hiphopmusic.com:

Can anyone confirm that these guys are really this influential over there?

Rap artists spearhead Senegal's quest for change

Faada Freddy has a message for Senegal's leaders: If they don't keep their promises they can expect a tightly rhymed tongue-lashing from his fellow rappers. The threat is more intimidating than it sounds.

Shunning their American counterparts' obsessions with gangsters, guns and girls, Senegalese rappers are among the country's loudest campaigners for social justice.

Already the vanguard of West Africa's explosive hip-hop scene, their voices are only going to get louder in the run-up to elections in 2007 when President Abdoulaye Wade is widely expected to seek re-election. He may need their help.

"It's not over," Faada Freddy told Reuters at his studio in the capital Dakar, a city perched on the Atlantic shoreline.

"When the rappers see that Abdoulaye Wade's party isn't doing its political job in the way we want, the rappers gonna whip him again, give him a slap in the face and say, 'We're here with our tongues to correct you when you're not acting right, and don't forget that we're still here,"' he said.

Expounding on the power of hip-hop, Faada Freddy, singer with Senegal's most successful rap group Daara J, remembers how rappers went on their own campaign trail encouraging young people to vote in the 2000 elections.

In their own eyes at least, the artists take at least some of the credit for ending four decades of rule by former president Abdou Diouf's Socialist Party and installing Wade's Senegalese Democratic Party in its place...

If they start referring to him as an "aspiring rapper," I'm done.

Osman liked beer and rap, says ex-girlfriend

As a teenager, Hussain Osman was an ardent admirer of American culture, a big fan of hip-hop and liked dressing like a rapper and drinking beer on dates with his middle-class Italian girlfriend, she recalled yesterday...

"...He worshipped American rappers, Tupac, the Afro-American ghetto culture of the Bronx. He and his friends added the letter "g'' to the end of their names, "g" for gangster, or rather "gangsta" as in "Gangsta Paradise," a successful song at the time but Hamdi was not a violent person...

"...Basically he wanted to have fun, which is why it still seems strange that he should end up on the Tube with a fake bomb."

Handed down by Big Reg of Okayplayer, where it has struck quite a chord. I was unaware of this trend as I avoid all places where hipsters congregate, but apparently it is epidemic? What sayest thou, is his gripe legit or is he just hating?

Friends don't let friends 'Black Rock'

We all have that friend.

First, they started growing out their hair, invested buying a sh*tty casio keyboard and recorded fake demos with the worst neo soul had to offer. They quit after acute incense poisoning.

Perhaps they went through their mcing phase, where their fifteen year old cousin made them fisher price beats that they claimed they couldn’t find a market because they were too real, but couldn’t find a beat if it was broadcasted in Braille.

Maybe they changed their name to Orange Moon Flower Asata Mandingo X, started writing poetry LIKE….this to be HEARD…on the localpoetryslam CAFÉ, to LET out all the POEMS theyhadabouthow GOOD their VAGINA or PENIS tastes…..*twenty second pause for inflection*

Anyway, when you go visit your want to be artist friend and there’s an Afropunk sticker on his door.. You see a Fishbone cd where you didn’t see one before. And they have a brand new Fender Stratocaster in the corner of the room.

Please, break that sh*t. Snip the strings,, scratch up the pickups, piss on their amp.

I remember back when there was a heavy stigma involved in being black and liking rock music. It still exists today, but it seems that for many it’s a badge of coolness. Considering the current crap I ve been forced to listen to, I wonder if kids getting clowned for having a Nirvana tape was a bad thing.

Today, after stumbling on the last straw of this current black rock bandwagon on myspace by one of our very own OKP, I ask you to stop the madness.

It’s a horrible assault to mankinds ears. It doesn’t rock in a Metallica way, it doesn’t rock in a Nirvana way, it doesn’t rock in a Matchbox 20 way, hell, it doesn’t hold a candle to Kelly Clarkson.

Who could I blame? Saul? Pharell? Ive got no clue.

Stop rap-rocking. Stop playing horrible ska. Stop with the two chord attack, the horrible drum programming (you should really be ashamed of this one considering your hip-hop backgrounds) the god awful pseudo angry hooks. Stop prancing around in a f**ked up hairfro cut thinking your PJ Harvey. Stop not claiming hip-hop because you think it gives you cred. You f**king suck.

