The musings of a madman...

     And then the news just keeps getting more and more surreal… Media Darling Attention-whore LaVar Ball accompanied his youngest son to China week before last for an overseas game in China that coincided with the opening of a couple of popup shops for his disastrously ugly sneakers.  Teenagers being teenagers, one being from a well-to-do family who could have ostensibly paid for the shit, decided that stealing some sunglasses from a Louis store was the cool thing to do.  An international crisis ensues and 45 decided to insert himself as the liberator-in-chief.      Except, no one has any real PROOF that this happened other than his own claims on Twitter, and no reasonable adult actually believes much of what this man claims.      LaVar got options and a media fully lapping up HIS bullshit.  The thing with his, though, is that he is brutally honest.  Well as honest as one with something to sell ca...

This motherfucker really isn’t going to quit until he tweets us clean off into WWIII, is he?  You’re supposed to be the president, off in the news IN ANOTHER COUNTRY talking like you’re trying to cut a WWE promo against Stone Cold Steve Austin in 1999. I figured China had done a good enough job of buttering him up by making him feel like he had gotten his ass kissed, but that apparently didn’t stop him from embarrassing us on the world stage again.  With a slow news week again, consisting of not much more than sexual harassment/assault burning Hollywood down, we could expect him to hit out at old targets considering his own past as a pussy grabber and with a pending case of his own.   Motherfucker didn't even wait to get off of the plane before getting started. Apple has released a fix to that glitch, Donny.  I understand that you have fashioned yourself the smartest person in the world, but we’re having a mighty hard ti...

     It seems that this “president” and his ghost writers are at it again…     It was a rough week for the guy, opening up on some indictments of people close to his campaign, released in waves to kneecap his attempts to downplay them – and attempt he did. Apparently, though, his handlers – or as “handled” as someone like him will allow himself to be – have finally convinced him to shut the fuck up about ongoing things that could tear his ass later, even if placed on the back-channel protected tweets. …  that didn’t stop him from going in on some of his favorite subjects though…      Suffice it to say, whoever is writing for the man – and we know he can’t be writing these himself – is serving him some better material these day. As the chances that this whole Mueller thing will snake its way up his organization and eventually see him resigning or removed from office, it is probably be...

Duck Down Records In the mid-90s, I was a high schooler. I feel a certain way about the hip hop I allow myself to consume. Summer 1996, Heltah Skeltah released Nocturnal, an album unlike anything I had heard to that time and I was a fan. At the time, I thought Rockness was the better lyricist of the two but they were both entertaining enough as a collective to hold my attention. I HAD to have listened to that album every day senior year. Things happened, the duo split for a while and Sean Price started making solo albums... Great. Fucking. Solo. Albums. He was new to many, but simply getting better at his craft to the ones who remembered. Unfortunately, on August 8, 2015 Sean passed in his sleep. On the second anniversary of his passing, we get his second posthumous release, titled Imperius Rex. The conventional album release day used to be Tuesdays but that was abandoned by most a couple of years ago. I am going to go with the coincidence of the release da...

A non-secret is that Jay-Z has money and a lot of it.  It is rumored that his net worth is more than that of a certain Willard Mittens Romney.  Incredible, as Romney got his on the back of a wealthy daddy helping to provide the best education money could provide and Shawn Carter is doing so without even a high school diploma to speak of.  Another non-secret or meme within the rap world is that those with money – even a little bit of it – walk around with it under their arms to use a metaphor.  “If you have it, show it” they say.  In exacting this, a theme that frequently gets pulled is “I ain’t even GOT to rap,” as if we didn’t already know that it was rap that got them there in the first place. Anyway, never mind that…  Today, we’re talking about Jay-Z and his new album.  After the past 18 years of his life in rap, it is established that he, in fact, DOESN’T have to rap – or probably even ever work again – and his great-grandchildren will die...

            On my next birthday, I will be 34, so it stands to reason that my life has left me with plenty of access to hip hop music in my time.  One thing that artists USED to try and actually pull off well was concept albums.  No, I do not mean an album upon which the artist finds a reasonably central theme well and sticks close to that across the entirety of the album.  With that in mind,  Ready to Die, Only Built For Cuban Lynx  and the like are off of the table.  They were classically presented albums that stuck to their formulas well, but “Concept Albums” they were not.             On the other hand, Prince Paul’s TWO concept albums  A Prince Among Thieves  and  Politics of the Business , Kool Keith’s entire career and minor outlying and TERRIBLY slept-on Sporty Thievz  Street Cinema  should all personify what it is I am getting afte...