I’M BOYCOTTING POP CULTURE UNTIL MR. T IS PAID $500,000 IN ROYALTIES

I’m sitting up here watching Rocky III (the best in the series by far) and I’m Google searching to see if Mr. T won an Oscar for his performance as Clubber Lang. To my disappointment, he didn’t. This is easily the best performance by a male actor in the last 30 years outside of Denzel Washington in Training Day and that basehead in Menace II Society that O-Dog shot over the cheeseburger. Mr. T was mean and just outright disrespectful to everybody. Apollo Creed was washed up and Mr. T knew it, that’s why he shitted on him all throughout the movie. Apollo went and got croaked by that big ass Russian in the next movie anyway, fuck him. Even Rocky Balboa was a big girlie mouth coochie frito from Rocky III onward, and the endings of Rocky movies III-V were fixed to save Stallone’s career. Let’s be real, Rocky sat up there and watched Mr. T run pimp talk to Adrianne at a public press conference.

“Hey sweet thang, why don’t you come to my place tonight. I’ll show you a real man”.

Mr. T was 9 years ahead of Jungle Fever by throwing mack lines to The Italian Stallion’s wife in public, Wesley Snipes was mad late. This is when movie villains were truly villainous. Bottom line, Mr. T was the greatest on-screen entertainer of the 1980’s- he’s tied with Sho‘Nuff from The Last Dragon - without even considering the A-Team. This epiphany hit me after he beat the crap out of a fan for no apparent reason on his way to the ring to fight Rocky, so I went on a Mr. T rampage and hit up you tube. One of the first things I unearthed was something I had completely forgotten about. Mr. T was a true renaissance man, and he recorded an album and an EP in 1984. Only Michael Jackson had a better hold on the sound of the mid-80’s.  I remember the joints “Mr. T, Mr. T (He Was Made For Love)” and “Treat Your Mother Right”. Speaking of the latter, here’s the video for it.

Please note how Mr. T was the only dude to ever do the Mohawk right (these barbers today are fuckin up the game), and how he was a visionary for racial harmony by having the Rainbow Ho-alition singing background vocals. Just check out how he breaks down the word MOTHER into an acronym. This song has aged pretty well considering what’s out now. I’m sick of hearing people “spit 16’s” and battle rap all day on these Smack DVD’s, all that shit is dreck. Mr. T had concepts, ideas and epiphanies.  These fools are over here promoting their new mixtapes. Gethefuckouttahere. Mr. T was making albums, good ones. There hasn’t been a major label rap artist to debut since the year 2000 that comes remotely close to what Mr. T was doing musically. OK, he wore some tight, fashion faux pas clothes, but have you taken a look around lately? At least the dude was diesel, not 56 pounds and wearing skinny jeans like the fools in this video (this is easily the worst song I’ve ever heard in my life…Jeeezus, this shit makes “Chicken Noodle Soup“ and “Do The Stanky Leg” sound like “Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos” and “Straight Outta Compton”). Ouch.

OK, Mr. T’s performance was a tad stiff, but he looks like LL Cool J in his prime compared to the performance (if you wanna call it that) of that horrendously God awful auto-tune song that this dude did on Saturday Night Live . No bullshittin’. Listen to the snare on "Treat Your Mother Right". It’s smackin way too hard…harder than all this snap clap shit out today. Plus, its good to see a rapper that is physically intimidating for once. Part of what made a rapper so awe-inspiring as a kid was the fact that he would scare the shit outta you.  Rappers were like superheroes back then,  and now they look like glam rockers that could share the sandbox with you. Mr. T had all the checkpoints of being a true rap artist and personality down pat. Not to mention, a lot of his rhymes were written by the one and only Ice-T, and he even had New Edition on his album. I managed to get a hold of both Mr. T projects, and they’re both better than EVERYTHING that has come out in the past two years (except Suga Free’s Smell My Finger album…that was genius).  To top it all off, all these little brats running around here in Mohawks need to recognize who started it all, as do all the rappers and entertainers that choose to run that style. I’m boycotting pop culture in all shapes and forms until Mr. T is paid a sum of at least $500,000 royalties for his underrated contributions to what’s going on today. I suggest everybody reading this do the same. All these electro-retro-metro 80’s throwback artists that weren’t even alive at the time better start cutting checks. I’m telling you, if it wasn’t for Mr. T, none of these modern day rap/ pop/ fashion/ glam/ swag/ retro-metro/ auto-tuned out whatever the fuck would exist. And to top it off, they’re doing it all wrong. I’ll end this entry off with another Mr. T gem, “Be Somebody”. He was foreshadowing what would happen to the music industry in 2009 and he saw the rap squeegeemen selling Mix CDs in the barber shops, I’m sure. Mr. T, Salute!!

LOVE TKO…GAME OVER

J-Zone takes a look at relationships in 2009. Can he find a sensible answer?

I know these were their actual facial expressions after the judge dropped the hammer.

The late great Miles Davis was once asked what he thought love was. His response was something along the lines of…"Love is the first person you have feelings for. Everyone after that is bullshit." I like that. I don’t agree with it 100%, but I like it. The bottom line is men and women will NEVER understand each other. We’re not supposed to. We were placed on Earth to reproduce and drive each other up the god damn wall, no more no less. The sooner we all realize that, the sooner we can see love as a gender driven boxing match and make the most of it.

