B.I.G. created classic joints over beats concocted on the SP-1200. The machine rose to such prominence that its strengths and weaknesses sculpted an entire era of music: The crunchy digitized drums, choppy segmented samples, and murky filtered basslines that characterize the vintage New York sound are all mechanisms of the machine.

Long ago toppled by more powerful equipment and computer-based production programs, the sampler continues to inspire enough cultish devotion that any prospective knob-twister still must shell out around $1,000 to go retro. We spoke with several of hip-hop's must celebrated veteran producers about their experiences with the SP-1200 over the last 20 years.

The Cast

Hank Shocklee
Part of the Bomb Squad and producer for Public Enemy, Ice Cube, and Slick Rick.

Lord Finesse
Producer for the Notorious B.I.G., Dr. Dre, and Big L.

Pete Rock
Recording artist with CL Smooth and producer for Heavy D, Nas, Das EFX, and House of Pain.

Ski
Producer for Jay-Z, Camp Lo, and Sporty Thievz.

The Learning Curve

Pete Rock
When I first got the SP-1200—I think that was back in '87—I was going to sessions with my cousin Heavy D, and he was working with Marley Marl. I would just be looking around and looking at the stuff they had and looking at what he was doing. Eddie F had the drum machine, and he showed me how to work it. I basically studied the manual—read it beginning to end and learned it like that. I used it all day, every day. I never came outside—just woke up happy to have a piece of machinery that made music. I didn't give a damn about anything else once I got that drum machine.

Ski
The strength of the SP was definitely the way the 12-bit sounded when you threw the sample or the snare or the kick in there—it just sounded so dirty. It was a definite, definite fucking plus with the machine. The limited sampling time made you become more creative. That's how a lot of producers learned how to chop the samples: We didn't have no time, so we had to figure out ways to stretch the sounds and make it all mesh together. We basically made musical collages just by chopping little bits and notes.

Hank Shocklee
There's little tricks that were developed on it. For example, you got 12 seconds [10.07, according to the manufacturer] of sample time to divide amongst eight pads. So depending on how much you use on each pad, you decrease the amount of sample time that you have. You take a 33 1/3 record and play it on 45, and you cheat the system. [Another] aspect that we created is out of a mistake—one day I was playing "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" and it came out real muffled. I couldn't hear any of the high-end part of it. I found out that if you put the phono or quarter-inch jack halfway in, it filters the high frequency. Now I just got the bass part of the sample. I was like, "Oh, shit, this is the craziest thing on the planet!"

The Machine and the Masters

Lord Finesse
They had me as a special guest on Stretch and Bobbito, one of the popular radio shows of the '90s. I thought it would be slick if I brought my 1200 down. A lot of producers did total beats with their 1200, and I think I did two or three, and one specifically was when I chopped up Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On." I chopped all around his voice using the 1200 and put an instrumental in the back. I played it over the air, and me and KRS-One freestyled over it. It was real slick.

Ski
People said they never saw anyone work the SP as fast as me and Large Professor— not that it means anything. It's crazy. I can't explain it—it's like the shit is programmed in my brain. I worked with Jay-Z and did all of Reasonable Doubt on the SP-1200. For "Dead Presidents," everything was made on the SP, man: the whole sequence, the drum sounds, the Nas sample. The only thing that wasn't done on the SP was the sample, [but] I ran it through it to give it that sound.

Pete Rock
Everything that you ever heard from me back in the day was the SP-1200. That machine made "Reminisce" ["They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)"], "Straighten It Out," "Shut 'Em Down," "Jump Around." When I made "Reminisce"—I had friend of mine that passed away, and it was a shock to the community. I was kind of depressed when I made it. And to this day, I can't believe I made it through, the way I was feeling. I guess it was for my boy. When I found the record by Tom Scott, basically I just heard something incredible that touched me and made me cry. It had such a beautiful bassline, and I started with that first. I found some other sounds and then heard some sax in there and used that. Next thing you know, I have a beautiful beat made. When I mixed the song down, I had Charlie Brown from Leaders of the New School in the session with me, and we all just started crying.

An End of an Era

Pete Rock
I used the MPC [a technologically superior sampler line first introduced in 1988] on Soul Survivor II. That was kind of the beginning of using it. I thought it had a thinner sound than the SP, but it had way more sample time—like three minutes. So, can't beat that. I got hundreds of beats on the SP-1200, but I like the MPC. I'm really starting to get in the midst of it now.

Hank Shocklee
They've mastered the computer to the point it does things the SP-1200 can't do. [But] we would have better records today if people said, "Look, you've got five hours to make a record." The problem is that people got all day. They got all week. They got all month. They got all year. So thus, you in there second-guessing yourself. With the 1200, you can't second-guess yourself, man. You got 2.5 seconds a pad, man. . . . Till this day, nobody has understood and created a machine that can best it.

