first post of the new year

yeah i know its late as fuck but i still gotta say that i am looking forward to 2009 i gotta lotta shit in the pipelines if you know what im saying and the new year has been pretty good to me i gotta say its been a hell of a ride so far but its only going to get crazier from hereonin the longer i been in the game the more respect i got for the cats who been doing this for decades theres people in this game whove been around since before the day i was born and that aint no fuckin joke if you know what im saying now even if i dont like some of those cats i gotta respect their hustle because thats what it is all about on some level no matter how much you want to try and reinterpret or distance yourself from that fact it is a pretty insurmountable absolute in this reality no matter what youre doing on some level youre hustling and the type of hustling that were all involved in differes from person to person but there are particular games you can get into and this rap game is one of the toughest games to get your money in even harder in many respects than the drug game though ive got no beef with those out there slanging since whether or not you like it you better fucking recognize the fact that motherfuckers slanging and transporting that shit are straight acting on the world stage buoying up nations and heavily impacting the international flow of capital and they have a lot of risk from every side of the so called justice system but thats all beside the point im saying that the rap game has a particular selectivity and highly hierarchical demeanour combined with this absurd determinations of taste and imagistic preference with everyone from record executives to fans to radio djs and while this isnt as necessarily life threatening as the issues that drug dealers might have to deal with they certainly cull tons of people out of the game making it a more selective field than just about any other hustle in the world but all of that is just sort of my musings what i really came to say was that this new year is going to be one hell of a new year if you know what im saying im pushing so much shit out this year you will not even believe it and one of those many things is going to be at least if i concede to my new years resolution the promised theory of lollipop that i put forth in an earlier blog entry its something ive been working on for such a long time now and i feel like if i do get it out its going to be a goddamn dissertation length hardass essay to read because despite what all the haters have been saying there is a wealth of implications and interesting details about that song in addition to it being a straight hip hop classic club banger with a straight phenomenal hook

elitism

the elitism that seems to be all pervasive in hip hop these days especially in that place known colloquially as the internet is something that is in my opinion a more important perpetrator of the nasian hip hop is dead syndrome than any sort of issue one might have with ringtone rap or the perceived content of the genre as a whole being unimpressive to use a euphemism this idea that the only real hip hop is wu tang or public enemy and rakim or whatever is contrary not only to the spirit of hip hop in general but also to the basic ethos of those artists as well as their taste and so forth i cannot claim that any one movement is better than another but this post backpacker mindset takes such a holier than thou mindset that it seems only justified to respond in kind fuck all that turn the other cheek dont stoop to their level shit this is a question of the viability of hip hop in the future not just mine but all of it there needs to be a re education of sorts in the fringe hip hop communities i fully respect independent artists but some of them are a cancer on the whole of art i cannot be accused of hyperbole because this is pure truth that i am typing i am certainly no savior of hip hop but I will do my best to protect that which i love i know i have sort of talked about this in my first blog entry but i see it more and more as the months go by and i just cannot handle this shit for much longer

accusations of ghostwriting

considering the fact that contemporary hip hop is built around certain ideas that stand as the way by which to judge the art form which are maintained by anyone with more than a passing interest in the genre inspired by the sudden burst in acceptability of rap in clubs and on television and mainstream radio there are certain things that can be brought to bear on a rapper that would be at worse entirely inconsequential in the rest of pop culture but which could be both the popular and critical death of a rapper and perhaps the most terrifying of these is the allegation of ghostwriting not only because these allegations need not be substantiated for the rumor to gain credence nor is it simply the fact that these accusations will stick around long after the rapper has become a popular legend or a critical darling and will always undermine even the most ardent of fan one thinks of the allegations of the ghost production that happened on nearly all eric b and rakim albums in analogy but the most terrifying thing about people believing that you are being ghostwritten for is that it an implicit criticism of the one thing that hip hop has had as its central tenet since the days of grandmaster flash and the furious five and which allows certain historians to trace its roots back to great orators like malcolm x and martin luther king jr that of above all else maintaining a reality which is exactly coherent with the reality which is prevalent among people on earth and since hip hop is a poetic form in which the narrator and the author are conflated if the narrator/author is revealed by way of ghostwriting to simply be the narrator then this central tenet is revealed to be indelibly blasphemed against making the rapper the equivalent of a christian who feels neither love nor fear but only malice toward his god and the fanbase which the rapper relies upon to carry forth his name after he is gone which is as i see it the true goal of all artists

the state of hip hop

for this second post i would like to talk about the relation of elitism to my fanbase i exist in a very strange place in the hip hop community it seems that there is no consensus to any criticism about me the members of the general public who hate songs by me who havent heard anything except lollipop and fireman and shit like that seem to be under the impression that i am just another rapper just some guy who sounds like every other ringtone rapper to them and who doesnt deserve all the praise given to him by the press whereas the hip hop heads who diss me tend to also complain about the praise i get and use this to somehow undermine my own strengths so i think that the weird thing about these two camps is that neither of them hate me so much as they hate my praise that comes from the greater majority of people and especially the people we call experts on the subject or professionals i guess either way the critical public and the critical elite agree with each other in that i am the greatest lyricist alive and yet there is a sizable subgroup within both of these groups that hate me for the very reason that the rest of their group is behind me in my artistic endeavour i think this is bullshit and can only wonder why it is that these supposed anti conformists even exist there is no reason to rebel for the sake of rebellion just because james dean was attractive and mythologized as a great actor doesnt mean that rebellion sans justification is a proper course of action from anyone that is like saying that objectivism is a feasible philosophy its nonsense as though solipsism was something other than something you ought to consider briefly to contextualize critical thinking speaking of which in nas new album he says break free of the matrix when he is spouting platitudes of empowerment and i must say that this is precisely what i was getting at with the james dean reference nas is unwittingly using the tools of a culture that he is trying to rebel against and in doing so is only revalidating it just like these haters who are attempting to denigrate my rap career and my latest album criticizing me for doing too many drugs while they spout off about how the best rappers of all time were biggie and pac like they were fucking sober or talking about how krsone is the best lyricist because even though they havent heard him they have heard that line being repeated hip hop is an art form and one that has yet to stagnate just because you prefer to accept talking points proffered by hip hop pundits doesnt mean your opinion will be considered relavent by anyone with any knowledge of the subject i am going to keep perfecting and moving forward the art form and maybe twenty years from now when someone better than me finally comes along your kids will be repeating the line that ive been promoting all along