For years, we’ve been trying to figure out how to get kids to stop schlumping each other at the tender ages of 12-19.

“Wait,” they’d say. And nary an adult ever offered up a really good reason as to not get to some teenage sexxing. Well, aside from that whole teenage pregnancy thing and teenage parenthood thing. But that’s the girl’s problem right?!

Well, NOW, I’ll be damned if we don’t have the best way to reach the kids. By now most folks have heard about the CDC study that claims 1 in 4 teenage girls has an STD. To wit:

At least one in four teenage girls nationwide has a sexually transmitted disease, or more than 3 million teens, according to the first study of its kind in this age group.

A virus that causes cervical cancer is by far the most common sexually transmitted infection in teen girls aged 14 to 19, while the highest overall prevalence is among black girls — nearly half the blacks studied had at least one STD. That rate compared with 20 percent among both whites and Mexican-American teens, the study from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

Um damn.

It seems that teenage pregnancy is on the decline these days which means that kids are either taking the route to abstain or are being smarter about their protective practices. And honestly, I’m not sure school of thought I believe more. With so much drama in the LBC…

Ooops.

With so much information out there in the world today available to a younger generation that’s clearly into information, it’s quite possible that little girls are just saying “No” like we used to do to drugs. Word to Nancy Reagan. However, that same information might be scaring boys into rocking the Jimmie hats. Though I wonder if condom consumption is at an all time high.

But clearly there are lots of kids who are still going to be fucking. It’s inevitable and it’s life. Grownups should accept it and make sure that you provide your kids with all the information they need to make informed decisions. So, for the rest of the kids who will inevitably be fucking, I suggest that we plaster a banner in every classroom across the nation that says:

THERE ARE 20 GIRLS IN THIS CLASS. 5 OF THEM MIGHT BE BURNING. ARE YOU REALLY WILLING TO TAKE THE CHANCE ON BEING WRONG?

Mister…I’m burning up…mister. What have I done stuck my dick in? ~ “Look Who’s Burnin’” Ice Cube Death Certificate

Thing is, I’m half serious about this. For some reason, the risk of pregnancy doesn’t register with boys and in many cases young girls. But throw in a little, “Boy, you might fuck around with the wrong girl and your dick might fall off. No really, read this study from CDC, 25 percent of the girls in your school got something!!!”

Who cares if the math is a little fuzzy or the extrapolation is a wee bit off. The message clearly wouldn’t get across to many boys but I’ll bet if you’d told me in high school when I got my career off the ground that these chicks were running around as internal laboratories, I might have put the career on hold.

Who am I kidding. Young boys don’t care. They’re dumb like the dude Dru on the new season of BET’s College Hill. All they want is pussy.

Nevermind.

It’s a buyers market right now in these streets. If you’re looking for a home across the nation, chances are that you’re able to do some negotiating.

Unless you’re happy ass lives in New York City–specifically Manhattan.

As per CNN.com: Manhattan Home Prices: Still Crazy

Of course, it makes perfect sense to anybody who spends a few moments thinking about it. Manhattan is an island.

Class…what’s an island?

Isaac: Island is what happens before I get off the plane!

Oy vey. My guitar gently weeps for education in this country.

An island is a body of land surrounded by water. And do you know what that means? It means that there is no additional land in Manhattan. You can only build up unlike nearly everywhere else in the nation that’s begun to sprawl. Which of course means that the demand is outstripping supply.

See, unbuyers market. Those that can read might also refer to this as a “seller’s market”.

Peep game:

The median (midpoint) price for a condo or co-op apartment rose 15 percent to $915,000, according to the Corcoran Group, one of New York’s biggest brokers. Surveys by two other brokerages, Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead, showed 14 percent growth, to $828,000.

A survey by Prudential Douglas Elliman showed lower growth, at 6.4 percent, but a median price of $850,000.

Got damn. I’d love to say that puts housing prices in D.C. in perspective, however, I still think that prices are just too damn high here as well. There is no reason that a shell of a townhome should cost $400,000 in a neighborhood where folks still get robbed in broad daylight.

Like mine.

What this does let me know is that it is very likely that there is no way in Hades I’ll ever be copping a spot in Manhattan. Unless…

Even Manhattan’s bargain (comparatively) areas are getting into the act. “Prices are way up, uptown,” said Miller, “and the market share is much higher.” Many Manhattanites, priced out of other areas, have turned to Harlem and points north.

Hmm…do tell.

Corcoran lists a two-bedroom, 2,000 square-foot condo in Central Harlem for nearly $1.8 million. All told, Harlem prices rose a whopping 56 percent this year, to a median of $610,000, according to Halstead.

According to Liebman, Harlem will be a very hot market. “It’s easily commutable, many of the buildings have Central Park views and there are a lot of great buildings to redevelop; it has good bones. You get the most bang for the buck there.”

Ruh-roh.