Afkap has raged long and hard about how current rock music can hardly be called black music. And while I disagreed at the time, you f**ks aren’t helping the argument. At least buy a rock cd before attempting to tackle the genre. The funny thing is, to make halfway decent rock music you don’t necessarily need ‘chops’. Name all the good modern rock singers. Exactly. Name the last interesting riff you heard? EXACTLY. But it does take an understanding of what makes good rock music, and what doesn’t. None of us can explain what hip-hop is, but we all damn well know when we hear it. Doesn’t take a genius.

Which apparently most of you Johnny Come Lately’s don’t have.

Luckily, most of you suck enough that you won’t make too much of a buzz above ground. But, for the sake of the Fishbones, the Living Colors, the 24-7 Spyz, goddamned Bad Brains who struggled for years to apparently have the path they laid out for be filled in by no frills artists trying the current cool genre, have mercy. For fans of all music, please stop being artists period. Go back to your corporate jobs, your college classes, smoke a bowl and watch Wonder Showzen and realize while your ambition is big, your talent is nil.

The madness must stop.

Seems to me the only thing this kid is guilty of is not knowing how to play chess.. "You're a rook, I'm the king"? Not quite the threat that you think it is, dunny.

ACLU sues over student's freedom to rap

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued a school district on behalf of a 14-year-old rap music fan who was expelled after he posted lyrics on the Internet in which, according to police, he threatened to shoot up his school and named a potential victim.

The ACLU said the songs by Anthony Latour, of Ellwood City, are protected speech, among other reasons, because they were composed at home and not brought to school. The suit says Latour's expulsion in May from the Riverside Beaver County School District violated his parents' right to control his upbringing.

"The school may not like Anthony's songs, but it is beyond their ability to dictate what he reads, writes or even raps at home," said Witold "Vic" Walczak, the ACLU of Pennsylvania's legal director. Latour was expelled for the remainder of the last school year and this coming year. The lawsuit seeks to have Latour admitted to school when classes resume Aug. 31...

...Latour was removed from class in April by North Sewickley Township police and charged with making terroristic threats and harassment because of lyrics he posted on the Internet...

But Walczak said school officials erred because Latour's lyrics - though violent and profane - weren't meant to be threats and didn't cause any disruption at school.

The alleged victim told school officials the lyrics Latour e-mailed to him were part of a "battle rap" challenge - one in which rival rappers try to out-rhyme one another.

One line of that song says: "You're a rook, I'm the king, and I'm cookin ya quick / I'm lookin to stab, don't even look for the strap..."

...Walczak contends such violent language is known to be metaphoric in rap circles, and that the school had played another rap song that Latour wrote and recorded in his home at a school dance in December...

Yesterday I went by Central Park to see how long the M.I.A. line was (answer: way too long), and on the way back I was appalled to discover the monstrosity pictured above.

Why is the "Imagine" centerpiece of Strawberry Fields cowering behind a fortress of gates and orange cones? How long has this been going on??

I've always admired what an apt remembrance it is, blending in unobtrusively so we all share the space with it and interact however comes naturally.. so effective, even decades later whenever I walked by I'd find folks engaging it one way or another, adorning it with flowers or photos or serenading it with a guitar.

How do y'all not get that you are completely killing the spirit of it, by reducing it to a spectacle that we gawk at from behind a barricade?

I need answers. Why is this happening? Who can explain this to me? Anyone? Anyone? Gothamist?

After reading this I came by another pro-life site, analyzing "Abortion and Rap Music." Who knew they were such fans? I wonder if they'll start picketing the Temple of Hip-Hop after stumbling upon KRS One's 'Build and Destroy' ("I give birth to emcees, and I also give abortions..")

Abortion theme boosts rap video

While many MCs are rhyming about taking girls to the, uh, "candy shop," or about situations so explicit they have to whisper the lyrics, Nick Cannon is hip-hop's equivalent of Mr. Clean.

The rapper and actor ("Drumline") says he wasn't trying to kick up a fuss last month when he dropped his new single and accompanying video, "Can I Live," the tale of a young, pregnant woman's decision about whether to have an abortion. He was, he said, trying to share his mother's story.

Either way, the video is a hit: It debuted at No. 1 on BET's countdown show, "106 & Park," and spent almost a month in the top 10. But as of last week, the song was only at No. 85 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop tracks. "Can I Live," a book of fan testimonials, is due next month.

The video has become, for abortion opponents, a kind of PowerPoint presentation - a visual persuasion tool.

