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.

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.

#50: Worshiping criminals

BET had a documentary on a year or so back called American Gangster. Under normal circumstances, one would say it’s simply telling a story about people the general populace might not be aware of, just giving information. After all those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it, right? Sadly, however, one has to keep in mind BET’s recent history and what kind of demographic it seems to want to court. You guessed it: ghetto people!

This isn’t a rant on BET itself, that’s another post (surely one the audience has been looking for right here or on a more specifically Black-oriented blog, where the channel is frequently ripped, so let this author not lose focus here with this long set-up). And let me state now that it was among BET’s offerings that featured fairly solid production values (just like First In: Compton, a show you should follow while it’s here). The ugly part is the context one can’t miss, because if you’ve known enough ghetto people, especially males, you’d know they’re downright fascinated by criminals. And BET, having evolved into a station ghetto people turn to, apparently couldn’t resist catering to ghetto interests by airing this series, showing history a lot of ghetto people want to repeat!

Why is the ghetto world so interested in criminals? Ghetto people especially like to keep special edition Blu-Rays (the bootleg DVD just won’t cut it in these cases) of movies like Scarface, Goodfellas, Public Enemies, and American Gangster (no relation to the above) that romanticized the dubious protagonists of these flicks as the best at their respective professions. So when the real deal exists, just like high profile athletes and rappers, everyone wants to be (or be with) that guy. Wantin’ autographs and locks of their hair and sh*t. Dare I say he’s the ghetto person’s picture perfect idea of manhood. “F*ck Warren Buffett and Barack Obama, I wanna be Nicky Barnes or Freeway Ricky Ross!”

He lives that playboy lifestyle, successfully picks up all the freaks, comes and goes as he pleases, drives flashy expensive whips with equally pricey rims on them, holds down really nasty guns (another favorite ghetto toy), regularly orders bottle service at the swankiest clubs in town…he’s the epitome of hood rich. Yet while wrapping their lips around his d*ck, people don’t wrap their heads around what kinda heinous things he might have done to get to that level. And if and when they find out, they’re quick to excuse it! If duke goes to jail, he could have raped 12 kids and smoked their mothers and these idolaters of criminals are urging him to “keep his head up”…as if he’s somehow the victim. As if he’s a political prisoner, targeted for persecution by the powers that be for living and doing righteously. No matter what, the ghetto person has the criminal’s back.

The amounts of futures such criminals have probably destroyed (whether by physically killing people or some law changes due to them) don’t rate to ghetto people. They also don’t allow in their brains that said criminal whose picture is ironed on to their T-shirt would probably just as soon have them whacked if he felt one was in the way of what he wanted. But this congregation is too busy wishing they were as tough and rebellious, too busy living vicariously through the stories of these guys (as well as hating the idea of the criminal’s other enemy, law enforcement) to even consider there’s more than one side to every story. And that all heroes have elements of their lives that would make that proverbial little boy from the Black Sox scandal cry “Say it ain’t so, Joe!”

Author’s note: Yeah, so many topics could have been #50 on the ghetto bucket list, but the hot hand (immediately inspired by the f*ckery one reads over on AllHipHop) wrote this one!

#48: Talking to people any kind of way

You ever text someone and get the response “who the f*ck is this?” and wonder why that was even necessary? You think to yourself that you could see the need to ask who someone is if you’re just curious, but did it require the seasoning of such a hostile fighting word like an F-bomb?

Ever been in line at the liquor store or the chicken and Chinese spot to see an interaction where the customer begins to flare his or her temper and begin spewing forth curses and racial and sexual orientation epithets and such as if that’s really going to get them better service as opposed to their dinner spit into? Way to resolve a dispute. The Newport you just smoked didn’t take the slightest edge off of your stress apparently.

Ever get on the bus or train knowing damn well once you get over by the local high school, parental discretion is advised? Have these kids heard nothing about how to act at home and abroad among polite and other mixed company?

Have some ghetto people lost their home training or are they simply showing they never had any in the first place? Are these folks having a series of bad days, are they just A-holes like that, or were they taught that this kind of language and attitude towards any random *ss person really is peace? And the majority of these twerps dare to assert what kind of “good Christian” they are…

Surely these same people don’t like being talked to any kind of way…unless they’re Likes To Fight Guy on the “I wish you would” tip looking to take it to someone’s chest. Oops, almost forgot, women fight with their mouth, and if you get into it with a ghetto girl, you just might shed a tear or two…because they’ll cut loose and be meeeeeeean! Really mean! You kiss your kids with that mouth, booch?