You know, I’m not from New York but have been enough times where the allure of the city doesn’t excite me anymore. Now it’s just another place. However, I’ve always had this mystical like view of Harlem and it’s importance to the Black community.

It had a Renaissance for God’s sake. Do you realize how many niggas know what Renaissance mean solely because of the Harlem Renaissance?!

So with people looking for more bang for their buck, and rightfully so, you do realize that Harlem as we once knew it is ripe for the pickings and clearly on the way out. Black people?!

Do you hear me?

Harlem is on the way out.

Interesting enough, it almost baffles me why it’s taken so long for Harlem to completely flip anyway. Sure there are lots of white people making that trek currently. I remember walking down 125th Street and seeings lots of white people and thinking to myself, “I wondered when this was going to happen.”

Though let me also say this, I’m not sure who my world would react to the loss of both Harlem AND Bed-Stuy, as is happening. That’s just too much of a shock to my system. It’s like losing Morehouse AND Howard.

Fact is, housing is cheaper at a time when nationwide, gentrification is happening left and right. As much as I theoretically hate gentrification, I do understand it’s social implications. Though apparently all the Black folks in my neighbhorhood didn’t get the memo since white people STAY losing in my neighborhood.

In November, while getting out of his car after work, a chap was forced BACK into his car, robbed, THEN forced to enter his home where he was tied up and subsequently robbed again.

In my neighborhood. D.C. stand up. And this amidst $600K and $700K homes. AND not an isolated incident.

Nobody said gentrification was going to be easy.

And oh yes, Baltimore is insane. Do not live there.

Fact is, Harlem is going the way of the condor and with relative housing prices like they are in New York City…

…get ready to hear about the new reincarnation of the DipSet records…in Hoboken.

Washington D.C. is having the worst. week. ever.

Everybody around here is talking about the shooting death of Washington Redskin’s football player Sean Taylor, and rightfully so. It’s tragic when young people’s lives are taken in such a cavalier and reckless manner. Even more so in this case because the details make it sound like it was less a robbery and more personal. He was shot in his bedroom. And he had a machete.

I hate to do this here, but do you remember what T.I. was holding in his bedroom? Yeah, army guns–the type of army guns that turn over Humvees and take out missile silos in countries shooting for gold in the nuclear arms race. T.I.? Wouldn’t be a victim in a home invasion. Imagine what he was holding under his pillow. My guess is that it was some sort of semi-automatic hunting rifle. You know, the kind that gives animals a fair chance to get away!

Either way, R.I.P. Sean Taylor.

That’s not the only bad news in Washington right now. On Monday, a report was released about the AIDS epidemic in DC. And boy is it ugly. Turns out DC has the highest concentration of HIV/AIDS cases in the nation and that 9 out of 10 new HIV cases are…

…in Black women.

Click here to read the article.

You don’t need to be a statistician to know that those numbers are pretty shitty. Basically, if you aren’t strapping up in this city, you are an idiot. A first class idiot. In fact, your level of idiocy is unprecedented. Your level of idiocy is on par with Magic Johnson being the only living human being who seemingly has managed to get HIV to untraceable levels in his body. Which begs the question…if you can’t trace it, is it there? Hmm…think about it.

But you know what is there? Your lunacy.

So let’s think about this for a second. DC is already a terrible place to be a Black woman in search of man, notwithstanding some level of attractiveness. Face it, if you have bad face, your stuck anywhere except the Montana and West Virginia backwoods. And its not to say that you can’t find a mate its just to say that you have no choice in the matter–you take what you can get.

Sidenote: I went to this rather upscale “supper club” last night for a small gathering and I swear I saw the largest collection of women who looked like they might have been attractive 10 years ago. Seriously, I saw two women who looked seemingly attractive and that might have been more a addition-by-subtraction thing than a natural beauty thing.

So yes, it’s already a shitty place to be a single woman who’s looking for man. But NOW you have to think that every man is a walking STD. Truthfully, everybody should already feel like that given the amount of STDs available to the masses. And I say available because the way some people go raw with their sex lives you’d think they wanted an STD just to see what it felt like.

According to science? Not good. Though according to television, catching Herpes is just like going horseback riding. Actually the commercial more illustrates that you can still go horeseback riding. So I guess that one’s not so bad. Unless you’re that horse because I’ll bet NOBODY told the horse she had herpes! As if!

Ladies, check your weave.

Then rub your tits if you love Big Poppa.

Tits is a fun word.

So yes, bad dating scene, bad HIV scene, and not to mention the ridiculous subprime mortgage lending and foreclosure rate and gotdamn, DC just is not the place to be an unmarried Black woman. This is interesting because so many young Black people move to DC because it’s a city with a young professional Black crowd of substance and visibility. In some places, being a Black person with a graduate degree makes you important. In DC it makes you manager at McDonald’s. And even then it only qualifies you for the job. EVERYBODY in DC has a damn graduate degree. I myself have 7 of them! Okay that’s not true at all. But this is DC, its possible. For Black people, its exciting to be in a city where there are lots of people like yourself who are about something and can read.

