Voltaire - "It is said that the present is pregnant with the future."

Thomas Carlyle - "Every noble work is at first impossible."

~~~

"THE GOLDEN AGE OF DISRESPECT"... HA HA HA! SO TRUE!

By Tai Saint Louis

Fonzworth Bentley will make an appearance on NBC’s Late Night With Conan O’Brien tomorrow night (Jan 3) on the show’s second live broadcast of the new year, to promote his etiquette book Advance Your Swagger: How to Use Manners, Confidence, and Style to Get Ahead.

Like many live programs, Late Night started airing immediate reruns when the Writer’s Guild of America went on strike on November 5.

O’Brien’s show, along with The Tonight Show With Jay Leno announced in December that they would return with live programming on January 2, albeit without a writing staff, after a breakdown in negotiations between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producer’s.

"We haven’t really talked about how the writer’s strike really affected our Hip-Hop community," said Bentley speaking exclusively to AllHipHop.com. "I remember, I sent the book to everybody. Conan O’Brien was the first person that called and the week I was supposed to go on his show, the strike happened. I’ve been in limbo like everybody else. So I feel very fortunate that January 2nd will be their first day back, and I’ll be on the show Jan 3rd."

According to Bentley, Advance Your Swagger, which was released on September 25, came about as part of an effort by publishing giant Random House to release more urban books.

"They wanted me to do a book about taking yourself to the next level," explained Bentley, who records for Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music label. “I didn’t really wanna do a book about myself. What I said was needed was a book on etiquette. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that we’re really living in the golden age of disrespect. When I look at etiquette books, they don’t really speak to [that] audience per say."

The book covers a variety of topics from the magic of the words “please” and “thank you,” to the art of eating well, to cell phone and email etiquette, interviewing tips and “music industry etiquette."

"People just don’t know, they just run up to whoever they see, whatever star – Russell Simmons or Jay, or whomever," says Bentley. "A lot of time they just shove a CD; there’s no cover, there’s no artwork. You spend time writing your lyrics and going over them, and performing to your best ability, and this is your heart and soul in this? And after doing all that, you won’t even put a nice cover on it, you just walk around with a CD and a magic marker? You can’t just be walking around like that. Because for a Lyor Cohen or a LA Reid, that says to them, the way your music looks, that says to them what you think about your art.”

Fonzworth Bentley is also gearing up for the 2008 release of his debut album Cool Outrageous Lovers Of Uniquely Raw Style. (C.O.L.O.U.R.S.)

While he had planned to release the title track "C.O.L.O.U.R.S." as his first single, plans to shoot a video for the song featuring Lil’ Wayne and Faith Evans, were interrupted by the untimely death of Pimp C, who is also featured on the song.

Bentley has shot a video for his first single, due out this month, but will not release the name of the single for fear that the release will be preempted by internet file sharing.
~~~

