Peace to Apache

Apache – Gangsta Bitch
Hit the Twitter this morning (follow us if you aren’t already) and found out the news. Again, as this author said on the Teddy Pendergrass entry, younger deaths hurt the heart like no other, but if hearing such news brought back good memories, then a man’s time walking among us wasn’t a waste.

Bump the cut and you’ll understand why that sound will live forever, regardless of pop rap whims. That was a downright electric time in Hip-Hop, sparking trends that some of the current faves keep alive to this day for a reason.

#57: Teddy Pendergrass

This author has an understanding that death is generally sad, but that many deaths can actually make you smile. In these cases, after you say “aw, damn, s/he died?!?” you smile because you think back to someone’s heyday and the legacy they left. You can smile if someone has lived a life that was fairly full and healthy. Like that guy that came up with Gumby. You hear that he passed and you begin to think “man, I used to love Gumby!” Ghetto people might think of Eddie Murphy doing Gumby on SNL or a Gumby fade back in the new jack swing era…but I digress.

The deaths that don’t bring smiles, that are sad as hell, are those where one was robbed of promise and potential upon death or somewhere down the line prior to death. Like young actors and athletes. Say, Len Bias or MC Trouble or River Phoenix. Someone where the next big thing they were up to was just around the corner (see John Ritter, for example).

Or in Teddy Pendergrass’s case, he didn’t get to continue or finish his career on his terms. The man gets paralyzed in a car accident in 1982 and that was that. Similar to how you think about what might have been had Jay Williams of Duke and the Chicago Bulls not hopped his tail on a motorcycle and crashed it or had Christopher Reeve not had that horse-riding accident or had the D.O.C. not crushed his voice box or Lauryn Hill not decided to start poppin’ out babies by a Marley kid…or if John Belushi and Chris Farley didn’t have drug issues…or if Eazy-E had wrapped it up…no telling what they might have had left in the tank, what ideas they had swimming in their heads. Death or no death, it’s always sad when the end comes way too soon, and the whole deal is cheapened into being a moment in time.

Ain’t like this author can’t live with that, one doesn’t need it to be 1979 or ’86 or 2001 or whatever, f*ck all that, one should embrace the future, the show gotta go on. Still though, all rambling aside, back to the point–what was the point? Ah, doesn’t really matter. The ghetto knows one thing though. Teddy cuts sure came in handy for getting some draws off. Those of you about 28-35, just ask ya mama. Her ready *ss probably threw hers on stage when he rocked the Total Experience back in the day. Couldn’t have him, so she settled for your daddy!

Don’t shoot the messenger.

Crips in New York City?!?

Are you f*cking kidding me?

Unbelievable.

One of those kids is yellin’ “cuzz”…it don’t even sound right in that accent, like a mockery almost.

Far be it from this author to question anyone’s thug thizzle…I don’t even think it’s about turning the streets out on that tip for these particular guys, seems like it’s a rap thing.

This could have been a “You can’t make this stuff up” entry, but it was just beyond bizarre to see this. Don’t get it twisted, I got used to NYC-style Bloods, but I also know that what they do is different. Generally though, it’s like this in my mind, if you’re gonna be thuggin’, the least you can do is stay in your city’s lane. Bay Area do their Bay thing, Chicago and the Midwest stick to Folks and People, New York should stick to Decepticons and razor blades in the mouth and buck fiftyin’ people (not that I want to see that), and Crippin’ and Bloodin’ needs to be left to SoCal and wherever it made its way to pre-The Chronic. For a style of thuggin’ to rise in a place known for a different home brew? It’s just odd.

About as odd as that Champ MC video “Keep It On The Real”, with lowrider Impalas in the middle of the Bronx.

What’s next, Nortenos and Surenos in France or some sh*t?

UPDATE: Researched it some more and it seems that Crips have been around in the Tri-State and other northeast US areas since at least ’96. Doesn’t take away from my idea that NYC just looks weird embracing a foreign style of thuggery. And they could be very true and sincere to this, showing solidarity with SoCal sets and everything. I’m just sayin’, between this and those 508 dudes, the streets are out of control, things done changed.

You can’t make this stuff up #7

So after this author gets thru watching NCIS: Los Angeles (don’t sleep, excellent show, I never miss an episode), I click over to the news, and oh so many stories in, they talk about these cats in New Bedford, MA, who get arrested for making a “f*ck law enforcement” type song. At first, you’d be like, what is this, ’92? But before you grow a tie-top hat and Zubaz, the thing was, they were naming names, not just any names, but those of specific police officers, their actual probation officers, so on and so forth. No DA worth his salt is gonna sit back and let that go down without f*ckin’ with somebody.