Reading is fundamental.

But now what? I remember when I read the article in the Post about women’s struggles to find a man in this city and women everywhere were in arms about it. Interestingly enough, the ratio in DC was better compared to the nation as a whole. Something like 8.3 marriageable Black men (with the .3 accounting for the myth, they don’t call it the Beltway for nothing!) to 10 women compared to 7 to 10 for the rest of the nation. But now you have to ask about their peders. Talk about your uncomfortable first date question:

Chick: So, Brian, I know your not gay, but do you have AIDS? Just askin!

Brian: Check please!

OH…and not to mention that in the article it stated that it wasn’t homosexual interactions that were making up for the majority of cases. Nope, it was the straight people. You can now remove that “gay-man’s disease” bullshit from your domes.

The moral of the story here kiddies is that if you are a young Black woman thinking of moving to DC, take your happy ass to Philly where all you have to worry about is getting shot just for breathing. At least that might take you out quickly.

AIDS?

Not so much.

…is love, sweet love.

It’s coincidental that while I’m listening to one of my favorite. songs. ever. “What The World Needs Now Is Love” by Jackie DeShannon, that I come across an article that seems so insanely insane, it must be true.

Prattville Student Punished for Hugging Classmate Appears on NBC’s Today Show

Good God.

For those two lazy to click-and-read, here’s the crux of the article right here:

The mother of a student in Autauga County says her daughter was disciplined for simply hugging a friend.

She says the hug wasn’t meant to be sexual. She says her daughter was consoling a male friend who recently lost a parent.

I’ve decided that discipline in public schools has crossed the damn line. Just last year a young girl was suspended from school for having a key-chain that constituted a weapon according to a very conservative reading of a school district’s policy. Kids across America, little kids, are being suspended and disciplined for doing nothing more than doing kid things.

And what is a hug? Let’s be clear, nowhere do the powers-that-be mention that any groping or anything was going on. This young girl was hugging a dude. Perhaps since I don’t work in the public school system (or any school system for that matter), I’m missing the need to punish youngsters for all acts of public affection. I understand the need for disciplining two kids who are tongue-ing eachother down in the hallway or getting head under the lunch room table — which I’ve actually seen happen.

I’ve seen some shit that definitely needs to be nipped in the tuck. However, I think that hugging just might go over the line. Shit, a hug can be one of the most harmless acts ever. Granted, a hug can be sexual…then again, there’s a very clear delineation between the two. You can tell when some kids are hugging in a jolly way. I know. I used to do it. It was fun. I’ve been a witness to and a party to some overly inappropriate behavior in my high school days. Shit, one day one of my exe’s was wearing a skirt to school but she really wanted me to see the new panties she’d bought. So what does a bright, creative, young lady do?

Starts kicking her legs up in the air so I can see her nether-regions and her draws. And I saw a teacher watch it happen and do nothing. I thought we were finna get suspended. Hell, I’d have suspended us. That’s just going too damn far. However, kids hugging just doesn’t seem so bad. If anything it gives me hope that the kids are indeed the future. And that we HAVE taught them well and we can indeed let them lead the way.

Well, not really. But you get my drift.

I think that short of a sexually inappropriate gesture or touching or seeing a young girl or boy dry humping against a locker (once again, which I’ve seen), discipline for public displays of affection really needs some leeway.

But it goes back to the problem with schools nowadays anyway. We’re so afraid of kids shooting up our schools, which is a real fear, that we take every OTHER rule to its extreme, forgetting that for the most part, these kids are just that, kids. And they like one another before we tell them that they shouldn’t. So they play nice at times and hug because they like eachother.

And we make them pay for it.

Basically, some administrator didn’t get any lovin’ that day.

By now, most folks have heard about the uproar in Detroit where a promoter decided to throw a party where Lightskinneded womenses and Libras got in free. If you haven’t, please do read the article.

*smoke break*

You back? Well, welcome!

I’ve heard numerous individuals discussing this story and lots of folks have harassed this young man for his colorism and ignorance in deciding to add fuel to the color cocophony in this country by further dividing an already divided race of people who’ve been hurt enough by white people’s focus on skin color. Why–oh why–would we do it to our own.

Poor fellow. He’s gone and cancelled his party and listened to the cries of the men and women who speak out against such atrocities in our community.

They should all eat a dick and die.

From the heart.

It’s amazing how stories and intentions can get totally misconstrued and fucked the fucked up through the little game we call “Telephone”. Hell, read the headline to the linked article. I first heard about this through some club promoters in DC telling me about this “light-skinned party” in Detroit and how this guy was throwing a party for lightskinned people. No mention of the Lightskinned FREE that night or that it was a party for everybody. We actually then engaged in a discussion of what kind of self-hate party we could throw in DC.