There’s nothing worse than opening Yahoo and seeing “articles” like “what turns men off on the first date” or “what women really want”.  I browse through Men’s Health magazine in the supermarket and every issue has a “Make Her Find You Irresistible” article advertised on the cover. Get the fuck outta here with that shit, it’s all crap. Unless you’re some typical NYC yuppie implant named Chad from North Dakota working in an advertisement firm and pursuing some graphic designer broad named Becky from rural Idaho, that shit don’t apply to your monkey ass.  Dating rules are a waste of time. You may as well be Wally Cleaver trying to take some broad to a sock hop if you think they do, because as soon as "the real you" comes out, it’s all over anyway.

On that note, I’ve NEVER known a man to desire a 100% platonic friendship with a good looking woman upon first meeting her. Be real, the platonic friend zone is equivalent to a day at the DMV with no air conditioning and a bunch of bad ass kids running around to the average male. At least initially. Does that mean that all men are dogs? Yes, just about. Arf. Does that mean that all men will do a woman wrong? No. Women will NEVER understand our mentality, give up ladies. On the flip side, we all know a girl that complains about our canine ways, but she always goes back to her knucklehead ex-boyfriend. I love it when some of these women get on these talk shows and complain that there’s no decent men, but when they find one, they’ll find a reason to label him boring or incompetent and then dump him. Yeah, we may all be dogs, but that’s like choosing a rabid Pitbull over a loyal St. Bernard. The bottom line is, there’s SOMETHING about that other dude that keeps her going back to him, and all the men that complain about women doing this will NEVER understand why they do it. Give up fellas, HE CAN press her buttons, YOU CAN‘T. It’s a woman’s mindset, and a man can’t rack his brain to fathom female logic, it’s impossible.  Same goes for that sucker that frequents coffee shops to perform his Haiku poems about how materialism is ruining hip-hop. He only eats organic foods, listens to Neo-Soul and is involved with every revolutionary group and rally in downtown Brooklyn. Women think he’s an "educated brother" because he runs around shouting conspiracy theories that he learned about on youtube,  but he has 8 kids by 7 different women.  He’s just a quasi-activist bum in a Che Guevara hat, and we can’t understand why women don’t see through his punk ass.  Instead of using the most underutilized words in the English language when it comes to socializing and relationships- "no", "never" and "goodbye"-  we as humans love to prolong the unnecessary and dive head first into bullshit just to have more shit about the opposite sex to complain about. The dating game is now one big enigmatic joke, and it always will be. I personally think its hilarious as long as nobody gets killed.

Women and men will FOREVER be opposing forces in a ‘can‘t live with em, can’t live without em, can’t kill em’ tug-o-war. Ironically, the third of those options isn’t hyperbole these days. Steve McNair just happened to be famous, it happens everyday. In 1972, jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan was ambushed by his girlfriend at one of his shows. Point blank, men have always been fools, women have always been crazy and vice versa. Once that honeymoon phase ends, you‘re fucked. That’s why I always liked that Al Bundy dude on Married With Children. That show was real as a muthafucka. He and that redhead broad he was married to represented what 90% of marriages are like when the honeymoon phase is over and they don’t divorce. It seems that this epiphany landed on NBA star Richard Jefferson. For those that don’t know, he canceled his wedding 5 days before the ceremony, VIA E-MAIL!!! Is he an asshole for pulling a last minute ditch move on cold feet, or is he a technologically hip visionary who realized that 90% of the time marriage is a booby trap where you just may wind up miserable or with a fuckin steak knife in your neck?

As of now, Kelis will get $44,000 a month in child and spousal support (plus $45,000 for her legal fees) from Nas so she can maintain the lifestyle she was “accustomed” to during their marriage. God DAMN, that’s the biggest unemployment check I’ve ever seen. That’s a “Thief’s Theme” for your ass. Maybe Nas can get Suge Knight involved and have it reduced to like…$12,000? Damn! And I’m up here mad because one of the dryers in the laundromat ate my quarter last week. Both Kelis and the judge who allowed that ruling are deserving of a fierce and continuous Weedwhacker drubbing.  Then again, a lot of artists are irresponsible dickheads that waste money on weed, cars and Hennessy while neglecting their kids, so I’m not saying Nas shouldn’t pay. But this is a court sanctioned jack move, and "It Ain‘t Hard To Tell" that Nas was outta his damn skull for wifing up a loose cannon like Kelis with no pre-nup. If you ask for a pre-nup these days, your love for the person is placed on trial, like ‘If you really loved me, you wouldn’t ask for one’. Fuck that, if either party makes any real money (Guy Ritchie smooth ganked Madonna’s ass in a case of vice versa), a pre-nup is sweeter than the fuckin wedding cake.  For celebrities, marriage is a business. If you don’t like it, don’t get married.  Nas smoked a lil too much weed and thought he was an exception. Oops. Now all of those unreleased songs that never made it to Illmatic will mysteriously appear on itunes as part of the Help Kelis Get Her Hair Done Daily Fund. And I know hardworking strong single mothers raising 3 kids on 55 g’s a YEAR, so Kelis’ needs to take her talent-free ass to the sto’ with that shit. Without this ruling, that bitch would be at the drive-thru selling milkshakes, not singin about em.  I’m sure Nas is “accustomed” to getting his knob buffed by Kelis, but I doubt the continuance of fellatio is a part of this ruling. Nonetheless, Nas was asking for it by putting a ring on that and will forever be reminded that he got ganked every time he looks at that ignorant ass Kelis tattoo. Loose cannons ain’t always dumb, in fact, they’re usually pretty sharp when it comes to scheming for finance. Nas (a self-proclaimed school drop out) is a wizard of the English language that obviously cut math class to blaze trees. I know my man 50 Cent is laughin his ass off right now.  Healthy marriages are beginning to look like those early 90’s haircuts with the dreadlocks that were skin faded on the side, like ‘damn, people actually did those?’ Sometimes I wonder, was my grandparents’ admirable 50 year monogamous marriage an anomaly, or merely a sign of the times? These points and unanswered questions coupled with all the other nonsense I’ve seen and been through has led me to one solution…