And as 2520 as these dudes come, they aren’t exactly the Icy Hot Stuntaz. They look like they get down for real. Who knew there was a 2520 hood out there that was that style of grimy? And though the song doesn’t sound mixed very well and these cats drop F-bombs like they’re going out of style, dare I say it’s overall actually pretty dope! Old girl from “It’s So Cold In The D” should take notes. They got a future with street cred attached once their violation lid is up.

UPDATE: As stated when this author first reported for you to decide, the actual vid is lawn gawn, so this is the closest you’ll get to hearing the sound (until maybe those cats or one of their boys cut an edited version…dare I say they should be heard from again with something, LOL. Somebody will sign they *ss even in these days and times):

Click here for the full story.

“It’s So Cold In The D”

Detroit, stand up…no, SIT DOWN!

This author knows he’s a year late to this, but I had to expose it to more people, for the sheer comedy of it.

Made by some chick named T-Baby (how very original of her)…and she proves herself to be completely tone deaf. I hope she rides her baby daddy better than she rides beats (then again, maybe not, she’ll probably crank out a Down Syndrome kid like Precious). Plus how the f*ck was she s’posed to keep the beat (pun intended, watch the vid, thank me later) if whoever’s on the boards recording her ain’t telling her anything? Sitting there just takin’ her money (yeah, studio time is expensive, but f*ck and that, you should have concern for your reputation). And she’s clearly not doing this as a joke, but taking herself very seriously…though I don’t think her entourage behind her got the memo (guess her hardrock cousins weren’t available that day).

Way to demonstrate why they should have never given ghetto people technology…or electricity to power it.

Straight disgrace to Detroit rap. Not to condone violence against women, but House Shoes should stomp her out in house shoes. Trick Trick need to slap that trick trick. Guilty Simpson should earn his name and slash her with a butterknife or something. Fight dull with dull.

They probably roadblocked the bridge and the tunnel to Windsor the day this cut dropped in order to slow down the next Great Migration. Detroit’s had enough of a brain drain already.

Message be damned, not many people are meant to rap. I mean really, she’s what’s left over after the rest of the Detroit Hip-Hop scene moves to L.A.? She makes Soulja Boy and Gucci Mane look like Rakim and Kane. It couldn’t have been THAT cold in the D when she cranked this out, right? Certainly wasn’t the day of the video shoot, what with her in orange hair to match her printed hoodie. I hope she got her money back from the people behind the camera, then gave them 1 star on Yelp or whatever.

And she got her goddamn nerve offering this as a ringtone! Isn’t having song ringtones played out now?

There’s literally 139 response videos to this on YouTube. But f*ck all that, comment here when you’re done.

Special thanks to Maximillian over on Very Smart Brothas for putting me on to this.

#43: Cookout holidays

There’s three types of holidays:
-the giftin’ kind (e.g. Chrismaboxihanukwanzakah AKA the whole month of December, Mother’s Day), where women and children always want some sh*t…
-the drinkin’ kind (NYE, St. Pats, Cinco de Mayo…really, all of them, but specifically those), the bar’s, club’s, liquor store’s, and freeloading female’s best friend, and…
-the grillin’ kind (could be the whole season of summer, but specifically Memorial Day weekend, July 4th weekend, and Labor Day weekend).

This is the type of holiday where there’s suddenly not a parking space in sight, mad kids you never met will be runnin’ around, and e’ybody feel like they can throw down. Swear they got the best ribs, the best carne asada, the best chicken, best brisket or brats or links.

Vegetarians, as you have probably figured out by now, ain’t welcome and the ghetto people who make up the bulk of the crowd will feel threatened by them and make remarks about how they can’t live without meat! So they’re up crap’s creek unless they’re interested in the potato salad with paprika and eggs and green onions and other random *ss ingredients (what in holy hell is a pimento?).

Anyway, all these foods you will take a plate of home, then forget all about as it goes bad inside your fridge…because you already know too many cooks spoil the pot(luck), but you gotta humor the sensitive bastards who made it lest you get made to feel feel guilty…

And of course you know what else is gonna happen when ghetto people get pepped up. That’s right, sweet babies, your ears will bear witness to the f*ckery known as a soundclash (clash being the key part of that term). Because there will be that DJ that doesn’t give a f*ck enough to have turntables as he opts for his dual CD player and a zip case full of bootlegs and burns of the same damn Tupac and reggaeton and oldies you can hear on a day heading home from work played with no kinda blends involved. That dude is also unequivocally over 35. And his opponent: that one cousin or boyfriend who swears his trunk rattlin’ *ss Chevy is bumpin’, so he just GOTS to have his door wide open as he wears Young Jeezy the f*ck out.

Oh, but there will be a wildcard, and that’s that dude that rides the wide *ss Harley with fringes on it. He’s sure to come rip snortin’ in the dance like he’s the absolute don playin’ Teddy Pendergrass or whatever super-lover artist was hot when he was younger.

