[I started this post at 2:30 am and it got deleted. Fuck the Internet]

Last night I was closing up at my work and one of my co-workers mentioned that he had the new Young Buck CD via promo. Naturally, I was excited to see and hear it and I offered my man a ride home. As always, on the way home he dropped some classic freestyles, both acapella and over the numerous beat tapes I had in my vehiclc. In fact, I was so enthralled by his raps that night we forgot to listen to the Buck album. So we reached his home and he let me borrow it in exchange for one of my beat CDs. I gladly accepted and then spent the next two hours lost on the winding streets of Anacostia and adjacent DC. All this time I was distressed over not being able to find my way out of Anacostia and I neglected the Buck album. So I finally reached the highway (after I asked like 20 people, none of which talked to me, one person even threw something at me) and listened to the Buck CD on the way home.

I can honestly say I wasn’t impressed. Dude has put out a “Rotten Apple” so to speak. There are no “Stomps” no “Let Me In”. None of that true fire I anticipated from Young Buck. Thats not to say its bad. Its just not that great. In the end you’re still better off listening to mixtape Buck.

I’m not gonna post a full review cause I got the clean version of the album. But I’m sure when I “fill in the fucks” shit still won’t be that hot.

I guess thats it for the Unit then……….

By way of introduction…..

A few weeks ago I began to get this odd feeling in the bottom of my gut. I would wake up in the morning with my breath smelling like ether. Not the same substance which Nas used to burn his greatest rival. But a fume that came from the poison welling up in my stomach. The idea for a cure came to me in a dream: “Start a BLOG”, the dream said. So I made this:

http://newyorkrap.blogspot.com/

It’s a BLOG about New York, Hip-Hop, and our decaying American Empire.
I showed it around the Internets. Your boy DJ Lethal (The man who runs this site, not the DJ from House of Pain) must have liked it because he asked me to join the team at METAL LUNGIES.

I told him like this: I’d be honored.

So to begin:

Face facts: Hip Hop is dead. And I don’t want to hear anyone saying it’s still alive like ya’ll ain’t in agreement with Nas (He said It’s dead motherfucker!)

1. I intend to celebrate it’s memory with every word I utter (type).

2. Just because the shit is dead doesn’t mean there isn’t still good music being made. I’m gonna find it and celebrate that too.

3. I come from a hip hop tradition and that informs everything I do and have done in my adult life. But all music comes from the same place (and will one day return there when it dies) and I reserve the right to post any kind of music I wish.

4. I’d like to say peace to all the lovely people out there and say thanks to my new compadres at Metal Lungies.

Now, I’d like to jump it off with a joint from Nas, who was with Hip Hop during her final moments and came out the room to break the sad news to the rest of us (we were all pacing the hallways). The reason why Nas is the best rapper alive is because he can swagger and boast with the best of them but he can also be introspective and self-critical (something most rappers refuse to do). In this song, from some ancient mixtape I had in my closet, Nas describes how he went from Illmatic to “ehh” and back. It is one of the most honest hip hop songs I’ve ever heard.

“Read a book on Pablo Escobar and got on some shit”

This is a real lo-fi MP3 and usually I try to strictly post songs with high bit-rates. But this song was too fitting and it’s worth a listen:

Nas: The Rise And Fall

Until next time Kiddies
My Name is Blind Boy Grunt.
an’ I’m out.
Peace!

Over the past two weeks I have spent an increasing amount of time in the magical land of Baltimore. The first of my recent outings occured when I went to some loud hookah bar with a couple of old friends. Besides the waitress being mentally disabled this was a fairly uneventful night. The real shit popped off at Virgin Fest.

I would have to say one of the stand-out performances of the entire festival was RJD2. We arrived early to see him and it was more than worth it. Watching this dude mix 20+ minute dance songs using constantly changing records, and without headphones, was like watching a miracle. I highly reccomend anyone who ever has the chance to see him should run to get tickets.

Before the Festival I never had previously seen a major rock band live. But by the time the Raconteurs came on I had already had at least one person fall on me as a result of crowd surfing. While I am not a huge fan of modern rock I would have to say that the Raconteurs put on a great show. My favorite part was when they did their rendition of Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang” with Jack White using a specially tuned mic that was placed so while he sang his back was to the crowd.