IT’S FLESHLIGHT TIME.

Google it: FLESHLIGHT.  Is that the answer to relationships in America in 2009?

• No more love related deaths.

• No more baby mama/ baby daddy drama and waiting for test results or $44,000 rulings.

• No more “if I can’t have you, nobody can” crap.

• No more passive-aggressive behavior, i.e. “you don’t care about me at all, but it’s OK, haha, don‘t worry about it, I’ll just suffer for you, I like doing that."

• No more Tyra Banks Show, with her ignorant E.T. lookin ass. Phone home, bitch.

• No more being a victim of Sex & The City  (that, BET and reality TV destroyed dating in America).

• No more E-harmony notification emails about some no tooth broad named Ethel and how she’s my perfect match..

• No more hiding in the closet because your partner left out that little detail about his/her girlfriend/boyfriend living with them and now you’ve been busted with your pants down (literally).

• No more jealous exes/ wild stories involving your ex and the back of a UPS truck.

• No more being looked at like there MUST be something wrong with you because you’re over 30 and single.

Look, all people do is Twitter, Blackberry, Facebook, IM and text message each other all day like a bunch of god damn Propeller Heads anyway. Why not simplify life and make intimacy all about gadgets too? Digital Underground had it right with Sex Packets in 1990. We won’t even interact anymore after the year 2020, thanks to all this stupid ass faceless technology driven socializing bullshit, so why not get the fuck outta Dodge and live longer? I know Nas is looking at his Kelis tattoo like…‘damn, I shoulda bought a Fleshlight instead’. Pride is out, economizing is in.

Question : “Well what about companionship?”
Answer : “Get the fuck outta here.”

It seems every woman in NYC is out walking a god damn dog these days and they claim the dogs as their companions. Men have been replaced already. They’re sick of our bullshit fellas, we‘ve been replaced by Yorkies, we suck.  That’s why I just ordered the first season of 227 on DVD, so I can watch Jackee and her titties jumpin up and down over some corny jokes for 6 hours, that’s all the companionship I need right now.

I’m sick of goin on Facebook and seeing quizzes like “What Zodiac Sign Will You Be Compatible With?” Wanna know what sign I’m compatible with? Dollar $ign, that’s what the fuck what. Because I don’t give a god damn if I’m a Pisces and she’s a Capricorn and her moon is in my House of Neptune in the year of the Rooster, all y’all are fuckin crazy and I’m DONE. You can call me weak, perverted, say I have no “game” or whatever you want, but I don‘t need no god damn “game”  when I‘m trying to keep my hairline intact and beat a recession. I can hear my boys talkin to me now when I step into a lounge/club…

“Yo there’s mad fine chicks in here Jay, holla at one.”

Fuck that. Mr. Don‘t Holla is my name and staying drama free is my game. In other countries, you may still have a chance at normalcy, but in America in 2009, its a WRAP! I’m considering leaving the man vs. woman tug-o-war for a month and ordering this Fleshlight thang and a Halle Berry poster. Whether I cave in and fall back into the world of relationships to try my luck or fully and permanently embrace my sexual alternative to Twitter remains to be seen.  But if y’all don’t hear from me for a few years, you know what I‘m up to.

And on that note, I leave you with two appropriate songs for this never ending tug-o-war of gender (click on titles for links to audio, then click song title in window). Enjoy.

Brothers Ain’t Shit by Roxanne Shante (theme music for the ladies)

I’d Rather Give You My Biiiiitch by Suga Free (theme music for the men)

SQUEEGEEMEN NEVER LEFT NYC, THEY JUST SELL CDs NOW

This dude is probably selling his new mixtape in the hood somewhere.

Squeegeemen (Wikipedia link).

If  you’ve never seen them, it’s because you moved to NYC after Rudy Giuliani turned Brooklyn into Nebraska East. If you’ve always lived in the city, they never affected you because chances were you didn’t own a car. But for those of us from Long Island, Westchester, NJ and the outer reaches of NYC, Squeegeemen were a part of life every time we drove to the city. A known hotspot was the foot of the Willis Avenue Bridge in the South Bronx, by the Mitchel Projects. Me and my pops would be driving into the city, and if we got caught at a red light, it was a wrap. They’d bum rush the car to clean the windows -even though we never asked for it- and demand money when it was done.  My pops was a goon with that, he’d usually just drive off, damn near runnin em over  like “thanks for the wash fellas”. They were usually flat broke and just trying to get some money, but they could be a pain in the ass and Giuliani eventually shut that shit down in the late 90’s. But Giuliani’s bitch ass failed to crack down on an even more menacing rodent of forced commerce…the hip-hop entrepreneur peddling his crap shit trash CD in front of the record stores.