Web sites such as lifesite.net and prolifeblogs.com have praised the video, calling it an eloquent statement "for the culture of life" and encouraging viewers to continue to request it on "106 & Park" and "Total Request Live," MTV's countdown show.

"The video is having a positive impact. A lot of kids are talking about it," says Robert Stewart, 25, a chastity educator for Generation Life, an organization that aims to bring an abstinence-before-marriage message to young people. "It's awesome because (Cannon put) it in a way that everybody can relate to and embrace, whether they believe abortion is wrong or not."

Representatives of Planned Parenthood said they were unfamiliar with "Can I Live." The NARAL Pro-Choice America organization did not return a call requesting comment...

Also peep the Mark Anthony Neal cameo a little further down in there.

I have nothing worthwhile to say about this article, but I couldn't resist posting the photo.

Rappers, mimes praise the Lord

At first the lyrics about guns and violence sound like a typical gangsta rap song, but a closer listen reveals something different.

"I'm so glad Christ took that away and all that I need God makes the way," rapped David Alexander, a.k.a. Praise, a gospel artist from Orlando.

His performance was part of the fourth annual Gospel Music Fest, held Saturday in the steamy Williston Middle School gymnasium. The festival included the expected choirs and soloists belting gospel standards, as well as gospel rappers, dancers and even mimes...

...Another Gainesville group, Jest-Praise, uses mime moves to deliver a Christian message. Anyone expecting miming of the French-guy-caught-in-a-box variety would be surprised. "It's a whole different thing," said Adrian Lumpkins, 13, of Alachua. "They're expressing jokes, comedy." Members of Jest-Praise, ranging in age from 5 to 18 years old, wear white face paint and gloves like traditional mimes. But their hand movements express the ideas and stories of Christian songs...

Looking through this biography of Mary Shelley, found a take I hadn't seen before on where she found inspiration:

A further and intriguing possibility emerged as I was considering the summer of 1815, when Mary was temporarily on her own, staying in lodgings at Clifton. Living within strolling distance of Bristol, a town which had grown prosperous on the slave trade, Mary had read books on the subject with increasing horor and indignation. Slavery, although formally abolished in England, remained a thriving industry; in England, slaves were still being rescued from service in the mid-nineteenth century. At Bristol, the evidence was all around her. Here, surely, was the explanation for the Creature's carefully described and decidedly un-British appearance, his hair of a 'lustrous blackness', his yellow skin and teeth of a 'pearly whiteness', features which, combined with his strength and muscular build, suggest the author was deliberately evoking the African and West Indian, while his yellow skin hints at the Eastern 'lascars' whom she would have seen on her journeys form the London docks. Here, too, was a clue to why Mary, whose sympathies as an author are with the Creature, lays so much emphasis on the fact that Victor Frankenstein judges him - misjudges him - by his appearance. She was, it seems, covertly attacking a society which still believed that the physical appearance of the Africans indicated their moral inferiority to Europeans.

Interesting, not sure if I buy it, but interesting.

Someone linked me to this "Reverse Dictionary," where you type in a phrase or description and it tries to figure out what/who you are thinking of. So I figured I'd use it to answer hip-hop's oldest and stupidest question. And damn! This thing is worse than Wendy Williams.

For the longest I've been wishing that the "Insert Link" button on Movable Type's "new entry" page could create links that open in a new window, and save me the trouble of adding TARGET="_blank" to everything. Today I finally sat down and figured out how to make this happen. For anyone who might be interested, I just grabbed mt.js from my mt-static folder and changed line 163 from

setSelection(e, '<a href="' + my_link + '">' + str + '</a>');

to

setSelection(e, '<a target="_blank" href="' + my_link + '">' + str + '</a>');

I feel so smart and accomplished now! My mind is aglow with whirling transient nodes of thought, careening through a cosmic vapor of invention. (© Hedley Lamarr)

This report sure is skimpy on the details, but I guess we can't expect much from the moonies at UPI. Anybody know what the deal is here?

Rapper's anti-white lyrics spark ire

French Justice officials will be examining whether anti-white remarks by a French rapper can be treated as discrimination.

Center-right lawmaker Francois Grosdidier called last week for charges to be filed against rapper Monsier R, who denounced the country as a "whore," among other insults in one of his songs, "FranSSe." Internet discussions suggest the song supports anti-white racism.

The previously little-known Monsier R. has denied being racist.

"When I speak of France, I don't talk about the French people but of its leaders," he has told French media.

Several rappers have been pursued for their incendiary lyrics. One group, Sniper, was acquitted but NTM was handed a 6-month prison sentence for a song that made an unpleasant reference to French police.

I didn't even know this was going on until the night before, and my peoples who were there described the turnout as "depressing." Naturally the veterans still rocked the house, however. Hope they smooth things out for the rest of the tour, nobody deserves a packed house more than this lineup.

Hip-Hop's Old School Rules Again At Fresh Fest — Nick Cannon, Redman In Da House

Whodini, Slick Rick, Doug E. Fresh, Nice & Smooth, others take the stage — but Big Daddy Kane doesn't.

returned with a lineup of hip-hop legends ready to resuscitate the tour, armed with a catalog of timeless music from the '80s and early '90s.

...Whodini, Slick Rick, Doug E. Fresh, Dana Dane, Biz Markie, Nice & Smooth, Chubb Rock and former members of the Sugar Hill Gang all took the stage for the kick off of what promoters say will be a 20-city tour.

...Kane was one of the show's main headliners, but he left a little before his showtime because of a dispute with the show's promoter over payment. A spokesperson for the promoter, Blackberry Entertainment, said the company did not have the full cash payment that had been agreed upon with Kane on hand, and the rapper refused to accept a check. Kane could not be reached for comment at press time...

Despite a lackluster turnout (the house was approximately one-third full), show-openers Nice & Smooth brought the energy like they were playing in a sold-out stadium... The prize for surprise guest of the night went to the Bronx duo: They didn't have Guru on hand when they performed "Dwyck," their collab with Gang Starr, but they did have Joeski Love come out to perform his 1986 hit, "Pee Wee's Dance."

After Chubb Rock delivered a brief set, Dana Dane entered the stage for hits like "Nightmare" and "Delancey Street." He too had a couple of tricks up his sleeve, bringing out Kwame for "The Rhythm" and D-Nice for "Call Me D-Nice..."

MTV: A lot of rappers talk about how authentic a dude you are. You have one of the strongest street creds in the game right now.

Jeezy: You can't just wake up in the morning and talk about the sh-- I talk about. Like that situation with the cops, you can't give a play-by-play description unless you really lived that. ... I don't glorify [my hustling days]. I just take it and know in my heart it's nothing no other rapper can say to me because everything they came in the game to get, I already had before I got in the game. All the Jacobs, the women, the cars, everything they wanted to rap for, I was already there.

So basically, "I'm not glorifying it, I'm just saying it brought me all the success, wealth and popularity any man could hope for." Well thanks for clearing that up, snowman!

Nothing against the man, he's a charismatic dude who makes catchy records, more power to him. But good lord am I ever tired of rappers running this tired-ass angle.

I'm delighted (and freaking amazed) to announce that WBAI has started archiving all their programs online at archive.wbai.org. The system is automated and will be posting each of our shows as soon as we finish up each Sunday morning.

Here are links to the last few shows:

Yet another Source Editor-in-Chief bites the dust. Maybe now they will finally give the job to Professor Snape?

The Source's Editor-In-Chief Resigns

Joshua "Fahiym" Ratcliffe resigned his position as Editor-in-Chief of "Hip-Hop Bible" The Source Magazine today (Aug. 16). According to Ratcliffe, the reason for his abrupt departure is a difference of opinion between himself, Chief Brand Executive Raymond "Benzino" Scott and CEO Dave Mays.

Ratcliffe said Little Brother’s album,The Minstrel Show, was to receive a rating of 4 and 1/2 mics in the magazine's October 2005 issue, but Mays and Scott disagreed.

"It's a situation were I believed in Little Brother and the rating we attempted to give them," Ratcliffe told AllHipHop.com via phone. "After speaking to Ray and making sure that was okay, I moved forward with that. Then it was decided that they wanted to change . I told that this is what they're getting and for me to go back on that is a challenge to my own personal integrity. Whether they deserve 4 and half mics or not is debatable; though I believe in it, though most of the staff believes it deserves 4 and half mics, as well as the writer. For me to tell someone this is what you're getting and to go back on it after I got confirmation, I just could not stomach that at all."

According to Ratcliffe, despite the magazine closing the issue last week, today Mays and Scott expressed their intention on reducing the The Minstrel Show's rating down to 4 mics (the same rating their debut, The Listening, received in The Source's May 2003 issue)...

Only the most attentive readers have noticed this, but I've actually had a poplicks-style co-blogger for about 6 months now, in the form of my tech-wiz friend Jason Solis keeping things popping in my side-blog the Inane Asylum.

I'm highlighting today's featured inanity because the subject needs to be publicly shamed for his misdeeds. In the post Stuart Scott/Sportcenter era every sportcaster insists on proving that he's down with the Hip and the Hop. But some of them are just straight-up shook ones.

If all goes well with my alarm clock I will be sitting in tomorrow on WBAI's morning show, to chat with Toni Blackman and Ty about this thing there, and probably other things.

In mere moments we shall be hitting the airwaves. And chatting. You know the drill.

For more information on Peter Vallone's attempted censorship of this week's graffiti event, check the coverage on gothamist, and at Mark Ecko's blog. And Joe Schloss's thoughts here.

How many people ever contributed more to music, especially funky music, than Robert Moog? (pronounced like "vogue", for the record)

Hats off to the inventor.

Miraculous. Common sense has prevailed over lunacy thanks to Judge Jed Rakoff, whose ruling captures perfectly the absurdity of Bloomberg and Vallone's, err, "reasoning":

He even poked fun at Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's argument that the party would incite the defacement of real subway cars. "By the same token, presumably, a street performance of 'Hamlet' would be tantamount to encouraging revenge murder," the judge wrote. "As for a street performance of 'Oedipus Rex,' " he added, "don't even think about it."

"The First Amendment would be a weak reed indeed if the utterance of such expressions could be banned from the city's streets because, in the mayor's view, 'It's trying to encourage people to do something that's not in anybody's interest,' " the judge wrote, citing Mr. Bloomberg's public musings last week... "Such heavy-handed censorship would, moreover, fall particularly hard on artists, who frequently revel in breaking conventions or tweaking the powers that be"

Thank you. How did it come to pass that our city, supposedly the most sophisticated city in America, is being run by people who lack a basic understanding of the Bill of Rights? These people make me want to vandalize something.

See y'all tomorrow at 22nd st. and 10th Ave, where our very own DJs 3d and Avee will be pitching in on the turntables (along with others such as RJD2, I'm told?).

(thanks to gothamist for staying on top of it)

I'll be I was on WBAI's Wake Up Call this morning at 8AM, giving my impressions of today's event along with Joe Schloss. You can hear our conversation here: (play/download), we come on about 30 minutes in.

And in the meantime here are some pics from a wonderful day for hip-hop. I was worried it might be overly corporate and commercial, but Marc Ecko did a great job of making his presence low-key and keeping the focus on the culture. A gorgeous day, I only wish Bloomberg had been around to feel all the positive energy created. Though I'm sure he wouldn't have gotten it anyway.

I don't often get starstruck but how can you not get geeked watching Lady Pink do a full car right in front of you? The piece she collaborated on was a brilliant "police state" mural in response to Bloomberg's attempt to shut this event down.

My complete set of pics from the event is up on my flickr page.

click on it and it gets bigger

Someone called us from Miami during the show tonight, and told us Suge Knight had just gotten shot at Kanye West's party down there.. looks like confirmation is coming in now. Allhiphop is on it here, and AP is checking in below. Contrary to initial reports, AP says he was only shot in the leg:

Rap Mogul Suge Knight Shot at MTV Party

Rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight was shot in the leg early Sunday during a party hosted by Grammy-winning hip hop artist Kanye West, police said.

Knight, 40, was hospitalized in good condition, police said. He was shot during a celebrity-studded party at the Shore Club in celebration of the MTV Video Music Awards scheduled for Sunday night, said Miami Beach Police Officer Bobby Hernandez.

Sonja Mauro, a guest at the club, said a shot in the party's VIP section rang out shortly before 1 a.m.

"I was in there and I heard a pop and I ran out and got trampled," she said.

People attending the party began screaming and running for the doors, she said.

Much as I may dislike Suge, I can only wish him a swift recovery on this one. As Kno of the Cunninglynguists said on OKP: "I can't wish death on anyone... especially those with children. Being a plague to rap music isn't enough to warrant death, though i wish he would just disappear in good health."

Last night it seems Jeremy Parker aka Tha Pumpsta visited our post about his "Kill Whitie" party, and posted a reply, of sorts. I'll let his words speak for themselves:

The Washington Post: “The Whitie We are Trying to Kill.”

On August 26, 2005, The Washington Post published Deejay's Appeal: 'Kill The Whiteness Inside': an article describing the party Kill Whitie as an all white scene that’s attempting to appropriate blackness. MSNBC, as well as other national publications also ran the story. The founders of Kill Whitie, including co-promoter, Lil Rae Rae, co-deejay Sha na na na, and choreographer, da Wondaho, all women of color, sat down to appropriate a little culture of their own over dumplings and noodles. The topic of the conversation was their absence from the Post’s article. The distraught, but not discouraged, Pumpsta listened as Sha na na na stated:

“This is bull-shit, we both dined with Michelle Garcia from The Washington Post, drank wine, she was bumming cigarettes off me. How can you talk to someone for hours and then pretend that [Sha na na na] merits no mention.”

Lil Rae Rae jumps in. “What did you expect? It’s The Washington Post.”

“I was the only one in the article, how could I be doing this by myself, we all started this together.” Pumpsta adds.

Wondaho shakes her head in disgust. “Man it’s just another black voice lost”

Lil Rae Rae concludes. “They want to know what Kill Whitie is, they’ll never know because they’re the whitie we’re trying to kill.”

In an infantile act to create racial boundaries The Washington Post omitted truths, attempting to achieve the obscure angel they desire. It is questionable that the Post would choose to run such a fraudulent article in the Nation section, when there are so many more prominent acts of racial bias that should be addressed. There is no reason to travel all the way to Brooklyn to witness the whitewashing of this country. Perhaps the Washington post should focus their attention on the Whities closer to home.

-Kill Whitie

He's also pasting the same message into other blogs such as James Lamb's and this random republican blog.. evidently he's googling "kill whitie" and posting in every blog that comes up.

In the blog for Laura Flanders' radio show, genius musicologist Ned Sublette is very worried about Hurricane Katrina and how it's being handled in New Orleans:

Ned Sublette's message from New Orleans

camp casey is an important story, but not when new orleans -- among other things, still one of america's most important port cities -- is about to be very possibly destroyed. i think it's so far beyond people's imagination what's about to happen that we can't process it. the storm is well above the category 5 threshold.

and here's the scandal:

the poorest one-fifth or so of the city is still there in harm's way!

guess what color the poorest one-fifth of new orleans is. it's as if you had advance notice that mohammed atta's crew was coming to the world trade center and evacuated all but the poor from it...

Our thoughts are with all of you down there..

8/26/05 - I don't even know where to begin on this one. Somebody call Tim Wise on the bat-phone.

I've been saying for years that irony is now the last refuge of a coward. A singularly dishonest and deluded sort of coward who imagines his behavior a mark of courage, as he fearlessly refuses to take anything seriously.

But the true mark of courage is a willingness to engage the world, and your place in it, with honesty and sincerity. Those who lack that sort of courage will spend their lives looking for something to hide behind. This cowardice is the root of all hipster irony.

And this is never more obvious, or more ugly, than when issues of race are involved. There's a lot more I could say about this but right now I just don't have the patience.

8/29/05 EDIT: Note the reply from Mr. Kill Whitie himself below in the comments, and the equally impassioned visit from his collaborator Debbie D (veteran of Vice magazine, predictably) in my other post. I may post rebuttals if time permits, but I'm not sure it's even necessary.

Also worth reading (especially for the Kill Whitie apologists now visiting us), the discussions on okayplayer and ILM, which led me to this fantastic Lester Bangs essay, The White Noise Supremacists (pdf).

This page is tracking the livejournals of New Orleans residents, many of whom are staying in their homes for the storm. Wherever you are down there, we are all there with you..

Did Suge Knight a.k.a. Cheddar Bob actually shoot himself this weekend? Please let this be true.

In the meantime, you'd think the rest of us would have enough sense to put the nonsense on hold for a little while. You would think. And Petey Pablo?

"That bullet is a tribal mark, orientation, something we all gotta get sometimes -- just as long as we don't die, it's fine,"

Petey Pablo, please just stop talking. Please.

Please spare me the "cross we all must bear in the hood" tripe. Suge Knight is not a starving ghetto child with no options and no way out, he is a millionaire with all the choices in the world. This is not something he's "gotta get," this is a position he continually chooses to put himself, and others, into.

"Tribal mark"?

Just stop. Please.

In case you've been missing it, NPR's Fresh Air is doing an all hip-hop week, you can catch the whole thing there at the site.

Also, I had a nice talk with UK all-star Ty the other day for Rise Up Radio, you can tune in here.

And you can catch the last two weeks of our own show here, including 3D's set of classic breaks that folks have been buzzing about: