I had dinner with the 3 most beautiful women in my universe last night: Gracie, Diane and Silk-Anne. Goddess bless you all! Thanks for the clarity, the animal is loose!

~~~
G-Unit. Whoo Kid. Cocaine. TOGETHER AT LAST!



~~~

Lil Wayne is in 'the Boondocks'. I don't like this cartoon that much, but here:



~~~

Charlie Murphyyyyy!



~~~

Snoop Dogg sangin':



~~~

Damn, homie:

Police in New York City say they have linked the Brooklyn based crew of rapper Fabolous, to the robberies of several high profile celebrities and athletes. According to the New York Post, the Street Family, which cops say is based out of the Breevort Houses where the rapper grew up, has been targeting nightclub patrons in the lower Manhattan neighborhoods of Chelsea and Flatiron for some time now. Fab’s friend, Shamel McKinney, was fatally stabbed outside of club Duvet last month after cops say he tried to rob another man of his necklace. Now police believe they can connect the Street Family to the muggings of Celtic’s guard Sebastian Telfair, and ex-N.Y. Giants cornerback Frank Walker. They also claim the crew has robbed boxing champ Zab Judah twice. “They don’t care,” one unidentified police source told the Post. “The bigger the celebrity, the better.” The NYPD believes that the crew searches out celebrities who are sporting expensive jewelry, then alert each other via cellphone. The victims are then targeted as they walk to their cars. Fabolous has previously denied any connection to this type of illegal activity and has denied allegations that he was present at club Duvet the night his friend was killed.

~~~

Ghost's album is dope. I just bumped it all last night. The last song is a JEM:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/statusainthood/archives/2007/12/there_are_plent.php

There are plenty of reasons not to be happy about the latest spate of Wu-Tang infighting, but the worst thing about it is that this round of rumor-jammed news stories runs the risk of overshadowing the adjacent releases of 8 Diagrams and The Big Doe Rehab. Those two albums, intentionally or not, are going to draw a line down the middle of Wu-Tang's constituency. Everyone is going to pick sides between RZA's thick, shambling mysticism and Ghostface's pitched-up head-crack shit. The two albums are drastically different, but they don't exactly represent opposite sides of one coin. At the peak of Wu-Tang's unlikely popularity, there wasn't any contradiction between those two impulses; the head-crack stuff and the mystical stuff coexisted without any problems, and neither one ever overwhelmed the other. But with Ghost and Raekwon both calling bullshit on RZA's psyche-rap explorations and threatening to make a Wu-Tang group album without him, it's hard not to see these two albums as oppositional forces rather than twin triumphs. At this point, close to a decade and a half after Enter the 36 Chambers, we should be happy that anyone associated with Wu-Tang is still making vital music; the concurrent releases of two powerful albums should be reason to celebrate. Instead, it feels like the Clan is turning on itself, and these two great records are just its death-rattles, a perception that's not fair to either album.

If I have to declare allegiance to either album over the other, I'm going with 8 Diagrams, a record that continues to get more compelling every time I hear it. 8 Diagrams is more than I could justifiably ask for from a Wu-Tang album in 2007: dense and mysterious beats that evoke past RZA glories without reliving them, every remaining member going off, an album-construction that sprawls in all sorts of unexpected directions without ever losing its focus. But even though Rae and Ghost are, in my opinion, on some bullshit decrying 8 Diagrams, Big Doe Rehab is still a strong album. The album might actually play to Ghost's strengths too much; virtually every track is a straight-ahead adrenal banger with a screaming soul sample and a death-obsessed narrative. Back when rappers were actually expected to sell records, Ghost's albums found interesting ways to deal with the pressures of commerce; "Cherchez La Ghost," for instance, was his bent attempt at club-rap. When Ghost would shoot for clubs or rap&B radio playlists, he'd never quite get there, but the attempts had a way of breaking up all the fired-up brawlers. These days, nobody expects Ghost to be anything other than a niche artist, and so now he's free to fall back on his favorite kind of track: the bloody-minded street-crime narrative. Ghost is, of course, incredibly good at that stuff, and I'm not going to complain about a whole album full of it. Only about half the tracks on Big Doe Rehab even bother with choruses, and when actual hooks do show up, they're usually just whatever was on the song Ghost was already sampling. As far as I can tell, this is the album Ghost wanted to make, and it's an exhilarating ride.