In the beginning, it wasn’t all that bad. The street peddler OG’s were cool and sometimes actually had good music to sell. I was always a huge fan of Percee P growing up. Every cameo he did, he stole the song. So when I met him selling his CD’s hand to hand in front of Fat Beats Record Store (on 6th Ave), it was a pleasure. Percee was always good for an interesting conversation and his product was good, so people respected him. He was never rude, and if you chose not to buy a CD off of him, you weren’t in for a 2 block chase. Same went for some of the other OG’s that would be out there. But damn, the economy has brought out the roaches. In the last few years, walking in front of Virgin Megastore could have you mixed up in a brawl. Another shitty 72 dpi artwork on typing paper CD cover with 35 “freestyles” over  whatever Just Blaze beats were hot at the time on a Dynex CD-R with sharpie writing on it being pushed on every single passer by with brute force. It usually starts like this…

“Yo fam! (I ignore him) Yo! Fam! (I ignore him again) Yo money, I’m talkin to you! (now he’s blocking my path so I can’t walk. You‘d think I was a fly bitch with a fat donkey ass or sumthin’. These are old school broad-pulling tactics). Yo, I’m sayin, you like hip-hop?”

“Nah I don’t fuck with it” (thinking this will deter this dude that chose to wear a South Pole coat dead in the middle of August).

“Nah, but you’ll like my shit. I got a 16 bar freestyle over that Jay-Z beat” (like he outdid Jay-Z)

Of course, I try everything in the book to politely tell this crumb to push on. My tape walkman doesn’t convince him that I don’t have a CD player. He doesn’t believe me when I tell him I have no money. I told him I don’t like hip-hop already, but being that I’m young, Black and not dressed for Wall St.,  he’s convinced I’m lying about not liking hip-hop. Of course he doesn’t even have a discman for me to listen to his hood karaoke (that just might be good), but he feels I should buy it off the strength without a listen, because it’s “real hip-hop” and he’s…him?  At this point, I’d rather hear Gene Autry than some “real hip-hop”, but he won’t give up (meanwhile tons of well-dressed 20 something’s who may have some real money are passing by).  So after 30 seconds of haggling and blocking my path, I push him out of my way, and now he’s ready to scrap.

“Yo all I asked for is your support, and now I gotta fuck you up my nigga!” Whatever.  After a bunch of “I’m from uptown” trash talk and doing nothing, we get separated by his boys and I go about my business. Although that was the only near fight, this damn near mating call happened just about every time I dared pass a Virgin Megastore in the city. I even tried to fake like I was talking on my cel phone or I’d actually make a call to seem occupied, but it was useless. They would still come at me with that bullshit and interrupt my conversation.

I even got recognized as J-Zone once (how homeboy knew, I‘ll never know), which was a tough one to get out of.  It got so bad that I’d wrap around 13th St. or 43rd St. just to avoid passing a record store. Nobody is gonna deter me from my path as a grown man, but the hassle was such a pain in the ass, I swallowed my pride.

Now that both Virgin Megastores (and all the chains) closed, the crap peddlers have moved back into their own neighborhoods. Even worse for me, I live and work around most of them. I never in my life thought I’d get approached in Rochdale Village Queens with one of these 72 dpi artwork, Dynex CD-R with the sharpie on the label mini-Frisbees when I was out getting my Grandmother some oatmeal at 8AM on a Sunday. Sure enough, I did. I never thought I’d hear “yo fam, real hip-hop, real hip-hop” walking around before work in downtown Hempstead, Long Island. But yea, the rap squeegee men are indeed out hustlin on the corner of N. Franklin & Fulton Streets.

This is why rap is a joke, and with shit like this going on, I‘m almost embarrassed to say I was (and half still am) a part of it. Now these clowns have an option to really live out their “rap game to crack game” fantasies the easy (and annoying) way. But you don’t see drug dealers pushin up on strangers looking for business too often. Even the bootleggers selling tapes in the early 90’s didn’t do that. Putting your music out to the world was once a privilege, earned by a long process of honing skills and working hard, with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow being an official release that you could be proud of, whether independently or on a label. OK, we’ve eliminated the boardroom, the pressing plants and the labels, but we’ve also eliminated quality control. You also don’t see artists in other genres of music do this dumb shit. The jazz musicians just post up in a train station and jam, leaving a tip box if you choose to donate.  At least you get to hear some music and to pay em is your prerogative. They just keep jamming.  Rock musicians sell their shit at SHOWS. Yeah, shows. Did you ever try to get one of those Mr. Virgin Megastore hustler, or do you demand a 4 digit figure being you’re the second coming of Tupac?  Even the dancers on the train, they’ll give you a show, so I‘ll kick in a dollar or two sometimes. But rap is the only genre that exhibits this ghetto entrepreneurship by force and I can‘t even test the product half of the time. Everybody wants to be like Master P, E-40 or Too $hort with the "out the trunk hustlin" approach, but they did this 20-25 years ago when it hadn’t been done, so change your campaign, Einstein.  The whole idea of being involved in the rap game feels like a joke when you see where its gone, and all of the talented hard working people that actually make music for a CAREER -or even the rap street peddlers that are polite and have some talent- will unfairly get nailed with the stigma of how corny this shit is. You may as well just panhandle and quit fuckin up the game by involving some cheap ass CD. Does EVERYBODY have to be an artist for a career? Everybody?  And if you choose to, can you start by making a more presentable product? Yeah, you know, like no 72 dpi art, no CD-R single laser burns and some ORIGINAL music, not another damn mixtape? How about learning some people skills first? That may be a good idea Mr. Weed Dealer Turned Second Coming of Tupac.

