Triniboyblog

2010-12-03T07:37:00.002-05:00

I am an asshole. It did not take me all 21 years of consciousness, I can’t remember shit before 3 years old, to realize this. But it did take me a full 21 years of consciousness to decide that I no longer want to be an asshole. This could be characterized as an attempt to exorcise the asshole in me. An attempt to return myself to a point where I can feel proud of who I am. Ironically, first I must dispense of my pride.
Where to start? Was it being born to extremely intelligent and loving parents? Was it never wanting for anything? Was it getting almost everything I asked for? Was it realizing that I was smarter than the majority of my peers? Was it achieving everything that I put my mind to?
I really have no clue. I guess that somewhere between the privilege, intelligence, and achievement a wellspring of arrogance was formed.
Multiple people have told me that I can seem aloof or dismissive. This is not the asshole in me. That is the shy insecure person who is terribly afraid of rejection.
The asshole in me is the guy who struggles to make small talk with people because they have been weighed and measured and found wanting, much like I now find myself. The asshole in me has manipulated countless situations so that they turn out in my favor. The asshole in me has either says what you want to hear or is brutally honest in a hurtful manner. The asshole in me has a million ambitions and responsibilities but continually puts them off because I know I can. The asshole in me has survived two major accidents but still continues to drive the streets like I’m Hancock before he met Charlize Theron, even though my greatest fear is death and within the subset of possible deaths my greatest fear is dying in a car accident. My friends have seen me drive hard, but they have not seen how I can drive when I’m in a bad mood and alone. Welcome to confession can I take your order please? Well father as I turned out of La Seiva I blocked a lane of traffic so I could get on to Saddle road quicker. At the entrance to Maraval I swung around a Frontier cutting it off as soon as the road became double laned. On the corner of Park and Henry I overtook someone on the inside of the road. Turning onto the end of independence square I sped around a pedestrian and swung from the outside lane to an inside lane as I turned cutting off a truck. I drove on the shoulder to overtake a car rather than legally merge on to the highway. On the highway I hit 160 kmph/100mph while weaving through lanes. At the lights in Aranguez I overtook a truck that had stopped at the lights by using a turning lane. All of this stemmed from me waking up from 3 hours of sleep and realizing that I had three cavities. It was after I turned off of the main road that I thought about how pointless everything I had done was, it hadn’t changed the facts that precipitated it, and it had endangered lives other than my own.
I want to stop being that asshole.
They say that knowing is half the battle, well knowing is obviously the easier half. If ignorance is bliss then being self aware but without conscience must run a close second. And, it has continued for far too long. I have not cherished the things I should have and all it has brought me is pain. It is time for me to try harder; it is time for me to be a better friend, brother, son, relative and person.
As everyone's favorite asshole Kanye West loves to say, it's a process, so please help me!

Kanye's rise from the ashes?

2010-10-24T08:01:00.002-05:00

A little under a year ago Kanye West was a phariah.

I guess that's just the way the world works, express a valid opinion based on a President's response to a disaster and no one cares. Rudely, but all the same correctly proclaim that Beyonce had the best video of all time and the entire world sides with the pop star major label product. I'm not gonna front, aside from the millions in the bank and supermodel looking gold diggers, dealing with that much misplaced hatred must have sucked. If I had an Amber Rose at my side I too would have said fuck it, and disappeared for a while.

But even more interesting has been his return. It really started with his joining twitter soon before power dropped. He was easy to follow, you got exactly what you expected, silliness, wanton luxury consumption, twit pics of a life led by few, and unexpectedly, some rambling introspection. And as expected, it is a hit.

Power itself was a departure from the normal Kanye opening single. Dark and introspective wit over a track that was patently un-pop. A short teaser video based on an imagery of hell that was only available on the interwebs. There was no upbeat beat or MTV worthy video. I for one wondered what is Kanye up to. I understood his desire to move toward deeper artistry in his work but not how exactly he could do that and sell records according to the industry model.

His next departure from the norm was GOOD fridays, say what, who can resist free music. Great beats, great rhymes what more could you want(phonte voice). It made sense, it kept him relevant musically, and us patient, while allowing him forgo releasing other tracks until he played runaway at the VMA's.

Then there is the masterstroke. The Runaway video. It is an impressive accomplishment. He showcases his music, his desire to have what he makes seen as real art, and the emotional turmoil of the last year in a beautifully shot easy to watch short film. As far as the music, he gives us just enough of it to confirm that his album should be at least good, while again leaving us wanting.

I really think that Kanye West has waged an incredible campaign for our hearts and minds. He may have lain a blueprint for all artists on how to explore your other artistic interests while setting your album up for monster first week sales. I won't call Kanye the official rapper of the internet generation, but one thing is for sure he does get the internet generation, and that will only help his star burn brighter.