One of the puzzling things about Rae and Ghost's anti-RZA campaign is that it involves both of them complaining about RZA trying to get too weird, when both of them, Ghost in particular, are among the weirdest rappers still holding onto major-label contracts. Big Doe Rehab is packed with vividly bizarre Ghost-isms: "The man that scrapped with lions, hibernated with polar bears," "Smuggle heroin in a cactus," "Double-cokeheads who watch cartoons / Type chicks who eat pussy, listen to Prince, and play with they wombs." I love the little dialogue he has with some girl on "We Celebrate": "'What's that in your pocket, Ghost?' A dill pickle / 'Not that.' Oh, that's the 45 stainless nickel." Like, does dill pickle actually mean something else in Staten Island street-slang? Or is Ghost really walking around with a fucking pickle in his pocket? Wouldn't it get so covered in pocket-lint that you wouldn't want to eat it? Ghost may think he's making a commercial album here, but he doesn't ever make things either for us, and it can take a few listens before his breathless narratives actually start to make sense. And he's on some grisly shit here, trying to get the brains out of his shirt on "Walk Around" and threatening to fuck a woman's dead body on "Shakey Dog Starring Lolita." Ghost is a great rap storyteller; his breakneck pace never keeps him from displaying a powerful, idiosyncratic eye for detail. On this album, he weaves other Clan guys into his stories, handing responsibilities over them and then wrapping things up by himself, like a group exercise in a creative writing class. But Ghost's gory story-rap isn't necessarily any more commercial than RZA's psychedelic space-rap, and it's really disorienting hearing Ghost staking out such a musically conservative stance.

When I interviewed Method Man last year, he pointed out that Ghost has been smart in picking beats; when he couldn't get RZA beats, he got beats that sounded like RZA. Other than the two weirdly sickly soul-jazz tracks that end the album, all of the tracks on Big Doe Rehab hit hard, not entirely unlike 36 Chambers-era RZA tracks. The last few Ghost albums didn't have a whole lot of appearances from fellow Clan members, but those intra-Clan lines of communication are apparently open again. Wu-Tang members are all over Big Doe Rehab, and these guys generally sound a whole lot better when they're alongside each other. I don't much like the idea of Rae and Ghost making a Wu-Tang album without RZA, but that's sort of what they've done here. If Big Doe Rehab isn't the vintage Wu-Tang album that Rae and Ghost wanted 8 Diagrams to be, it's close. The result isn't better than 8 Diagrams, but it's still pretty great.

~~~

PRODIGY IS MY FUCKING FAVORITE QB DUN DUN. REAL TALK FROM A REAL HEAD:

http://www.hnic2.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1622086%3ABlogPost%3A1336

Whats the word my geez, just in case you didn't know MY STORY is a ill one. I was born in HEMPSTEAD L.I. and lived out there up until like age 10. Where i grew up at iN L.I. there were alot of GODS and EARTHS, if you don't know those are 5% er's and Muslims who study and memorize the 120 lessons. (peace god, whats today's mathematics?) and all that shit. Every reall hood in L.I. or NY for that matter know what i'm talking bout. I started rapping at the age of 12 when i heard the RUN DMC song "sucka mc's" and that LL COOL J shit "rock the bells".

After i heard those two songs my life was changed forever. i used to say those lyrics to my mom's and act like i wrote it until one day i got tired of lying and decided to really try to write my own shit. it was around 1986-87 and my mom's and i were living in Lefrak City queens. my moms had just started letting me stay outside after the street lights went off wich was the wrong thing to do in lefrak cause the whole hood sold drugs. it was 1988 when me and my friends started selling crack and doing all the grimey shit. by the end of that year the cops had caught me making direct sales one too many times and Lefrak City tried to kick me and my mom's out our apartment. My mom's worked for the NYC Housing Authority for several years so she smoothed it all out. But she was so mad and scared for me that she found a new apartment in Jersey City.

She made the right decision to move because i would have just got into more and more trouble in Lefrak. Right before we moved, i got enrolled into the High School of Art and Design on 57th street in Manhattan and at that same time i had put together a 4 song demo tape and started shopping around for a record deal. Before my mom's worked for housing, she was in a doo-wop group called "THE CRYSTALS" and on the low my mom's and her group had some hit records back then. Shit like "THE DOO RUN-RUN", "ROCKIN ROBIN" and alot more. She was on tour with Diana Ross and the Supremes and all that, so mom's knew the music industry pretty well. She was actually my manager when i started shopping my demo and i found a deal over at JIVE RECORDS.

JIVE gave me a demo deal wich means they paid for my studio time and if i made some good enough songs they would have signed me to a real recording contract. I started hanging out at the JIVE office alot back then and i got cool with a few of the ladies that worked there. One of those ladies i got cool with gave my the ultimate plug in and hooked me up with this R&B group named HIGH FIVE. They had a real popular song called "The Kissing Game" and they were working on a song for the BOYZ N' THE HOOD movie soundtrack and needed a rapper to do 2 verses on the track. It was perfect timing. I wrote 2 quick verses and the next thing you know i'm on the soundtrack, the song is called "TOO YOUNG" HIGH FIVE featuring ME.... i was gassed the fucc up after that. Right after i recorded that song, probably the very next day is when i first met HAVOC.

HAV was cool with one of my niggas in my class LIL' D. D hooked us up together cause we both were lil' short niggas and both were heavy into rap music. Ironically both me and hav's grandmothers lived in RAVENSWOOD so We clicked instantly. JIVE wanted to sign me to a real contract after BOYZ N' THE HOOD but i told them that i had a partner now, and if they didn't wanna sign the both of us, then it was NO deal. JIVE didn't see the vision back then so that situation got deaded.

Maybe a year later 1990-91 I started reading this book called "BEHOLD A PALE WHITE HORSE". i was real intrested in the book first of all cause of the weird cover, then secondly cause the god's back in L.I. and the god's i met in queens would talk about some of the things i was reading in the book and most of the god's i knew were extremely smart and spoke intelligently and i wanted to have the knowledge that they had. That year Havoc and i dropped out of school and finished our first demo. we got a deal at ISLAND RECORDS.

ISLAND just signed M.O.P. and had ERIC B. and RAKIM . Havoc and I were only 15 years old and all we cared about was jewelry and having a video on video music box. We weren't focused on making quality music. I had moved to queensbridge and was living with hav. i got real cool with all hav niggas from q.b. like THE TWINS, NOYD, GODFATHER, GOTTI, TY NITTY, ect. ect. we were all a bunch a juvenile delinquents for real, getting drunk every morning, smoking, shootin' people, robbing people, just being young and crazy

In 1993 We put out our first album "JUVINILE HELL" and shot our first 2 videos ever "PEER PRESSURE" and "HIT IT FROM THE BACK". The songs were ok but the album flopped cause we didn't take it serious at all. That shit taught us a hard lesson. YOU DON'T GET A SECOND CHANCE TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION! We got dropped after the album only sold 20,000 copies. We were mad as hell and a lil' embarassed cause we knew we had some shit. the whole hood was feeling our music and style but we didn't express or represent ourself correctly. NAS had just dropped ILLMATIC around the same time and he made us look real stupid with that shit. ILLMATIC sounded more mature and JUVINILE HELL sound like a bunch a lil' wild bad ass kids made a album.

