ANOTHER WAY TO DIE (Besides reading my blog)

I hope you didn't come here looking for reassurance about the debates last night. EVERYBODY SAYS that Senator Barack Obama won the night. The whole country. Most surprising is the fact that FOX NEWS even had to relent and say that Senator John McCain didn't pull it off. In other words, this race is over. You know as well as I do that the next POTUS is also going to be the first black African-American one. And "that one" happens to be Obama.



But enough of that. I'm kind of tired of politics for a minute anyway, and I've noticed that I'm slacking on Hip-Hop, which in my absence has been seeing its vital statistics slipping a bit. Yet before I get back to wifey, I still feel like cheating a bit with R&B and rock & roll. Pardon me while I lose myself...


One of my favorite groups is The White Stripes. Jack White is murder on the guitar, and it just so happens that he's one of those multi-talented cats that can write lyrics, produce them (without computers) and perform them--both vocally and instrumentally--at a higher grade of artistic delivery than most, if not almost all rock artists in modern music.

So you can imagine how crunk I became when I heard a while back that Jack White and Alicia Keys are comiserating together on the new, Amy Winehouse-less theme song to the upcoming JAMES BOND film, Quantum of Solace. The title of the song is the same as the title of this post, if that helps at all.





I can't lie; Alicia Keys is dope. And even though they could have put some T-Pain in there somewhere, I have to say that this is a funky ass song. I dig shite like this; you can catch me at any moment on the interstate in your hometown, blasting some wild rock song with heavy bottomed bass drums and a slap-happy snare and cymbal mash-up. My only real complaint is that White and Keys sound amazingly off-pitch on the chorus, trying to hit the same note with two different sets of vocal cords. As a remedy, I would have had Jack sing in the lower octave, which would have added a fuller sound and given it even more funk. It's not like they asked axed for my musical expertise, but it's here anyway, so I might as well speak when I see fit.

Either which-a-way, I'm still going to download this song as soon as I can find it and create a new Rock mixtape for the ride to and from work for the next week. Hopefully this shit doesn't make me ghost-ride the whip into a graveyard as a result of trying to crank that air guitar while driving. If somebody finds a link, send it on. Yes, I'm weird. Learn to love it.

RELIGION IS DEAD

Thank Jebus it's Friday. Speaking of The Lawd, there's a movie coming out that I'm going to try to see sometime this weekend called RELIGULOUS. It's Bill Maher's journalistic satire of religion, and by most reviewer's accounts, it promises to be funny to OBJECTIVISTS like myself while pissing off most Evangelical neo-conservative lunatics and hopefully every other manipulating servant of Satan that pretends to speak the language of spirituality. You know the type...






I don't know your views on Christianity, Islam or Judaism, but you're more than welcome to ask axe God to strike me down for saying that I am highly interested in what this documentary-styled film contains, or you can just leave a comment and be less dramatic. But if you wish to know, I am neither an atheist nor an agnostic, but I have serious questions about the factual or plain-old believable issues that are preached in the name of The Lawd, especially down here under the bible belt, where assholes and dickheads alike stink up the region with their quiet quest for money, power and fame--all in the name of Jesus Christ, Muhammad or MATISYAHU. God knows he has some strange followers that probably believe that he wrote the Old Testament or some next shit like that. Me? I was raised as a Baptist, and I had to go to chuuch all the got-damn time. I would hear all types of buffoonery. A quick list of some of the nonsense includes:

1. If you kill yourself, you're going to Hell.
2. If you're gay, you're going to Hell.
3. If you say "God Damn" too many times, you're going to Hell.

Now, I can't vouch for two of those, because I'm neither gay or dead from suicide. But I lost my fear of speaking my mind years ago, and sometimes you just can't substitute another phrase for the all-powerful "Gyeaad--DAAAYYUM!!" And besides, don't act like a lot of the men that attend mostly black churches aren't apple bottom biters on the low, if you follow. Maybe on the high... But please believe: God has been very good to me, so don't assume that I'm not a believer. I just don't let another human being get between our relationship, so I really have little to no use for modern evangelists, preachers and such.



The few spiritual leaders that I do respect have always agreed that there is no such thing as an unforgivable sin as long as you've accepted God into your life. The others have always made up things that they claim can be found in The Good Book. By the way, it is a good book, but did you know that the Bible was in fact not written by God? A man actually took the trees that God created on "his" earth, in "his" universe, and cut them into shreds so that he could print money, collect 10% of others' income and give it all back to God. God made man and man made money selling God's magnum opus.



OUCH-- I just got struck by a bolt of lightning! But no, really, what is the point of religion? I see it as a way to control people and to turn the individual hero into a compressed weakling who cannot exist on his or her own terms. Maybe that sounds harsh, but riddle me this: when was the last time you sinned? Probably today. And the wages of sin is... you already know. Death. But guess what? You're gonna die anyway, so stop taking things so God-damned literal and learn to laugh at life while you have it. Sheesh!

I expect to laugh incredibly loud at Religulous, but I do not expect anyone to volunteer to see it with me. And while I believe it will do decent numbers at the box office, I can also clearly see the future, when the zealots start protesting and calling for HBO to cancel his show like Comedy Central did back when he started FREESTYLING about September 11. If there's anything guaranteed in America, it is religious persecution, which is pretty sad when you remember that this country was supposedly founded as an antidote to intolerance.



