Do You Remember...? Soul For Real

My love, do you ever dream of candy coated rain drops- eish Soul For Real. For a minute, those brothers had us convinced that they were for real. Then they fell off 1.5 albums later and today we all play the same songs over and over again, trying to keep childhood and teenage memories alive. I always wonder what happens to artists and celebs when they fall off the popular wagon – some go to real school after realizing that the entertainment industry isn’t for them. Sometimes, they just fall off the wagon of life. That’s the worst kind of falling of one can do! Not much information is available regarding their activities over the last few years, except for the fact that Brian Dalyrimple – the oldest brother, and the mother of his child- a 28yr old Laborah Milison are accused of identity theft and orchestrating financial thefts totaling up to US$1 million from more than 145 victims in Duluth, North Carolina and 115 victims in other jurisdictions.
Now, this is hardly new news, as the story broke months ago, but still. Clearly the recession started a long ass time ago for some people. It’s tough in the screets for has beens, just as well Bobby had Whitney.

Dude... Who Killed My Music?

Ok, ok, so ever since Nas proclaimed the death of hip hop, everyone’s taken it upon
themselves to do a post-mortem to finally get to the culprit.

What a conundrum. Some people have blamed Biggie and Pac because they introduced beef to hip hop. I say nay, because it promotes competition- and frankly, I enjoy seeing a good battle every now and then. Especially because these days, the immediacy of the internets can never be underestimated: Just two years ago, you were only most likely to find diss records on sites such as ahh, sohh and realtalkny, but it always took a day to get access because a) I would be sleeping when people stateside were awake b) mobile internet was a bitch. These days boy- you know said rapper’s got that diss song on their phone and they will waste no time in uploading it to or announcing it on their website/twitter/facebook. I’ve been trying to ignore mainstream hip hop for the last few months but my favourite current beef is Game/Jayz [bwaha-no one on the corner got swagger like you cos no one on the corner’s 42]; mostly because I laffed really hard at Game, who made himself a trending topic using the standard “me against the world tag” that he adjusted to #ihategame. Beef and battles keep rappers on top of their game- as long as the shots that aren’t spared are figurative.


Then they blamed Southern Hip Hop brands like Crunk- even though the East & West Coast rappers were clearly cool with the outrageous Lil Jon- who has produced quiet a few good beats for them. Later on, people pointed fingers at poor scapegoat, Souljaboy. His empty lyrics were made fresh for the ringtone generation; they earned him over $3mil in 2007 in downloads alone. I don’t think that it’s his fault that one day he found himself getting popular on youtube and an already ailing and fickle industry took him seriously enough to let him be the hip hop custodian for so long. Respected hip hop journalist Toure called him out last year after he made the ignorant remark that if it wasn’t for slavery, he would be back in Africa without his ice and tattoos- Toure dismissed him as ignorant and immature. We can’t blame a misguided Souljaboy- has everyone completely blanked out on Nelly’s Tipdrill video when he slid the credit card in that girl’s buttcrack, and the lyrics it must be yo ass/cos it aint yo face? I’ll never forget when I first heard the great Slick Rick’s ’88 track Treat Her Like a Prostitute? It was all about how girls/women are so evil and only deserve to be treated like prostitutes until they prove their worth (sad hurt boy issues clearly). And just cos Uncle Luke of the Miami Bass group 2LiveCrew is now married to a respectable woman, it doesn’t mean they didn’t sing all the music they sang in the early 90’s.
While T-Pain is a great producer, he needs to lay off the auto tune. This is my pet hate. He should actually stop performing; we’ve had enough of that Minstrel Show already. Thanks T-Pain. There’s the door. I can think of a few moments where I was like ‘oh there goes hip hop now-for real for real!’ but it’s not just because of autotune, T-pain (he does make me sick though), Souljaboy. It’s all of that and the rest of the Coonery Congress.

Dear Flava Flav, you are a 50 yr old man with gold teeth, you wear a viking hat and you rock a clock around your neck. No matter how much they pay you for shows, they are laughing at you, not with you.


Above: The Tipdrill video- Not for the fainthearted ;)

Lethi' Walkman Yam'

My ipod shuffle's been giving me issues today. When I was younger, I never understood what my mom was talking about when she would go on about how technology is designed to fail so that you can keep purchasing it and that things aren't made like they used to be made. I'm afraid I'm starting to agree. There always used to be solutions to problems presented to me by my walkman...rewind button not working? No worries, use the pencil I was writing lyrics with to rewind the tape myself, so that I could go back and properly listen to that Mariah Carey line- I never got my lyrics wrong, by the way. I still don't.LOL

Ok, Ok, so my ipod has the 5R's but shit how many times have I had to delete my entire library from my itunes this month, just to start over again? Bullkak. Walkman yam', iwalkman yam...hawu lethi' walkman ya

Semi-Obsessed?

Ok so every now and then I search my itunes for all the girl groups of the 90's and blast that shit and do a little karaoke. I dont think I'm the only one. Maybe it's because I'm going through a quaterlife crisis and I'm reaching out to the days when I wanted to be older, but didn't have to be...Maybe I miss belting out the lyrics to Red Light Special without fully understanding what T-boz was actually saying (i'll let you touch it if you like to go down?). Who cares? The fact is, I really dig music. But lately I really can't stand a new track for longer than a week; no staying power, seen?  I love 90's music. Still. Yfm doesn't cater to me and I hate listening to the garbage the Dj's spew in between old school tracks on the other radio stations. So this is me. For now. 

**Remembers the days when I used to tape myself singing**