Skillz 2007 Wrap-Up... now with video!!! :)



~~~

FAILURE IS THE NEW SUCCESS, LOL! -

(Oprah.com) -- I spent at least half my childhood drawing. By the time I got to college and signed up for my first drawing class, I was pretty comfortable with a pencil. My teacher was a brilliant draftsman named Will Reimann.
art.failure.o.jpg

To impress him, I fired up all my best tricks: lots of varied lines, fade-outs, soft gradients. One day while I was drawing, something landed on my sketch pad. It was a mechanical drafting pen.

"Use that from now on," said Mr. Reimann. And he smiled the smile of a man who has hatched an evil plot.

Oh, how I hated that damn pen! It drew a stark black line of unvarying thickness, making all my faboo pencil techniques impossible. You'd think my teacher would've been helpful, or at least forgiving. But no. He'd glance at my awkward ink drawings, groan "Oh, God," and walk away holding his head in his hands, like a migraine sufferer. My art grade plummeted. I writhed with frustration.

A few weeks later, as I sat in another class taking notes with the Loathsome Pen of Doom, something happened. Without my intention, my hand started dancing with that horrible pen. Together, they began making odd marks: hatches, overlapping circles, patches of stippling.

The next drawing I completed won a juried art show. "How did you figure out a drafting pen could do this?" one of the judges asked me.

"I failed," I told them. "Over and over again."

Since then I've had many occasions to celebrate failure, in myself and in others. From my life-coaching seat, I've noticed that the primary difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that the successful people fail more.

If you see failure as a monster stalking you, or one that has already ruined your life, take another look. That monster can become a benevolent teacher, opening your mind to successes you cannot now imagine.

The optional agony of defeat

My dog-groomer friend Laura breeds and shows prizewinning poodles. One afternoon she arrived at the off-leash dog park looking thoroughly dejected.

"What's wrong?" I asked her as our pets gamboled about.

"Ewok," said Laura, nodding mournfully toward her well-coiffed dog. "He didn't even place at the show yesterday. Didn't ... even ... place! And he just hates to lose!" Her voice was so bitter I winced. "He should have been best in show," she said. "Look at him -- he's perfect!"

I looked at Ewok. He looked fine -- but perfect? Who knew? To me, saying a poodle with long legs is better than one with short legs seems absurd. A poodle's a poodle, for heaven's sake.

I think Ewok would've agreed. He certainly didn't seem to be the one who hated losing. He'd discovered a broken Frisbee, and appeared to be experiencing the sort of rapture Saint Teresa felt when visited by God.

Laura's desolation stemmed not from what actually happened at the dog show but from her ideas about success and failure. Lacking such concepts, Ewok was simply enjoying life. Going to dog shows and winning, going to dog shows and losing, going to the park and scavenging -- from Ewok's perspective it was all good.

Meanwhile, Laura's thoughts about losing had tainted all these experiences. Thankfully, she'd managed to avoid a pitfall even worse than failure: success.

"Success is as dangerous as failure," said Lao-tzu, and any life coach knows this is true. I can't count the number of times people have told me, "I hate the job I'm doing, but I'm good at it. To do what I want, I'd have to start at zero and I might fail."

Dwelling on failure can make us miserable, but dwelling on success can turn us into galley slaves, bound to our wretched benches solely by the thought, I hate this, but at least I'm good at it.

This is especially ironic because researchers report that satisfaction thrives on challenge. Think about it: A computer game you can always win is boring; one you can win sometimes, and with considerable effort, is fun.

With time-killing games, where the stakes are very low, pretty much everyone's willing to risk failure. But when it comes to things we think really matter, like creating a career or raising children, we hunker down, tighten up, and absolutely refuse to fail. Anyway, that's the theory. The reality is, we are going to fail. Then we make things worse by refusing to accept this.

Tammy came to me distraught because her 17-year-old son, Jason -- her perfect son, whom she'd raised with perfect love, perfectly following every known rule of perfect motherhood -- had been arrested for public intoxication.

"I've failed," Tammy sobbed. "I've failed Jason; I've failed myself!"

"Yup," I said. "You got that right."

Tammy stared at me as though I'd slapped her. Clearly, that was not my line. I shrugged. "You've failed a million times, and you've succeeded a million times. Welcome to parenthood. Do you know any mothers who never fail their kids?"

"Sure," Tammy said, nodding. "A lot of my friends at the country club are perfect mothers." She wept even harder. "And they say horrible things about the bad mothers. Now they'll judge me, because Jason ... " She dissolved in sobs.