You mad? Who cares. Take it up with the man, woman or entity upstairs. But please, save your accusations of blasphemy for someone that's stupid. I have always believed that the spirit of God lives in each of us, therefore we can communicate directly with the great spirit without the need of an intermediary or middleman. As long as we have pastors with perms, private jets and penthouse apartments that preach prosperity, I'll happily refrain from spending my sacred Sunday afternoon doing anything as ridiculous as attending a "house of God" that man built and paid for. Isn't God already rich? Doesn't "he" own the earth, as well as the universe? How much sense does it then make to cut down "his" trees, turn them into currency and give 10% of the paper product back to "him"?

God don't like ugly. And yes, I know I might go to Hell for this, but like The Last Poets said, "If there's Hell below, we're all gonna go!"

COMEDY IS DEAD: CHRIS ROCK RETURNS TO THE STAGE

I saw this guy at the Essence Festival in July, and all I can say is that he deserves his place on top of the black comics' game. There are funny comedians, hilarious comedians, wack comedians, dead comedians, missing comedians like Dave Chappelle, rising comedians like Katt Williams, and then there's the Rock.





What makes Chris Rock a great comedian is his diverse intelligence. He goes over a lot of ground in his live show, and even though his material has become much more vulgar, it has simultaneously become smarter and more worldly. Rock has become better with time, because he has not allowed himself to got the route of Eddie "I'm too busy with these wack-ass movies" Murphy, who he has always called one of his comedic mentors. But we all know that Eddie's shine has been supplanted by Chris's tenacity and consistency. Both men have selected or accepted some very suspect roles in some very dumb movies, but Rock has turned down the check to his own reputation's advantage. Eddie is just taking the check and showing the same cheesy, coony smile every time he shows his mug around Hollywood. And to think, Eddie used to be the funniest guy in the world...



Now, the poor guy is just a lost multi-millionaire, with a love child owned by Scary Spice, a recent snub at the Oscars and Johnny Gill as his last, best friend that he can trust to do anything for him if asked axed. What the hell happened to Arsenio? He would have never let his former BFF do a movie this lame...



All I know is that of all the funnymen out there who do their jobs by making people with senses of humor actually exercise their intellects, Rock is among the very best that existed. As a black comic, he dances across the fine line of telling the ugly truth and making it loveable, like a common pain that we all feel and have learned to live through together. He'll be in the history books if he keeps it up.

So watch his show if you have HBO. It's on right now if you're on the east coast; it plays at 10pm if you're on the Pacific side. Trust me.

DIG THIS: THE HIP-HOP PING-PONG MOVIE

Ping Pong Playa- Official Trailer - The funniest bloopers are right here

What chu know about that PING PONG PLAYA, playa?

That sounded pretty lame, huh? Not as lame as this movie sounds and appears to be, oh my brothers and sisters. It seems that we as a nation are finally crossing the burning sands of race, religion and even the boundaries of geographic location. Now, Chinese people want to "act black", and it's all good. At least, that's what Hollywood wants you to think.

Ping Pong Playa is a movie that's new to U.S. theaters, starting today in Los Angeles and moving east, in which there's a guy named Christopher Wang, a.k.a. Jimmy Tsai, who is the little brother of a champion ping-pong player. He is supposedly "ghetto", and he hangs with a black dude. And that's about it. Not that I've seen it, but joints like this are usually exactly what you'd expect after seeing the trailer, which we now have already done. Lot's of slang, stereotypes and stupidness for young Ivy League Republikkkan weedheads to see and equate to black culture. That sad part is that some of you might buy it when it's hits DVD. SMH.

THIS WEEK'S OBITUARIES

You already know what time it is.



CAREER-DEAD MCs
Kwame Kilpatrick.

I know you can't die twice, but today it became official. With the loss of his law license, a 4-months sentence and a 7-figure fine, it's safe to say that the saga of the "Hip-Hop Mayor" is finally done. The "D" just got a little less cold.




LEGALLY-DEAD MCs
Kenneth Smith.

I don't have a photo of this guy, but according to THE SMOKING GUN, Kenneth Smith was arrested on September 3 for wearing baggy pants. The legal charge is "exposure of undergarment in public." He is a first offender, so under the law in Florida, where he was charged, he faces a $150 charge. If caught three times, he could be sent to jail for thirty days. America hates Hip-Hop.




REALLY DEAD MCs
Don LaFontaine.

In a world where you can make your own career path, enjoy notoriety without having to show your face and reap great financial benefits, Don L. was the king. He died on Tuesday from complications from pneumothorax, which is a collapsed lung that causes air to build in the pleural cavity. Whatever that means. But hey, he was a microphone fiend, and his voice is famous as hell. That's Hip-Hop.




HISTORICALLY-DEAD MCs
Mother Teresa.

The Queen Mother of spiritual pursuits left us on this day, September 5, 1997. Though there have been recent reports that she QUESTIONED HER BELIEF IN GOD, she is still widely remembered as something like a living saint while she existed among the living. Even in death, she remains highly influential and a beacon of hope for those who believe in the power of love over the love of power.




Life is a celebration. Enjoy ever minute. Tomorrow is promised to none of us, so accomplish something great today so that we will still be talking about you tomorrow.

C'entanni!

WHITE RAMBO vs. BLACK RAMBO: WHO KILLED IT?

People are always saying that Hip-Hop is too violent. And the general response to this statement from those defending Hip-Hop's right to using violent and vulgar rhetoric is that actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone have killed more people on film than any thugged-out rapper has killed MCs on wax.

So I came across two videos of two different Rambos. One uses the machine gun and the other uses his mouth as a weapon. You tell me: Which of the two deadly MCs is really killing it?


BLACK RAMBO:



WHITE RAMBO:



Seems to me that our Italian-American brother John Rambo is way realer than the OG from Compton. Gangster rap stays losing.