Total noise pollution (which could get uglier if the karaoke starts) to add on to the air pollution of the burning flesh of the piggy piggy. Because the ghetto cookout just isn’t fine if the attendees can’t dine on swine. It’s a party, y’all, to which the 20-somethings will have blunts in rotation, the 13-year-old girls will bang out the stank dance of the month, and that one uncle the family suspiciously knows about is in the background grabbin’ his meat.

What, I was just talkin’ about the sliced beef!

#41: Taking rap(s) too seriously

Studio gangstas exist because rap’s biggest problem since the rise of the thugs and “roughnecks” has been the idiot fans (and some rappers’ colleagues) who feel that keeping it real actually means that rappers must live exactly what they say in rhymes (that subject matter usually being some hardcore dirt or illegal way they got extreme stacks before they first hit the mic). To these people (usually ghetto), there’s no such thing as a persona or a character, no such thing as creative license.

Somehow this “keep it real” contingent never got the memo that a rap song isn’t an interview with a given rapper.

Some, to be sure, actually do rap about their real current lives or true experiences. Or even base fictional raps on something that really happened, ripped from national headlines or their personal ones.

But one should be able to paint whatever type of picture they like without some weirdo attaching these works to how the performer actually lives. Many rappers are their own worst enemy, as these lyrical Brunos never step out of character, and perpetuate the idea that this should be the normative of Hip-Hop. Even wrestlers change it up when they get out of the polyester daduntaduns.

Overemphasizing that other idea of “realness” is what has poisoned the rap climate for so long. It’s partly how Tupac and Biggie got killed, it’s partly why so much corny E-thuggery is posted to rap sites like allhiphop.com or DubCNN, it’s partly why so many MCs (like Max B and Shyne) go catch cases and end their own careers.

It’s really disrespectful to the beauty of what Hip-Hop has been and still could be. You don’t see this f*ckery go on in rock or jazz, not even with these all-too-closely-associated R&B artists.

And it’s paradoxically hilarious that these homophobic alpha males are analyzing every square inch of the life of another man as if they’re getting paid for it. Message to that man in question who rolls like this: If another dude was on your tip like that, living vicariously through you, you’d call him all kinds of queers, right? Of course you would, the world already knows how people like you are. You don’t think you look some kinda way all in a rapper’s personal business (or that of some sports figure, for that matter)? *cue the plea copping that it’s supposedly different*

And leave it to this idiocy that you got rappers not admitting to or proud to have perfectly legit jobs or degrees in the name of higher street cred. For the sake of feeling right listening to a record, one would rather that someone getting smoked or turned out on crack actually happened, and at that rapper’s hand! As if that makes the beat sound better in the speakers or some sh*t…

You can’t make this stuff up #4

In the immortal words of Black Sheep’s Mista Lawnge, “Vaaaaaan Damme!”

Of course we knew Jacko’s name would be used to make mad people money (and ratings–say hi, BET!)…and of course people go mad in the process:

Because yeah, Michael Jackson not only makes people hungry on the evening dinner hunt, but in the obvious way he was out to shape his image, he really wanted his name associated with fried chicken.

Hoodie Award winning fried chicken at that. And as insult to injury, they had the nerve to not even offer white meat.

The hood shows in very laughable and shameless ways that it sometimes just doesn’t get it. Vaaaaaan Damme…

#38: Michael Jackson

Regardless of overall ghetto ideology, understand this: Ghetto people, hood folks, whatever you want to call them, fox with Michael Jackson, always had, always will.

The thugs, the smokers, workaday people, hoochie mamas, uber snobs, churchy folks, foreigners who own the shops, every single generation alive right now and they kids, any living condition you could possibly think of, fox with MJ.

The hood was on those Beat It and Thriller jackets real tough along with the sequin gloves and weren’t afraid to admit it. So many artists the hood appreciates got some of their early and/or current steez from Michael. Dr. Dre in his World Class Wreckin’ Cru days. Ginuwine. Usher. Ne-Yo and Chris Brown. Cats that were singin’, rappin’, producing, startin’ record labels all likely dreamed of being involved in a Michael Jackson cut. Because the world watched him like Monday Night Football, or more to the point, the World Cup. He may not have been in the hood long beyond blowing up out of Gary, Indiana as a child, but he was the son of every hood, and many in the hood ate due to his existence.

Trust, you saw bootleg t-shirts of the month when his albums and concert tours were churnin’? You gon’ see ’em this weekend with EXTRA strength!!

Surely many wondered as this author did (including before even the news broke) how large the story of the death of a guy like Michael Jackson would be. An icon probably matched only by Michael Jordan, maybe Madonna…but we’re not gonna go there today.

