Hip Hop Blogs

It's bigger than hip-hop (Remember the Tsunami)

It's been two months since the tsunami that devasted S. E. Asia. The media was slow to assess just how huge this disaster was, and the American public probably didn't donate as much as they would we usually do since it happened the day after Christmas aka "Debt Day" if you're like my family.

So, I've been saving this post till the time when news about the tsunami's aftermath would be waning, yet people's wallets would have recovered from the Giftmas season (yay! for income tax season).

If you haven't donated something already, please do. If you're a blogger, here's your chance to do what we do best- highlight this issue on your site while the mainstream press begins to ignore it. Right now the region is still battling the aftermath of the tsunami- including disease, orphaned children, and financial depression for the cities whos economies relied on fishing and tourism.

Props to the hip-hop artists who participated in relief efforts, especially M.O.P., who held a benefit concert weeks after the disaster.

Rappers and Bloggers are the Same

Josh Levin of Slate stole my idea about hip-hop and blog culture being very similiar (Jeff Chang told me to post the idea over a week ago but I was waiting to polish it. Polish a blog post? Silly me!).

Other than the shared funny names, here's something else both art forms have in common:

"Essentially, blogging is sampling plus a new riff. Political bloggers take a story in the news, rip out a few chunks, and type out a few comments. Rap songs use the same recipe: Dig through a crate of records, slice out a high hat and a bass line, and lay a new vocal track on top. Of course, the molecular structure of dead-tree journalism and classic rock is filthy with other people's research and other people's chord progressions. But in newspaper writing and rock music, the end goal is the appearance of originality—to make the product look seamless by hiding your many small thefts. For rappers and bloggers, each theft is worth celebrating, another loose item to slap onto the collage."

Is it any coincidence that Ian and Nick are both active DJ's, and their blogs read like an eclectic mix of links (instead of records)?

Share Events with Upcoming.org

Use the cool service Upcoming.org to schedule, share, and find events in your city. On the site they use RSS to help you keep tracks of events by city, type, or most useful- by user. So if I find a user in NY who keeps going to hip-hop shows, poetry readings, or signings at Hue-Man Bookstore, I'll subscribe for his feed and get sent whatever events their going to.

Weekend planning without the hassle. I love it.

Real world example: I found another blogger who loves Blackalicious through an Upcoming.org listing of last year's Quannum Allstars Tour at Irving Plaza. Cool, no?

If you want to stalk my many movements through the city, see my user page.

What Am I Mourning?

I'm sitting here listening to Nas' Just A Moment and it dawned on me, some people just don't deserve my sympathy to be mourned. There are only a few deaths that in my opinion where I can say "Dayum! [INSERT NAME HERE] didn't deserve that." Aaliyah (plane crash), Left Eye (car crash), Jam Master Jay (wrong place), Big L (wrong person).

But then you got rappers like Big Pun who was overweight. Why am I sorry he died? He was overweight. He brought it on himself. Then his boy Fat Joe got even bigger once Pun died. Not too smart in my opinion.

[OT]Despite what Latin America thinks, Pun is not the greatest rapper ever. If he was maybe Joe would quote him more than he does B.I.G.[/OT]

Then you have these fickle fans who give any dead rapper 'super' props. Big L is a perfect example. L was nice. But let's keep it in perspective. He was nice in ONE REGION. There's no telling what he would have done, so let's stop fronting like he was going to change the game.

Jam Master Jay was talented. However most people can't tell you his cutting routines. I only know a handful of people who have said that JMJ was a great DJ aside from Chuck D.

Overall, stop fronting on the dead. If they suck breathing then they'll probably suck six feet under. Get over it.

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50 Cent's Massacre Album Cover

Am I allowed to say "no homo"? Cuz I don't feel comfortable posting this album cover without clarifying that...well, whatever.

Dudes on LiveJournal hate it, while the women there are fawning over 50. In that respect I guess it's good marketing, since teenage girls drive all pop hits. However, if guys feel like he's pandering to the females too much, his credibility could get Ja-Ruled.

Hmm...that has me thinking. Maybe 50's almost-porn Disco Inferno video is a gift to the fellas for dropping the sugar sweet Candy Shop song as the first single.

Introducing Lunchtable Sessions

Lunchtable Sessions is a blog about hip-hop bloggers. It's the evolution of an idea started by Eric Nord to aggregate posts from hip-hop bloggers to make it easier for readers to keep track of. Cuz let's face it, most people just aren't going to use bloglines or kinja.

If you have a hip-hop blog of your own, here's how to use Lunchtable Sessions:

1. Each month think of a post interesting enough to have listed on Lunchtable Sessions
2. Send a trackback from that post to the post in Lunchtable Sessions for that month
3. If you don't understand trackback, just go back to your post, add the phrase "Lunchtable Session," plus the month, and your post be be automatically added to the site. Cool, no? (It takes a few weeks if you do it this way, though)

And why the name Lunchtable Sessions? Well, back in high school I would sit around the cafeteria lunchtable with friends playing spades and talking about hip-hop. But the cafeteria was noisy and the lunch period short, so our conversation was always limited to only the hottest happenings in the music culture we lived and loved.

And that's what this new website is for. Instead of readers wading through 20+ posts a month on each of our sites, they can feel comfortable skipping a week or two, then checking out Lunchtable Tables for what was going on during the time they were sleeping.

Got all of that? Good!

Peep the posts for January and February and get going.

Oh yeah, the site is still a work in progress, but I want to get it started now, or else it won't launch until June!

Hacking Napster-to-Go

I told ya'll back in December about Napster's new subscription model, where you can grab all the music you want for 15 bucks a month. For all the reasons why this service won't work I think my prediction that hackers would find a way to beat the system within a week is the best.

Well, I was wrong. It didn't take them a week- it took one day. Peep this hack for stealing downloading all of Napster's music, using Winamp and the Output Stacker plug-in.

50 Cent's Love Advice

SOHH.com has a new feature where 50 Cent gives out love advice to readers. I am very surprised by how thoughtful his answers to people's questions are. Dude may have a career as the new Dr. Ruth if this G-Unit hobby doesn't pan out.

See more progress on: Post to Hip Hop Blogs

Barney Shakur

Forget Tsunami Songs, the state of hip-hop blogging, and the age gap in hip-hop critcism. The new meme for Febraury is the Barney Shakur video!

Discuss!

A great man is gone

Ossie Davis is gone. One of the Finest man ever is resting.
Rest in Peace.
He talked the talk, walked the walk.
Here's to a great man.

I loved You