The musings of a madman...

I would be lying if I said that I, after 2000 and 2004 was even able to feign excitement about hip hop in the current decade... I would also be lying if I said that I was any less willing to impose my opinion just the same with this, the space that the nice folks over at Google provide me here on blogger. Anything less would be a waste of such, as it would the ownership of this nice comprutah of mines... You know what? I was fucking DRUNK most of 2002. I was making good money, my cash outlay was not necessarily exorbitant, I was newly popular basically out of nowhere and enjoying life in general. Plenty of money to blow on music and car shit, and God knows I did. Did I mention I was intoxicated most of the year? Yeah, Absolut, Yuengling and Jim Beam were good friends of mine all year, so I don't terribly recall a representative most of the shit we did, as much as I do where I did it and who I did it with [pause...] . Lord knows, somehow I am drinking a LOT less these days, but have

The year is 2004, I am working to put my life back together after the run-in from fathers day with Godzilla and Mothra. One consistent remained through all of this, though, has been my music, for better or for worse. Along with weeks, months on end of 10-hour overtime workdays 7 days a week dealing with a hastily thrown-together and ultimately failed system workover, which led to a murder of company profitability for several weeks, which hastened a 2005 company merger, which made shit so unbearable that I left the company in 2006, all I had was music on the in-between. This [particular] blog, though, is not about me or the shit I have been through. We're here to talk about the year 2004 in this thing I love that we call hip hop music. It also stands to explanation that I DO categorize everything that IS hip hop music AS hip hop music, even if it is the shittiest of shit. I refuse subscription to the "hip hop vs rap" argument when the abject comparison is actually "

As previously mentioned, I was reluctant to further my " wayback " series to cover the decade that we are currently in for reasons including the fact that we're still IN the decade and the fact that this decade has caused us to watch the slow and painful death of this artform that I have come to love down through my years. A footnote to this is that I have not done the 80s yet either, but that has more to do with the fact that the decade was EXTRA thin on releases, and a lot of the release dates just can't fucking be found as easily as things released SINCE the advent of the internets... Go figure. Anyway, I had a request or was asked if I would be doing this immediately upon having finished the 90s series by someone who apparently neglected to read that I specifically mentioned that I probably wouldn't. More recently, though, I was specifically REQUESTED to scribe my "top 10 albums from 2000-present," and I arrived home from handling business yesterday

Also happens to be a fully-featured 3.2MP Sony Cybershot camera, so I am less than angered when I leave the camera home when we go out. Sold my elliptical made redundant by a gym membership this morning, then The Katie took me out to breakfast at IHOP, then to Wal Mart to get some Potato Bread [best bread ever fucking invented] and a couple other items, then to Target to look around, leaving only with LEGO Star Wars, since nothing more was terribly interesting in the whole store, then to see Where the Wild Things Are [maybe more on that in a later blog, I need to think about this for a minute] , then on a silly little mission and now back home... You saw up there in the title, I talked about my camera-equipped phone? Yeah, I will be doing the photo caption thing today. Katie - "You know, it is kinda sad that Michael Jackson spent his entire adult life trying to be a little boy, then there was the legal shit... Ironic is how now one MUST be a little boy to be Mike for this Hallowe

Conversing with Roger one day last week, we came to a realization here about some of the "pioneers" of hip hop. One in particular. Lawrence "KRS-One" Parker is a pretentious and self-righteous bastard sometimes. And by "sometimes," I mean "damn near every time he opens his mouth." For all his "Temple of Hip Hop" pseudo-religion talk and popping up to hate on whomever is popular at a given time -- blatantly or indirectly -- I find it odd that someone who has been "in the industry" since 1980, almost 30 years now, only has 14 (mostly shitty) solo albums released since. Strange, that, when one considers the number of people whose careers who have begun SINCE then who have almost matched that output with WAY more consistent results. One might think that last night's blog was a slight on him, but actually Jay-Z comes to mind as I type that. For all of his posturing and complaining, one would think that KRS would work on having

At some point in the not-too-distant past, Kanye Zest dubbed himself as the "Mike Jordan of rap" at some point in his career. I thought about this for some reason yesterday/last night while I was out and about and went more in on it as the evening progressed and it came to me that he was actually being his normal full of shit self when he said that, and that Jay-Z was actually the rightful "Mike Jordan of Rap," not Kanye... After noticing that he (Jay-Z) was totally absent from the Hip Hop Honors last night, I was in the shower last night and I was thinking "well damn, I might have a point there." [ Phlip note - a LOT of what I think about in the shower realizes blog infamy, just for the record] Sure, Kanye meant it as to say that he was the greatest of all time, which flies in the face of those who did it before him and who will come along to do it after him. Of course, being that we're all stupid fucking consumers, we were supposed to not notice the

One would be inclined to mention how I should probably not be reviewing an album on the 13th if it does not release until the 20th. One should also realize that these leaks have been Royce's albatross throughout his career, which has come in coincidence with the advent of the internets. One should ALSO realize that I, as a Royce Stan, plan to buy the damned album anyway, based solely on the body of his previous work, my respect for his grind and especially the Slaughterhouse album. I won't get into the specifics of where this particular leak came from, but comparing the track listings I have found on the internets to what I have, this is a proper leak and not some cheapass bootleg "street album" full of track-by-track leaked songs from mixtapes, though 3 of the songs have been heard on the internets before. With that out of the way, let's talk about the album, shall we? Gun Harmonizing (feat. Crooked I) I do like this beat, and Royce starts off this album rhyming

Friday morning at work, I went to the bathroom for my 10am crap and there was a guy on his way out, and he was showing male pattern baldness... See subject 7, Figure: I was on the way into the can and he was on his way out, evident in that he was washing his hands (well at least there was that), but once he was done washing his hands, he dried them, then took the now-damp paper towel to shine the top of his head before tossing it. Needless to say, I snickered once he'd left the bathroom. As the weekend progressed, I blogged about cooking, about random conversations about nothing in particular, then about airplanes and let us not forget the ever-important subject that would be boobies that I'd had scheduled for this morning but typed YEARS ago (this was the 3rd annual one), the thought of WHY people are so unwilling to commit to a full-on baldy when the time comes was fresh on my mind. Seriously, it is 2009, and major scientific advances have been made in both the restoral and r

A repost of mammarial proportions ... (yes, I know that "mammarial" is not a word, or was not until now) I'd originally posted this blog in October 2007, and as the date draws near again my mind has not changed one little bit, nor has the importance of the subject at hand, so here goes... Do you know what this week is? According to NYC Cancer Prevention , the 3rd Friday in every October is "National Mammography Day." I know what you're thinking, "But Phillip, you don't have titties," and the jokes of my man-boobs are damn near moot, as they are just about gone now. I DO have a sense of humor about myself and I know that I am still not a small person by any stretch of the imagination, but I digress... I have taken on the vigil, as a member of the S traight M ale P ride F oundation (AKA the "anti-zesty coalition," PKA the "take off them fuckin' skinny jeans frontline"), proudly led

Manufactured from 1937 to 1947, lives as one of the most popular light aircraft ever made. Lovable little thing she was, no taller than 6'8" and only able to seat 2 people. Light enough to be fine with being powered by a 48 horsepower engine. Over 19,000 total were built at affordable prices ranging from under 1000 to under 2500 when new over the 10-year production span. Kits are available to this day, but the originals in working condition still can fetch about 30-40k which is quite affordable when one considers recreational aircraft. No further lining necessary this time out, let's just make with the images. (holy shit, is that one made of LEGO bricks?!!?) Noteworthy is that most you will see will be yellow in color, as that is the color they're most famous in, right up to that lightning bold stripe on them... I'm done now, the link to the gallery is here .