I would say to all these cats, get a fuckin job, but that’s easier said than done in 2009. OK fine, as fucked up as this may sound, go back to drug dealing y’all. Because if somebody wants some weed, they’ll come find you.  I’d rather pay for a Squeegeeman to do my windshield than support behavior that further adds to the laughable state of something that was once a privilege to say you did.

DON’T HOLLA!: Hip Hop “Hollaticking” Must stop.

Even my grandmother knows the slogan. "DON’T HOLLA"

I may piss some people off here, but so goes life sometimes. How many times have you heard this?…
“Yo man, I’mma holla at you son, we definitely gonna get up! Yo gimme your math, I’mma get at you, we gotta connect, we gotta build, we gotta politic, for real.”

But then they’re nowhere to be found when you take em up on their proposition.

Shut the fuck up and find a paper route. Disingenuousness is in every walk of life, but the music business (namely hip-hop) breeds a certain type of insincere rodent, who on sight, makes you feel like you pulled a bunch of wet hair out of a greasy tub drain. MUST you say you’re going to work with, “politic” with, “build” with or “connect” with EVERY muhfucka you meet in the industry when you REALLY have no plan to?  Is it a felony to say…

“Yo it was good speakin to you, I’ll see you when I see you. Good luck.”

Is it???

Yeah, it is now, because people are afraid of closure. Hypothetical situation…If you’re Mr. Beat and some halitosis stricken, clammy handshake, 38 year old “aspiring” rapper asks you for a free beat, but you have ZERO interest in working with him whatsoever, what do you say to him? If you’re the typical flaky phony ass music industry amphibian, you’ll say…

“Yeah, no doubt, we’ll get up, I got you, we gonna “build”, I’ll “holla” at you and we’ll “politic”, knowing that you’re just trying to get away from him and stall until next time you see him at some Hollywood attitude on a Homeywood budget industry party.  You give him your “math” to get him off your back, but now he’s mass texting you invites to all of his open mic showcases and the “press release” for his new mix CD with the 72 dpi artwork. And when you call his ass back to tell him stop flooding your phone with crap, it goes straight to voicemail. Welcome to the shit pit. So I ask you now, who is the crud muffin in this case? BOTH people. If you’re too busy makin moves to  pick up the phone after you bombard my phone with promotional texts, fuck you, we ain’t boys, we can’t “politic“, good luck with your 72 dpi cover CD and your brother who interns at The Source getting you a feature in the mixtape column.  On the flip side, if you have no plans whatsoever to take my calls, don’t even give me your number.  Just say ‘I’d prefer not to, but good luck to you’ and I’ll respect you a lot more. Why people feel the need to go beyond “hi” and “bye” in this industry has always befuddled me. The lines of respect have been crossed, and the bottom line is these Rev. Deke O’Malley phony cornball kiddie assed adults can’t survive in any other walk of life, so they come to the music business, where it’s currently a free for all on self-aggrandizement that’s anchored by blackberry, sidekick and disingenuous mass text message dreck.

Remember when a phone number was a privilege?  When you gave it out (or got it), it was a sign of respect and not another “connect” to text message your wack ass event invites to? Yeah, me too, but it just ain’t so these days. Save that shit for e-mail, because this free flow of “math” exchanging is indicative of how flaky and phony the music biz is, mainly because people have a problem with the words “no”, “never” and “goodbye”.  We don’t need to have any type of dealings whatsoever and can still not have beef, so if you ain’t gonna call somebody and hold a 5 minute conversation with them, there’s no need to have their “math”.

At this point, I ask…WHAT THE FUCK ISN’T SOLELY A PROMOTIONAL TOOL????? Myspace, OK, that was meant for promotion. Now we have twitter, email (I do blasts my damn self), blogs (you‘re lookin at one)…OK, but those are pretty non-invasive as long as they‘re not sent out every 3 minutes. But now Facebook (which is meant to be personal)? Facebook was originally meant for people you KNOW (like really KNOW, or want to know more about).  If you’re going around adding people you don’t even know just to promote your music career on Facebook without forewarning, I ask you…DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE FOR THE SAKE OF PROMOTION? Is ANY form of social networking or communication technology immune to trying to “get your buzz up”? I know it’s a flooded cesspool in the entertainment biz, but Jesus H. Christ, when the fuck does it stop? And when is the next time you’ll actually pick up the phone to talk to the faceless dude who you texted your show invite to? If the answer is never, you’re a piece of wet kotex fragment and I wish you luck in the ever so booming and recession proof music industry. I hope your “swagger” can get you the money to buy some clothes that fit you correctly.

