Reflection Eternal Performs "Back Again" at Sirius Radio

 Put Sway, DJ Premier, and Reflection Eternal in a satellite fishbowl and what do you get?

…I’m telling you the only thing better than free buffalo wings, seltzer waters, and promotional one-size-fits-all cap with the starred-eye doggy logo is seeing DJ Hi-Tek & Talib Kweli perform live in studio. By live I mean clear as day, through the Plexiglas live.  Last night, the storied duo hit us exclusive (press and label reps) off with cuts from their upcoming album Revolutions Per Minute on the Hip Hop Nation station courtesy of Sirius radio.  They did “Strangers”, “Back Again”, and “In This World”, which of course was out of this world. It almost made folks forget RE’s ten years of Hip-Hip latency. We forgave it at least.

Reflection Eternal head on the tour bus this May with a May 3^rd stop at Black Cat in DC.

Sway: You know the tour dates off the top?

Talib Kweli jovially: I know that one because we got the day off May 4^th.

Midtown Manhattan…raw Hip-Hop…live studio audience. A contemplative Sway, many stamps of approval from Primo on the ones and twos. Random questions about the Reflection Eternal as part of the Hip-Hop illuminati and Talib getting his shit stolen in Australia?

I dug it.

The Boys "My Lucky Charm"

Just reminiscing y'all...

In Honor of Guru...

My favorite Gangstarr song, produced and rapped by the legend Guru himself. Rest in peace.

Obey Art Piece #2

Out of sheer radness and therefore obligation...

The 75 Greatest Women of All Time

The 75 Greatest Women of All Time

 

Peep it.

Forbes Fictional 15

This annual list is always very fun....

The Forbes Fictional 15

Michael Noer

Our annual ranking of fiction's richest.

In Pictures: The Forbes Fictional 15

It's a great time to be imaginary.

Global markets are rapidly recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, and so are the fortunes of the fictitious. There are six new characters on the 2010 edition of Fictional 15, our annual ranking of fiction's richest, with an average net worth of $7.3 billion. In aggregate, the nine returning members are worth $79.8 billion, up 9% since we last checked in on them.

Topping the list this year is newcomer Carlisle Cullen, patriarch of the Cullen coven of vampires in the Twilight series of novels. Cullen, age 370, has accumulated a fortune of $34.1 billion--much of it from long-term investments made with the aid of his adopted daughter Alice, who picks stocks based on her ability to see into the future. Low-key and undead, Cullen has spent recent years posing as a mortal doctor in a small town in Washington State.

Chuck Bass, the brooding, manipulative heir to deceased New York real estate legend Bart Bass, makes his Fictional 15 debut this year with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion. The Gossip Girl star and fashion icon (daywear, the three P's: Purple, Plaid and Preppy; nightwear, the three V's: vests, velvet and Valentino) recently sat for a Forbes Fictional Interview.
In Pictures: The Fictional 15
 
Also new to this year's list: Sir Topham Hatt ($2 billion), the railroad tycoon from television's Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends, Lucille Bluth ($950 million), the matron of the dysfunctional Bluth real estate family from Arrested Development, and the Tooth Fairy ($3.9 billion), who has blown several previous fortunes 50 cents at a time. Jay Gatsby, the shady Long Island dandy from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, returns to the list after an absence of several years with a billion-dollar fortune.

Uncle Sam is the highest profile drop-off this year. The crusty frontiersman and former U.S. Army recruitment officer had the largest net worth swing in Fictional 15 history, from an estimate of "infinite" last year to less than a billion today. Yes, he has the ability to print money--literally--but how much exactly is that money worth? Gordon Gekko, the hero of the forthcoming Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, drops off the list after a stint in federal lock-up. We also mourn the passing of Jabba the Hutt from the Star Wars universe. The crime lord was found dead late last year under salacious circumstances.

Fictional 15 perennials Scrooge McDuck ($33.5 billion) and Jed Clampett ($7.2 billion) had banner years, reflecting surging gold and oil prices respectively. Only Richie Rich ($11.5 billion) and Thurston Howell III ($2.1) billion have seen their fortunes decline over the past year...

Read the rest...

New Boondocks Season

Yes, it is confirmed. Huey and Riley will be back for season three. According the show's ceator, Aaron McGruder, the show is set to air on May 2nd. I've been scratching neck for a while for this one!

Dave Chappelle at the Laugh Factory

Dave Chappelle talking about man rape. This guy is a legend..."what's particular noteworthy about this rapist..."

Allen Iverson 30 for 30

The personal demons of Tupac with a jumpshot. Watch this 30 for 30 clip that talks about Iverson's legal troubles as a teen. You remember the infamous bowling alley incident, right?

Mayles Cinema in Harlem

They're doing some good things over at Mayles Cinema on Lenox Ave in Harlem. As a matter, they're gonna show Muhammed Ali: The Greatest this Saturday at 4:45 pm. Be there or else...:)

The Maysles Cinema and Maysles Institute are located at
343 Lenox Avenue (Malcolm X Boulevard), New York, NY, 10027
Between 127th and 128th. 2/3, 4,5,6, A,B,C,D to 125th street

Salon.com Diary Day 157

Follow Sidik Fofana on his quest to land a freelancing job at the prestigious publication, Salon.com.

 

 

I was pleased to see that the editors at Open Salon chose my Born to Use Mics book review for the home page. Very pleased! Raise those champagne glasses!

You know, I read somewhere that James Baldwin published a book review a week for the leftist publication The New Leader. Though it's damn near sacrilege to try to emulate the great Baldwin, I'm definitely inspired to read and comment on as much quality literature as I can. I see Laura Miller's 1500 word book reviews on Salon and I am wowed at how she's in tune with what authors are trying to do, summarizing complex literary devices with witty catch phrases. She was on film a little while ago breaking down Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke and I thought: reading, writing, and talking about good books as a job and people respect your opinion, how cool is that?

Anyway, slowly and steadily, I'm getting more exposure as a reviewer of literature and sharpening my critical eye. I'm looking forward to that day where I can review top notch fiction from minority writers on bigger platforms. Yum yum.

-Sidik

For more Salon.com Diary entries, click here

Paul Harding Wins Pulitzer Prize

.... for his novel Tinkers, which means congratulations Bellevue Literary Press and hallelujah to small independent publishing houses! The great gods of letters (the Pulitzer Prize committee) is reading all works big and small  (also see Lydia Millet's "Love in Infant Monkeys" from Soft Skull press which the committee announced as a finalist). I personally thought the prize was going to John Updike (rest in peace) or some literary blockbuster like Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin. But it didn't. And the very least I like the gesture.

BOOK REVIEW: Born to Use Mics

 

In his essay “‘Memory Lane’: On Jazz, Hip-Hop, and Fathers,” Mark Anthony Neal provides context for Nas’s seminal debut, Illmatic, by considering the musical journey of his father Olu Dara. He writes, “Dara’s oldest son, Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, was born in the place affectionately known as ‘the Bridge,’ not so ironically, at a time when the ‘gumbo’ that Dara sought in his music was simmering throughout the five boroughs of New York City.” The “Gumbo,” which symbolizes Dara’s Mississippian roots as well as the melting pot of South American, Caribbean and African residents in Queensbridge, New York City’s largest public housing projects, also fits the aim of Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic, in which editors Michael Eric Dyson and Sohail Daulatzai assemble top hip-hop scholars to dissect Illmatic into its cultural, political, literary and global components.

Needless to say, much more than celebrating hip-hop’s most canonized opus, the essayists, which include Mark Anthony Neal, Marc Lamont Hill, Greg Tate, Imani Perry and others, analyze the ars poetica of Illmatic, examining the album through the bifocal lens of music and poetry and deconstructing it like a hybrid between Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Their close reading serves as a springboard into the tangential topics of fatherhood, urban decay, prison and post 9/11 New York City—the very dilemmas that make Illmatic such a stalwart work of social commentary.


Almost none of the scribes in Born to Use Mics, feels reserved about elevating Nas to the level of chief ghetto scholar as evidenced by their intense decomposition of his lyrics. Marc Lamont Hill goes as far as to label Nas a celebrity Gramscian, a term borrowed from Mark Anthony Neal. In his essay, “Critical Pedagogy Comes at Halftime,” Hill writes, “Through his lyrical representations, Nas functions as an informal ethnographer by consistently offering an on-the-ground counternarrative of day-to-day ghetto life.” Hill links Nas’s storytelling rhymes to a stark but necessary kind of grassroots urban journalism.


