The musings of a madman...

1: Humble Beginnings      We all know the story of basketball’s beginnings. Dr. Naismith was commissioned with the creation of an indoor activity to keep kids in his YMCA busy on rainy days or in the harsh New England winters in Springfield, MA.  In a dearth of seed money or other outside resources, a peach basket was nailed to a wall ten feet in the air and the objective was to throw the ball (then a soccer ball – specifically-designed basketballs  wouldn't  come until later) into the basket within the constraints of a set of rules he had written out prior to nailing the baskets up. Compared to what “basket-ball” – as a then-skeptical Dr. Naismith called the game in his diaries – would become, it really doesn’t seem feasible that beginnings get more humble than that.  From his brainchild, the activity became sport played in YMCAs throughout the US, spreading through the rest of North America as well and eventually into high schools and colleges en route to taking hold

     Allow me a moment to explain what it is we’re about to embark on… Back in May, I had this idea that I would write a book that would detail the connected histories of Hip Hop and Professional Basketball.  In June I got married, then had the week leading up to my birthday off of work.  In that time, I got a lot of work done on it, but it was not shaping up to be voluminous to be worth attempting to pursue a whole book’s worth of writing on.  As of the date that I type this (10/15/2012), I was a hair over 10,000 words into the project and running out of steam enough to carry it any further.  I mean that to say that I was almost “done,” and would need an amount of input up to about four times the amount of words I had put into it.      Given the length of what I DID have, though, I would not be willing to let it go to waste, and that is what brings me here today.  Instead of a book, I will publish the presentation as a series of blogs to be posted every Tuesday until I h

Disclosure: This is an album from a good friend of mine, I received my signed copy in the mail a couple weeks ago... Busy with changing items in my life to be discussed in a blog this coming week, I am just now getting to finishing the review. Different from my usual fare, this is what one might categorize as Electronic music, though I know full well that Mike is just as capable of hip hop, even raps a bit himself. All songs written, produced and arranged by the big name on the front of the disc. As I live with a seething hatred for iTunes, I had to name and tag all the tracks myself in order to rip them using Windows Media Player, which I have learned to hate less. [ Phlip note - feel free to ask me how it is I am syncing my iPod in private and I will share] Now with the introductions out of the way, let's get down to business. 1 - Heavenly Bodies We start things off here with a very interesting string arrangement. This is followed a couple bars later with the introduction of mor

It seems to me that music -- popular or otherwise -- is the only medium in which people neglect to learn from those that came before them in making better product. That, or or they just refuse. Seriously, look at sports, even the ones you don't watch... Football players are bigger and faster and throwing the ball farther, baseballs are being pitched faster and hit further, basketball players are bigger, stronger and jumping higher, race cars are faster and safer in getting there, as well as same linear advancements in every other sport I did not care to mention. We COULD blame performance enhancing drugs, but that takes away too much credit from the athletes who are not cheats, which I truly do believe is the most of them. Anyway, we look at most professions in the world whose lives are made better by the knowledge imparted on them from the experiences of those who came before them and I am beginning to think that people making music these days are fucking stupid. Here we are, 4+ m

I'd originally STARTED to use this as a piggyback or even a series of rebuttals to a Curtis75Black guest post over on Tony Grand$' blog a minute ago, but I decided instead to make this one for my own instead of a series of responses in someone else's comments section, so here we are... The conversation, as presented, was one to fly in the face of the "hip hop is dead" movement from those who look at the current state of hip hop and music in general and look at it as being on a decline. My response, as a direct quote, was... "I won’t declare hip hop necessarily 'dead,' but there comes a time where one must look at quality over quantity. Just because artists who HAVE been “classic” in a past life are releasing albums does not mean we’re getting classic material on name alone. I own the last 3 on your 2008 list, and listen to Heltah Skeltah damn near every day still. Own or downloaded 11 of the 2009 list, but would not call all of them “great,” a