When Gnarls Barkley came on the crowd seemed subdued for just about every song besides Crazy. But Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse definately put down an incredible show dressed as Romans for this venue. They put a lot of time into Jokes and story telling too. I wonder if I was the only one yelling for Khujo and Gipp in the crowd?

I have nothing to say about the Who. They were everything I expected and more. They laid shit down. Classic to Classic. Laid Down. Cop that DVD. Life changing.

When the Chilli Peppers came on I had already been hit by a total of 9 people crowd surfing. During their show I was hit by about 10 more. Fucking bananas. I have never seen a performer get so energetic. They ran shit. They played through all the classics and then when they left people were stomping and chanting so loud that they came out and did damn near a whole other show as an encore.

But that wasn’t the end of B-more fun. Last night I went to a another better hookah bar with a friend and after watching Belly Dancing, eating some good food, and smokin’ some great tabaccy we let to see that my car had been towed. Now don’t get it twisted, I fly high, but I just didn’t have that amount needed to free my vehicle (89 Maxima BALLIN!!) in cash on me at the time. So we took a cab back to UMBC and I got that money and left to get my car the next day. Suprisingly, I was so happy with the the whole experience that I wasn’t at all angry about my car getting towed.

But my god do I need sleep.

Maybe a shower first……..

JP: btw
JP: i hope it’s safe to microwave styrofoam
Pal: uh
Pal: it’s totally not
JP: because i just heated up last night’s mexican food
JP: hahah
JP: dude don’t lie
Pal: seriously, that’s a no no
JP: haha
JP: well crap
JP: i just put it in the microwave for 2 minutes
Pal: put some metal in there, it’ll be like a double neg and cancel it out
JP: if i die you can have my dignity
Pal: so i’d get nothing?

This little conversation prompted me to do some research, which led me to:

http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/microwave_ovens.html

This is the most amazing Q&A set I have ever read. If you’ve ever wondered about microwaves and how they work, check this page out. My favorite question has to be:

My husband put a large metal bowl in our new microwave oven and tore a small hole in the oven’s metal screen while trying to close the door. My husband isn’t concerned, but the oven is mounted over the stove at face level and it certainly concerns me. Can we use it? — E, Ontario, Canada

I still haven’t figured out if styrofoam is hazardous after being nuked.

-JP

Ok, Get this. I woke up this morning at 6:00 to go and meet lethal for a Rockcorps volunteer thing for a ticket to see Ricky Ross, and Ghostface. Now we are both students and staying at parents home’s over the summer so when I pulled up at his house I decided to call his cell as to avoid ringing the doorbell and waking the entire family. So I did, and he didn’t pick up. After trying several more calls and waiting for 30 minutes I called a friend to get Lethal’s house number. After waking up, and confusing my friend I drove around the corner (because I’m a coward and would rather piss off his family with a distant phone call than with a direct knock on the door). After several unsucessful phone tries I was fed-up with Lethal’s lack of initiative and decided to get on the train and go down to DC myself to do the volunteer work (mind you, I did call Lethal another 10 times or so during the trip). After a 45 minute train ride I arrived on the outskirts of Northern DC. (Note that throughout my commute I had been frantically looking for other volunteers and had found none.) I got off at the train station and came to find that the directions I had recieved from boost mobile left me at about a 7 mile walk from the station to my destination. This left me with no other option but to walk, a decision that would have made me late (and thus ineligible), and robbed as I had to walk through about six miles of “Rough DC”. Frustrated I decided to cut my losses and head back home. After an hour-long trip I arrived back at my local metro station and went back to my house relaying the sob story to my brother. Then, around 11pm I recieved a phone call from Kathy at boost mobile. Embarassed because of missing the event, I cut off her talking immediately explaining my entire story in detail, at which time she replied to me “i’m very sorry your directions were wrong sir, but the event is tomorrow.”