"Tell me," I said, "do you actually like any of those women?"

The sobbing stopped abruptly. There was a long moment of silence, and then Tammy seemed to transform before my eyes. She sat up straighter.

"You know, I don't," she said. "I don't really like any of them."

"I believe you," I said. "I don't know your friends, but if I had to live with someone like the person you were a minute ago, I'd start drinking, too."

"I do live with her," said Tammy wryly. "And I'd love a drink."

"Hear, hear," I said. "So go home and apologize to Jason for imitating mothers you don't even like. Try being real with him -- teenagers love that. Every moment you're real with him, you're succeeding as a mother. Every moment you lose yourself by trying to be perfect, you're failing. And the moment you accept that you're failing, you're succeeding again."

Tammy squinted at me. "You're telling me to accept failure as a mother?"

"Whenever you fail," I said. "Got any other options?"

"Well, no ... but accept failure? As a mother? I can't."

"Sure you can," I said. "Try this: Think about the fact that you failed to control Jason. Notice how you're all scrunched up, thinking, Oh, no!?"

Tammy nodded.

"Okay, now unscrunch, and instead of saying, 'Oh, no!' say, 'Oh, well ...'"

I beamed at Tammy. She waited for me to go on. I didn't.

Tammy laughed. "I can't believe this," she said. "I came here thinking you could tell me how to fix my son, and the best advice you've got is, 'Oh, well'?"

"Damn. You're right," I said. "I've totally failed you." I took a deep breath, and relaxed. "Oh, well ..."

Tammy looked at me for another long minute. Then she said, "Just your saying that makes me trust you."

This is the magic of accepting that you've done your very best but failed. Own your failure openly, publicly, with genuine regret but absolutely no shame, and you'll reap a harvest of forgiveness, trust, respect, and connection -- the things you thought you'd get by succeeding. Ironic, isn't it?

Blasting through attachments

I owe my ability to accept maternal failure to my son Adam. Though I bred young, never smoked or drank, ate right, and all that, Adam showed up with an extra chromosome, mentally retarded. Oops. From the word go, I'd failed to make him a successful student, athlete, rocket scientist. In my mind, nothing could compensate for such massive failures.

This was when I discovered that the bigger the perceived problem, the better it delivers failure's great gift: freedom from attachment to ideas about success. A lucky person escapes her enemies. But a really lucky person (as the poet Rumi puts it) "slips into a house to escape enemies, and opens the door to the other world."

This can happen in tiny ways and huge ones. The day my pencil-proficient mind accepted failure and allowed my hand to start dancing with that mechanical pen, a door opened on a new way of drawing.

Accepting that I'd failed to create a "normal" life for my child blasted away much bigger assumptions, bone-deep beliefs like "Successful mothers have smart children" and "My kids should never fail."

This hurt like a sonovabitch, but when the rubble cleared, I found myself in a world where all judgments of success and failure are arbitrary and insignificant, as ridiculous (no offense) as the American Kennel Club's definition of the "perfect" poodle. Without judgments, it's obvious that joy is available in every moment --and never in anything else.

I can see that Tammy gets this. Jason's rebellion becomes a gift as failure does for Tammy what I've seen it do for so many others: soften, mellow, calm, enrich, embolden. The poet Antonio Machado expressed it this way:

Last night as I was sleeping

I dreamt -- marvelous error! --

that I had a beehive

here inside my heart.

And the golden bees

were making white combs

and sweet honey

from my old failures.

I can't say I look forward to the failures that await me. But they'll be along in no time, so I feel lucky to know what to do when each one arrives. It will work for you, too. Unscrunch. Exhale. Let go of "Oh, no!" and embrace "Oh, well ... ." Then, whatever door opens, walk through it.

Failing upward

By my sophomore year in college, mechanical pens were my favorite drawing instruments. Trial and error (and error, and error) had made me so comfortable with them that they felt like extensions of my hands. Being a masochist and a fool, I signed up for another class from Mr. Reimann. One morning while I was drawing, something landed on my sketch pad. It was a watercolor brush.

"Use that from now on," said my teacher. "You'll hate it. You put a mark down on the paper, and half an hour later, it decides what it's going to look like."

I picked up the brush. "You're not going to help me with this, are you?"

"Well, let's put it this way," said Mr. Reimann. "The sooner you make your first 5,000 mistakes, the sooner you'll get on to the next 5,000." And he walked away smiling his evil-plot smile, having arranged yet another dance with failure, inspirer of all uninspired artists, master teacher of all master teachers.