We landed on “Light and White in White” — a party where only lightskinned people dating white people could come through as long as they were wearing white. We’d serve fried chicken martini’s with watermelon slices. It’s amazing the ignorance that’s possible when you get enough like-minded ignant motherfuckers in the same place. Viva la imagination!

Anyway, upon further review, it turns out this promoter, DJ Lish, was planning on doing upcoming parties in a series, if you will, that would include dark skinned and the nebulous “ain’t light but ain’t dark” or better known as the “caramel” sisters.

IGNANT SIDENOTE: You know we have too much food in America when Black folks take to describing our color in food terms. I ain’t never met an African who refers to him or herself as a Chocolate drop. Perhaps coicidentally, there’s some starving ass motherfuckers over there too. You get to calling yourself Choco-Latay and you just might get cannibalised. Too. much. food. in. America.

Let’s delve a little shall we? Was this fellow slightly misguided? Perhaps. Any time you decide to throw skin tone into the mix with los Negros, you’re welcoming criticsm. Face it, we’re still a bunch of people who are psychologically and literally paying for our God (or whoever you pray to) given blessings. And because of that, skin tone issues are largely a sparkplug for outrage.

Hmm, fuck that.

Let me rephrase this (which is the source of this dude’s problem). Ever since the slavery days, lightskinned and dark skinned folks have been at odds. Sometimes blatantly, sometimes latently. Think about the barbs thrown our way. People ALWAYS resort to using somebody’s skin tone when making disparaging comments.

“Lightskinned bitch thinks she’s better than me!”

“Dark skinned motherfucker lookin’ like midnight!”

And we wonder why white people do it.

Thing is, implicit in both of those statements lies the problem. There’s a clear ideology about how skin tone plays into society. Light is right and dark is, well…dark. And we’ve all bought into it in some way shape or form. It’s a sad state of affairs but its unfortunately the state we live in. It’s like living in Montana when you know California exists.

It’s like rain on your wedding day. Oh wait, that’s actually ironic.

Or not. Am I the only person who got slightly peeved that she called so many things that weren’t actually ironic, ironic? She kept noting coincidences, not ironies. Though I suppose saying, “Now isn’t it a coincidence” doesn’t have the same punch. But I digress.

Dark skinned people constantly get the short end of the stick. And it sucks. But you know, that’s not really lightskinned people’s fault. It’s white people’s fault, but much like Black-on-Black crime…

…we STAY robbing the wrong people.

Yes, Black people stay losing.

So here comes DJ Lish, who from my perspective only made one real mistake.

He threw the wrong party first. But let’s think about this. How many of you people are party promoters? And for those who’ve been doing it for a while, how difficult is it to come up with something that actually draws people in? Promoting sucks. There are really not that many things you can do as a promoter to really draw folks in short of random gimmicks. Enter DJ Lish.

And he had a good idea. It’s a winner, a gimmick catered to the very women most men harp on in the media. Light chicks.

“…and all the wavey light skinned girls is loving me now…” ~ Jay - Z “December 4th”

Wrong or right, it’s true. And I’m sure a lot of light skinned reading chicks probably hate the lightskinned-points they get, but they sure don’t mind the attention. But the point is promoters need gimmicks to draw people in. Promotion is an ugly game.

So he picked the Light and Libra party. Bad move bucko, but not a bad idea. You should have just started with the Sexual Chocolate first because niggas hate color schemes, but don’t mind Chocolate as much as we mind Light-skinned preference. We actually love it when people of darker-hue receive recognition.

Read: India.Arie’s fanbase.

I think the outrage wouldn’t have been as loud for that party. Color me stupid and call me Renee but I think that our color issues intra-racially are far more skewed towards wanting to knock light-skinned “bitches” down a peg or two. So of course, any party that celebrates and benefits a woman’s light-skinnededness is going to catch hell. And the purveyor is going to catch wreck.

I wish this DJ would call me because I’d love to tell him not to listen to the motherfuckers who called for his head and have decided that he realizes he was wrong and should work on being a better person.

Fuck them.

Is he naive? Clearly, he thought he was just going to throw a party that allowed light-skinned chicks to gain entry free one night, but what he got was national attention and articles and phone calls. Playing with skin-tone is playing with fire, bucko. You can still play that game but you have to play it smarter. It’s actually a win-win. You throw that first Sexual Chocolate party and you can’t NOT throw the other two.

That’s how you stay winning.

But this dude has been reprimanded and scoffed at and I think that’s total bullshit. Not a bad idea, just bad judgement and decision-making on his part. Intra-race issues will be present forever, but everything ain’t as terrible as we want it to be.

Except the “Light and White and White” Party…there’s just no excuse for that one.

Word to Al Sharpton.

And the church said…

DAMN! DAMN! DAMN! JAMES!!!!!!!!!