Thats when we stopped fuccing around and we dug deep inside our hearts and minds and we made the INFAMOUS album. We found a new deal at LOUD RECORDS and in 1994 we put out the first single "SHOOK ONES pt.1" that shit took off at college and underground radio, then we put out a remix called "SHOOK ONES pt.2" right before the album release and the remix got bigger then the original. That album went gold real fast and mid-1995 we went on a eastcoast tour with BIGGIE SMALLS , CRAIG MACK and CAMP LO. Man i got some stories to tell about that tour!!! but i'm a save all that for my autobiography.

1996 I Started to read alot more cause i realized that it was helping me with my song writing. when you read your vocabulary get's better and stores all that information. i was able to use words people werent using in ya average everyday conversation. My nigga i grew up with in Hempstead SHAMEEK, gave me the 120 lessons and after i read that it made me want to do research and learn more about the origins of humans, religions and the earth. The information i discovered was incredible and unbelievable. i had check, double check, then triple check the shit i was finding out.

Me and hav started making the "HELL ON EARTH" album at this time and i started putting lil' bits and peices of information in my lyrics back then. I knew the world wasn't ready for the shit i was learning, shit...cause i wasn't even ready for it. "Ether utopia, enclosed garden of gan, take a bite of this fruit it's knowledge of the good and evil man. it be the mobb epic's, we stole the tablets of destiny so that we may rise to supremacy." "illuminati want my mind, soul and my body. secret society tryin' ta keep an eye on me." my partner havoc didn't overstand where i was going wi all this at first, he wasn't even tryin' to hear what i was saying, but twin, gotti, ty nitty, godfather and a gang of others was feeling it. Twin used to tell me back then... "Yo p you need to do more songs like that. niggas wanna learn about all that!"

After doing his own lil' research on his own time, havoc started coming around. He started overstanding and asking me questions about everything. Havoc coined the phrase "MIX THE MEDICINE WITH THE FOOD." when he said that to me one day thats when i knew havoc finally got it cause thats exactly what i was doing. i didn't wanna turn off my fans with all the shit i was knowing, so i came up with a plan back then to spoon feed the world with what i knew and eventually letting it all out. The medicine is a lil' bit of information and the food is the music. Every album since HELL ON EARTH i been doing that.

Sometimes i would say some real shocking shit just to capture your attention so you would really listen close to what i'm saying and not miss anything. Why do you think i named the last mobb album BLOOD MONEY? Cause all money is blood money and is evil even tho we need it and cant live without it in these days and times. Theres a song on that album called PEARLY GATES and i said some shocking things about religion in my verse. This was purposely done to get your attention and make you listen closer. i didn't explain myself on the song because it's a song and not a school lesson. i purposely left people confused so the question would arise during radio and magazine interviews... "P WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING BOUT ON THAT SONG?" and thats when i tell people that....Before we were kidnapped from our homeland and made into slaves to build America, we were a spiritual people with our own connection with the creator and the universe.

There was no such thing as a bible, quaran, torah or any religious books. They simply DIDN'T EXSIST AT ALL. Mostly every story in all of these MAN MADE religions are ALL STOLEN from EGYPT. AFRICA is the mother of all civilisation and OUR-STORY pre-dates any story. Thats why the negative forces that control this world and have everyone under the SPELL of LEVIATHAN keep OUR-STORY a MYSTERY and they made sure HIS-STORY is the only thing being taught to the entire world. Yes the rabbit hole gets very deep.

On the first HNIC album, the first song that comes on is called "GENESIS". i put some good information in that song but like i said, i didn't wanna turn off the fans with all that plus it wasn't time to put it all out there yet so right after that song i put a skit from the movie MENACE TO SOCIETY where kane say's " OH YOU TRYIN' TO GET SMART? YOU TRYIN' TO KICK SOME KNOWLEDGE? NIGGA GIMMIE YA JEWELRY NIGGA!!" then the album get's on some G shit. Trust my, i'm very aware of what i'm doing and all of this was planned out.

It's been goin on 8 years since that first HNIC album and alot has happened in the world since then. Right now is the time to reveal everything to the hood, i think they are hungry for information and they demand answers to alot of bullshit this government is pulling on us. Thats what i'm bringing to the table with HNIC2. i dont see anybody ell's in this game that has the power to do what i'm bout to do right now. there are a few big names in rap that know the information i know, and they could do it, but they conceal it and dont speak on it cause they are so wrapped up with money, fame, fashion, ect. ect....

they are too scared to loose all that or too scared that people will laugh at them for revealing this information, maybe even scared for their life. alot of our leaders were murdered for knowing too much and having the power to spread what they knew. I'm not scared of dying for my kids, people laughing at me, or whatever. I dont have a DROP of fear in me. My army in the streets is stronger then ever before and we ready. We are a positive / aggressive army wich means that were the good guys and we only use force when were forced to. We believe money is just ONE of the most powerful tools the devil uses to control us, we need it to stay alive so we make as much as possible but we dont let it make us. Dont let money make you loose focus!!! Anyway, thats what it is and thats what we bout'. If you feel the same feel free to join us, we are a army of many colors and cultures. it's not about the color of ya skin anymore, at this point you either POSITIVE or NEGATIVE who's side are you on? PRODIGYhnic2