Stale Crumpets and Cold Tea

2010-10-05T10:38:00.000-05:00

The fall of 2008, the first semester of my senior year, I had the pleasure of taking an amazing class called “Race and Politics”. It looked at politics and its complex relationship with, you know, race. Which is to say it basically looked at American politics since the passage of the voting and civil rights acts, no wait, since emancipation proclamation. Apparently, it is a class that Mike Taibbi of rolling stone should have taken.
Mr. Taibbi’s article on the Tea Party, “Tea & Crackers”, is highly insightful. He chronicles the origin of the tea party, from its birth in libertarian ideals to its hijacking by the upper echelons of republican corporate interests. He provides an excellent look at the motivations of the tea partiers and their narcissistic thought process. However, he loses me when he says it would be wrong to call the Tea Partiers racist.
I say this because in almost all facets of society, especially politics, there is nothing new under the sun. Yes, mankind has seen it all before. And, America has seen this all before.
America’s history is one dominated by oppositional groups. Us versus Them. The most poignant of these is the history of African Americans and white (mainly southern white) Americans. (A quick aside it’s fucking disgusting that American without a modifier is reserved for white Americans, I’m gonna start a movement to call white American’s European Americans and Native American’s Americans. Jk about the second part). After all it is this history that has shaped American politics since it’s inception. Yes, since the declaration of independence black Americans and their relation to white Americans have been a source of consternation and contention.
The best way to examine the long history of this interracial (pause/no porn) relationship is to take a look at a one particular phenomenon of slavery, the escaped slave. It is not the escaped slave who was interesting; after all wouldn’t you try to escape forced labor, heinous treatment, and inhumane living conditions. It was the people who hunted the escaped slaves: posses. Groups of poor white men who would take up their arms and relentlessly hunt down the only people that had it worse than them.
Here’s an inexact analogy to the posse’s situation. I am a soldier. A robot has recently taken my job and income, as such I am poor and idle, scratching out a meager living on my land while the generals I could be serving earn obscene amounts of money because the military no longer has to pay humans, or worry about their well being. It only has to pay for the upkeep of these ever-toiling machines that they can easily replace when broken or destroyed. Say one of these robots develops sentience and makes a break for it. Those generals would now come to me, because they could not risk the robot freeing its compatriots. Now I as the recently fucked over soldier would tell the generals to shove it, hoping that it has a sharp point and reaches their brains. But if I believed that the robot posed a threat to the lives of my wife and children I might willingly enlist in the hunt for this rogue.
The poor white southerner truly believed that the “savage” African slave would not hesitate to kill him and his family if he were freed. Quite frankly, I don’t blame the poor white southerner. If I helped keep a people subjugated in heinous conditions for a long period of time, nothing would scare me like the prospect of them rising up and seeking revenge. The main culprit of the poor white southerner’s attitude was ignorance. Unlike my soldier they never had the benefit of working for slave owners. They were born poor and fated to remain poor due to shitty employment prospects, due to the fact that slaves held the majority of southern jobs, and they were taught to fear dark skin and all the savagery that would be unleashed if this dark skin were to be freed. They never thought, how am I benefitting from slavery? They never thought who is benefitting from slavery? And most importantly they never thought, who is actually suffering from slavery?
This line of questioning could have freed the slaves earlier and launched America on a vastly different path. Unluckily for the slaves, political thought is a top down exercise. The rich and few hold sway over the poor and many.
This relationship has continued throughout American history. It is most severely expressed when the theys, seemingly, stand to benefit.
Lincoln, A Republican, emancipates the slaves probably creating a job market and a white middle class by unintentionally creating a racially segregated capitalist market. How does America thank him, by electing a Democrat.
The dixiecrats maintain a political stranglehold over the American south by preying on the fears of white men that they are sexually inadequate when compared to the black male whose sole desire is to taste the pure as the driven snow sex of the white female. Well this is a gross simplification, but for the purposes of this article it is all I need. As such blacks are segregated, lynched, and hated. In the south they are practically rights less from the emancipation proclamation to the signing of the civil rights act.
When the civil rights act is signed Lyndon B Johnson proclaims to his Democrat colleague’s “We have lost the south for a generation”. Never mind that integration destroyed black companies that could not compete with larger white companies, helping to take a black middle class with it. Never mind that black teachers(and academic excellence) and other professionals, part of the black middle class, became a dying breed crushed under the immense weight of southern institutionalized racism. Southern whites only thought was you gave those niggers rights. Which then ushered in a new era (no fitteds) of Republican dominance.
And the Republicans took the insecurities of white America and kicked the ball further down the road. Barry Goldwater’s nearly openly racist rhetoric of returning safety to America, Reagan referencing non-existent welfare queens, Bush Sr. using the Willie Horton ad to crush an opponent: all example of how the black other has been used to rally poor whites, who are actually in direct competition with poor blacks for whatever scraps fall from the plates of the wealthy, to the republican cause. A cause that has increasingly strayed away from its somewhat noble principles, that are now only truly espoused by libertarians.
The tea party is no different. It is the same ruse worked to perfection. Us and them. The them may not be overtly persons of color, but the racial implications seethe beneath the surface. For instance, anti socialism: why would any poor person oppose a system that would make their lives better by raising taxes on the rich and corporations?
Well to answer that you need to look at the “appeal” of the Republican party. It’s original values were to encourage open competition between all persons. As such your wealth would be commensurate with your hard work and intelligence. The government should not help any specific group of people no matter the circumstances. Socialism is obviously to be abhorred. When applied to America this does not account for it’s racial history or the fact that wealth is accumulated and begets more wealth as generations live and die. What it also does not take into account is that this accumulated wealth provides a false image to the white populous, who see the rich white benefactors of the accumulated wealth of slave owners and think that they are part of a superior people. While the other, the inheritors of the accumulated poverty of slavery, colonialism and second class citizenship are lazy, stupid, criminals. As such under educated whites are drawn to the Republican party rhetoric that soft plays this image of the other.
What has happened with the Tea Party is that the thought of an African American president is too much. It is not the blind faith in their candidates, who are mostly inexperienced and tend to gaffe often. It is the blind fury constantly and wrongly aimed at Obama for all the issues he inherited and an agenda that would benefit the Tea Party members the most and hurt, not that significantly, big business. The fear of being engulfed by an other propped up by socialism seems to have dug in too deeply. It has brought racist vitriol to the front and sent subtlety to the back of the bus. Racist signs are paraded on the street courted by the GOP while it moves with impunity to protect its corporate interests.
Race is at the heart of Tea Party politics, just as it is at the heart of all American politics. There will never be any real progress for the majority of Americans. Until the European American majority begins to understand that their us and them is not black vs. white. It is the haves versus the have nots, with the haves heavily favored, and by siding with race over the potential gains for all they are just helping the other team more.