~~~

AND THEN WE GOTTA DEAL WITH THIS:

UNTIL a few weeks ago it seemed like one of the few happy stories to emerge from an otherwise difficult year in hip-hop. UGK, the Port Arthur, Tex., duo that influenced a generation of Southern rappers, returned after a five-year hiatus. They came back bearing a sublime single, “Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You).” And they came back bearing a great double album, “Underground Kingz” (Jive/Zomba), which made its debut atop Billboard’s album chart.

Then, on Dec. 4, the news arrived: Pimp C — the duo’s flamboyant half, a slick drawler and an even slicker producer — had been found dead in his hotel room. His bereaved musical partner, Bun B, gave a handful of eloquent interviews, trying to explain what he had lost, what fans had lost.

If you’re looking for a two-word motto for hip-hop in 2007, you could do worse than that: “Keep grinding.” This was the year when the gleaming hip-hop machine — the one that minted a long string of big-name stars, from Snoop Dogg to OutKast — finally broke down, leaving rappers no alternative but to work harder, and for fewer rewards. Newcomers arrived with big singles and bigger hopes, only to fall off the charts after selling a few hundred thousand copies, if that. Hip-pop hybrids dominated the radio, but rappers themselves seemed like underground figures, for the first time in nearly two decades.

Sales are down all over, but hip-hop has been hit particularly hard. Rap sales fell 21 percent from 2005 to 2006, and that trend seems to be continuing. It’s the inevitable aftermath, perhaps, of the genre’s vertiginous rise in the 1990s, during which a series of breakout stars — Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur, the Notorious B.I.G. — figured out that they could sell millions without shaving off their rough edges. By 1997 the ubiquity of Puff Daddy helped cement hip-hop’s new image: the rapper as tycoon. Like all pop-music trends, like all economic booms, this one couldn’t last.

This was a bad year for hip-hop sales, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad year for the genre. The scrappy New York independent Koch flourished, releasing a couple of great CDs by major-label refugees: “Return of the Mac,” by Prodigy from Mobb Deep, and “Walkin’ Bank Roll,” by Project Pat. (Koch also released “We the Best,” a sanctioned mixtape by DJ Khaled that produced a couple of hip-hop hits, and “The Brick: Bodega Chronicles,” the well-received debut album from Joell Ortiz.)

And then there is Turf Talk, a loudmouthed upstart from Vallejo, Calif., who made arguably the year’s most exciting hip-hop album, “West Coast Vaccine (The Cure).” It came out through Sick Wid’ It Records, which is run by his cousin, the rapper E-40. (The album was released through a distribution deal with Navarre, which sold its music distribution business to Koch in May.) And despite Turf Talk’s flamboyant rhymes, the album has pretty much remained a secret. Without a national radio hit or even a proper music video, Turf Talk has promoted the CD mainly through West Coast regional shows, from San Diego to Tacoma, Wash.

Reached by telephone at his home in Concord, Calif., Turf Talk tried to put the best spin on a mixed-up year. “The independent game is starting to shine again,” he said. But when pressed, he said he would love to cross over to the mainstream, speaking in the third person: “Turf Talk wants to be known all across the world.”

A few years ago that might have seemed like a reasonable goal, and an attainable one. During the boom the industry was flooded with scowling optimists: small-time hustlers with dreams of big-time success. And some dreams came true. In 1998 Juvenile went from a New Orleans secret to a pop radio staple, selling five million copies of “400 Degreez”; two years later, Nelly came from nowhere (actually St. Louis) to sell six million copies of “Country Grammar.” Overall CD sales peaked in 2000, and by then even second-tier major-label rappers were routinely earning gold plaques for shipping half a million CDs.

Because hip-hop is so intensely self-aware, and self-reflexive, it came to be known as big-money music, a genre obsessed with its own success. If we are now entering an age of diminished commercial expectations, that will inevitably change how hip-hop sounds too.

How bad are the numbers? Well, no rapper was more diminished by 2007 than 50 Cent, who challenged Kanye West to a sales battle and lost. His solid but not thrilling recent album, “Curtis” (Shady/Aftermath/Interscope), has sold about 1.2 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan; considering that he’s supposed to be the genre’s biggest star, that’s a disaster. (His 2005 album, “The Massacre,” sold more than five million.) In fact “Curtis” has sold about the same as T. I.’s “T. I. vs. T. I. P.” (Atlantic), the underwhelming and underperforming follow-up to his great 2006 album, “King,” which sold about 1.6 million.

This year veterans like Jay-Z and Wu-Tang Clan also returned, pleasing old fans but not, for the most part, making new ones. And Lil Wayne released another slew of great mixtapes — available for free download, not for sale. Meanwhile Mr. West’s “Graduation” (Roc-A-Fella/Island Def Jam), which stands at 1.8 million sold and counting, is the only hip-hop album of the year that really seems like a hit, although he loves to portray himself as outside the hip-hop mainstream. Only one problem: After a year when the hitmaker Fabolous and the bohemian Common sold about equally, as did the BET favorite Yung Joc and the indie-rap alumnus Talib Kweli, it’s not clear that there’s still a hip-hop mainstream to be outside.

And eager newcomers discovered that the definition of success has changed. Rich Boy, Shop Boyz, Plies, Hurricane Chris and Soulja Boy Tell’em all released major-label debuts, buoyed by big, lovable hits: “Throw Some D’s,” “Party Like a Rockstar,” “Shawty,” “A Bay Bay” and “Crank That (Soulja Boy).” But of those only Soulja Boy has managed to sell half a million CDs. Hurricane Chris’s disappointing CD, “51/50 Ratchet” (Polo Grounds/J Records), has sold only about 80,000 copies. To a major label that number is almost indistinguishable from zero. (Despite the hit the No. 1 chart debut and the half-decade of anticipation, UGK’s triumphant double album hasn’t reached the half-million mark either.)