I’ll end on this note: The music biz is the only place where being an insincere phony flake is encouraged. Don’t ask for my "math" if you don’t intend to call, don’t mass text people if you don’t answer your phone for em. Do that shit in corporate America, you get fired. Do it in the street, you get your head popped off. No wonder the game is flooded, these people have nowhere else to go. "We gotta get up J! We gotta build fam!" No we don’t, just gimme a god damn pound and keep it movin. "Holla" at your halitosis, potna.

J-ZONE’s TOP 8 MOST PERPLEXING HIP-HOP SKITS

Circa 1989, the hip-hop skit was born. Circa 2009, the number of skit-less hip-hop albums released are about equal to the number of people in Williamsburg Brooklyn that are actually from there.  For better or for worse, skits have taken over albums and I was very guilty of this feat my damn self. Many would say there are only good skits and bad skits, no in between. I beg to differ. We all know a good skit is usually mad funny and/or glues together an album in someway (ie Prince Paul, Dr. Dre, Redman, etc.). Their arch-rival bad skit is usually the dudes in the studio talking about getting money or pussy or a shoot out of some sort in a boring way, primarily found on most post-1996 major label albums (the late 90’s-early 2000’s were atrocious times for these).  But I have to say, the most memorable skits to me have always been the ones that have that fine rare quality of somehow lingering on a middle ground that sticks them in a category of their own. They manage to be funny (albeit in a sick way), but are usually packed with random and/or senseless violence, misogyny or outright ridiculousness and have zero artistic value or point whatsoever. And more often than not, they have you sitting there wondering what was goin through the artist’s mind when they came up with them. Here are 8 perplexing hip-hop skits I feel should go into the skit hall of fame and why (click audio links, then click file name to play, download is optional).

8. X-RAIDED: THA MURDER (INTRO)

Audio Link

There are a lot of ways to start off an album by senselessly ambushing somebody.  But this one, I believe, was the most creative. You hear the late night suburban atmosphere and the footsteps approaching the door, followed by a knock. I’m thinking of a Steven King movie, something big, something dramatic. Then all of a sudden…

“Who is it?”
“Pizza man!!”
“Man I didn’t order no muthafuckin piz-” BANG BANG BANG…

I always thought of pizza as a jovial party food, but not after this. It deaded the thought of ever getting food delivered to my crib again, and for that I will never forget it. The world’s most violent pizza delivery man then went on to deliver an album full of madman behavior with no anchovies, but unfortunately life imitated art. X-Raided was sentenced on a murder bid shortly after this album (Psycho-Active, 1992) was released. He has continued to release albums while incarcerated.

7. TIM DOG: MICHELL’E CONVERSATION

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Tim Dog had beef with a long list of people on his 1991 Penicillin On Wax LP, but his main targets were DJ Quik (more on that later) and NWA. What a better way to antagonize NWA than to bag their star producer’s (Dr. Dre) songstress girlfriend in a skit? After an angry Michell’e calls the studio -interrupting Tim Dog nonchalantly telling his man about a 35 minute sexual escapade with a “bitch” who’s “pussy felt like velvet”- to scream on Tim for dissing her on “Fuck Compton”, he calmly clowns Dre and bags Michell’e over the phone in 22 seconds flat. This man had game. DJ Moe Love (of Ultramagnetic MC’s) produced much of this album, and he told me they happened to know a girl that talked just like Michell’e and she played the part. I don’t believe him. Nobody else in America has that mousy voice. I’m convinced to this day that Tim Dog misogynistic-ally bagged  Michell’e in 22 seconds over the phone and they just happened to be taping it.

6. ICE CUBE: THE DRIVE-BY

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This one has always been puzzling to me. Not the drive-by itself, but that fact that on the way to go do the drive-by, the assailants are listening to none other than “Bust A Move” by Young MC. For those that weren’t of age in 1989, Young MC -who was actually a better MC than people gave him credit for- was one of those rappers that the rich white girl in school would name drop to you to prove that she was aware of rap music. Sorta like Will Smith I guess. Anyway, I’ve spent the last 19 years trying to determine how “Bust A Move” would psychologically make me want to commit some mayhem on Normandy and Florence. I’m stumped, I really give up. This is so enigmatic, that this skit has to go down as one of the best in history, if only for the sake of being baffling to the 50th power. I’m probably the last dude in the world that would get in on a drive-by, but if I ever did, I’d be sure to top Cube and his boys by making sure K-7’s “Come Baby Come” is in the system when we’re ready to mash on somebody.

5. PRETTY TONE CAPONE: MARKED FOR DEATH (INTRO)

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For those who don’t know, PT Capone was ¼ of the legendary Harlem group, Mob Style. All joking aside, (group leader) AZ is a good brother and I still say that this is the hardest group to ever come out of NY. But PT Capone was like the Ghostface of Mob Style. He was animated, charismatic, mean spirited and loud. On his 1993 “12 single, “Across 110th St.” b/w “Sexy” and “Marked For Death”, PT sounds extremely pissed off on all 3 songs. He’s very unhappy with rap, namely NWA, who he decides to take a flight out west to maim in some undisclosed way.  After a one minute rant about who he doesn’t like, he’s ready to board his flight to Cali, but at about 1:02 into it where the skit gets interesting. The poor unassuming stewardess reading the safety instructions over the plane’s PA system had no way of knowing that PT Capone didn’t want to hear any safety instructions. He didn’t want to hear anything at all, so when she was done with her pre-landing greeting, he pumped two slugs in her and sneered “shut up, bitch”.  Now here’s my dilemma. This was released in 1993. We all know that airline security got hectic post-9/11, but how the fuck did PT Capone manage to sneak a Saturday Night Special on an airplane? Was that legal in 1993? The last time I went to Australia, they confiscated my 6 oz container of lotion before I boarded the plane and I had to walk around Sydney ashy as fuck for 2 days. Now I’m even more mad, because PT Capone managed to bring a heater on the plane, pop the stewardess and continue the song. But yet my 16 oz. bottle of Deer Park is a safety hazard in 2009. He’s achieved the humanly impossible through this skit, and thus it goes down as one of the best skits of all time.