All this vulgarity, rowdiness, and belligerence from so many hood folks. Desensitized to the point zero empathy is there, zero decency, zero sense of how to treat people, even those you disagree with.

The disease has fully infected the hood, polluted Hip-Hop as a whole, the children are a bunch of potty mouths…I mean this ain’t the 50s and all that, a little colorful language expands minds every now and again…but don’t you the reader find it gets a bit over the top? Wouldn’t it seem uncalled for and inappropriate if you heard it, for lack of a better example, on Saturday morning cartoons?

What is the ghetto person’s hypertensive fascination with using cuss words?

Or the other one you should love that ghetto brothers especially drip like water? “My n*gga.”

Every five words if you eavesdrop on one of their conversations (or are forced to hear it due to the obnoxious loudness), it’s “my n*gga this, my n*gga that, my n*gga my n*gga my n*gga.” You would think they just saw Training Day for the first time the night before. It replaced “you know what I’m sayin'” earlier this decade for most overused ghetto verbiage.

It is said that people who can’t control their tongue can’t control their actions. Now if you notice such behavior in a person, why would you think it’s a good idea to make them company you keep? Or in the case of one of those Bridezilla grooms, marry it?

#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…

Peace to Dolla

You know what, say what you will about rappers of today and their subject matter and lifestyles and all that, but Dolla didn’t have to die in L.A.’s Beverly Center yesterday (way too young at frickin’ 20 at that). Surely just flew in to see the town and promote himself, only to end up unable to return home. Condolences to his loved ones. Even if this author never heard of him before yesterday.

#25: Selling you their rap CD

On avenues from Melrose to Myrtle, you’ve likely participated in the following exchange:

“Do you like Hip-Hop?”
“For you? No.”

Sad and mean, but after so much of the the exact same approach from these rappers wanting you to take a flier on them all at random, you develop a heart that pumps used motor oil.

Trust, Stuff Ghetto People Like does not believe in knocking hustles, just pointing out what goes down when it comes to some hustles, and how wild the game really is. Ghetto people try the hard sell on you con frecuencia, taking the darndest folks by surprise. It can sound like they’re practicing on you for the day they’re actually serious about getting a sale or two.

Oftentimes the spiel is fired at probably the most inappropriate moment of all: on company time. Surely you thought it was weird to be hit up about buying a rap album by a security guard, or the guy changing your oil at Jiffy Lube, or a bank teller (e-mail that I’m lyin’!), or dude that is taking your order at McDonalds. Get a $5 drink coaster with your Big Mac Value Pack!

It’s not totally a bad thing. Some of the best acts in the Hip-Hop era got their careers off the ground by flipping their music on the streets (see Too Short, Showbiz & AG, Nas, countless cats down South). The thing is way too many guys do it these days, from the Woods of Ingle to the Woods of Holly, and they’re annoying anymore. Cats don’t even stand out, looking exactly like the dude next to ’em selling incense. (They probably came together! Take blunt breaks with one another and the whole deal.)

It’s as if no one tries to get signed, they’re selling the demo right to the consumer, unmixed, unmastered. And often it isn’t even packaged in an appealing way that would fit in next to the Gang Starr and Lil Wayne on your rack. Quite likely it’s a sweaty envelope with folded corners from sitting in the pocket of homeboy’s North Face for days.

Listen up, MCs, if you got a product you reeeeally believe in, if you’re a real artist, and you aren’t just someone hitting a lick like so many other rap hucksters (many of whom actually get radio spins on Power/Hot/The Beat in your town right now), get your marketing bars up, find better and more respectful ways to demonstrate that the product is dope. Take it to college radio. Book some shows opening for someone established. Do your cuts at open mics with your albums handy. Put some in the hands of a few bar and club DJs. Hell, sell it on Myspace. Failing all that, at least have it bumping out the car trunk or in a boom box. Anything but trying to push it on someone unheard, because you may as well be panhandling. Those who know this author know I’m not a big fan of panhandlers. And don’t you dare pass me those sweaty, lice- and ear wax- ridden headphones, because I’m likely to slap them to the ground.

Yep, even in front of my evening date.

#20: Bootlegs (and other illegitimate goods)

  You hear it by every liquor store, every check cashing place, every chicken-and-chinese stand.