Hip-hop has always had a complicated relationship with full-length albums. They’re both too long (for impatient hit lovers) and too short (for ephemera- obsessed mixtape listeners). And even though the South has been hip-hop’s most fertile region since the 1990s, the industry, based in New York and Los Angeles, harbors a lingering anti-Southern bias. Southern rappers are often viewed as one-hit wonders, and that can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. By the time Rich Boy, from Mobile, Ala., tried to drum up interest in his excellent fourth single, “Let’s Get This Paper,” it seemed everybody had already moved on.

At least independent-label rappers have no one to blame. Turf Talk knew from the start that he would have to fight for his album, which he released in June. “I had a lot of hopes for ‘West Coast Vaccine,’ that’s why I’m still pushing it now,” he said, adding that he was finalizing plans for a video. The song he chose was “Popo’s,” a sleek and infectious collaboration with E-40, who adds a memorable touch: a thunderous “Oooh!” In his mesmerizing verses, Turf Talk raps about selling drugs and avoiding the police. His breathless rhymes — “I’m tryna stack every dollar,” he pants — evoke not a kingpin’s confidence but a survivor’s tenacity.

It’s easy to romanticize Turf Talk’s grass-roots approach: his do-it-yourself video shoot, his evident pride in how much he has accomplished on his own, his commitment to the family business. But for him the promise of exposure and the long shot at stardom are too tempting to reject.

“I love the independent money,” he said. “I’m living good, I drive nice cars. But right now, if you asked me, I’d say, ‘Turf Talk wants to go major.’ Because you can always come back to independent.”

That’s what Prodigy discovered. Last year his duo, Mobb Deep, flopped with “Blood Money,” a misconceived CD on 50 Cent’s label, G Unit, an Interscope imprint. This year he went independent for “Return of the Mac,” a hallucinogenic, willfully obscure solo album that evokes the grimy old New York, and the grimy old Prodigy too. (It sold about 130,000 copies.) He has a new album scheduled for next year, though he pleaded guilty in October to gun possession and was sentenced to three and a half years. His new single, “ABC’s,” begins with a halfway defensive boast: “It don’t matter who poppin’ for the moment/P is forever.” If you’re not making hits, why not claim to be making history?

Like Prodigy, Project Pat is a major-label refugee. He emerged from Memphis in the late ’90s and swiftly took advantage of the hip-hop boom. “Chickenhead,” his memorable but medium-sized hit (it peaked at No. 24 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart), helped his 2001 major-label album, “Mista Don’t Play: Everythangs Workin,” sell nearly 1.1 million copies. (Five years ago, in other words, Project Pat sold about as well as 50 Cent sells today.)

After a prison sentence and an underperforming major-label comeback, Project Pat made his Koch debut with “Walkin’ Bank Roll.” The boast in the title track is a defiant (and typically absurd) response to his diminished commercial success: “I’m a walkin’ bank roll/You can rubber-band me,” he keeps shouting, and his glee is infectious. It’s a weird, funny little album; though it has sold only about 40,000 copies, it feels triumphant.

Is it possible to hear a shrug over the phone? Project Pat, when asked about his newfound independence, seemed profoundly unimpressed. “It’s the same old, same old,” he shouted, over the roar of a Mortal Kombat game, though he conceded, “People say they liked it better.” He said he was planning his next album and gearing up for more live dates, which are crucial for independent acts. “Alaska — yessirrr, Anchorage,” he said, sounding a bit like the eccentric rapper from the CDs. “They asked for me per-son-al-ly.”

Under-the-radar releases, weird tour schedules, modest sales figures: none of this is new. The success of Southern hip-hop in the last decade was built on a foundation of independent and independent-minded rappers, many of whom worked with the scrappy regional distributor Southwest Wholesale, which is now closed, like many of the little shops it used to serve. In an earlier era these regional scenes were farm teams for the industry, grooming the top players and then sending them up to the big leagues. But what if there are no big leagues anymore? What if there’s no major label willing or able to help Turf Talk get his platinum plaque? Would his next album sound as brash? Will his musical descendants be as motivated? The mainstream hip-hop industry relies on a thriving underground, but isn’t the reverse also true?