Though no discussion in this book takes precedence over another, Sohail Daulatzai’s “A Rebel to America: ‘N.Y. State Mind of Mind’ After the Towers Fell” places Illmatic within the most contemporary post 9/11 conversation. In this analysis, Daulatzai equates the first full song on the album with Gill Scott Heron’s “New York City.” Both offer the city as a symbol for the country at large. Daulatzai reiterates the common view of New York City as “the blessing and the curse, the American Eden and the forbidden fruit,” the latter of the two descriptors Nas adopts when he raps, “I think of crime when I’m in a New York state of mind.” The city is also, to bring Nas’s lyric further, the target of anti-imperialists who view New York as the figurehead behind unwarranted expansionism according to Daulatzai.


Perhaps Mark Anthony Neal’s hip-hop “gumbo” can also refer to the triad of social issues (fatherhood, prison, and urban poverty) that surface in this collection. On the topic of prison, Dyson pens “ ‘One Love’ Two Brothers, Three Verses” which doubles as a companion to Nas’s memorable Q-Tip-produced track and a firsthand account of his own brother’s jail-time woes. As for fatherhood and urban poverty, the writers in this book don’t or, rather, can’t limit conversations on these matters to one piece, leaving these issues to be in infused into every piece in some form or another.


Just as Nas creatively played with the cassette tape medium in 1994 when he substituted the A-side and the B-side with the 40th and 41st side, (sections of the Queensbridge projects in which he was raised), Born to Use Mic divides its writing into the 40th side, 41st side, and the remixes. Perhaps the spiciest section, the remixes, includes an original 1994 Rap Pages interview with Nas, who calls out interviewer Bobbito Garcia for passing him up on Def Jam. There is also a testimony of Tupac’s love for Illmatic rendered by Dream Hampton, and a brief exposition on Illmatic’s relevance to the movie “Wild Style” and other emblems of Hip-Hop’s nascent stages by Charlie Ahearn.

This socially poignant compendium of essays transforms its essayists into emcees themselves who use their scholarly quills to tell the story of one of hip-hop’s most enigmatic albums. As Imani Perry writes, “the narrative form is a classic in Hip-Hop.” In Born Use to Mics, both the rapper and the thinkers are the ones dropping knowledge.

Notorious B.I.G. Ebonics Translation

Remember this forwarded mail from your inbox back in the day? This is hilarious...

This paper was turned in by an Oakland High school student who received the highest honors at the school district’s Ebonics translation competition.

Assignment: Please translate the following Rap song lyrics from Ebonics to standard English.

Artist: Notorious B.I.G.

Album: Ready to Die

Song: One more chance (remix)

---

Lyrics:

First things first, I poppa, freaks all the honeys

Dummies - playboy bunnies, those wantin’ money

Those the ones I like ‘cause they don’t get nathan’

But penetration, unless it smells like sanitation

Garbage, I turn like doorknobs

Heart throb, never, black and ugly as ever

However, I stay coochied down to the socks

Rings and watch filled with rocks

TRANSLATION:

As a general rule, I perform deviant sexual acts with women of all kinds, including but not limited to those with limited intellect, nude magazine models, and prostitutes. I particularly enjoy sexual encounters with the latter group as they are generally disappointed in the fact that they only receive penile intercourse and nothing more, unless of course, they douche on a consistent basis. Although I am extremely unattractive, I am able to engage in these types of sexual acts with some regularity. Perhaps my sexuality is somehow related to my fancy and expensive jewelry.

Lyrics:

And my jam knock in the Mitsubishi

Girls pee pee when they see me, Nava-hoes creep me in they tee pee

As I lay down laws like I lay carpet

Stop it - if you think your gonna make a profit

TRANSLATION:

I enjoy playing my music loudly on my car stereo. Apparently, women enjoy this also because they become sexually aroused when they see me driving. Oddly enough, when I visit the Native American reservations, some of the more sexually promiscuous Indian women attempt to seduce me in their homes. Their intent is to divest me of my earnings. Such actions are unacceptable.