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0746,detrick,78335,22.html

~~~

CROOKED I - HIP HOP WEEKLY #33: http://sharebee.com/c5a37385

This guy is the King of the West Coast. Period.

Don't say I didn't warn you :)

~~~

Mos Def said it last night, performing 'Definition': "IT'S KINDA DANGEROUS TO BE AN MC". Here's more proof why. God bless this family:

By Rudy West

Police in Chicago are investigating the death of an aspiring rapper who was shot and killed by police officers during a traffic stop last night (November 13).

According to Chicago‘s NBC 5, police stopped Chicago Rapper Freddie "The Saint" Latee Wilson around 10:30 PM last night and minutes later, opened fire on his beige Cadillac.

Wilson was pronounced dead at the scene. While police claim a gun was recovered from the area, community leaders said that they are hearing conflicting accounts of what actually happened.

The 34-year-old rapper leaves behind an 8-year-old son. The mother of his child is popular Chicago rapper NewSense of the rap group Psychodrama.

The shooting is the first to be investigated by a new department, the police Office of Professional Standards.

The independent department was originally created by the Chicago Police Department in 1974 in response to public concerns about the CPD’s use of excessive force.

In 2007, the city of Chicago restructured the department by ordinance, making it an independent branch of the city, as opposed to the CPD. "I prayed and prayed on it," she said. "With this new office, hopefully this will be the beginning of them bringing justice to these streets."

~~~

MC Serch interviews the old owners of The Source. These were the days:



Soulja Boy, peeing off a balcony? Jesus Christ... Astroboy that hoe! LOL!



~~~

I still haven't listened to Jay-Z's "American Gangster" album all the way through... I'm literally listening to it right now (this Intro is kinda cliche, but still real talk). This review is good. I like Tom Breihan's writing. Others don't. C'est la vie, welcome to modern hip hop:

The story goes like this: After seeing an advance print of the Ridley Scott heroin-trade epic American Gangster, Jay-Z found himself inspired. The movie details the story of the Vietnam-era Harlem kingpin Frank Lucas, and Jay saw so many parallels between Lucas's life and his own. Over the course of a few weeks, Jay recorded his own widescreen epic, a concept-album about the rise and fall of a gangster like Lucas, an imagined what-if trajectory for what might have happened to Jay if he'd never left the drug trade.

It makes for a good story and a great marketing coup. By attaching himself to a big-budget crime epic, Jay guaranteed himself cross-media presence and positioned himself to regain some of the grimy credibility he'd lost with 2006's Kingdom Come, the would-be comeback that found Jay rapping about brands so expensive most of his audience had no idea what he was talking about. In working to create the impression that he'd sacrificed commerce for art, Jay recast himself as an artist rather than a CEO, a canny commercial move at a time when rappers like Kanye West are outselling CEOs like 50 Cent. As a piece of media-manipulation, American Gangster is dazzling. But as music?

Well, as a concept-album, American Gangster is kind of a wash. Over the course of its first 13 tracks, the album loosely outlines the criminal rise and fall we've seen in so many movies: the desperation of youth, the excited early schemes, the slow hard-fought rise, the lavish celebration of that rise, the eventual joyless inertia involved in maintaining that success, the sudden and inevitable descent into a prison-cell anonymity worse than death. That story animates the album, but it doesn't dictate its movements. Throughout, Jay-Z breaks that narrative whenever he feels like it, taking care to force in all his standbys: The sneering aristocratic death-threats, the breezy uptempo party-songs, the (especially forced) for-the-ladies seduction-song.

Jay actually corrupts the impact of his own moralistic rise-and-fall story by ending the album with a pair of bonus tracks, "Blue Magic" and "American Gangster", that trumpet Jay's own triumph over the vast impersonal forces that landed his protagonist in prison. On "Blue Magic", he even growls, "Can't you tell that I came from the dope game?" like it's a point of personal pride, immediately after he depicted an inevitable criminal downfall. On his wide-scope art-piece, Jay still can't put aside commercial success and relentless self-aggrandizement, even if those twin impulses fuck up his concept.

So American Gangster doesn't quite work as a concept album, but it's difficult to imagine the record would be better if that concept had been fully realized and fleshed-out. Jay's evident obsession with the post-Don Imus furor over nihilistic rap lyrics has fuck-all to do with his gangster narrative, for instance, but Jay's willingness to break narrative and address that obsession leads to lines like this one, where he calls out recent rap foe Al Sharpton on "Say Hello": "Tell him I'll remove the curses/ If you tell me our schools gon' be perfect/ When Jena 6 don't exist / Tell him that's when I'll stop saying 'bitch,' bitch!" The album's story gives it enough structure to feel huge and all-encompassing, but Jay floats in and out of it as fluidly as he switches between the first and second person. And so the drug-dealer story serves an important purpose: It rips Jay out of the royal materialistic old-man haze that ruined Kingdom Come and recalls the titanic, invincible snarl that made him great in the first place.

