*SMH*

The Chris Brown/Rihanna saga is a gift that just keeps giving. In case you’ve been living in a cave for the past 48 hours, the couple got into a heated altercation after leaving a Clive Davis pre-Grammy party Saturday night. No one knows exactly what instigated the fight. Some say Rihanna gave Chris Brown herpes. Allegedly. Others say Brown was screwing around, so Rihanna went ballistic on him. Only one thing is certain at this point: the fight left Rih Rih with two huge contusions, several bite marks, a bloodied lip, a busted nose, and a massive beatdown. MMA style. When police arrived at the scene, Chris Brown was gone. He later turned himself in to LAPD, and then posted a $50,000 bail. For more on the boring details, here’s the police report [pdf].

Poor Chris. He’s no longer the squeaky clean 19-year old America thought he was. Wrigley has already dropped his ass from their ad campaign, not necessarily because they care about Rihanna but because women are not likely to buy bubblegum from a woman beater. Expect other companies to follow suit. C.B. is america’s sweety pie no more. The big questions is: who are all those pre-pubescent high school girls going to turn to for romantic ballads now? I guess that just leaves R.Kelly to tickle their fancy?
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Well, guess who won’t be bumping “My President (DC MIX)” in his SUV anytime soon? If you guessed Bill O, you’ve just won yourself an autographed copy of the Internet.

In a classic case of When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong, an Atlanta rapper shot a man twice and wrote a song bragging about it. “Ask Chad Blue, he knows how I shoot,” rapped 25-year old Rico Todriquez Wright after shooting one Chad Blue. A judge sentenced Todriquez Wright Monday to spend the next 20 years in jail.

Chad Blue, meanwhile, testified to police that he knew Wright before the shooting, but that they weren’t exactly friends. Blue claims that Rico’s friends egged him on to the shooting.

“I heard one of the men tell Rico, ‘go ahead and shoot him’,” Blue testified in August. “When he raised his gun I knew I had to run, but I knew if I ran a straight line, I was dead. So I started weaving, running between houses, trying to avoid the bullets.”

According to the Dublin Courier Herald, Rico Todriquez Wright shot his victim in the thigh and the groin in September 2006 and recorded a song about the incident. The idiot was sentenced to 20 years for two counts of aggravated assault. He will spend another 20 years on probation.

Many of you were outraged to learn that virgin rapper Soulja Boy had some praise for the slave trade that led to generations of oppression. In a predictable damage control move, S. Boy now claims that his comment, “Shout out to the slave masters! Without them we’d still be in Africa. We wouldn’t be here to get this ice and tattoos,” was only a joke. Read the rest of this entry »

While interviewing Soulja Boy for his Black Carpet show last week, Toure found out what a pathetic sambo Soulja Boy really is. Toure had asked the kiddie rapper about his most hated public figure. He couldn’t think of any public figures, but he sure had some well thought-out praise for the slave masters.

So, Toure called him out:

I asked him, What historical figure do you most hate? He was stumped. I said, “Others have said Hitler, bin Laden, the slave masters…” He said, “Oh wait! Hold up! Shout out to the slave masters! Without them we’d still be in Africa.”

My jaw, at this point, was on the ground.”We wouldn’t be here,” he continued, having no idea how far in it he’d stepped, “to get this ice and tattoos.”

Wow. Never mind that diamonds come from Africa. Never mind that there were many generations of pain in between leaving Africa and getting diamonds. Never mind that the long-term cataclysmic effects of subtracting about tens of millions of young, strong people from Africa over the course of a couple of centuries is a large part of the reason why Africa now appears so distasteful to you. Never mind all that, Soulja Boy. You put country first.

To his defense, Soulja Boy’s all around ignorance may not be his fault, because along with having no brains, an average jelly fish lacks the capacity to process any information that involves current events or knowledge of one’s history.

You’re looking at the official album cover for Guns n Roses’ much ballyhooed album, Chinese Democracy. Sure, Axl is a tool and Duff McKagan is a creep, but the point is they make great music and they sure as hell make some interesting album covers. The only thing this cover has in common with a typical rap artwork is the redundant self-promotion: GNR appears on it 3 times. Rappers already have that part down to an art.

The focal point of this cover, however, is a simple yet strong visual. Something that most hip-hop covers lack today. An effective album cover not only speaks volumes about an artist’s source of inspiration, but it also conveys an album’s core message. Besides a handful of imaginative artists (The Roots and El-P come to mind), most rappers are content with uninspired album covers that feature one of the following 3 cliches:

i) the bored look headshot
ii) the “tough guy” mean mug shot, and
iii) the “LL Cool J” pose

Why are hip-hoppers so reluctant to attempt anything beyond the norm? The technology is readily available, and there are people who would gladly design a creative artwork for cheap. My guess is that many rappers are scared of being pigeonholed for being “too different” or esoteric. I find that funny, because what ends up happening is they get placed in a box anyway, for not trying. Only this time that box is boldly labeled “complacent.”

In a music environment rife with complacency and with bazillions of artists competing for my attention, I want an album cover that speaks to me. Hell, I want an artwork that reaches out and grabs me by the arm as I’m strolling through the aisle. Is that too much to ask for?

From Curtis Jackson to Officer Rick Ross, meet the 10 publicity-hounding, mud-slinging, mischievous hip-hop figures you most love to hate. Read the rest of this entry »