T.I.

What. The. Fuck?

Look, I don’t care if the hip-hop police are out there or not trappin’ niggas left and right trying to take a brotha down. As a convicted felon, you need to be smarter than that shit, right?

For those that don’t know, don’t show, or just don’t care about what’s going on in rap music, everybody’s favorite trapper, T.I. got busted on Saturday after his bodyguard-turned-informant basically handed his ass over to ATF on a count of buying .9mm automatic machine guns and silencers.

Feel free to go to CNN.com. It’s front page news. On CNN.

And then can go to vh1.com to read an entire account of what happened.

What are silencers? Glad you asked. According to taped conversations, T.I. provies the answer. You see when you fire a gun, sometimes it makes a loud noise and there is a flash of fire. So, T.I….what is a silencer?

“No flash, no bang.”

I’m SO getting that put on a T-shirt the same day I get my t-shirt that says, “I got good credit”.

Free T.I.

Those are the NEXT hood shirts coming to a ghetto near you.

And he had guns in the house…in a safe…in his bedroom. Loaded automatic weapons. And he’s a convicted felon. As my homegirl Liz just stated, “T.I. is the posterboy for when keeping it real goes wrong.” And boy is that shit ever true. I honestly don’t understand this situation at all. Whether or not he was being targeted is unimportant. And do you know why? I’ll tell you why…

…he’s supposed to ASSUME he is. I guess Tip forgot to reiterate to T.I. the rules of the game.

Rule #1: If you are a convicted motherfucking felon…HIDE YOUR SHIT.

And according to the 10 Crack Commandments courtesy of the Notorious B.I.G.:

Rule #3: Never trust nobody, your mom’s’ll set that ass up properly gassed up.

His bodyguard sent him up shit’s creek. That nigga flipped like the little Chinaman in Ocean’s 11, 12, and 13.

You know, I feel bad for T.I. (kind of). You’d think the nigga had his shit together or was at least well on his way to getting all of his shit together. But the fact that he had numerous automatic weapons and was out buying more just reeks of a dude who can’t let shit go. Michael Vick just got fucked the fuck up behind his niggas snitching on him and now T.I. is going down behind something like this.

First, Prodigy of Mobb Deep gets 3 and a half years in the bing. And now T.I. is well on his way to the jail house in the Feds. Not Fulton County. Federal pen. Sure when he comes out he’ll have even MORE credibility but short of his lawyers being able to pull off the entrapment defense, he might be gone for a dime or more. And by the time he gets out nobody will care anymore.

I hope this shit works out for him in the end mostly because we don’t need anymore Black men in jail, but got damn, when niggas do dumb shit, we really go the extra mile.

If we could only show that kind of dedication in education…

Free T.I.

And I’m not talking about his debut album’s sales totals either. Besides that was like 2006 or some shit.

As of now, most people are aware of Lupe Fiasco’s flub at the vh1 Hip Hop Honors tribute to A Tribe Called Quest (ATCQ) on Monday night. He fucked up the words to “Electric Relaxation”, one of Tribe’s landmark and most famous songs. The song comes from Tribe’s album Midnight Marauders, which is one of my favorite hip-hop albums ever. I wrote about it a long time ago but I’m too lazy to link to the post. Sue me.

(Incidentally Lupe plans on suing Vibe magazine for defamation of character for their flub of semi-fanning the flames by using a little bit of time-line trickery by printing an interview with Lupe done before the Hip-Honors show that seems way fucked up when read AFTER the Hip-Hop Honors show.)

Courtesy of vh1, here’s a link to the all of the events that have occured under Fiascogate. (Click the link)

My opinion on this whole affair is kind of two fold. Lupe fucked up some lines to a rap song, big fucking deal. I think the part that’s fucked up is his approach to discussing why he fucked up. For one, he probably shouldn’t have engaged anybody in this debate but he did and came off like a dick. Luckily, I wasn’t a fan of his anyway but whereas his previous lack of interest in ATCQ and their catalog was kind of a non-starter his now stubborn stance on his intention to never listen to it in its entirety or even care that it is a landmark album is kind off-putting. Phonte from Little Brother (whose response I largely agree with) got one thing right; Lupe is definitely benefitting from being placed in the same vein as folks like ATCQ.

Interestingly enough, I wouldn’t put him there myself. Sure, he’s a “positive” rapper–a term I loathe, by the way–but I’ve never felt he was Tribe-esque. He was just not 50 Cent or Young Jeezy in the way that ATCQ and De La Soul and the whole Native Tongues weren’t NWA or Spice 1 or Ice T or King Tee for that matter. Granted, on The Low End Theory, Tribe did take on some social commentary and subject matter, but on Midnight Marauders, not so much. So it’s kind of a what-you-are-because-of-what-you’re-not kind of deal in my mind.

