I get asked a lot how to get songs played on HipHopGame. I think it’s time to lay out some ground rules and clear some things up. Here we go. 

How to not get songs on HipHopGame 

Ask how much it costs to get a song up – There’s no better way to command respect than to tell people you have money and are willing to pay to get what you want. Prostitutes love that line actually. But would your girlfriend? Your sister? Probably not so much. Believe it or not, everything in hip-hop is not motivated by the money. Like Billy Donovan knows now, it’s much better to annihilate your competition and worry about the bank account later. 

Send angry email – Get it off your chest! Tell me how fake I am. Tell me how HipHopGame is gay because we didn’t play your song. It’s all great. Believe me, I love constructive criticism, especially when it looks like this: “FUCK YOU PLAY MY MUSIC!!!!!” If I wasn’t thinking about playing your music earlier, the exclamation points won me over and you can start telling your friends how you’re the new HipHopGame Artist of the Month. Congratulations. 

Have your friends email me the same email about how hot you are – Strength in numbers, right? Especially when all those numbers have the exact same message and each one decides to send it two or three times, either for emphasis or because they’re too dumb to know when they hit the ‘Send’ button. Nothing screams ‘movement’ quite like three or four people spamming me with the same MySpace link. 

Claim that the reason HipHopGame isn’t posting tracks is because we’re “getting back at the world” – If I’m writing about it, it’s happened. And yes, one artist did question that by not posting his tracks if it was my way of “getting back at the world.” Yep. It is. Damn. I thought no one would ever catch on. The only reason we’ve worked hard to build HipHopGame up is so that we can get it big enough to where artists want to get on the site, and then once they send us their music, we completely diss them. For those of you scoring at home, HipHopGame 1, World 0. 

A psychologist could have a field day with the last one. I mean, talk about feeling yourself to the point where you feel others are socially maladjusted by not playing your music. And if not playing your music makes me a weirdo, then yeah, consider me the hip-hop Unabomber. 

In other news, everyone’s favorite dogfighter recently lost his endorsement from AirTran. What, you don’t want one of the world’s top dogfighters telling the people to fly your friendly skies? What is this world coming to? I hope some of the marketing people at AirTran get fired. Think of the cross-promotion they’re missing out on. You can either show in-flight movies and reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond and Friends, or you can have Ron Mexico bring a few of his socially maladjusted (word of the week) friends on board to really entertain the passengers. Seriously, who wouldn’t love to be flying over the Rockies while Fluffy makes a move on Sparky’s jugular? I don’t know about you, but that’s much more entertaining than watching the fat guy in the middle try to make it through to the aisle. I’m confident another airline will recognize the brilliance Mike Vick brings to the table. And if they don’t? 

That’s where Vick Airways come in. Mike can be in charge of entertainment and brother Marcus can be in charge of security. Someone harasses the stewardess for an extra bag of mini-pretzels? Boom! There’s goes their calf. Someone stinks up the bathroom? They can kiss their calf goodnight. I suspect this airline will be extremely popular amongst pedophiles and creeps like R.Kelly and Michael Jackson, as the Vicks do not discriminate when it comes to serving alcohol. No ID? No problem on Vick Airways, where they specialize in getting kids drunk. Seriously, what better way to show minors how cool you are than by getting them high and drunk? 

In O-Zone Magazine, Too Short wrote, “We’re encouraged to make explicit, negative songs. If we ask our labels to release emotional, uplifting songs, they say, ‘No way.’ This coming from Too Short? One of the pioneers of the explicit rap? Since when did Too Short want to make ‘emotional, uplifting’ songs? Sure, mix one in every now and again, but it takes more than that to be considered a ‘positive’ artist. And if you saw the Punk’d with Too Short, was there really anything positive or uplifting about that? If you didn’t see, dude rolls into one of those bikini car washes and one of his crew members films them for Too Short’s reality show. When and where it is airing, I have no idea. Anyway, one of the girls flash the camera before cops arrive to punk Too Short. Needless to say, the rapper’s reality show is not airing on PBS anytime soon. 

I’m waiting to hear R.Kelly complain how labels want R&B songs about sex. 

By the way, his album was No. 1 in the country, which is further proof that this country is filled with sick, twisted weirdos. I also saw an old dude bumping R.Kelly when he was driving in traffic. His kid was staring out the window, expressionless, probably thinking to himself, ‘We’re almost home’ and ‘Remember to not introduce Dad to my new girl.’ 

As long as we’re talking about weirdos, Michael Jackson is reportedly investing in Eminem’s catalog. I can’t wait to hear him two-track some of those songs. 

“Role Model (Not!)”

“Guilty Conscience (For Getting Caught)”

“Cum On Everybody (MJ REMIX!)”

“Cleaning Out My Closet (Come Here, There’s Lots of Toys!)”

“Just Lose It (The Underoos)”

“(These Kids Would Be So Normal) Without Me”

“My Name Is The Ice Cream Man” 

MJ might also have to put a little money into 50 Cent’s catalog, because the “Amusement Park” remix just wouldn’t be complete without the one-gloved freak’s perspective. 

Glad to see George Bush took some time away from finding more reasons to keep the war going on to officially declare June as Black Music Month. As long as he has his priorities in order. And who said he didn’t love black people? Dude is a modern-day MLK. 

You can now add King of Perfume to Puff Daddy’s long resume as he took home a Fifi Award for his cologne Unforgivable. Now let’s just hope MTV doesn’t do some sort of reality show where we go “behind the cologne.” 

It might be time to go to the mailbag this week to look at two albums coming up. 

Sharkey and C.Rayz Walz – Monster Maker (Babygrande, August 2007) – It’s tough to say how this album will be received. I think there’s definitely an audience for this type of music, but the question I have is would this album have ever happened if Gnarls Barkley didn’t exist? And before all the Strongholdians get mad at me, my reason for saying this is that C.Rayz could have done an album with a lot of producers and made it work. There are some good songs on here, but Ravipops is still my favorite C.Rayz album. 

Oh No – Dr. No’s Oxperiment (Stones Throw, July 31) - Another instrumental album from Stones Throw. I got made fun of by a publicist at a major label when she asked me what I was listening to at the time and I said Madlib and J.Dilla. The actual response was something like “LOL. Boring.” Well, bring on the “LOL. Boring’s” here because Oh No delivers 28 crisp tracks, taken from samples of music from Turkey, Lebanon, Greece and Italy. Say what you want about instrumental albums, but they’re making hip-hop much more interesting right now. 

Just got another email. This oughta be good.