I was speechless for an hour. I checked the dates so many times I had been building up for so long and I was a day early? Later I recieved a call from lethal which started with him suggesting that I refrain from crack-cocaine use that early in the morning. I explained the whole story and felt it worthy of a post. Hilarious.

Full Concert coverage from Me and Lethal will come following the concert on Sunday….err…..Monday
I need to lay off that pipe………

Late.

I really like the guys jogging outfit..shit I like hers too!

After such a phenomenal response (telepathic of course, see: 0 comments to the post) to the fart in the shoe aisle story, here is another ’story’.
So being the gadget whore that I am, I’ve been jogging (or “yogging” as my gf calls it because..she um prefers to make her j’s “soft”) more than usual thanks to apple’s nike+ ipod nano thing that tracks your runs and makes pretty graphs and so on, I’m sure even the grandmas at retirement communities have heard about it by now so I’m not going to explain anymore what it is (OR GOOGLE DAMMIT). So the Jog starts off normal as any other, but before I am 30 seconds into it, a car speeding by with someone sticking out of the passenger window that yells “HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO“, (and reacting as if my only interaction are the rats at petsmart) I jump up and get startled mid-stride as the car passed by me (in retrospect I think it might have been a friend of mine driving by (I SWEAR I HAVE THEM, I HAVE PICTURES!!). Anyway I keep jogging and not a few minutes later thanks to all the wonderful forest chopping they are doing in the county I spot not one, not two but THREE deer on the fucking sidewalk. Being afraid they will triple-team me into naughty things I have to run into the road to run around them. OK that should be enough right? Nope. A few minutes later an early 90’s chevy/ford red pickup truck comes to a crawl and a scruffy looking man with a pony tail, yells out to me if I need a ride.. (??? I wasn’t running from the police.) My elementary schools lessons of not to get into strangers cars overcomes my middle-age sketch looking male fetish, and I just ignore the man and keep running (OK I’m not gonna play it completely tough I sped a up a little). Then with all the lumbering that’s going on to build a new road to the interstate comes a construction site and the sidewalk I had to go through a bit later was really thin because there was an ass load of work near there with a lot of crew (even at 9pm!!), and I noticed there was a mid-20s couple walking senior citizen style in a single file, so I had to zig zag through them and almost fall into a ditch to pass them, as I passed them I heard some grumblings and simply waved in apology, they probably thought I was showing them up. So the rest of the way there weren’t much things to note. But when I got home, I dropped my iced strawberry-kiwi (NO Formula 50 in this house!) vitamin water in kitchen spilling all over, so i just proceeded to roll around and soak it up with my sweaty body (OK that’s a lie, I had to use a roll of bounty paper towels to clean that shit up). Oh yeah, my run was only 6 seconds off my average.
So there you have it kids if you like deer, old men in pickup trucks or other shit, please come to Maryland and jog at 9pm on the streets!

out.

So first I got to drop this little story which I think many of you should enjoy.

Your favorite ML homie was shopping for some new shoes the other day at a department store. I was about to go in to this one aisle when a black man pretty much jumped right into my face. His reaction screamed “don’t go there unless you want to get robbed”. I was wrong, a 100% wrong, as what he proceeded to say has probably changed my life. He said very firmly “do not go down there…(4 sec pause, as he collected himself)…that man farted (as he pointed to some white man walking away from the other side of the aisle). I stood in shock & awe and greatfullness of this warning. As the kind warning-giving man marched past me he muttered “Nasty ass motherfucker”, and upon having his taste for new shoes spoiled bolted straight for the exit. I will tell this shit to my childeren. The End.

ok in other shit…

If you want to see the very few chances to see nudity in a CNN news article check this . Look very hard at the top left hand corner, hopefully that is a woman’s goods and not man boobs *shudder/no homo which from now on being the trend whore I am, will simply refer to as ‘nh’* I am so 10 years old.

Thanks to the nice folks at spinemagazine.com, check out the Mission Impossible III theme done by Kanyeezy w/ help for Keyisha Cole, and Twista. I’m kinda on the fence about it but it does have those Kanye drums that gave Twista a mainstream career over 2 years ago (and it also has a Michael Jackson refrence!). Anyone want to play it backwards? It probably has some scientology message they agreed to work in on that “Yvan Eht Nioj” tip (simpsons refrence yo).

and you know NHL & NBA & NFL come first but this shit tells me clearly how sad the CinciNati Reds are

“Signing Hatteberg was the key” to the deal, Krivsky said.