But Lupe’s become the guy-du-jour. For fuck’s sake, he was one of GQ’s men of the year or some shit, and for no good reason mind you. His album (executive produced by Jay-Z) was alright but it didn’t change anything. More people were talking about Lupe because of his deviation than for his artistry. Which is more a sad testament to us than it is to the greatness that is Lupe. He’s so different and he wears colorful clothes and tight-pants and likes cartoons. He’s a hip-hop nerd. Truthfully, if Pharrell hadn’t saddled up to him so that they could be hip-hop nerds together, my guess is that there’d be some uber-gay pocket-protector Trapper Keeper beatdowns between them (musically of course) with Kanye officiating in a pink Polo and Cole Haan loafers.

And at least Pharrell doesn’t claim to be a skateboarder like Lupe does…and he isn’t.

One of Lupe’s defenses during this whole “scandal” (if we must put a term on it) is that he didn’t grow up on ATCQ but on Spice 1, NWA, and Eightball and MJG. Hmm, me too. NWA is my favorite group of all time and similarly, De La Soul’s album, de la soul is dead is my favorite album of all time. But I listened to all that same shit Lupe was listening to so I have to wonder how the fuck he glossed over Tribe. Granted, I wasn’t the biggest Tribe fan until later. But when I did start paying attention I was stuck. Midnight Marauders is one of those albums I can take with me anywhere and will buy the second I think I lost it. Who cares if I find it later, I lost it then. And I have to have that album. It’s part of me.

It’s also one of the albums that makes its way everywhere and everybody knows and respects. Nobody says that it isn’t worth listening to. So why not pick it up Lupe? At this point, he ain’t listening to make a point. Which is a stupid point. In the Kay Slay interview, when Mr. Drama King himself asked him if he had listened to it or if he planned on it, Lupe responded with, “no, I haven’t listened to it yet. I’ve been busy with my album.”

That’s the second stupidest shit I might have ever heard in my life. The first?

Any of George Bush’s speeches from 2001-?

Anybody who knows about the music making process knows that you listen to all types of shit when making music. It’s called inspiration. Also, the fuckin’ album doesn’t even clock in at longer than an hour. The nigga’s from Chicago. He could pop it in while he’s sitting in traffic and finish it by the time he got to a Harold’s from O’Hare.

There’s another thing that gets lost on me in regards to this whole debacle and that hasn’t been mentioned.

He had to get lyrics to TWO songs in a tribute. “Electric Relaxation” and “Scenario”. And he didn’t have to do Busta’s part since Busta did his own part on “Scenario”. I’m a Tribe fan, but they weren’t exactly kicking physics or being overly complicated with rhyme patterns or anything. A sampling:

“by the way my name’s Malik, the 5 foot freak//let’s say we get together by the end of th week” ~ Phife Dawg, “Electric Relaxation”

Hell, you can take two hours and memorize a good four songs on that album since the verses ain’t exactly difficult. Do niggas mess up lyrics? Sure, I was at an Outkast show in Atlanta where Andre 3000 fucked up his own verse. Hell did you see Kanye fuck up his verse on “Everything I Am” on Saturday Night Live? It happens.

However, all he had to do was memorize a damn verse and spend time reciting it for a TRIBUTE. All he had to do was focus on that shit because it’s a tribute. ONE verse. Kanye fucking up is kind of endearing. Hell, he’s human and he shows us all the time through his arrogance, pride, and passion. But this was a tribute show to ATCQ. The least you could do was not fuck that up. In fact, the only difficult part of “Electric Relaxation” is the damn part in the hook where the voiceover says “Relax Yourself and some shit that even 15+ years later I have no clue what’s being said”.

Lupe fucked up. He shouldn’t have and he could have nailed it but he didn’t. However, his uberfucking studity in the way he’s handled it is what made it a problem.

“I’m not backpack rap,” says Lupe. Okay, nigga. Whether you are or not, ATCQ and specifically Midnight Maruaders is just one of those groups that everybody who’s really into the art behind hip-hop know. How can you not? It’s arrogant to so adamantly deny yourself an album because “that ain’t you”.

Who cares what you grew up on? Who says you can’t expand your horizons? Most of us interested in music do at some point. Tribe isn’t obscure and they had 3 platinum albums in pre-Master P/Puffy dominated rap world. And how the fuck are you going to be so big-up in respecting Tip and his musical legacy if you don’t actually know what the fuck it is that everybody seems to respect so much?

In short, Lupe’s an idiot.

Thank you and goodnight.

PS - Who in the Blue Fuck thought Missy deserved to be honored?

Justice.

Of all the words that have had any semblance of meaning since Black people were mercilessly brought to the United States, justice is the word that has had the most lasting effect. Not the n-word. Not racism.

Justice.

Black people have been searching for justice for hundreds of years. Sadly, we’ve yet to find any. The Jena 6 is a prime example of the lack of justice that America see’s fit to don upon Black people. Everything about that case just reeks of differential treatment and outright arrogance on the part of the prosecutors of LaSalle Parish in Louisiana.