On American Gangster, he's fallen back in love with language, making slick puns and jamming his lines with internal rhymes and vivid, detailed images without letting those devices detract from the emotional punch of his mini-narratives. "No Hook" has some of the most complicated rhyme-patterns he's tried in years, but it's all in service of a sad picture of the conflicts of anyone who makes a living doing dangerous, immoral things: "'Stay out of trouble,' mama said as mama sighs/ Her fear her youngest son being victim of homicide/ But I gotta get you out of here, mama, or I'm [long pause] die [long pause] inside." (Nobody uses long breathless pauses like Jay-Z; when he's at his best, as he is here, those silences can say as much as his words.)

On "Roc Boys (And the Winner Is)", the buoyant and celebratory ode to financial success, Jay thanks every device and corrupt institution that made his rise possible: "The Nike shoebox for holding all this cash/ Boys in blue who put the greed before the badge." On "Blue Magic", his wordplay is so dense that it can take multiple listens to parse: "Blame Reagan for making me to a monster/ Blame Oliver North and Iran Contra/ I ran contraband that they sponsored." (Maybe I'm dumb, but it took me a while to realize that the second of those lines ends with the exact same four syllables as the next line's beginning.) On "Fallin'", the song about the dealer's comeuppance, Jay sounds like he's spent a lot of time thinking about the fate he avoided: "Come January, it gets cold/ When your letters come in slow and your commissary's low." And on "Ignorant Shit", a Black Album outtake revisited and revamped here, Jay positively relishes the contradictions of rap, a genre where every artist theatrically proclaims himself to be more real than everyone else: "Actually believe half of what you see/ None of what you hear, even if it's spit by me/ And with that being said, I will kill niggas dead."

Musically, American Gangster is lush and spacious. The sampled voices of Al Green and Marvin Gaye float through the record like ghosts of Jay's past, sweetly offering encouragement like benevolent angels. Jay's handpicked lineup of producers keep his voice grounded in thick, organic globs of 1970s soul. Diddy and the Hitmen, the reunited production who gave old Bad Boy albums their flamboyant elegance, turn in five tracks on the album, and their work drips with ambition. On album-opener "Pray" they outfit Jay with churning strings, screaming guitars, cinematic sound-effects, and a histrionic gospel choir; the horns, windchimes, and rolling drums of "Sweet" are almost exhausting in their richness. But not all the production is that warm and languid. On "Success", Jay and guest Nas rant paranoically over No ID's disorienting storm of organ-wails and murky, off-kilter drums. On "Ignorant Shit", Just Blaze layers up a furious storm of tinny synths and guitars, giving Jay's shit-talk a trashy "Miami Vice" veneer. And "Hello Brooklyn 2.0", built from an old Beastie Boys track, is a stark corrective to all those florid harps and violins: all booming bass and skeletal handclaps, Jay sounding more at home than guest Lil Wayne.

When Jay taped his episode of "VH1 Storytellers" in Brooklyn last month, he kept comparing tracks from the album to moments from The Godfather and Scarface. American Gangster isn't really about Jay's own memories, and it's certainly not about Frank Lucas. Instead, it's an album about Jay's mythic legacy, his place in a pantheon of larger-than-life outlaws. Problematically enough, it works because it reconnects Jay with the verbal and musical eloquence that allowed him to escape from an outlaw's life. If it took a big Hollywood movie and a half-baked concept to get him back to that, then thank God for big Hollywood movies and half-baked concepts.

-Tom Breihan, November 08, 2007

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/46899-american-gangster

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Fuck. This is tragic. Stop the violence. We're headed for self-destruction. Brothers GOTTA work it out:

Up & Coming Canadian Rapper Stabbed To Death
Monday - September 24, 2007 by Jolene "foxxylady" Petipas

An aspiring Canadian emcee was reportedly killed outside an Ontario townhouse yesterday (September 22).

According to C News, paramedics found 24-year-old Tactix (born Jermaine Alexander Malcolm) suffering from multiple stab wounds outside a Mississauga complex around 1:53 A.M. on Sunday (September 23).

Their attempts to keep Tactix alive failed and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Tactix' friend, who refused to be identified, revealed to C News that the rapper did not live at the Mississauga complex but had been hanging out there with a friend.

On his MySpace page, Tactix listed Scarborough, which is about 30 minutes from Mississauga, as his hometown.

"He was a good guy. He was one of my best friends," Tactix' friend said. "He was a young guy, yo; he didn't deserve this sh-t."

Constable J.P. Valade of Peel Regional Police has refused to confirm that Tactix died of a stabbing until he receieves results from an autopsy.

Police are currently searching for two suspects. Anybody with information is asked to call the Peel Homicide Bureau at ********

~~~

that's how I'm signing off today.
SPREAD LOVE,
Mindbender