Michael Jordan Takes it to the Hole

My man Mike in Cabo St. Lucas doing his best Kobe Impression. Touche Bitches!

Don Imus, The Aftermath

Don Imus is on Monster.com this morning. Plus his crew, Benard McGurk and Charles McCord were just as bad if not worse. Not real sure if they still have jobs. I do not mean to rehash what has already been said about his firing, he deserved it. If you attack undeserving individuals on a nationally syndicated radio program/TV show you deserve what you get. And believe me this was not the first time. Imus has a history of racist, misogyny, homophobia and antisemitism. As bad as what he said was, his initial reaction was worse, saying this is what we does on this show, and basically telling us to deal with it. Also blaming black music and movies for their ignorant comments. What a winner. Imus is a piece of trash his firing was way overdue.

The aftermath has been very interesting. Many people notably, Michael Baisden, whose radio program I love, have been saying that we cannot stop at Imus. That we should look at rap music and stop the artists from using such terms. Now I love rap, I grew up with it, I plan to die a fan. (Preferably in old age.) The majority of the music on the radio today I do not particularly care for. Any songs that have a dance related to it, have a grunt or moan that makes up more that 65% of the lyrics, or those that are made for the strip club, I quickly turn off. That is not what I call hip hop, it is not what I call music, it is noise on beats. The reason we hear so much of it is because it sells. God only knows why, but it sells, and the labels (majority of which are white-owned) keep producing it. Artists who want to get signed sell their souls to get on. The root cause is money, labels have it, artists generally don't. The labels need to be answering the questions from Oprah, we should not be attacking Ludacris, directly.

That being said, attacking artists directly is an exercise in futility. The artists only make music the label will print. There are hundreds of rap artists that make positive music that we never hear because they do not sell. I blame society as a whole because real lyrics are not bought, real lyricism tend to be overlooked. There are only a few who have been successful and even they have "dumbed down" their lyrics from time to time in order to sell records, namely Jay-z and Nas. Bottom-line if we want to make a difference go after the record labels and their bottom lines.

Please tell me, who says rap is the only music that uses fowl language? I am sure rock and roll and other non-traditional black music genres do the same thing. People used the words Imus used way before rap. People had bad things to say about black people way before rap. I think a societal study on appropriate and inappropriate language needs to be conducted. Rap has been under attack for 20 years now, unfortunately the artists do not have total control of what is distributed. There are other avenues but you can only get to a certain level on your own, major labels and distributors make stars and m. We need to reestablish decency in this country. It is not about Rap music, it is all about money, if labels ignore trash, and pay for art we would not have trash on the airwaves.

Hey Don any advice on how I could get your radio slot?

Are you My Daddy? - 4/12/2007

American Idol's Melinda Doolittle is asking Shrek, Are you my daddy? They gonna Don Imus me for this one!

Black in Minnesota

I know it has been a while since I have written a blog. My fans and critics have been waiting for something, anything from me. After a modern classic like ManSomeTimeDay I am feeling the pressure and unfortunately this is not my day job, nor my night job, hell I don't get paid anything for this. But my real job tends to send me to very interesting places, places that don't have that many people that look like me in it. You know devilishly handsome dressed to kill black men. Places like Crane Indiana, (Home of the world's longest yellow lights, I mean damn, it is as long as the green in some cases) or Eagan Minnesota home of nipple cracking cold and about 3 blacks. Being that I am an enterprising young man please believe I took advantage of this. I might have gone to a restaurant and when the matre d asked was I a Minnesota Viking I might have taken all of the free drinks, steaks, signed a few autographs and kissed a few babies. A middleaged grandmother may have shown me her Viking Tattoo and I may have had dry heaves but I figure to make the people happy it is just something I had to do. It's all about the fans.
But back to my day at the Eagan office. As a side note most of the black people in minnesota play professional ball, chances are, I will be the only brother in the office there. Yup. And the 3 other blacks, wait I think they were African Americans, it's hard to tell, the other 3 looked at me like I was their cousin, we all hugged and sung We Shall Overcome, discussed our escape plans and went on about our day. So I am working after giving the presentation of my life and getting corporate backing for my product. I was clean as the board of health and what happens, around lunch time the one attractive Minnesotian Sister (Yes there was only one, the rest were really nice people) decides she wants to introduce herself. Being a happily married man and having not evolved the ability to regenerate flesh I immediately . . . RAN LIKE HELL. I mean I ran like she had on a white cape with a red cross on it, like Richard Pryor on fire, like Bobby Brown at the child support office, like Michael Vick during a herpes breakout. I was gone. I gave her every bit of my 4.9, 40 speed. Meanwhile she is WALKING next to me like, Can I show you the town?, Where are you staying?, Have you had lunch yet?, Would you like a home cooked meal? It was like a 1970s Blacksploitation horror movie, "Negrotia" the story of a professional black woman that at the sight of an attractive well dressed brother turns in to a diamond hungry, engagement seeking, penis vampire.

Finally, I escaped in the warmth of the men's bathroom I collected my thoughts called my Pastor and did what any strong black brother from the hood does in a crisis, I pulled the fire alarm, walked calmly out of the building and went on back to my hotel suite calling my wife on the way. Momma aint raise no punk.