Could this be the day pop music died, as said on the news? As with the foundation he laid mentioned above, probably not. The show went on when Pac and Biggie returned, the show went on when Elvis died, the show went on when so many others died (or fell off), so the machine will keep churnin’. But again, with the foundation he laid mentioned above, the legacy and doors opened are arguably unmatched.

The term King Of Pop wasn’t just a marketing tagline. It was already understood before it was even coined to promote the Dangerous album, back in ’91. When Jam first came out, this author could have swore that was Chubb Rock on the mic, until I was informed it was Heavy D…but I digress. Back on that generation thing, it was one thing that the Jackson 5 were them boys in the 60s right next to Elvis and the Beatles. It was another that they fit right in in the 70s with all those disco and funk acts. But in those damn 80s though. Certain elements of pop culture were just…larger than life in the frickin’ 80s. Knight Rider & A-Team. Dallas & Dynasty. Lakers & Celtics. Transformers & G.I.Joe. Hulk Hogan. Mike Tyson. Michael Jackson. Elements of culture that rocked those who grew up in the 80s and beyond. Game changers.

MTV got on board because his videos were EVENTS, like the Super Bowl or the Olympics. Punk *ss MTV were the folks who wouldn’t play a single record that wasn’t by a white rock artist. Ray Parker Jr.’s “The Other Woman” was turned down because he had a white woman on his arm and MTV didn’t want to upset the likely racist viewership they were courting in such places as the Bible Belt. MJ’s music had the clout to apply the undeniable pressure necessary for MTV to cut the crap and play not only his material, but Lionel Richie! Jacko arguably made Yo! MTV Raps, Fade To Black, MTV Jams and Black Real World cast members possible.

Oh yeah, that wonderful nickname. Jacko. Short for Wacko Jacko, as the Brits would call him. Yeah, the hood knew that something was off with him. And we ain’t talkin’ the initial nose job: no one really tripped when that happened. Pallin’ around with Emmanuel Lewis, no big deal (back then anyway). Could even look past having a pet chimp. But when all the other stuff rolled in regarding kids that looked noways Black and Jesus Juice and some of the other…eccentricities made headlines every frickin’ week for some 25 odd years, the ghetto didn’t clap to it…

But oh, bet your bottom dollar that albums like Bad, Dangerous, even History and Invincible, were for them trucks. Many a Suburban piloted by the Billy-est of Bad*sses had some Michael subbin’ right in the mix with one of those Lil Young Boy rappers. And you better believe the parties and barbecues with the fam went hard when “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” was thrown on the same way they would to the latest freaky dance cut.

NBA commissioner David Stern said recently, and I paraphrase, that there are two things that unite a people. The house of worship (church, synagogue, the rally, masjid, what have you), and the house of sports worship (you know schools, cities, and countries get up with great pride for its team winning a title). Michael Jackson was, and is to this day, yet a third.

By the way, what a busy news day: death of Michael, death of Farrah Fawcett, the Iran craziness, NBA draft…this author remembers two others like this. Sammy Davis Jr. and Jim Henson passing on the same day in 1990, and Johnny Cash and John Ritter returning the same day in 2003. And that thing about deaths of famous people going in threes is some wild space sh*t…but again, we’re not gonna explore that one.

#36: Haters

Haters make the ghetto world go round. Ghetto people are obsessed with haters. Katt Williams told the ghetto faithful, if one doesn’t have enough haters, he needs to do what it takes to get his hater army up.

Why? Because hate is big business. The hater effect is realer than the Oprah effect. More extremely large rims are sold in the ghetto for the Chevy crowd to build ghetto monster trucks with, not because they think it actually looks good, but because it gives the haters fits!

Haters give a ghetto person another thing they hold in high (or low) regard: a target. A ghetto person can breathe again, has a new life, something to look forward to every waking morning, knowing that Jesus provided them a new hater to make or break the day of, as they turn their swag on, buy bigger shines, and give the haters another reason to make a bitter beer face. One who has a hater to focus on has new pep in their step.

There was once a player in a now-defunct football league called the XFL who went by the name He Hate Me on the back of his jersey! He had that good football-playing job due to the haters who inspired him to have them hating him more and more.

Teenage Beckys usually kill themselves if hate is coming their way because they aren’t wired to take the pressure like ghetto people are. Ghetto people hear these stories and wonder “what the hell was wrong with them?” They took themselves off the planet over haters instead of milking it for all it’s worth! Haters give one an opening to vent some frustrations, as a hater punching bag is preferred to seeing a therapist.

This means Kobe and the Lakers should feel good about their status in the hate community. Means they’re doing something right.

Haters aren’t a top-3 subject of raps for nothing. The street cred grows bigger with the haters to back it up. And ghetto women don’t feel right if a hater woman doesn’t have interest in taking her man. Haters are the spice of ghetto life.

On a side note, the following shirt is just wrong…well, at least in context: