I know Kanye was already a joke in many quarters but now he's becoming a media reference point of the worst kind.
Faith Hill insists that she's no Kanye West.
Seemingly no big thing in the ever growing mass of Kanye West jokes, my point is that the writer is not discussing Kanye West, he's using Kanye West's name to signify freaking out in an embarassingly public manner when one doesn't get an award .
After watching the mass media , I think it's pretty clear where all this is leading. Even when Kanye's on his best behavior, he's stuck with his nutty perception because now the journalists are turning the perception into a cliche, the kind of cliche that they will use over and over and over again until it simply becomes common knowledge.
Then again, maybe it was already common knowledge and now it's completing the process of becoming an everyday part of the language.
Lucky Kanye. Now he might make the dictionary.
Posted by Clyde on November 8, 2006 in Ben Sisario of the NY Times reports on the .
Gee, I can't wait to see the reports from the New York and New Jersey based hip hop news sites that sent somebody over for this historic event. They should be great!
It looks like the got some more facts wrong since Sisario reports that Brent D.
Glass, the director of the museum, said the project was begun in recent months with seed money from Universal Records.
Although I know I give Russell Simmons a hard time, I also have respect for many of his accomplishments and for his intelligence so I find it incredibly hard to believe that he actually said that hip hop is the only real description of the suffering of our people. Assuming he means African Americans, as opposed to rich men with expensive wives, he just dissed a lot of great black artists, including numerous writers whose work will tower over even my favorite hip hop lyricists long after they're dead.
Yeah, back that azz up, I'm suffering!
But, man, I wish I could have been at the conference. I know I would have met some great writers from all the news sites we all follow on a daily basis.
I'll be sure to add their eyewitness accounts as soon as I track them down!
Posted by Clyde on March 1, 2006 in Recent media reports claim that, "according to research", the easy availability of music via downloading has led to a " ". Since this announcement immediately appeared to be one of those media items that would return to haunt me via op-ed columns and blog posts and since, as with most scientific research, the research itself was likely to be misrepresented, I thought I would try to check out the research findings.
So I went to the web page of , a researcher at the University of Leicester's School of Psychology who is quoted in the BBC article linked above. I was surprised to find no mention of the research on Dr. North's page or on any of the University's press release pages so I wrote Dr.
North directly.
North, A. C.
, Hargreaves, D. J., and Hargreaves, J.
J. (2004). The uses of music in everyday life.
Music Perception, 22, 63-99.
Since that seemed a bit old for research being reported in the BBC, I followed up and Dr. North stated:
"I did an interview for one of the Scottish newspapers a couple of weeks ago in which I was asked to speculate about how downloading might have affected attitudes towards music.
After that it just seems to have snowballed - strange how these things work."
Strange, indeed. What began as some speculations on Dr.
North's part about the effects of downloading in light of North's earlier research becomes the media creation of a generational label that can now go on to have a life of its own. Since my copies of Music Perception are in storage, I'll have to hold off on a closer look at the research itself for the moment. If you happen to track down a copy, feel free to respond in the comments below.
Otherwise we can simply continue the conversation like most conversations about science generated by media interest, the discussion will have little to do with the research itself.
Posted by Clyde on January 12, 2006 in I wasn't paying a lot of attention to Young Jeezy this summer when he announced a and the connection to cocaine seemed likely but I didn't really follow it up at the time. However, let me make clear that cocaine is one area of exploration I've avoided, primarily because anyone I ever knew who was strongly associated with coke was a total asshole when they were doing it and I do not hang with coke heads, even the cute ones.
But I finally started paying attention to Young Jeezy's branding when I read this , who I've often given props here at ProHipHop, about the "symbolism of the snowman." Jeezy maintains:
"You gotta understand what it symbolizes . .
. It symbolizes a young hustler. .
. Snowman is a cool dude . .
. He's a gangsta too. There's a Snowman in every 'hood, several Snowmen in the 'hood.
You gotta be that dude to look up to with the car and the girl. Whatever you do, be the best at it, because that's what the Snowman is going to do."
I know I'm being naive but MTV occasionally fronts like a real news organization and to print this statement at face value without mentioning cocaine and the long history of the snowman referencing a cocaine dealer, , is a cynical, let's play along with a wink, maneuver.
I recognize that the snowman is a smart marketing move and a great brand for Young Jeezy, but I also appreciate the decision by the manufacturer of the original line to because of the drug references. He could make a lot of money off those shirts.
Speaking of making money, I'd advise to start looking at hip hop promotional opportunities ASAP and I applaud the bootleggers making money off their versions.
It just seems appropriate that hustlers at all levels should be making money off the snowman brand, from the streets to the MTV newsrooms.
Clover Hope of AllHipHop.com has an interview with Benzino about the current controversy, see and .
I was happy to find Hope pushing Benzino more than one normally sees in the hip hop press. And it reveals that Benzino will try to misdirect and manipulate interviewers in any way he can. One thing I have no way of knowing is if he's trying to play the not so bright thug for street cred or if that's what he really is cause his explanations are kind of weak.
I'm really looking forward to Benzino's days in court. I truly believe that he and Dave Mays will be feeling a lot of pain.
Adisa Banjoko is writing about his recent experience working on a piece about Jimmy Iovine for The Source, see and .
Based on responses to his interview requests, he found that people just didn't want to talk to someone associated with The Source and that The Source wasn't interested in anything positive about Iovine. Check it out. It's unfiltered communication.
Keith at ThugLifeArmy also has a to Benzino's antics.
You know, I appreciate the recent pieces that I've been linking to at MTV, SOHH and AllHipHop. I just hope they all start digging a little deeper.
Actually, I wish hip hop had serious, in-depth, investigative reporting happening somewhere, anywhere. I'm not the man for the job and don't plan to become that guy. But there should be a team at work on such tasks as interviewing the former Source writers that must know so much, investigating the financial involvement of Black Enterprise and figuring out who Benzino's crew is and what they actually do at The Source as well as what they were doing before Benzino brought them on.
I don't have the connections, the resources or the temperament for investigative reporting but I'll keep pointing out what I can and looking for patterns in what's publically available.
I imagine that whatever happens in court will tell us the most about The Source, just as it is about Michael Jackson. On that note, keep in mind that Michael's incredible contributions to entertainment are totally separate from his sexual activities.
Don't use one to deny the other and that goes for The Source, as well.
Thanks to for posting the link to Adisa and it looks like is also continuing to track the situation. Hmm, must be on vacation or something.
Update: I've just been informed that Davey D writes for The Source so he can't really take a public stand. But someday he will tell all, no doubt, and I can't wait!
The Associated Press covers the press conference.
The high point appears to have been a quote from Russell Simmons who said, when asked if the truce was genuine:
""Of course it was genuine . . .
They stood on stage together."
Did anyone else actually go? Even the New York papers are just rewriting the AP press release.
Hashim Warren was on today and he blogs about it at and at . They were discussing violence in hip hop and my general impression is that he got bested by a producer from BET. But he'll get better at this because it's just the beginning of a lot of things, including Hashim's rise to prominence in hip hop media.
Being what may be the first hip hop blogger on television is rather historic and would have sounded absurd not that long ago. It makes one ponder the possibilities. I mean, what's next?
A ?
That said, his closing statement at is a bit disturbing. After throwing out a what goes around comes around argument, which does have merit, he closes with a reference to the killing of Tupac Shakur (I assume):
"Last time it was on a Vagas [sic] strip.
Now dudes are shooting outside the corporate office. It's only a matter of time before some exec gets shot or stabbed up, instead of a rapper and his friends. Hopefully.
"
Hopefully? If he's saying that executives are responsible for violence in hip hop because they promote violent music, for which a good argument could be made, then why doesn't he just say it rather than putting out the idea that he wants to see executives attacked? I understand that he's writing a blog and that such statements can be filed under "the kinds of things bloggers like to throw out," but it seems a peculiar statement from someone who is now claiming to be the .
Although seems to be flying under the radar at this point, eventually, if blogs mean anything, such statements will have serious repercussions because what goes around does come around. And it will be interesting to see how SOHH management handles it, once they finally get around to actually making a public announcement that their blogs exist. I mean, if you had a writer on your site on television, wouldn't you feature it on the ?
Update: Please check out my based on an interview with SOHH cofounder Felicia Palmer.
Posted by Clyde on March 4, 2005 in In addition to news of Suge Knight's arrest, a currently returns earlier accounts of rumors that Jimmy James Johnson, the man accused of assaulting Dr. Dre at the Vibe Awards show taping, claimed that Suge Knight paid him to undertake the assault.
As , this report began at the based upon one of their "sources". However, having worked it's way through the online hip hop press, the story was picked up by who reported that it came from AllHipHop.com.
I meant to address this issue at the time, because it illuminates the sometimes shoddy standards of online reportage. I have a lot of respect for AllHipHop.com.