The Executive Producer is usually the least important individual on the actual production of an album, but the most important in the PRESENTATION of the album. As odd as that may sound, when one considers that the individual usually does have some hand in the production of the music contained on said album, but also has other non-musical duties as well. Such as... Minding the budget Legwork to secure promotion of the album Choosing which songs make the album and The order in which those chosen songs will be presented People who make the name "executive producer" one worth striving to achieve in spite of being a largely figurehead title to hold have always been DJ Premier (Gang Starr, others) , Large Professor (Main Source) , ?uestlove (D'Angelo, Common, The Roots) , MC Serch (3rd Bass, Nas) , and Prince Paul (3rd Bass, De La Soul, himself and many others) . Cheapening the title, though, have been the number of Diddy's albums "executive produced" by Biggie,

We know that record labels aren't actually RELEASING albums these days, not even from the big-draw artists unless said artists are the ones in charge of the release of their own shit. In combat of this, it seems that lesser known and surely less talented artists are going the way of the "mixtape/street album" to get their "art" to the masses. [ Phlip note - quotation marks on the former for definition, and for ridicule on the latter] I come from a different time, where a "Mix Tape" was exactly that - a 60 (or 90 if you could up a couple more bucks) minute cassette tape of songs you sat by the radio and recorded from the recorder set and left on pause for that moment... Extra points if you could catch the Friday and Saturday night mix shows, where they ONLY played the shit you waited all week to come on the radio... Then put in your walkman to impress people on the school bus until either... The tape broke. Some new shit came out and you recorded over

"Invented sex," huh? Did anyone stop to think about how in the HELL that could POSSIBLY be a good thing? Before I proceed, please don't think for a minute that I actually spend time listening to this sorry excuse for "R&B music" coming out this day. R&B has been a sadder state of being than hip hop has been for a longer period of time. The very careers of Trey Songz and those of his ilk speak to this fact. I happened upon the song a while ago and attempted to ignore it, but the song is similar to a bad rash, the more you try to brush it off, the worse it becomes. Now back to business... When we think of someone who "invented" anything, we think of an individual who did a rag-tag job of putting something together that would be terribly in need of improvement. Need examples? Fire - how many of the cavemen died following the invention of, at the hands of fire? I bet it felt like a horrible idea until properly grasped. The wheel - how many caveme

This is a question I just kinda had to ask myself... It is well documented how Jay-Z spent the prime of his career discussing his retirement plans. If anyone remembers it right, it was supposed to be Volumes 1-3 and ride off into the sunset. Vol 3 failed to best 2 in the quality department, so he had to make The Blueprint, which bit him with that "classic album" flu, then he piggybacked with a horrible Blueprint 2 and even horribler 2.1. We all know what happened from there, one more great album since (The Black Album, for the record) and 2 "retirements" in the meantime. Now how he speaks non-specifically about how long he will do this, almost as if threatening to retire is some kind of a game. This game was so fun that lesser rappers had to get on the bandwagon. Nerd rapper Lupe Fiasco decided that he would do the same, amidst his not-THAT-great releases with 12 fucking minute outros thanking people who had nothing to do with any fucking thing in the universe, poor

Part of me is ashamed for having even downloaded this album, with my very much on-the-outside crush for Helen Folasade Adu, professionally known as Sade. The other part of me sits and thinks of the fact that music has so terribly sucked over the last several years. Evidence in this can be found in the outputs of Beyonce and Rihanna compared to Sade. So much being said, I HAD to download this album before I would allow myself to spend good money on it. Sorry Sade, blame it on the head and not the heart. 1: The Moon and the Sky Okay, this album is off to a not-too-fast (in physical pace, not quality) start, and I like it already. The music here matches her voice, cadence and writing well. I am not even one to nitpick on things like the fact that I STILL liked Sweetback better as her backing band, but the guitar work in this song makes it worth the price of admission, which is still $0.00 to this point. Good start to things here. 2: Soldier Of Love Okay, I get a short horn [pause...] and