Like that Bron Bron?

2010-09-30T13:48:00.005-05:00

When I say "Like that Bron Bron", I don't mean it as the clipse do in Doorman. It's a rhetorical question. I'm asking are you gonna do them like that Bron Bron? Whereas the clipse are asking, do you like the Madonna look a like you are currently banging?

And I won't say it, I will shout it every time Bron Bron dunks on someone.

And Lebron isn't even my favorite of the trio. That privilege goes to Dweezus.

What can I say. The prospect of watching a season long highlight real has me salivating. They should change the heat's name to the slam'o'rama. Barring injury or truly awful role players the heat are a lock for most entertaining team this season.

Kobe, Pau, and Ron Ron? They will be in the finals next year. Lebron, Wade, and Bosh? Who knows? All I can say for sure that when those three are on the floor together we might OD on all the amazing.

Now usually I don't do this, but uhhh.....

2010-09-28T11:52:00.004-05:00

I want these.

I want these so bad that if I ask you for money don't give it to me, because I might buy these. Are they expensive? hell yeah. Would they be worth it? I do not know.
What I do know is they are fresh.
The color, the look of the leather; the fact that they're made to be worn sockless ( Boat Shoes and Clarks crew stand up and be counted). It just seems like it would quickly be my fall shoe of choice.
Well if I had fall. It's flip flop weather year round down here.

check it out at

http://www.highsnobiety.com/news/2010/09/28/visvim-virgil-boots-kangaroo-folk/

Just how dumb do you think we are?

2010-09-09T16:13:00.002-05:00

Change, 2 years ago that word served as a rallying cry around the world as America dumped the Neocons out of office and saved the world from what would have been the unmitigated disaster of a McCain/Palin White House. And yet as the US approaches the midpoint of Obama’s first term, it appears that it was simply not ready for change. The right has shifted even further right with its base delving from implicit racism to openly xenophobic and racist sentiment. It has returned to attempting to stonewall any Democratic legislation, particularly those that represent Obama’s campaign issues. It has successfully reduced health care reform to a sham that will for the most part continue to line the coffers of insurance companies while still leaving significant portions of the public uncovered. It has opposed regulation of the banking regulation in the face of irrefutable evidence that regulation is necessary and yet most crassly it has tried to limit the amount of money that the federal can seek as damages from BP. Also, the Republican Governors of states affected by the oil spill have been loath to activate the National Guard for clean up, but quick to blame this on President Obama.
Yet through all of these acts, most of which could be viewed as malicious toward anyone that earns less than $100,000 dollars a year, the Tea Party and what has to be their mostly ignorant denizens have continued to blindly bash Obama for attempting to right the wrongs that the GOP and their had wrought on the US on the behest of feeding the ever growing capitalist beast. At the heart of all this is the familiar theme of fear of the other blinding those who could benefit the most from unity. Yet the knife being twisted in said heart is the continual lack of any form of reconciliation of the United State’s sordid history of race relations and the divides that fracture the US populous as a whole. However, unless a far larger fraction of the white population becomes willing to seek some sort of understanding of the implications of its racially hegemonic past there will never be true change, the corporations win and hope for actual change continues to fade fast.
Recently, in Trinidad and Tobago, change was also adopted as the war cry of the coalition that pushed the People’s National Movement out of power. Unlike the US I held out very little optimism that any actual change would occur. Trinidadian politics has been dominated by the same 2 parties for most of my life, the difference between this party has not been the politics: both parties thrive on corruption and racial pandering rather than making actual progress, whether economic or social. So when I heard that one party had upended the other, just like the last election, I expected more of the same.
What I got was quite frankly a jaw dropping amount of the same old shit. Yesterday the ruling party released their budget. There were some good ideas, such as tax rebates for installing solar water heaters, which could almost be seen as progressive. Then I heard about the less progressive plans that the COP held. Rather than installing a countrywide rapid transit rail system the COP has decided that it would be a far better idea to connect Maracas(A popular beach) to Tunapuna(A town of middling significance).
Let me make it clear why I am this angry. The COP canceled a project launched by a previous government that would serve to reduce traffic congestion, move goods and labor efficiently, and provide long-term employment for many for a project that would accomplish nothing. Some people will be able to reach a beach more easily, but the actual utility of the tunnel to our country would be veritably nil. Further the COP, to tremendous applause, lowered the taxes on oil companies in order to “encourage” investment. I am left with a sinking feeling. This will not encourage further investment, all of our resources are already accounted for, the COP has simply increased the profit margins of foreign oil companies.
The numerous white elephants that have been erected in my absence may have alerted my people that change was necessary, but apparently it did not make them look beyond their usual options. On the back of racial divides, corruption, and a carnival mentality colonial corporations are yet again winning. This begs the question, how dumb are we?

( Jay-Z's voice)This is America People ( Jay-Z's voice)

2010-08-24T08:59:00.006-05:00

For the past few weeks there has been an uproar about the plan to put a “Mosque” at “Ground Zero”. You will note that I bracketed the words mosque and ground zero, I did this because the building that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf wishes to see rise is not a Mosque but a Muslim community center that happens to have a prayer room, and the proposed site would lie in the former shadow of the twin towers, not atop the gash that still mars Manhattan.
In light of these two very salient points one is forced to wonder what exactly the furor is about. This is not like a conquering moor army erecting a Mosque over a razed town on the Iberian Peninsula, which is one example of the incorrect comparisons that I have recently read. It is in fact a mission of peace being undertaken by an individual with strong interfaith ties and a pacifistic message.
So why so serious Americans, really, what is the issue? A frequent ally of the US wants to erect a monument to the peaceful nature of Islam and yet people turn out in droves clutching white signs reading Sharia in a font that could be named blood spatter. It is actually quite sad, it is not as if there has been a misinterpretation of the facts, they are all easily available online; from Feisal Abdul Rauf’s pacifistic track record, to a correct definition of Sharia. It is willful ignorance that is probably fueled by the racist opinions (fair and balanced news it most certainly is not) of Rupert Murdoch’s GOP attack dog.
I’m saddened that a portion of certain segment of the US population is still acts like it does, I will spell it out later in the post, but for now look at who is marching against the community center and who is marching for it.
However, there are other facts that are far more pertinent.
First, the US is a nation of immigrants; even its aboriginal inhabitants were not here when North America was initially formed. Nope, they traveled many miles and many moons (sorry, had to do it) from Asia, when an Alaskan-Siberian ice bridge existed, to populate the Americas. Without these immigrants the US would most likely be as relevant as Togo in the world village: without slaves there would be no basis for America to be a superpower, without fairly constant immigration from Europe until the 19th century the US economy would have probably stagnated, without the influx of exceptional Asian and African students to the US educational system during the later part of the 20th century, who continued on to work in the US after their educational tenure the US ended, the US would most likely not have outstripped its closest rivals as it has.
Second, there are no grounds, legal, moral, or otherwise (barring idiocy) to protest the building of this community center: political hyenas have far too long trampled upon the separation of chuch (Church) and state, like a toddler in a stadium stampede, to appeal to the undereducated and racist. America has no state religion, if it did, wouldn’t that be like exercising Sharia? Yes it would. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the constitution, the same constitution that many of the people who oppose the community center would claim to revere. But more importantly, one nation under God is an affront to the founding fathers (sorta), In God we trust is an affront to the founding fathers (sorta), and barring the erection of this community center is an affront to the founding fathers (again sorta, the founding fathers were for the most part still racist dicks, which led to the extension of slavery and the civil war).
Last, the people who are complaining the most about this “Mosque” have absolutely no right to argue against it, if they do then “Native Americans”(misnomer) have every right to picket churches. What we have here is yet another example of the ignorant portion of white America being suckered into hating “the other” against their interests. It has happened before, whether the other were Aboriginal Americans, African Americans, or Asian Americans.
As such the erection of this “Mosque” may be exactly what America needs. Five to ten years down the line, when the world hasn’t been destroyed by a cataclysm triggered by suicide bombers, Americans may look back and say “damn we were dumb as rocks back then, we should smarten up a little bit.”

Well, one can only hope.

Ok, let's try this one more time.

2010-08-10T12:58:00.002-05:00

"I'm coming home again, do you think about me now and then, cause I'm coming home again!"- Kanye West.

So I'm going to be returning to the twin beauties of Trinidad and Tobago for the first time in two years. Overdue as fuck, ain't it? Quite frankly, I'm going to be carrying back a lot of baggage, both of the literal and metaphysical kind. However, I also will probably be unemployed for the first 2 months I'll be home. This should allow me to get over whatever humps are ahead of me, as well as allow me a little more free time to contemplate life and its meaning.

No wait, we're born, we grow, we follow our biological imperatives to procreate, then we die: life in a nutshell.

Soooooo, scratch the meaning of life from what I'll be contemplating. But, I will be contemplating a lot, hopefully this will lead to me actually using this blog as the outlet for my thoughts, which was my initial intention.

So if "anyone's out there, cause I feel like I'm talking to myself"(Eminem), I will be making a sincere attempt to post more.

"Thank you, good night and good luck"

Haiti

2010-01-28T10:08:00.002-05:00

Paul Shirley should have read The Black Jacobins( CLR James), a little bit about the aftermath of the Haitian revolution, and about the brutal dictatorship that Haiti is only a few years removed from to get a better idea of why Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere before he wrote this:

Dear Haitians –

First of all, kudos on developing the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Your commitment to human rights, infrastructure, and birth control should be applauded.

