You gotta love Notre Dame’s Charlie Weis suing doctors for negligence on his stomach surgery. I’m just waiting for the lawsuits that are sure to follow. Exercise v. Charlie, Fruit and Salad v. Charlie and That Flaming Heap of Broken Recliners v. Charlie.
One rapper who has completely screwed himself and is in real danger of being a one-hit wonder: Mims. Where do you go after “This Is Why I’m Hot”? What happens when the fans IQ lowers even more after listening to that and you have to make something even dumber? What do you do next? Just mumble syllables?
Maybe this is all just one big game by the record companies like the film Bamboozled and all those fruitcakes are going to jump out of the bushes one day and yell, “Gotcha! You actually bought that crap? We fooled you!” Then they’d probably giggle and skip to Starbucks.
If anything, you have to love the extremes in hip-hop. On one hand, you have the fruity front-office exec with his sequined Blackberry deciding what’s hot and then you have your fake-thug “street poet” complaining that the nerfball execs won’t sign him. Nice. You like?
Maybe now is a good time to bring up a trend I’m seeing in everyone’s demos. I can tell just from the picture what your demo is going to sound like, for the most part. There’s always room for error and it’s not an exact science, but even Bill Nye would be pretty impressed, if not jealous, of my skills.
If you take a picture in some baggy nightgown, Stop Snitching t-shirt, Biggie t-shirt with sequins or anything relating to some other rapper’s clothing line, then you fall into Category A. Category A is the “I heard there’s money in rap and I want some of it” rapper. Their demo will consist of around four songs, and each song will be a different type of song. If there are more than four songs, then the extra songs will just be some sort of variation of the first four songs, as there are only four different styles for the Category A rapper. Those four categories are:
Club song – These songs usually talk about popping bottles, shiny jewelry, having multiple sex partners and doing some sort of buffoonery-inspired dance.
Girl song – This is where Category A rapper shows his versatility over an Omarion or Beyonce record. Here, all the sex partners somehow disappear as Category A just wants a girl just like his boys, crew, gang, clique, circle, group, movement, minus the genitals. This is the only type of person in the world who desires a woman who can hide crack when police show up and take the wheel when it’s time to knock off the local 7-11 or stage a casual drive-by.
Street banger – It’s important to let everyone know that you don’t take shit from anyone. As a matter of fact, why should you take shit from anyone? You’re a boss! CEO of the streets! Our favorite OG’s favorite OG! This is the part where you dump clips in the streets like pedophiles dump their hard drives when they hear Shaq knocking on their door. This is where you let us know that having a girlfriend makes you pussy, reading books is for homos and if you’re not killing, you’re not trying. To stress your gangsterdom, a phrase coined by the one and only Poison Pen, mix as many punchlines into your verses as possible. References to cars without titties (Rich Boy!), having more jewels than my jeweler (Lil’ Wayne!) and the Fresh Prince (Lloyd Banks!) are not only acceptable but required. As you begin to incorporate more and more of these lines into your raps, your street credibility rating will have no choice but to skyrocket.
Reality song – No matter what happened in your life, whether you dropped out of school because you didn’t like a teacher, never did anything illegal because you had watchful parents or grew up in the nice part of Brooklyn, forget all that here. Your life sucks. That’s the only thing that matters. Everyone else is eating and you’re starving, no matter how fat the scale tells you you are. When it rains, only you get wet. This is your chance to let it all out and tell everyone just how bad you had it growing up. Let it all out here. Don’t hold back. If a bully stole your basketball in fifth grade, talk about it here, only substitute the basketball for your best friend and the bully stealing it to a gangster shooting at your friend. We’ll all understand that it’s just a metaphor anyway. And hey, if this doesn’t get you a deal, at least someone will throw you a buck when you’re panhandling outside Def Jam.
Sometimes, and this is rare, there may be a story track on the demo. Sometimes these stories have a mysterious resemblance to Scarface or the latest Lindsay Lohan flick. I guess there is some diversity in Category A after all. Usually these story tracks are peppered with gems like, “I go to the club with my man Scooby/We like to look at boobies.” These recycled story tracks can usually be skipped over, unless you have nothing better to do with your time. If that’s the case, you should be trying to find porn passwords for Poison Pen.
Then there’s the Category B rapper. Usually this one says, “Fuck you, hip-hop standards. I’m an individual.” Then they make a bunch of songs about how they’re not iced out, how they don’t bag chicks and how they don’t do anything but write rhymes. Somehow their porn addiction gets left out of the mix.