~~~

I CAN'T STOP, I WON'T STOP:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/statusainthood/archives/2007/12/why_do_rappers.php

A couple of weeks ago, Saigon posted a long rant on his MySpace blog about how he's quitting the rap game. His reasoning: "Now I can say what the fuck I want, when I want, however the fuck I want without people feeling like they have the right to ridicule me, judge me and talk slick about me because I have this title 'Rapper' attached to my name." Today, Pitchfork ran an interview with Lupe Fiasco where Lupe talked about how the album he's got coming out is his second-to-last. His reasoning: "I'm at a creative end. I really don't think I have that much to say. And I don't want to get to the point where I'm putting out music just to put out music." In both of these cases, there seems to be some pretty sound reasoning at work, even if in both cases it's surrounded by pretension and bluster. But it's sort of striking how quickly these guys are getting tired of the music business when they've both only really just broken in. Saigon and Lupe were both on the cover of XXL's next-big-things issue a couple of months back. Between them, they've released a grand total of one album. After years of working to get into the position where major record labels are releasing and promoting their music, these guys are declaring themselves done with the business before the vast majority of the music-listening public has had a chance to figure out who they are. I still haven't heard The Cool, the new Lupe album that's coming out in a couple of weeks, but a friend who's heard it reports that he keeps saying "one more to go" throughout. It's kind of hard to get excited about rap music when the people making the music keep reminding you how over it they are.

Common mag-industry wisdom has it that you have to have three workable examples before you can write a trend-piece, so this isn't really a trend-piece. I can't think of any other young rappers who are declaring themselves through with rap, though I wouldn't be shocked if there's some random mixtape rapper out in New Jersey doing just that this second. And Saigon and Lupe are two very different cases. Lupe's long been planning to only release three albums, whereas Saigon seems to be going off on the spur of the moment; there's a good chance he'll either issue a retraction soon or just keep on as if the outburst never happened. Still, it's pretty amazing to see both of these guys making dramatic-exit talk at the exact same time. Rap has had more than its share of halfassed retirements, retirements which always turn out to be temporary. But it hasn't had a whole lot of high-profile figures who just storm out of the industry in disgust. To be sure, a whole lot of foul shit happens in the music industry, and as record sales continue to tank, there's also less money going around. But Saigon and Lupe have spent long enough in the music business that they knew what they were getting into when they signed their contracts. It baffles me that either of them can be surprised about how much bullshit is involved in making a career out of rapping.

One of the weird things about rap is that none of the richest rappers make most of their money rapping. They all have clothing lines or action-figures or signature microwave-popcorn brands or whatever, and those things generate a whole lot more money than music. But to get to the point where someone is making that microwave-popcorn money, you actually have to become a popular enough rapper that the microwave-popcorn companies of the world sit up and take notice. The biggest financial incentive to keep rapping isn't record sales or live-show fees; it's the possibility of endorsements. Another weird thing is the recent mentality that being a rapper isn't cool and so every rapper needs to constantly remind you that he's not a rapper but that he's really a master kingpin drug-dealer who also raps, just for fun. I've interviewed both Lupe and Saigon in the past, and both of them are total rap dorks, people who have studied the form for years and who take their craft seriously. But I wonder if the general devaluation of the craft of rapping has somehow seeped into every rapper who either wants to quit right now or who wants to record a few albums an then quit. If it's not cool to be a rapper anymore, and if the music business is such an exploitative mess, then why would anyone even bother? Why isn't every rapper just throwing up his hands and quitting? Is everyone on the cover of that XXL next-big-things issue going to announce a sudden retirement within the year? Or are they all going to do the honorable thing and gradually fade into obscurity instead?

~~~

I'm healing, still. I must not smoke NOTHING.
Plus, I think I fucking hate my father.
Thanks for the time and space.

Oh, I went to Wicked. I LOVED IT. I will return.
sincerely yours,
Adhimu