I wasn’t sure what to write about this week in the column so I threw on some Big Lou in the iPod and played in traffic for an hour. I’m back with a little more adrenaline. 

Could anything be more ridiculous in hip-hop than LL and Jay going back and forth? LL’s mad about the lack of promotion he’s gotten and probably his position in the company and Jay’s mad that LL’s mad…Either diss each other and get it over with, or hug it out, bitches. There’s nothing worse than two of the biggest rappers in the game sending subliminal disses and weak lines back and forth. 

And LL has to make an album worth promoting. Who remembers DEFinition? What an awful album that was. Not only was it geared to females, it was also apparently geared to deaf females. LL tried to do a little something for the streets on his last effort, Todd Smith, as he enlisted the help of Juelz Santana and Freeway, but that didn’t really work either. LL’s paying the price of pigeonholing himself. If you make B-level high school love songs, lick your lips, pour water on yourself, walk around like you’re allergic to sleeves and make fitness books, who do you expect to get marketed to? Making R&B rap songs is about as risky as walking through a field of daisies with an AK-47. 

LL’s last three albums have been extremely subpar. While he is a legend and helped build Def Jam, he still has to prove why he deserves a huge marketing push today. He’s not walking into Jay’s office and saying, “Box!” If you’re an exec up there and you have to feed your kids and the kids’ second daddy, are you going to allocate more money into the LL Cool J project or the Rick Ross/Young Jeezy funny beard and big sunglasses fund? 

And Jay, there’s really no need for you to throw lines at LL in a verse. If you’re mad that he disrespected you, either have a meeting behind closed doors with him like a real executive would do, make a diss track against him, which the average 14 year-old would do or say lines under your breath, which is what the average woman would do. It’s like masturbating to Tubgirl – the choice is yours. 

And how many times has Nike CEO dissed a designer by printing a t-shirt that says, “You suck, Gilbertus!”? 

Apparently Soulja Boy is attempting to show everyone that he’s not a one-hit wonder. I’ll believe that as soon as Barry Bonds says his head doubled in size because he ate his Wheaties every morning. Somehow Soulja Boy’s song “Donk” ended up in my inbox. I figured I’d give it a shot because maybe he really did have something to offer…Nope. From the second “Donk” hits the speakers, it’s waging an all-out assault on intelligence and heterosexuality. Watch out. 

Plus you’ve got to love how Trick Daddy came with the album www.Thug.com in 1998 and almost 10 years later Soulja Boy’s pulling the same gimmick. Before we know it he’s going to be rocking shiny suits and FUBU shirts. Hell, maybe he’ll go all out on the next album and come with the flattop and dressed like a reject from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and/or the Village People. 

Donovan McNabb sparked some controversy when he said that black quarterbacks have it harder than white quarterbacks in the NFL. After watching the debilitating Eagles last week, I have just one question for dude – How much harder do quarterbacks with no offensive line have it when compared to quarterbacks who have a line that can actually hold a block? Hell, Candy Bar Reid could have gone out there and tripped up Osi for at least a play or two. I’m no analyst or anything, but when the only thing people really remember about your team so far is an interview one of your players did with Bob Costas, that’s not a good sign. Good game last week, Eagles fans. You have a lot to be proud of and a lot to look forward to for the rest of the season. 

Hopefully Correll Buckhalter or David Akers can let us know what they think of Britney Spears so we can have something else to talk about when it comes to the Eagles besides the team falling apart and Candy Bar Reid’s ever-expanding waistline. He needs to stop eating cheerleaders before games. 

"Honestly, my head never left basketball. This is what I've done. This is what I do and this is what I think about the majority of the time," Isaiah Thomas said after he was found guilty of sexually harassing a former employee and the Knicks had to “dole” out $11.6 mill to her. I’m thinking MSG chairman James Dolan is probably wishing you had thought a little more about getting that “not guilty verdict” than by thinking about what fat, lazy big man you could sign or what talented, overachieving big man with upside you could trade away for another guard. The more you think about basketball, the worse the Knicks are. It’s in the Knicks best interests if they got you an office at Scores with an desk in front of a pole. Of course your desk would come with a fake-looking phone that could only dial out to Stephon Marbury and Red Lobster. Isaiah, you probably wouldn’t even notice the change and if you did, you’d probably think you got a promotion. An added bonus is that you can refer to any black woman as “bitch” as long as that bomb comes with a dollar for her “college fund.” 

And you’d think if Zeke thought about basketball “the majority of the time” that he would make a lot better decisions. If basketball is always on your mind, why are the Knicks the laughingstock of the league? Why can’t you control Starbury? Why can’t you do anything right as an executive? Oh, and clearly your mind wasn’t on basketball when you were dropping b-bombs on female employees. 

Props to Ron Mexico. Just when you think his situation can’t get any worse, dude gets busted for tree. So much for that apology about letting everyone down. If the judge asks you to stay out of trouble, he doesn’t mean get high because you’re about to go to jail and you may be feeling a little stressed out about that. Come on, Mike, you still have to have connections with the Falcons trainers. They don’t have anything they could give you to help you beat that test? Hell, the steroid-popping numbskull at your friendly neighborhood GNC probably could have helped you flush the THC out of your system. You can say Michael Vick is probably not a good guy and one of the worst decision-makers in America south of D.C., but one thing you can never, ever accuse dude of is being smart. 

Kay Slay has been talking about what a good move it is for Papoose to be off Jive Records and I couldn’t agree with him more on that. Papoose’s career was going nowhere over there and the songs he was making, from “Bang Out” to “Fitted Hat Low” were not working at all. No matter how big of a name Scott Storch has, it doesn’t mean the chemistry is going to be there. Hopefully Pap goes after producers that can match his style this time around. 

And even though it sounds like you guys knew the records weren’t good, they still saw the light of day. That’s on you guys. 

Looking back on the whole thing, Kay Slay and Papoose knew Jive wasn’t a hip-hop label. They took the money and hoped for the best, which is probably not the best business move. We probably won’t see a Papoose album for at least another year now unless he signs a one-off with an indie for a “street album.” 

J-Hood’s been taking a lot of heat from DJs and fans for leaving D-Block and rocking with 50 on stage. I think fans could have gotten with the decision to leave if he had gone about it in a much better way, i.e. not dragging his D-Block chain on the ground, jumping onstage with 50 and making songs like “Who I’ma Sign To?” Realistically, J-Hood wasn’t going anywhere on D-Block. If his album hadn’t come out by now, it never was going to come out. As nice as everyone in D-Block can be, their business is not always on point. Styles P’s album Time Is Money was a letdown, especially considering how long fans had been waiting for it. Jada’s third album should have come out a year ago and Sheek has been pretty quiet, save for a few guest appearances here and there. D-Block is not the place to be if you’re a young artist and can’t eat off of getting checks for shows, features and remixes. 

Should J-Hood have left? I think he made a good move. Did he do it the right way? He did it the right way to get attention, but did he do it the right way to get respect? Not really. Now we’ll see what happens because he has no one to blame for holding him back anymore. 

And unless you are the DJ for D-Block, blackballing J-Hood is kind of corny. All you’re really proving is that you’re riding for a team that may or may not ride for you. And if J-Hood takes himself to a bigger level, let’s see how many DJs still want to blackball him. It’s easy to blackball someone when they have no music out and their buzz isn’t really up there, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to not play someone’s records when they’re actually out there. J, if there was ever a time for you to put up or shut up, that time is now. 

Time to take a nap in the middle of the road. Who says we don’t keep it street?