Eventually, a (new?) group of executives will find a business model that doesn’t depend on shiny plastic discs, or digital tracks bundled together to approximate them. But for now the major league is starting to look a lot like the minor one. And in ways good and bad and utterly unpredictable, rappers may have to reconsider their place in the universe, and their audience. Some will redouble their commitment to nonsense, like Project Pat. Some will wallow in their misery, like Prodigy. Some will merely revel in their own loudmouthiness, like Turf Talk, hoping someone will pay attention. But if sales keep falling, more and more rappers will have to face the fact that they aren’t addressing a crowd, just a sliver of one.

On Oct. 14, less than two months before Pimp C’s death, there was another death in the Houston hip-hop family. His name was Big Moe, and he died of a heart attack. He was a much more local figure than Pimp C: a crooner turned rapper and an associate of DJ Screw, who popularized the art of remixing records by slowing them down. (DJ Screw died in 2000.) Big Moe’s best tracks are sublime and disorienting. His was a huge, wobbly sing- rapping voice, often paired with slowed-down drums and lyrics extolling the pleasures of cough syrup.

Big Moe eventually got himself a deal, but his odd and entertaining 2002 major- label debut, “Purple World” (Priority/Capitol), quickly disappeared, and soon he was back to independent releases. It’s no slight to his legacy to say that when news of his death arrived in October, even most hip-hop fans didn’t know who he was. That’s all right. Music that seems lost — there’s a head-spinning selection on “Big Moe Classics Volume One” (Wreckshop) — will be found, over and over again. And after this dispiriting year, it’s not hard to admire Big Moe’s little career. He made secrets, not hits, but so what? He kept grinding.

~~~



The Moment I Feared

Besides the time I let the Aziatic One know that Pieces of a Man was a piece of crap, here are a few times I remember when an artist and his entourage were angry enough to want to bruise my two dimples. (My conversations with Curtis and the Benzino face-off will be omitted at least for the time being. Ha!) I wonder what the statue of limitation is for getting your ass kicked for something you wrote? Oh well.

Dres (from Black Sheep)
We all know what majestic masterwork A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing was but I had the unfortunate job of being the first one to inform my fellow Queens brethren that his second album Non-Fiction was a true shit sandwich.

It was a write-up in One Nut magazine, an independent publication based in Connecticut owned by a gentleman named Barry Wade. Barry would pay me about 30-50 dollars to review as many rap albums I could get my hands on. Fun fact: When I retired from that gig, kris ex filled in the kid’s shoes. Sorry exo!

Anyways, the story goes Dres was up at Mercury Records (yeah that really was a label) and he read the review and after threatening his publicist Chris Chambers from OutKast fame for my number he called my crib irate. I still lived with my parents then and my grandma was on the other line, I clicked over and the fun began.

I remember he kept yelling “One Nut? You’re one nut! You’re one nut!” This was followed with the usual when he and his peoples see me it’s on sight. Back then, dude was rolling with The Legion. Jingle jangle my ass—those was some big-ass niggas. And I think one was from my projects, Woodside which had me extra p-noid. I remember being at a Jive show where Keith Murray’s crew got into it with R.A. The Rugged Man (then Crustified Dibbs) and I Dame dashed it towards the E train when Molecules came through the door.

Sadat X.
This is actually the only real time (knock on wood) that a rapper actually put his hands on me. Basically, the story goes, I shitted on the Wild Cowboys album not once, but twice. In CMJ magazine where I wrote a regular column and Vibe where they paid me for a review. In retrospect, I regret doing it but back then I needed the dough. I also used to be paid by labels to write artist bios but I would still turn around and write a bad review of their albums if warranted. Anyways we had some mutual acquaintances (if you know what I mean) and X felt my critical attack was personal. So he called looking for me at the ego trip offices and eventually we bumped heads at that year’s Vibe Music Seminar. The irony is that night we both had on some crispy Yankee fitted caps and while I was sitting with my peoples at a table X approached. He barked in my ear, and when I rose up he snuffed me on some schoolyard shit. My ego trip crew rose to my defense and X got some back-up himself in the form of Duck Down’s BCC. The wild cowboys were in Bucktown but thankfully security shut the shenanigans down.

There’s more. But it seems like I’m dwelling too much on the past. I’m gonna come up with some current shit. Stay tuned. No flipping!

WWW.XXLMAG.COM from Elliott Wilson, the HYNIC.

These are the moments I fear too.

Once, I read:
"If you are going to tell the truth, be funny. Or else people will kill you."

Yes. Be funny. Or too real for reality.

OR ELSE!

I still love you,
Mindbender Supreme, creator extraordinaire