How can 36 year old journeyman be a key to anything? Maybe the ‘key’ to the soda machine in the clubhouse? Sad. I bet current Nats/ Ex-Reds GM Jim Bowden is laughing his ass off.

THE reason to be a DEA federale. Now that is crazy delicious. Those are probably good as a nice lunch snack.

out.

p.s. some sick reviews + interviews coming REAL soon.

So I was browsing the Washington Post aka WP (for the cyber streets) for more signs of how DC/MoCo area keeps it gully. I used to write about this quite a bit, if you don’t recall check the archives. Well anyway, I came across this piece, and I’ve had my share of stories, and these too are pretty good ones.

I might as well tell my story, Some buddies and I were headed down to the Talib/Mos Def/Pharohe Monch show at the 9:30 club. We got on the Red Line at white flint, as soon as we got on. I noticied a guy, dressed some in timbs and baggy clothes, sitting near one of the doors on the car and was fumbling around, going through like all his pockets, looking at what looked like years old papers that were very worn. A few minutes later he caught my attention again. He took out a walie-talkie and start franticly talking it to it saying shit like “Green 43, 34″ then “Blue 43 82″, while looking frantically down both sides of the metro car. At first this went on for 10 minutes, I thought there was gonna be some gang or some shit he was calling in. A lot of the folks on the train (mostly your standard over 40, white, dc vistors) were starting to get worried and shook looks. Then he started to dissemble the walkie-talkie yet he still continued to yell out those same codes.. this continued for the whole ride to Gallery-Place/Chinatown, I didn’t want it to end but we had to get off the train, But ever since I’ve always wondered if there was an exciting conclusion to this mans train journey.

out.

Guttah

Tired and worn I return to bring the word!!!! The word is Guttah……allow me to elaborate. I was recently (6 hours ago) in the capitol of hip-hop, NYC. Sticking to my usual plan of gulliness I hit the streets in search of some shit that I could not photograph. After copping about 5 bootlegs I came upon this dude who was regailing passing folk with an invitation into his place of buisness (an unmarked building). I approached him to inquire about some DVDs and he said he had none, at this point a young man tapped on my shoulder to get my attention. He showed me this CD in a plain white sleeve and proceeded to say “Thats me and my brother man”, so I copped it (5 bucks, why not?). I listened to his CD and for an off-the-block artist its pretty nice. So a shoutout to the Guttah Coalition. I give them the Track of the Day.

So it seems that our man Cassidy may be staying inside for a minute. I see this as a plus for him. Being locked up right before your album drops is marketing you just can not buy!!!! Maybe he can get himself a nice prison setup like good old Mr. Zekey. After all, he’s a huslter…….right?

Like you needed another reason to hate Suge Knight, it turns out that he may have had a role in the murder of Biggie. Supposedly Mario Ha’mmond (some snitch he was in prison with) was told by Knight that he had organized the murder over a cellphone network. Also implicated were Death Row security leaders Big Sikes aka Devon Sikes and Reg aka Reggie Wright Jr.. Lets just say that I wouldn’t be suprised if we are reading the obituary of Mr. Ha’mmond sometime later this week.

{This comes the day after an internet crash….thank god for drafts!!!}

Today the BIG trial was postponed because of a new tip that suggests the two implicated LAPD officers (David A. Mack and Rafael Perez) confessed to killing the Notorious One. Usually this inflow of snitching would bother someone like me but the mofos who killed Biggie deserve this shit.

Lloyd banks may also encounter some legal trouble because an alleged rape victim who implicated him quite a while ago has an eyewitness who saw the alleged assault. So if Buck and Banks go to prison (followed shortly by the prison magnet……err Talk of New York Tony Yayo) then will G-Unit be completely consumed by it’s new members.

Aight thats it. Update soon.

Track of the Day: Guttah Coalition feat. Dolaco- This is how it is