Lyrics:

Don’t see my ones, don’t see my guns - get it

Now tell ya friends Poppa hit it then split it

In two as I flow with the Junior Mafia

I don’t know what the hell’s stoppin’ ya

I’m clockin’ ya - Versace shades watchin’ ya

Once ya grin, I’m in game, begin

TRANSLATION:

Understand this fact: you can have neither my money, nor my weapons. I suggest that you inform your peers that we engaged in violent sexual acts. Currently, I am rapping with my associates, the Junior Mafia. I’m having some difficulty understanding why you refuse to approach me. I am attempting to make eye contact with you through my expensive glasses, and as soon as you respond with a smile, I will approach you.

Lyrics:

First I talk about how I dress and this

And diamond necklaces - stretch Lexuses

The sex is just immaculate from the back I get

Deeper and deeper - help ya reach the

Climax that your man can’t make

Call and tell him you’ll be home real late

Let’s sing the break

TRANSLATION:

I prefer to open the conversation with light banter about my wardrobe and jewelry, then I like to discuss my collection of expensive cars. This is more than enough to convince you to have sexual intercourse with me. I am able to insert my penis further into you when I enter you from behind. Furthermore, you will be able to reach orgasm. I understand this to be a problem with your current sexual partner. He needn’t be concerned about your whereabouts. Please phone him and inform him that you won’t be home for a while. By the way, please sing the chorus of the song for me also.

Lyrics:

She’s sick of that song on how it’s so long

Thought he worked his until I handled my biz

There I is - major pain like Damon Wayans

Low down dirty even like his brother Keenan

Schemin’ - don’t bring your girl ‘round me

True player for real, ask Puff Daddy

TRANSLATION:

Your current love interest no longer wishes to hear your fabrications about the length of your member. After I had sexual intercourse with your woman, she became enlightened as to the proper way it is supposed to be performed; violently and immorally. It would be in your best interest to keep your woman away from me as my sexual prowess is very strong. If you are unconvinced, ask Puff Daddy.

Lyrics:

You - ringin’ bells with bags from Chanel

Baby Benz, traded in your Hyundai Excel

Fully equipped, CD changer with the cell

She beeped me, meet me at twelve

TRANSLATION:

Despite the fact that you attempted to win her at her doorstep with bags full of expensive clothes and a car (the lower end model Mercedes Benz which you financed by signing over your current vehicle) containing an expensive stereo and a cellular phone, your woman has contacted me through my pager indicating that we should rendezvous at midnight.

Lyrics:

Where you at? Flippin’ jobs, playin’ car notes?

While I’m swimmin’ in ya women like the breast stroke

Right stroke, left stroke what’s the best stroke

Death stroke - tongue all down her throat

Nuthin’ left to do but send her home to you

I’m through - can ya sing the song for me, boo?

TRANSLATION:

You, on the other hand, jump from job to job, barely able to maintain payments on the Mercedes Benz you purchased for your woman. Meanwhile, I continue to engage in sexual intercourse and commit lewd osculatory acts with your women. My only remaining option is to request that she leave my home and return to you because I have reached orgasm and no longer have a need for her presence.

Lyrics:

So, what’s it gonna be? Him or me?

We can cruise the world with pearls

Gator boots for girls

The envy of all women, crushed linen

Cartier wrist-wear with diamonds in ‘em

The finest women I love with a passion

Ya man’s a wimp, I give that ass a good thrashin’

TRANSLATION:

The ultimate decision rests with you. Whom do you choose as your sexual partner. I can take you on cruises around the world. I will dress you in the finest jewelry and footwear. You will be envied by women worldwide in your fine clothes and jewelry. There is a special place in my heart for beautiful women. I will defeat your man in an altercation because he is effeminate.

Lyrics:

High fashion - flyin’ into all states.

Sexin’ me while your man masturbates.

Isn’t this great? Your flight leaves at eight.

Her flight lands at nine, my game just rewinds.

Lyrically I’m supposed to represent.

I’m not only the client, I’m the player president

TRANSLATION:

You will be dressed in finest clothes on the runways of Paris. I will fly you to every state to shop for fine clothes and jewelry. You will enjoy sexual intercourse with me and your man will be forced to pleasure himself through manual stimulation. What a life! I’ll return you to LaGuardia in time to catch your 8 o’clock flight. The timing is perfect because I have scheduled a date with a second woman who arrives at the same gate at 9 o’clock. I’ll seduce her in the same way that I seduced you. I rap well and I am a positive reflection of my home town. Not only am I a sexually deviant, misogynistic, immoral, wealthy, male prostitute, but I also sit on the board of directors of the organization that governs others of my kind.