They do more original reporting than most hip hop news sites and I frequently link to them. However, they are often unclear about the source of their articles and will often bury the fact that it's a wire report or from another publication a few paragraphs down. While that's better than some websites, it makes it appear as if they are doing original reporting and then quoting an additional source.
Let's break it down. The Jimmy James Johnson story was initiated at the . Examination of the version shows that it's a rewrite of the NY Post version, plus some closing lines taken from other services, and was posted a day later.
Since AllHipHop.com simply ran Nolan Strong's byline, rather than clarifying that the whole article was from the NY Post, as they should have done by basic and longstanding journalistic practices, some sloppy somebody over at Yahoo! Launch or Yahoo!
News took that at face value and . But the screwup at Yahoo! illuminates worse issues in the online hip hop press.
While this is the first example I've seen of a story getting picked up by a major online news source and being misattributed in this way, the underlying practice is quite common on hip hop news sites. Actually, much worse things are going on elsewhere. Of course, hip hop bloggers like have long pointed to such shoddy practices.
Hip hop news services need to recognize that it's time to step up their game. Hungry young professionals are on the move and old guys like me are also trying to break in. Not only are we bringing higher standards to the game, but we're going to be reporting on your lack of professionalism.
In the case of AllHipHop.com, the problem could be alleviated fairly easily but it would reveal how much of their news (like most news) is based on newswire reports and press releases, plus stuff written elsewhere. But a newspaper would state that in the byline and an article such as the one attributed to Nolan Strong would probably not even list his name.
Although I dig the way blogging and online publishing in general has opened up the news game, the shakeout that will occur in the next five years will reveal that old school professionalism is a still necessary foundation for real news gathering and reporting.
I use a lot of different news searches for ProHipHop and I'm finding that various terms and phrases that are basically hip hop and/or urban slang are being used by everyday reporters all across the U.S.
as regular terms and metaphors. If you search Google News for , you'll find that it's mostly used to refer to flashy things by people with no connection to hip hop.
If you search for the two terms , it's a closer match due to the current popularity of the show Pimp My Ride.
However, if you get a Google News Alert on that term, you get similar results as with bling. But rather than being used like bling as a normal word, one usually sees stories along the lines of someone's son working on something automotive who either wants to pimp his ride or doesn't. Either way, it's rarely about the tv show and only occasionally about someone intensely involved with auto customization.
Such searches have also led me to the discovery that MTV watchers may already know, many of these terms have been . If you're not familiar with the OED, it's the kind of volume that certain nutty literary friends will gesture towards when they want to refer to what a term "really" means.
This must be my day.
After all that heaviness, comedy is flooding the room. At this very moment, Yahoo News is from Reuters/Hollywood Reporter (at least that's who's credited with providing the article in whatever agreement they have) that's about Martha Stewart. But I'm guessing they're either using automated picture matching like Google News does or, because Kimora is getting into Martha's space (in terms of product lines), I think it was just one of those moments of serendipidy meant to brighten my world.
But that's really so perfect considering what's to come from Ms. Simmons.
If you really need to see the picture and they take it down before you do.
I can send you a screenshot.
[Update: Kimora's picture has been traded for Martha's, but it will always be emblazoned on my memory.]
I've been writing and rewriting this post and have now accidentally deleted it signaling that I need to keep it as short as I can stand to.
Solvej Schou wrote me a nice note that challenged me on my response to her article in my post . I've responded and I hope we're talking but my attempts to communicate what it evoked in me have continually turned into an essay of the sort I haven't written since grad school. What I need to address at the moment is the perception that I was insensitive to her gender and possibly to her ethnic/national identity by my use of "Mr.
or Ms. Schou" in my response which, by the way, was attempting to mix voices in a manner that led fairly easily to misinterpretation. So much for literary experimention in a quasijournalistic trade blog.
Bottom line: I'm commited not only to gender equality but to gender liberation. If you're aware of the tendency for left/libs to build long lists of such categories that need liberating, you may be rolling your eyes. If that's the case, I hope to help you change your tune in the future, because such concerns are not only useful for improving the bottom line, but for the unlikely possibility of taking human social and cultural development to a really beautiful place.
However that strikes you, don't ever imagine that I'm in support of prejudice of any type. Since you'll need proof of that, keep watching. But I'm as pissed at oppressive attitudes regarding gender and sexuality that I find in hip hop, as I am when I confront them in absolutely every sector of society with which I interact, including left/lib circles that imagine they're past all that.
I thank Ms. Schou for pointing out the fact that my stance may still be rather unclear. Don't worry, you'll hear more on such topics in the future, whether or not it costs me my potential ad base.