It reminds me of the movie “Ghosts of Mississippi” where Byron De La Beckwith tells the Assistant DA Bobby DeLauder that “no jury in the state of Mississippi would convict a white man of killing a Black man.” Sure that was 1963 (initially) and he was acquitted of killing Medgar Evers at the time but for some reason those words just resound to me.

Those 6 young men were arrested for what amounts to a fistfight. The white student was up and running and attending events that very evening yet Louisiana is ready to put these young men in jail for damn near life? Mychal Bell, the first convicted, had his charges thrown out for battery and assault because the state claims he should have been tried as a juvenile.

Hmm…what about the people who put the nooses up? That’s a hate crime. This whole fucking country has issues. Hell, in Darfur, AMERICA was loathe to call what was happening genocide, because that means that we’d have to get involved. Sure, we can police the Middle East, but to hell with Africa.

Justice.

I’ll always contend that race relations in this country will remain the way they are now forever. Black people think everything is racism and white people think nothing is racism and that’s about as close to the middle as we’ll ever get. But what I’ve always wondered is why white people seem to ignore the impetus for our reasoning? Black people have been lynched for doing so much as looking at a white woman without even a hint of fear of paying for it.

In layman’s terms: for hundreds of years a white man could kill a Black man with reckless abandon because they had a justice system on their side. Not even just on their side; gleefully on their side. For fuck’s sake, any white man could walk into a courtroom with a smile and some sweetened tea and just wait for “justice” to prevail. That justice would be the white man getting acquitted for crimes he might actually have admitted to.

Justice.

How am I, a Black man raised to believe in people supposed to feel when I know that people can and will justify any and everything. A few weeks ago at the University of Maryland-College Park, Maryland’s flagship institution of higher learning, a noose was hung from a tree near the Black student union. Amazingly it allegedly stayed there for a week before it was taken down. I’d be willing to bet my life on it that for as many Black people who were offended and even scared that something like that would happen on a very diverse campus, as many white students claimed it was just a prank and not to take it so seriously.

A noose. A symbol of white power for hundreds of years. It symbolised the white man’s ability to get away with murder. It also symbolised the fear that Black people had to endure because ultimately, a white man could get away with murder.

Mind you, I recognize that the system was more to blame than merely the individuals involved. However, what kind of people could accept a system that devalued human life in such a manner. The problem is that in America, the system trumps all. Everybody can hide behind the law. Almost 600,000 people in the District of Columbia have no elected voting representation in Congress because of the “law”. Forget what’s implicity right. Nevermind that whatever advantage the addition of a voting member in the House for the District would totally be offset by an additional House seat in Utah. It violates the “law”. And that is what’s most important. Laws intended to protect and serve. However, residents of the district don’t get a say in the laws they are ultimately held accountable to.

Justice.

As a young Black man I have an unhealthy distrust for the justice system. I always worry that if I’m stopped for anything other than a routine traffic stop, I’m going to jail and I might never see the light of day again. Why do I think so negatively? Because it’s a real possibility. The stakes are so high for Black people, and men in particular, that achieving a certain age is akin to an actual accomplishment. I can actually brag on never having been to jail. That is a problem.

We live in a country where justice has two prongs: white justice as displayed in Jena, Louisiana (lest we forget that a gun was pulled on a group of Black students yet no charges were filed…let me try that on somebody and see what happens), and Black justice as displayed in Jena, Louisiana where six young men who got into a fist-fight were charged with attempted murder (later reduced to battery and assault).

Further, let us not forget that it all started because there was an actual “white” tree in Jena, Louisiana. A situation where until the status quo was questioned, all people were just as happy to live their lives in their own version of American reality. If anything, this entire saga just teaches us that as Black youth, if you attempt to challenge the status quo that the American way of life accepted, you just might find yourself staring down the barrel of a 25 to life.

I hope and pray that all of the demonstrating gets the message across. I’m proud of all of those individuals who made their way to Jena to protest and demonstrate. My hat’s off to them. I’m just sad that in 2007 in America, a nation that feels we can trumpet our way of life across the world as a paragon of the right way to do things, we still have a situation where a Black man’s life can mean so little.

And there are just way too many examples to illustrate that point.

Justice.

…and Superman’d that ho.

Man kisses ailing wife, hurls her from balcony

I think it’s official. Hell has won. I’ve reached the maximum amount of Hell points possible. It was a good fight and I fought the good fight, but man, how could I NOT take that angle. It incorporates pop-culture, assholish irony, and pure and total unabashed comedy.

You know you wanted to laugh.

Anyway, as you can tell from the story (and title of this post) a man Superman’d his wife from a balcony because he could not afford to continue paying for her health care. Mind you, this is a sentiment that is shared by many Americans as we grapple with the argument for universal health care.

Then again, I have to wonder how many people have dreamed of wanted to do the same thing with an ailing family member but thought better of it and then went to pray for their soul for the heinous act that they wanted to commit.

America, this is how bad its gotten. White people have taken to tossing their family members out the window because we’re just gotdamn broke. It’s bad enough that gas prices are high. Hell, he probably wasted some of the money he could use for her health care just driving her back and forth to places. It’s enough to make somebody want to throw somebody off a balcony!

Oh…right.

All jokes aside, I don’t know all the sides of the issue involving universal health care. I do know that our taxes would have to increase and this is not a country where people (namely the rich) want to use their tax money for other people’s social services. Which is a shame, for a country that prides itself on the common man having the opportunity to come from nothing to becoming a rich person, we sure do forget that it takes a nation of people to make that happen.

I would hope that nobody’s life and finances would ever be so bad that you’d have to resort to throwing family members over a balcony, despite KNOWING you’re going to get caught. Let’s face it, you can’t just go hurling people over balconies all willy nilly without anybody finding out about it.

Sad sad times and I feel sorry for the man and his wife.

And also, in the event that anybody feels I’m too much of a burden, just tell a muhfucka. Shucks, I’ll be mad as hell if I die because somebody threw me off a balcony!

Just too bad she couldn’t Spiderman that ho…

I’ve got two words for you: Jean “Motherfucking” Strahan.

Also known as the ex-wife, divorcé of one New York Football Giant, Michael Strahan.

Actually that’s three words unless you just count the “Motherfucking” as a nickname (which I do), therefore making it interchangeable, which still renders it as two words. Logic be damned.

Fellas, you REALLY need to consider the shit that you do while you’re married because this here justice system is going to fuck you with no vaseline. Basically, don’t get caught cheating on your wife or you just might lose roughtly 70 percent of your net worth.

Yes bitches, not 50, but 70.

Such is the case in this sad tale about divorce, retribution, and a (must be) woman judge.

To wit:

Michael got taken to the cleaners to the tune of $15.3 million in the divorce (New York Daily News headline: “Wife: 15,000,000, Strahan: 0″). He also had to vacate the couple’s 1906 Montclair, N.J. mansion, the one with the 22,000-square feet, 12 bedrooms, seven baths and a garage big enough for 20 cars.

The ruling was even more than Jean actually sought for the less than six years of marriage. The judge wound up giving up more than half of Michael’s estimated $22 million of net worth. from article, “Giant Headache” from Yahoo! Sports

Say it with me, class: Gotdamn! Dude, getting taken to the cleaners is so not heavy metal. However, if he OJs her ass with a gun instead of a knife, that would definitely qualify him as hip-hop.

Gunplay is so hip-hop. Word to Smith & Wesson.

And why did he get fucked 40 ways from Sunday taken to the cleaners? My guess is he sucks as a husband, but this probably helped:

Strahan’s rep took a beating in the divorce. It was alleged he ditched his wife and twin 2-year-old daughters to jet off with his mistresses, one he supposedly called “Cupcake.” Then there was the time, Jean alleged, he secretly videotaped her sister as she undressed only to later allegedly deposit $30,000 in her bank account.

And, maybe most damaging to female viewers, there was the rebuke by the judge for not remembering Jean’s birthday or their wedding anniversary. Every man knows that’s tough to overcome.

Dude, calling a woman, “Cupcake” is so not the hotness. I don’t care if she is just your jump-off sperm holder. But that’s WAY better than videotaping your sister-in-law undress. For fuck’s sake, what were you thinking? Things like that are what makes marriage such a fading institution. You just can’t trust anybody these days. Plus, people apparently can’t keep secrets either since he allegedly “secretly” taped his sister-in-law but motherfucking Yahoo! Sports knows about it. Some secret, Santa.

It’s no wonder El Idiote Strahan got laundered. He approached his cheating with reckless abandon and if the child support case of Diddy is any indication, New York state doesn’t play when it comes to infidelity and uberfuckery. Of course there is a downside to this whole thing (aside from the serious downside that Strahan will have to face if the actual settlement goes through, he’s appealing)…

…you see, Jean Strahan just might catch a bad one. Michael Strahan is a rich nigga. But he is also about to become a broke nigga. Yes people, he will not be able to live like he used to live once his career ends (like in a year). And you do not mess with a Black man’s money. She’s white too?! Oy vey. I’m getting OJ flashback as we speak, except instead of a white Bronco, it will be a black Escalade with limo tints and a bulletproof fiberglass casing.

Let’s just say, Jean Strahan might need some security because she took his house, his money, and she doesn’t really have to do shit except sit back and laugh at him.

“I ain’t saying he should have killed her, but I understand…” ~ Chris Rock, Bring The Pain, 1996

Word to the wise when purchasing a wife…let the buyer beware.

That bitch might cost you 25 to life one day.

Michael Strahan, this is your life.