“Got them CDs, got them DVDs.”

The bootleg man got you when no one else does.  Need that new Makaveli? It’s on deck.  A fresh replacement copy of Soul Plane?  It’s on deck.  If it’s directed by Tyler Perry, starring Cube, or featuring T.I. or Cassie on the soundtrack, it’s on deck with the bootleg man.

Or there’s that other guy with the Econoline doors propped open….

“I got that Ed Hardy, that True Religion, that Prada…”

Don’t forget that crackhead who is a better salesman of furniture than anyone who ever worked for Levitz or Wickes.  He also got those registration tags for your whip.

It’s a bazaar every single day in the hood.  Whatever you want, for a limited time only, it’s yours if you think the price is right.

The guys that have all this fraudulent crap wouldn’t put in the work if it wasn’t so lucrative.  Wouldn’t take the time to get that illicit editor’s copy, or sneak the video camera into the advanced screening, or buy in bulk from that warehouse…or ransack your neighbor’s property!  Because somebody in the hood will take a flier on it.  (And contribute to hood squalor in the process…but we know that don’t matter!)

Suckers and others line up to make sure they got the latest flick they ain’t tryna see in the theatre (more often than not a Black one) supporting piracy, and taking dollars away from the entertainers they obviously love enough to buy something featuring them in it, missing material and crappy sound and/or picture be damned.  And we all know it’s the pits not being dipped, so ghetto corner-cutters would rather cut to the corner to have what they need to floss like a boss at the club on Friday (and drink real drinks, go figure) instead of recycling Black dollars a better way by supporting the store down the block that really needs the customers.  

Keep this in mind when the “For Lease” sign goes up a week after the one that reads “Going Out Of Business.”  Or your favorite entertainer is no longer a bankable star.  Could have gone the extra mile and waited just a little bit longer for that legit product.  But ghetto people don’t often worry about legit.  No. They care about being up on the latest for as low a price as possible.  Remember this when you see a fairly crispy pair of late-model Jordans on someone’s feet in colors you don’t remember Nike making, or the Lex on D’s you know damn well Pooky can’t afford.  When they say they got the hookup, look for the fingers crossed behind their back!  Or look for the smoker they got that deal on the Rolex from (then you’ll know who to blame for the receiving stolen property charges).

#16: Tupac by Guest Blogger Mr. Focus

Okay people here is the deal. Several folks have contacted me about taking over the website. Since I can’t decide who I want to take over the website, I will post the entries as they come. Based on the responses I will decide which person gets to take over the website. Enjoy this entry by Mr. Focus!

Let’s be honest: Tupac is the Elvis Presley for ghetto people.

Why? The man is dead as dead could be, but there are folks who pray to a Tupac altar in their house every day, keep an airbrushed shirt on their back, and look for all the subliminal instructions he left for them in his music as they wait with bated breath for Makaveli 10 to hit the bootleg man’s stock. Tupac is the rap Jesus ghetto people needed.

Once a conscious rapper of sorts, debuting with Digital Underground as a dancer, then rapping in African garb, Tupac Shakur morphed slowly but surely into the embodiment of all things hood. Tattoos in places that will have you rejected at job interviews. Wearing wifebeaters all the time with a bandana tied just so up front and the mustache lined to perfection. Brash, extremely vulgar, hypertense, with a fuse shorter than the circuit breaker in the back of a building on Martin Luther King Blvd.

And after “I Get Around,” ghetto people ate it up. Every Walkman, every radio and video show, every apartment, every Tercel and Tahoe had to get it in to the tune of three Pac songs an hour. He made you love your mama and keep an eye on your baby mama all at once. Catholic school girls were his groupies and guys who were nerds in middle school had their thug bars up in time for tenth grade with a Pac record as the textbook. There’s incense and energy drinks named after him and the whole shot. Tupac is a billion-dollar industry.

Not to mention think of how many fights and shootings broke out in house parties, classrooms, clubs, and on street corners across America. Over a damn rapper. Even if it was simply the mention of Biggie Smalls’ name when that rabid Tupac freak was in the room. You’re probably closing your closet door to hide your swap meet airbrushed, bedazzled Pac shirts right now as you read this. And you should, because it’s that shameful.

UPDATE:  Thinking everything was just jokes about the 2Pac energy drinks, as I’m sure you were, it turns out one really exists, as told by this candid liquor store photo:

As Sade would ask, is it a crime?