You can spot these guys from a mile away as well and you have to be equally as careful around Category B rappers as Category A rappers. Why? Category A rappers will stress that you have to give them shine because they’re the next big superstars. They’ll go to all ends of the earth to convince you that they’re next to blow and that they have the support of so-and-so. They’re probably lying. Then you have Category B rapper, who is so brainwashed that he’s the only one doing “real” hip-hop anymore and that if you don’t support him, you’re basically disrespecting Bam and Kool Herc. Category B rapper will not sleep until he has convinced you that he is “bringing hip-hop back,” that today’s hip-hop “sucks” and he is the only one left saving hip-hop in a world more smelly than Rosie’s toilet after her morning dump.
Every so often Category C comes along. Immortal Technique was one of those. Apparently he told Dee Jekkyl just to listen to his demo, which Jek did. Now look where Tech got himself and look at what outlet noticed Tech first. More recently, Fab Nickel was one of those demos. What they sent was one of those CD’s you can play and hear them being themselves and having a good time. That’s not to say that everyone has to have a good time. If you’re ornery by nature, convey that ornerousity to the best of your ability in your records.
The moral of the story is to be yourself. You can still lose being yourself, but at least it’s an honorable loss and not like any of the Giants losses from 2006 season.
Props to the extremely selective selection committee for the 8th Annual Children Uniting Nations Academy Awards Celebration for naming Lil’ Kim as their host. Jenna Jameson and OJ were offered the hosting gig but had to turn it down due to scheduling conflicts. The suits putting a spin on the party claim part of its goal is to “ensure that such dreams can be possible for our foster children’s futures as well.” I know what one of those dreams may be for some of the fellas in attendance, and it has nothing to do with a shiny red bike.
And just how is Lil’ Kim going to help save the children? If the children already know who she is, then it’s too late. If they’ve already heard a Lil’ Kim album, they either love her or don’t respect her. If they love her, they’re lost already. The only thing Kim could do for them is half-heartedly tell them to make sure it’s wrapped up during sexytime intercourse and sell raffle tickets for a lifetime supply of Valtrex for one lucky kid. Now if they don’t respect Kim, which, which is hopefully the case for the sake of the future, anything she says is going to go in one ear and out the other.
Kim, no matter how nice you are and how badly you want to be a role model, it’s a little too late to go that route. You really should have thought about that before you told kids worldwide that you can make a Sprite can disappear. And no, Kim, you can’t tell us now that you used to be one of David Blaine’s assistants. No, seriously, I don’t care how stupid you think the general public is, that won’t work.
And it’s good to know that Atlantic can send out an email about that but they can’t send out one about Saigon’s “Pain In My Life (Remix)” or Little Brother’s free mixtape download.
Busta recently said he feels no guilt for how his bodyguard Israel Ramirez was killed at the “Touch It (Remix)” video shoot. He also claims he didn’t do nothing, which is actually true. He’s done nothing to help solve the case. He’s probably never going to talk to the police, which is his choice, but after allegedly assaulting his driver and beating up a fan, Busta’s PR people have a lot of work to do to repair his image. All Busta has to do now to make himself look worse is to kill a few puppies on national TV. And after the whole world has seen how you treat your employees, good luck getting anyone else to sign on the dotted line, if the dotted line even exists.
Just like 30 is the new 20 for Jay, sloth is apparently the new manatee on the HipHopGame menu. I already got the manatee burgers in the freezer. I’m going to need some sloth burgers next. Hey, PETA, take that, take that. Maybe Pen’s got a connection.
Pen also said us collaborating would be like John Lennon and Lenny Kravitz coming together, and that’s cool and all, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen. I think I’d rather use that as leverage to work with someone else. I already got Pen on record as saying he would work with me. That means I can take that to someone like Killah Priest or Ron Artest. They’re both probably more likely to do a collaborative journal now that I’m cool enough to collaborate with. Maybe I’ll collab with Pumpkinhead in the comments section.
Not that Pen needs to hear this, but you know you’re doing well when other dudes leave their journal in your comment box.
Good to see Kanye is continuing to make poignant political statements. This time he didn’t show up at Paris Hilton’s birthday party. From George W. to European award shows to Paris, you’ve got to give it to Kanye for covering all the important bases. As soon as he lets me know what he thinks of the Olsen twins I can relax.
But onto a topic that actually matters – Rah Digga. If you didn’t read her last journal entry, go check that out. Digga’s the best and she’s going to do well in whatever she decides to do, but I know I am going to miss the calls after a new journal would go up and she would hyped about the comments. I haven’t been involved in the writing side of hip-hop for that long, but I do know you don’t come across artists with talent and class like Rah Digga very often and it’s a sad day when artists like her are fed up with the game.
I have to actually shut down the computer right now. This Uncle Murder mp3 just keeps opening itself in my iTunes. Every time I close it, it comes back louder. I don’t know what to do so I’m currently looking for a dark place to hide until a solution presents itself.
05/13 - 
All
the News 
Home
HHG
on Myspace