I need to make clear that Ms Schou did not attack me and said nothing negative about hip hop in the writing I critiqued or in her note to me. I'm the one that's calling out hip hop on the elements within it that align with other oppressive trends within society. And I'll be the one calling out hip hop homophobes on a regular basis.
If you have a problem with that, bring it to me, not to her.
You may have noticed some sympathetic posts on my part regarding the general difficulty Sony is in these days. However, if they're going to , then they've lost my support.
It's a perfect example of the giant swaggering corporation trying to crush the little guy by threatening a lawsuit that the little guy can't afford. Perhaps they haven't noticed that a wide range of little guys and gals are using the Internet to amplify their voices in a way that corporations have not had to deal with in the past.
Finally the various negative responses to Sony that I'm running into online are emerging as part of a pattern of missteps and failures that I couldn't see because I have not been following them closely enough.
The recent brought about by inadequate testing of the Viewtiful Joe 2 demo will never be forgotten by those who experienced it. The has already disturbed shoppers at a time when . And game retailers will have added Christmas stress if .
Suddenly, Brad Hill's is making a lot more sense and I've always agreed with his take on the , another example of corporate blundering in dealing with changing times. So I should admit that I've been a bit snarky about his blog, but I also must make clear that it's been a must read since day one of ProHipHop.
The bottom line is that I'm still finding my way as a critic and newshound attempting to bring together a radically broad range of resources.
In a sense, I'm a middle aged man growing up in public and to say the things that I feel need to be said will require me to say things that I'll later regret. Like being so nice to Sony!
I'm sorry to hear that due, at least in part, to what he terms National Public Radio's failure to "meaningful reach out to a broad spectrum of Americans.
" Looks like NPR's attempt to move beyond it's core educated white liberal market hasn't gone so well. Though Mr. Smiley has often been attacked in the hip hop conscious comic strip , he has been one of the few high profile journalists to intelligently cover hip hop with an awareness of its many faults without misinterpreting its rich cultural base.
As recent events have made all too clear, the vast majority of American reporters do not understand what they're covering when they write about "hip hop culture."
"Host Tavis Smiley has been named by Time magazine as one of America's 50 most promising young leaders. Newsweek profiled him as one of the "20 people changing how Americans get their news" and dubbed him one of the nation's "captains of the airwaves.
""
If you're not familiar with the show or want to catch up on shows you missed, you can going all the way back to Jan. '02 when The Tavis Smiley Show premiered. You can also listen to individual segments of the show, which is great because each show has a rich selection of guests and topics.
This is a huge loss for NPR but, potentially, a great opening for Mr. Smiley to take that brilliant mind and that great voice and the incredible Rolodex he must have and shift his game to a whole new level.
An attempt by Florida Atlantic University to meet NCAA attendance requirements by having the at a football game has been stopped short by closer study of the act's lyrical history.
This situation is strongly illustrative of the difficulties of using hip hop when marketing to youth and young adults and suggests that closer study of past marketing victories featuring controversial rock artists might be in order.
In news of related failures in the nexus of sports, music and marketing, by R B group Allure has been a nonstarter. Some news outlets are even reporting that Artest has released a rap album that did poorly and, as it turns out, when everybody was getting upset with Ron for wanting some time off to promote his new album, he meant the R B release.
However, before sports reporters begin turning their keen powers of social analysis on brawlers like Bobby Brown or running corrections that simply replace "rap" with "r'n'b", I want to be the first to report the, largely unverifiable outside of this office, rumor that Artest was observed furtively ditching the packaging for the recently released deluxe collector's edition Black Sabbath boxed set. You know, the one that comes with a jewel-encrusted spinning dove's head.
Rush Limbaugh is an idiot but the problem is he has media power.
Please, those of you that recognize that the NBA brawl was much more about longstanding issues in American masculinity and sports violence, rather than anything intrinsic to hip hop, should let your feelings be known. And, if you've got media power, use it.
It's one thing for those of us within hip hop to put our beliefs on the table in order to change the context in which we work.
And we've got difficult issues to face. But it's quite another for someone as despicable as Limbaugh to make the claims he's currently making. If you're not sure how to respond due to personal discomfort over the Vibe fiasco, don't let it stop you now.
Limbaugh threatens much more than the commercial viability of hip hop. He's a serious threat to democracy both here and abroad and needs to be countered strongly, at least till his drug abuse finishes him off.
Time to Institutionalize Rush Limbaugh?
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