4. ONYX: BICHASBOOTLEGUZ

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In 1992-93, the bootlegging of cassette tapes was rampant in rap (if they could foreshadow what would happen with the internet, they wouldn’t have said shit). Every artist -especially from NY- seemingly had a song or a skit about it, but none were as good/bad as this Onyx skit. For one, it’s to the point. Pete Rock & CL Smooth did a good job addressing bootleggers on “Straighten It Out”, but Onyx broke it down so anybody could understand.  After they pump some hot lead into the bootlegger’s ass, an 8 bar segment of…

“Ya bitch ass bootlegga muthafucka sellin my tape/ you get shot”

Then it ends. Sometimes being artistic can take away from a skit when you’re trying to make a point. The kicker for this one is the bootlegger selling the tape at the beginning.

“Onyx tape. Three nine nine, my friend, come buy from me.”

That has to be the worst foreign accent impersonation I’ve ever heard in my life. Me and 2 of my boys that love this album have been embroiled in a 16 year debate of ‘what the fuck are they saying on the chorus of Electric Relaxation?’ proportions about the nationality of the bootlegger. One dude says its an Asian accent, the other says its Middle Eastern. I say the dude was half Asian and half Middle Eastern and he was drunk, but it doesn’t matter. He’s dead now.

3. ICE CUBE: JD’S GAFFLIN

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Cube wins again. This skit is pretty senseless, but like X-Raided, this skit has changed the image of something jovial (McDonalds) into something ominous. Cube’s man JD (from the group Da Lench Mob) lets it be known that he acquires his automobiles at the drive-thru windows of the Golden Arches.  At gun point. And he’ll take your Quarter Pounder too. So while Grimace and Ronald McDonald are inside spreading a positive image of America’s #1 chain, JD is outside jackin for transpo. Ever since then, I go inside to get my apple pies. I’d rather deal with Grimace’s fat ass than get gaffled for my Protégé.  Another totally useless hip-hop fact, this skit is listed as track #5 ½ in the liner notes. I don’t think anybody else has ever done that, before or since. By the time you get to track #6, your Nissan truck and Big Mac are gone.

2. TIM DOG: DJ QUICK BEATDOWN

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Tim Dog also makes his second appearance on this list. Not sure if he misspelled DJ Quik’s name by adding a “c” (which was a no-no back then) on purpose, but its no secret that the two didn’t like each other. I’m a huge DJ Quik fan until this day, but I can be the first to admit that this skit is very entertaining and senseless. Fit snugly between two anti-Quik songs (“Fuck Compton” and “Step To Me”), “DJ Quick Beatdown” is nothing more than as follows..

Goon 1: “Yo man ain’t that that punk ass muthafucka Quik over there?”
Goon 2: “Where?!”
Tim: “Yea that’s that punk ass muthafucka lets roll on him!”
Goons 1 & 2: “Word.”
Tim: “Yo…Ayo Quik, yo come here man.”

Then we get 10 seconds of what sounds like an actual beat down, leaving us wondering how this was executed. Like the Michell’e skit, this was all too real sounding. What it lacked in creativity it made up for in sheer treachery.  And as mindless as it is, the rewind factor and entertainment value are still supremely high 18 years later. Quik had a better career than Tim, so he got the last laugh. But if nothing else, this skit embodies the vibe of NYC in 1991 if you were bold enough to be walking around in a Starter jacket. Classic.

1. POISON CLAN: UZI GETS SHOT

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Had Poison Clan been more successful, C. Delores Tucker could’ve done a separate campaign solely dedicated to them. The group that once proclaimed…“This kid I once shot him, because his Cadillac had too much bottom, that’s a good enough reason” -amongst other hoodlum rants- and was labeled The Baby 2 Live Crew, had plenty of senseless on-wax episodes. Lead MC JT Money held it down for their second album, Poisonous Mentality, and he let it be known that he wouldn’t appear on the “U.N.I.T.Y” remix anytime soon with song titles like “I Hate Ho’s”, “Somethin For You Raggedy Ho’s”  and “Ho Stories”. But the album’s most senseless moment comes in the form of a skit called “Uzi Gets Shot”. We hear a teenaged sounding boy proclaim that he respects girls and wouldn’t make misogynistic records, and that he’s baffled as to why JT Money would. Harmless enough right? Wrong. JT cuts the poor dude off mid sentence with a flurry of gun shots, three to be exact. At the instruction of a dude with a heavy Jamaican accent, JT plugs two more in the corpse. Ouch. Respecting the ladies is a rough business, it’ll get 5 bullets plugged in your ass if you dare do it around the Poison Clan. Call it juvenile, call it funny in a twisted way, call it foul, call it tasteless, call it a travesty…whatever the case, it’s a baffling hip-hop skit that 17 years later, I listen to over and over to try and capture the motivation for it. Oh, and JT Money is STILL the best MC from the South that isn’t named Scarface Or Devin.