As we prepare to assist you in this difficult time, a polite request: If it’s possible, could you not re-build your island home in the image of its predecessor? Could you not resort to the creation of flimsy shanty- and shack-towns? And could some of you maybe use a condom once in a while?

Sincerely,

The Rest of the World.

According to the rumors page on allhiphop.com the author was fired from his job at ESPN. If this is true I would like to applaud ESPN for taking the correct course of action.

Notorious.

2009-01-20T10:15:00.003-05:00

After taking one black film class I feel qualified to review the film Notorious. Just kidding, there is no way that I could be considered qualified to do anything besides chill and drink thanks to my liberal arts education. But, I am willing to put my honest to god opinion on screen so others know what they're in for before they go.
The film does has it's fair share of problems, the biggest might be the casting of the film. Aside from BIG the only good physical match was Naturi(the dark 3lw girl) playing little kim. The biggest failure was the actor choosen to play Tupac. he looks nothing like Tupac, and captured none of Tupac's energy or charisma. The actor playing faith bore a passing resembelence to the real Faith, but from the videos of faith that I've seen not much else.
Overall the acting was pretty terrible, with Naturi providing the best performance, ie capturing the sexuality of lil Kim by baring her breasts early and often, and actually at times becoming hard to distinguish from lil kim. The only thing Gravy managed to capture from biggie was his nasally breathing difficulties, but then he was also a fat bastard in the movie so that might've come naturally. Even the usually respectable Angela Bassett seems like a bad actress in this movie.
The cinematography was for the most part basic, I don't know who shot this but he fucked up by not borrowing from the cinematography of BIG's music video's. The final scene focused on Biggie's mother's face and the video of Biggie's last ride through brooklyn does redeem the director.
The dialogue and storyline are at best uninteresting, and it feels like very little is done to really flesh out biggie's character. My overall verdict is to download this, but don't waste your money.

New day, same shit.

2009-01-14T20:30:00.003-05:00

It's the 14th of January, in 6 days George W. Bush will finally be out of office, and the great Black(or half black) hope will take office. Some people, white people, see this as the end of Racism in the United States, and as such an end to any claim that blacks have to affirmative action. Some people, black people, see this as the beginning of the government taking an actual interest in the well being of Black Americans. The sad and true reality is that Obama's victory may strengthen certain forms of racism and undermine attempts to advance minorities to social equality.
First, racism is not dead. It actually cannot be pronounced dead until all minorities accomplish permanent equal social standing as whites. This is when all the measured statistics that are used in some circles to rationalize black inferiority, after the decline of biological racism, are the same across all races we can say that racism is dead. That will be the day that blacks and latinos are no longer disproportionately represented in the underclass and incarcerated, which would reflect unbiased education and justice systems. On that day minorities and women will also be equally(proportionate to their population) represented in all levels of business an industry, which would reflect unbiased advancement opportunities. If this was all naturally occuring then you could declare racism dead.
What is preventing this from occuring? Colorblind racism for one, colorblind racism is the child of the right wing, yet is fostered by the left's acceptance of the main tenet needed to apply colorblind racism. That tenet is that since the civil rights era blacks(or all minorities) have had the same opportunities as whites. Thus blacks failure to accomplish is due to the inferior nature of African American culture, and blacks are as such still inferior and worthy of discrimination.
Of course there is the discrimination thatand the inequal inheritance of generational wealth that affects all blacks ,and the cycle of poverty that affects those in the lower class that represent the actual barriers to black achievement and need to be addressed.
Second, the government will not magically start caring about black people. Why, congress and the senate remain overwhelmingly white, and represents mostly white people. As such just as missing little white girls are always big news stories, and missing little black girls go virtually ignored, the legislature will continue to not give a fuck about black people.
Yeah reparations will not be forthcoming, what will be forthcoming are attacks on affirmative action using the shift in public(white) opinion about racism.
As such, what can Obama do for black people. Well for one, he is likely to try to try to protect affirmative action by nominating liberal minded supreme court judges. In an interview, I believe on CNN, Obama when questioned about affirmative action said it was necessary but he did not want people who did not need it, such as his daughters, benefitting from it. He also plans to attack poverty which will be heartily welcomed considering the current financial environment and educational reform. This puts blacks in a position to advance their social position greatly. Also I feel like in ads there has been a visible shift toward representation of blacks as middle class this could possibly represent a shift in media attitudes in general and could help positively influence white attitudes toward blacks.
I guess that my title is a little more pessemistic than my post, and a change may finally be coming.

Let's get the ball rolling again.

2009-01-07T23:38:00.003-05:00

I'm going to, yet again, try to get back into blogging. I don't know exactly what I'll be blogging about, but hopefully it will be funny, informative, or entertaining. If anyone is reading this wish me luck.

98% YAYO FREE

2008-07-05T00:47:00.002-05:00

Right now, I'm listening to the new G-Unit album, Terminate on Site/Sight. This is odd to say the least because after the travesties of Curtis, Massacre, and whatever failure of an album Banks released, I pretty much gave up on seeing good music coming out of the G-unit camp.
TOS, however, has produced a glimmer on the horizon. I once again feel like the Unit can produce a solid album of bangers, which while not greatly lyrical provide a good balance of swagger, gun talk, punch lines, and general entertainment.

But, I'm being generous. The version of TOS I'm listening to is 98% Yayo free. The only times that you are forced to suffer Yayo's voice are ad-libs and choruses. No more terrible punchlines, terrible flows, or general wackness. It makes TOS a pretty decent album.

I first heard about the existence of a Yayo free TOS in MuzikSupremacy's IRC, after i had downloaded 2 tracks off TOS and said that I would probably DL the album, had Yayo not been on it. Lo and behold the heavens parted and a link to a yayoless album descended to my web browser. Well someone gave me a link.

As I play the album, I wonder, what would drive a person to edit a rappers verses out of an album. Yayo is a wack rapper, but, what would possess someone to sit down and edit out each of his verses.

I feel like this is indeed a testament to the level of wackness in which Yayo lies. Someone went through the trouble of editing out his verses. They, rather than not dl the album or just skipping his verses, created a monument to how bad a rapper he is, and then proceeded to distribute it.

I sincerely hope that in an interview someone asks his opinion on the Yayo free album. Hopefully it will enlighten him to how little the general public likes his rap and he'll become to 50c what Farnsworth Bentley was to diddy.

It's only right after all that 50 has done for him.

Be a Nigga Too.

2008-06-10T06:49:00.002-05:00

Be a nigga too is a flawed ass song in term of logic and subject matter, but fuck it, the intro and cinematography are great. Fuck Nas for biting the 25th hour in a completely uninspired manner though.

Number 2

2008-06-01T18:57:00.002-05:00

Waysssss hoss the way you play you rel deserve that number
any other person woulda conceded 2 corners, but no, you just had to cause 2 goals.
Best case senario, IE had the two men that throw way scored, 2-1 win
worst case senario same score line, or a 2-0 or 1-0 scoreline.

2 posts in one day, damn I'm on a roll.

2008-05-24T17:52:00.002-05:00

I was driving home today, playing Kidz in the Hall's latest release (The In Crowd) on my Ipod. As I skipped driving down the block, it hit me, I hadn't listened to radio in a long ass while. The digital age, well really apple's Ipod and the apple care replacement plan, made it possible for me to never have to listen to the radio or buy CD's.

Judging from apple's brisk sales of Ieverythings I am definitely not alone. This got me to thinking, with the cost of computers, Mp3 players, and broadband internet connections declining, how long much longer will the vast majority of people listen to the radio? Think about it. Primarily, I used to listen to the radio while in cars. However, with the advent of the CD player and cd player cassette adaptors the radio was abrubtly cut out of my life. With cars becoming more and more digitally intergrated, as any Cadillac or Ford Commercial will attest, will radio completely die out?

Well maybe I'm being a little morbid, radio will live on, I think that there will always be people who will listen to it the profitability of sattelite radio seems to attest to that. But the CD's lease on life seems to be inching toward a close, with declining CD sales and increasing use of the internet to get music it seems that the internet is quickly replacing CD stores. In my three years at college I have bought less than a quarter the number of CD's that I bought in my last three years of high school. This is not to say that I bought fewer albums, the number of itunes charges on my credit card statements can speak to that, but I made fewer trips to the CD store.

The greater implication for the death of the CD format is what will happen to music distibution. Itunes has been a great success, but it essentially works within the confines of the traditional label machinery. Radiohead's digital release of in Rainbows is a different beast, done without a label, their radiohead's independant digital release might revolutionize the music market. Why shouldn't independant artists raise money through shows buy hot beats, make a hot album, and sell it to people through the internet. They can build buzz via youtube, myspace, facebook, imeem, countless music forums, and countless music blogs. Think about all the possibilities of actually doing this, the main and most important one would be real artistic Freedom. Had Nas done this we might actually be looking foward to an album with the powerful name Nigger, instead of a much less interesting sounding title, Untitled.

I mean there's nothing new under the sun, so I'm sure that someone has begun the process I've described above already. I wish them luck

in the meantime I'ma leave you with some radiohead, complements youtube:

enjoy!

BET I call BS on you.

2008-05-24T07:06:00.002-05:00

So, I'm trapped in Trinidad, without any of my close friends, and very little to do. Where do I turn for comfort, on a Saturday morning, during these dark depressing times? To BET J and specifically to Soul Sessions. If there was any indication of how fucked up the fact thart viacom owns BET is, it is the fact that VH1 Soul represents Soul and Neo Soul music better than BET J's Soul Sessions.
These were the five videos I caugh when I stumbled onto BET J this morning:
Honey by Erykah Badu of her latest, and very good album, Amerykah.

Rising Up by the roots feat. Wale and Chrisette Michelle of their latest, and ridiculously good album, Rising Down.

and then it all went to hell and 4 minutes by Madonna feat. Timberland and Justin Timberlake came on

This was followed by Kanye West feat. T. Pain with the now ancient the Goodlife

And to end the soul sessions American Boy by Estelle Feat. Kanye West

.

Now I fuck with all of these songs, except Madonna's. However, only two of them can actually be considered Neo-Soul. Wait, wasn't the name of the video block the Soul Sessions. The programming director, or whoever decides what videos to show in that block should feel ashamed. But, i think that this is indicative of a larger problem, the fact that what was once a black owned and run enterprise is now, white owned. Black people still run it, badly, and have done little to improve the image of black people in the media, sometimes even stifling voices that run counter current to the mainstream, Little brother's banning for being too intelligent being a prime example.
All this considered it seems like BET and Viacom add insult to injury by playing pop videos during a soul session. The insult being that white people know soul better than black people, remember that I mentioned VH1 soul being respectable earlier.

But fuck it all let's start the day on a HIGH note:

Return of the King

2007-08-23T06:38:00.001-05:00

IIIIIIIIIIIIIII'mmmmmmm bbbbbaaaaaccckkkkkkkk
but you probably didn't miss me.

After a not so brief hiatus due to weed induced laziness and my depression about the wack state of mainstream hip hop, I have decided to begin posting again because the world needs me. Actually, I really have too much time on my hands right now and nothing better to do.

Right now I'm chilling in beantown patiently waiting to return to my college. My feelings can be described as a mix of fear and excitement. Fear, since I have to actually begin studying in order to raise my GPA to a respectable level. Excitement, since I can hardly wait to see all the friends that I missed over the summer and I know that this year should be a lot of fun.

I imagine that for most hip hop fans that like NY hip hop or just real hip hop in general feel the way that I feel about my return to school about the supposedly forthcoming release of albums by Papoose and Saigon.

Fear, since Papoose's skills in my opinion are questionable(in my opinion)
and could easily release a cd with 3 really good tracks and 13 meh ones and also since saigon also has the potential to put out wack songs. Excitement, since both papoose and saigon have put out their fair share of classic songs and mixtapes, which I hope reflects their potential ability to release a classic album.

However, there is the small issue that neither of the two have release dates yet even though their albums are supposedly complete. They've both put out singles which have unfortunately fizzled and died. I must ask what are their respective labels waiting for. Why are they keeping potential moneymakers sitting on the shelf, really all they need to do is put out good singles, shoot good videos, and put a good promotional team behind these guys and they could make a mint. I make it sound so simple because it is.

I really think that the labels might be afraid of causing a shift in the current state of hip hop. Labels might really be scared that if East coast rap becomes dominant again they will have a much harder time finding artists that will make money. The labels would no longer be able to just sign anyone who can put out a catchy single(case in point the fucktard collipark signing the even bigger fucktard soulja bitch), they might have to actually go out there and start looking for music that is actually good and that might stand the test of time. (Lets face it next year round this time soulja bitch will be an unpleasant but very very vague memory)

But, I could be wrong having a huge e buzz, a lot of talent(saigon mainly), and a completed album might not be reason enough for an artist to get a release date and some label backing. I will be waiting patiently on Saigon and Papoose's albums to drop but I will not hold my breath.

Real B Boys still exist

2007-06-17T22:28:00.001-05:00

Last Thursday night was a reaffirmation that hip hop as a culture still lives, at least in the form of those who practice more than one part of hip hop culture (ie. do more than one of the following: mcing, graphing, breaking, or djing).
I had gone to the BX to smoke the finest sticky icky that I have ever smoked, haze if you wanted to know the name, and was carrying a backpack full of beer. When i got there I proceeded to do what I had waited 4 days to do... get fucked up. The people who I was chilling with were friends of a friend of mine, and as we watched LeBron's Jordan comparisons come to a sad end we were joined by two people I had not met before. They seemed as anxious as I was to be in an altered mind state so after drinking some beers they went off to the liquor store to get some E&J.
When they got back, they got fucked up and took it upon themselves to to school the non-New Yorkers on what we had missed out on by not having been lucky enough to have been born in the BX. They told us about trips to Manhattan where they racked everything from Cristal to a giant bottle of hennesy from liquor stores, they also told us about trips to local parks while using shrooms, and they told us about drunken tagging treks that they had taken.
The tales of drunken tagging trips turned into their tales of their regular tagging. They grew more and more enthusiastic about describing their various escapades and the damage that they sustained during those escapades. I heard a story about a guy who always took too long on his tags but never got caught, a story about one of them jumping off a 2 story roof to avoid getting busted(which ended with the jumper sustaining 2 shattered heels), and the stories of the clothes that they had shredded going through barbwire (whether climbing up or falling down).
Their stories revealed the passion that they had for graffiti, no matter what injuries they sustained or how many times they were nearly bagged they still kept doing it; they did not do it for the fame or for the money they did it because for what ever reason they loved it.
The passion that they showed in their graphing and also their rapping ( remember I said that they could be called B boys ), in my opinion, is what is missing from rap these days(by rap I mean the mainstream rap that helps shape the stereotype of any black person in America). There is no real passion for it, no one does it because they love it, they do it for the money. This is the main reason why I am looking foward to hearing the new kanye west cd it is because he is the only truely mainstream mc, except maybe nas, who really seems like he makes music out of a love for making music. I hope that soon we see more mainstream artists like kanye or the two graph artists/rappers, artists who rap because they love it.

Blogspot messed up

2007-06-11T13:17:00.000-05:00

The title that was here was for a possible post that I wrote a draft to and deleted.
peace

RIP Stack Bundles

2007-06-11T10:24:00.001-05:00

AHH.com announced today that Stack Bundles was murdered early this morning. I really do not want to believe that Hip Hop has lost another talented soldier, but I would like to send my condolences out to his family.

New York, New York

2007-06-05T16:26:00.000-05:00

I've been in New York for 5 days now

the things I've learned

1. If you think it's the right train don't get off especially if you're drunk and it's 3 am.
2. The signs on the columns at pacific-atlantic stop say pacific, which is retarded.
3.New York loves J's
4.New York is fly; so fly that I feel like a bum if I don't go out looking Doug E.

What I didn't need to learn about New York
1. It has the best rappers
2.It has the best rappers
3. It has the best rappers

When I say they have the best Rappers I am not referring to the Golden age of hip hop where almost everyone who was rapping was amazingly talented or had amazingly talented ghost writers; I am talking about today right now as I'm writing this. How many NY rappers, who are more talented than 90% of the rappers that have gone platinum in the past 3 years, have been relegated to being mixtape stars? Immediately graph, gravy, nucci reyo, red cafe(questionably), maino, saigon, papoose and jae mills (sai, pap and jae are signed but still haven't released albums which is why I have included them) come to mind. With such a wealth of talent waiting for their shot to become the next Jigga why the fuck did someone sign MIMS. Him getting signed is proof enough that there is a lottery for getting rap deals and i want to know where I can buy my ticket.
Really I want to but out a single which says nothing about me besides that I am a greedy arrogant fuck and have it get 10000000000000 spins then flop, really I do. How is it that even though the lottery system has proven that it will only result in big singles and small sales that it still persists. More importantly it needs to be stopped so that played out songs aren't used in every possible ad to squeeze every possible dollar out of the song, because it is fucking annoying for the listeners who heard the song the trillion times it played thanks to payola.
The real problem is even the Majors are just too stuck in their ways, they still make so much money off mediocre sales of mediocre albums that they do not have to change and so they will will continue to force feed us doo doo raps.
How can we fight the majors, the same way we fight should fight corporations; steal from em, fuck boycotting them that won't help. All those who want to save mainstream hip hop should dl what ever wack album is out, steal 100 cdrs from wal mart, burn the album onto those disks, and then go sell em for 5 dollars. I am not advocating bootlegging, just the bootlegging of wack albums. Hopefully enough wack albums will have such poor sales that they become extinct.

Ohhhhhhh shit my first post

2007-05-31T17:10:00.000-05:00

Damn, my first post. When I decided i wanted to start a blog I had no idea what I would write about first. I want to do some album reviews, I want to talk about what I think about music, I want to talk about things I experience, and I want to talk about my opinion on the state of the world. Sounds a little pretentious don't it, whatever son.

Now to the actual first post

Over the two weeks I have been out of the bubble that is the small liberal arts college I attend, I was reminded that racism is still breathing even in the most metropolitan and liberal cities.
I spent the last week in Montreal enjoying the it's best aspects, a liberal attitude toward marijuana and a sane drinking age. It all lead up to me spending my final night in a strip club. At some point during that crazy night, like all people who are drinking a lot, I had to take a monster piss; on my way out of the bathroom I witnessed what I thought was going to be a polite gesture when i saw a white 20 something hold the bathroom door open for an asian 20 something. However, I was sadly mistaken, after the asian thanked the caucasian for holding the door open the white guy replies no problem yellow boy.
I was pissed, were I not a black Trinidadian in Canada I probably would have beaten the shit out of the dude. However, fear of both deportation and big ass bouncers caused a quick suppression of that impulse.
The next week i was in Boston chilling by my aunt and trying to find a sublet or room in New York city for the summer. Part of this involved posting my phone number and email address on craigslist and praying for responses. 2 of the responses disturbed me. A 718 number called I picked up and said hello, immediately there was silence then a beep beep beep letting me know I had been hung up on. So I called the number back thinking that the call had been dropped, the phone rang twice and went to the machine. A few hours later I called back again and the outcome was the same, a lil while later the 718 number rang me again and upon hearing my voice hung up. Later I sent a description of myself, specially tailored to appeal to landlords, to someone who had seen my craigslist post. After he received it he suddenly was leaving later on in June. In my description I mentioned that I was Trinidadian and that Trinidad was a Caribbean country, I think that this lead the landlord to jump to the correct conclusion that I was black. My belief that these 2 incidents were due to racism might just be the result of residual paranoia from a week of being stoned senseless combined with my renewed sensitivity to racism on a personal level, which is dulled at school, but in any case the fact that the incidences could be due to the fact that I'm black and the incident that I witnessed in Montreal saddened me.

In a book or academic essay i would have a nice intellectual conclusion at this point, something like race blah blah blah the greatest human tragedy blah blah blah we must change the way we view each other blah blah blah. Fuck that, it wouldn't help. Racism is a way of life in the world, it even exists within races, we aren't gonna defeat it soon so I'll just let you read what I've written thus far and be on your way.

no wait hold on

quick review of fabolous' new album from nothing to something
for a full review go to: http://playda.blogspot.com/
for a dl go to: http://bluntsmoke.blogspot.com/

It doesn't suck, it's full of good punchlines but fab sounds sleepy and it has balls chick songs.
But hey you might like that who knows.

sorry If there are grammatical or spelling errors