April 2006 Archives

SOHH reports: mixtape rapper Gravy was shot in the behind outside of the Shot 97 Hot 97 radio station last night. Gravy survived and seems to be doing OK, since he showed up for an interview at Hot 97 afterwards.

Now, this is the third rapper related shooting near the Hot 97 building in the last few years. I love hip-hop and everything, but if I worked in that building I would have asked for a transfer long ago.

Last year the landlord complained about the violent atmosphere Hot 97 was creating and asked to limit their number of visitors to 2 at a time. Fair deal. We all know it's the artist's huge, uncontrollable entourage that causes all the mess. Now, this detail in the story jumped out at me:

"Word is Gravy went to the station with an entourage of approximately 30 people sporting T-shirts with his moniker on it."

Now that Reebok has been brought by Adidas they will go back to being focused on athletic shoes, instead of the lifestyle sneakers that boosted their brand years ago. So says the CEO:

"We've been a little bit too lifestyle-focused maybe over the past couple years, and we want to shift actually more toward the performance side of our business"

In other words, they're dropping the Jay-Z's and 50 Cent's and going after more Allen Iverson's. Hmm...seems like they've been reading my blog.

Mass Appeal, in its tenth year and 39th issue, has them Clipse boys on the cover this month. What a good look.

I haven't purchased a Mass Appeal off the stands since they had Eminem and Rakim share a cover. Next month they went with Nas and Large Professor, but after that they gave up using popular artists to sell issues, for whatever reason.

Jon Caraminica gets the Clipse to speak on their frustations with being in rapper limbo, even though the first album did well. It's not just their wack label deal that has them in that floating state. Their Virginia location also has them outside the mixtape and tour circuit that New York, Atlanta, and Houston enjoys. So, even though they can make crack rap anthems with the best of them, it's dudes like Juelz, Jeezy, and Weezy getting all the shine.

Late last week Lupe Fiasco's debut album got the Yousendit treatment and was leaked via dozens of message boards, blogs, and backroom AIM convos. Atlantic, the label set to profit from a proper release of the "Food and Liquor" album in May has been going bananas trying to put the genie back in the bottle, while Lupe has been resigned that his career will be further stalled by a scrapped release date.

I say stop the nonsense. Common's platinum album was "freed" on the net wires weeks before the real one dropped. And I had a Kanye mixtape of "College Dropout" that included pre-mix versions of almost all the album tracks, plus some that didn't make the sample clearance cut. Yet I still went out to buy the official-official.

So far the leak has created insta-buzz for Lupe, even more so than his sneaker deal or the snore-worthy "Kick, Push" video. How could this be a bad thing?

Complex Magazine has a great cover story this month on Eminem and Obie Trice. Rereading the interview after Proof's death makes it eerie because they dive into what happened with Obie's own shooting and Em's frantic reaction to it.

Today the NY Post ran an article about Proof's murder that began:

"Red-hot rapper Proof - a close pal of Eminem - was executed in a Detroit nightclub early yesterday when a gunman blew his brains out during a heated argument."

"Blew his brains out"? Holy hell. This so-called journalist, Bill Hoffman scribbled a description of Proof's murder that is more than just disrespectful - it's tasteless. I plan to email him about this at "bill.hoffmann@nypost.com" and I suggest you do the same.

SOHH reports: Proof was murdered early this morning.

The news has hit me hard, but I didn't know I would feel any emotions towards a dead rapper. But that's the thing. I'm not seeing Proof as a rapper anymore. Instead he's Deshaun Holton, the black dude who loved rap music, and repped his hood. Just like me.

Remembering that there's a real person behind this murder story, I have some hopes for the media coverage of this in the next few weeks:

What if you woke up one morning and a genie was your room, offering you three wishes for the next three years in the future of hip hop. What would you make happen in this music of ours? A grip of well known hip hop writers are gethering at NYU on Saturday to answer that question (see more info. I'll be there, so  come through and holla at me.)

Here's my three:

1. More Just Blaze

2. Less Mr. Collipark

3. Proper album releases for Killer Mike and Sleepy Brown 

SOHH reports: “A new study published in Pediatrics Magazine has revealed that raunchy rap lyrics are likely to push teenagers to have sex before the age of 16.”

Yeah, right. Lust is what urges teenagers to have sex at a young age.

However, let’s be real, my hip-hop people. Radio and TV outlets need to regulate the songs with raunchier lyrics to late night time slots, when kids are supposed to be asleep.

Over the weekend SOHH wrote up their annual April Fools Day joke and caught a bunch of bloggers and news outlets with their fact checker pants down.

The fake story claimed that Diddy was suing Proactive for failure to even out his bumpy face and "preserve his sexy". The story further claimed Proactive was blaming Diddy's love of Diet Pepsi as the real cause for his acne. Not until you get to the end of the story and click the link, does the story reveal itself as a joke.