So there we have it. Rap skits. Love em, hate em, or in these cases, find them perplexing and very entertaining in a twisted way. One thing these all have in common…15-20 years later, they all still have you scratching your head and rewinding for further enjoyment/analysis. That makes them the best hip-hop skits ever outside of Prince Paul…in my opinion.

YOU KNOW YOUR ASS IS GETTIN OLD IF… (EARLY 30’s EDITION)

30 is the new 20. That’s what they keep telling me. But with the aches, pains, changed views and realizations that are going down, I’ve realized maybe 30 is the new 30 (or in my case, 32). Nuthin wrong with that, but to all my fellow early 30 somethings, keep this in mind…YOU CAN’T PARTICIPATE IN A RETRO FAD IF YOU DID IT THE FIRST TIME AROUND. I mean you can, but you’d better look 19 if you decide to rock a mohawk and you’re not Mr. T. And when you start going bald, attempting the receeding hairline cornrows is a bad bad bad bad bad look man. Bad. Anyway, if you remember any of this shit or any of these things apply to you…you’re gettin old as hell…

1. You were lovin Crystal Pepsi and just knew it would be the next big thing (oops).

2. You thought Zima was healthier than regular beer because your piss came out damn near clear.

3. You wore your shirt tucked in so people could see your disconnected Radio Shack beeper. The said beeper had girls diggin your style regardless, so when you see somebody profiling on a Blackberry they look soft to you.

4. You bought a Black Bart Simpson t-shirt in Harlem and when the white kids in school saw it, they thought it was defective.

5. You now realize that despite the fact that this 21 year old Pratt graduate looks good, you’d much rather stay home and serve it to the kleenex than listen to this dumb broad talk about her "mid-life crisis" now that she’s done with school. And how she thinks it’s ridiculous that she has to take a bus to the Morgan stop on the L train because of late night track construction…before she asks you about some mash up version of "Love Lockdown". Shut up, bitch.

6. You remember buying a bootleg cassette tape for the first time and being mad that there were no damn liner notes.

7. Your first time seeing Chris Rock was ordering one rib and a sip of soda in I’m Gonna Git U Sucka.

8. You had a crush on SOMEBODY from Head Of The Class (Robin Givens was my first..um..u know).

9. You bought a pair of Reebok Pump sneakers and spent the next 10 hours in front of a basketball hoop pumpin up them shits up and trying to dunk the ball and were crushed when you found out it was all a scam. I cried. Fuck Reebok.

10. There was always one kid in school that could dance real well on some Club MTV shit and he always wore those Z. Cavaricci pants with the double belts and a floral print shirt. He somehow drove a Mustang in the 9th grade too, pumpin some 2 In A Room or Twin Hype in the car.

11. Your school was closed for an asbestos scare and you accused your moms of trying to kill you when she made you return to school after it re-opened.

12. Your moms was nervous about you seeing Juice, Menace II Society and Boyz-N-The Hood in the movie theater because early 90’s hood movies always ended in a fuckin shootout.

13. You remember the whole school buggin out and being scared to get laid when it became known that Magic Johnson had HIV (I wasn’t gettin no play any fuckin way so the shit didn’t matter me none).

14. When money got tight, you bought all your clothes at Big & Tall Men because they had those Knights Of the Round Table brand rugby shirts. They had the same logo as Polo, but the horse was facing in the opposite direction. $29 a shirt playboy.

15. You remember watching OJ Simpson in the Bronco chase on TV and cheering him on like he was in the Indy 500 or some shit (at least I was).

16. You now realize that Omega-3’s aren’t the name of a new hip-hop trio.

17. You just knew that Cross Colors was gonna re-invent the fashion wheel (oops).

18. You’re scared to play pick up basketball now because you know you’ll be in pain for a month.

19. You thought Capri Sun had the most genius packaging ever (it really did and still does).

20. You NEVER EVER EVER let it be known it was your birthday because when people found out you’d get 1500 birthday punches and come home all lumped the fuck up (do they do this shit anymore or do these kids just slap box in real fights, throw gang signs and talk a bunch of shit…besides dressing like women?)

21. You collected CD longboxes and hung them on your wall like 3-D posters until the music industry got cheap and downsized the packaging (while near doubling the price of the CD…RIP Music biz, you deserved it).

22. You blew on your video game cartridges like a madman when the game wouldn’t load…And the first dude in school to beat Mike Tyson on Mike Tyson’s Punch Out wouldn’t shut the fuck up and stop bragging.

23. You wore a Triple Fat Goose coat inside out because the lining looked like an MCM jacket and it only cost $89.

24. You’ve done one of these current fashion trends the first time around -probably about 20 years ago- and it bothers you deeply to see others your age fully embrace them like they didn’t do them back then (high top fades, Mohawks, loud ass tight shirts, etc). Yeah, that’s a pic of me in 9th grade.

25. You have no shame in leaving a club/lounge/party at 11:30, because you finally realize that good things rarely happen after1AM and you’d rather miss a possible night of wild debauchery than a possible classic installment of Sports Center.

Welcome to the club!!!!!!!!!! And behave accordingly….