Black Women…Are you really THIS Ugly??

I came across these clips on another site, and I must say, I haven’t seen something purport itself so disgustingly to be Philosophical or conscious with such a lack of taste since whatever was the last Nas album…

Watch The Videos first!!

But I do want to ask my Beautiful Black women out there, who Iam sure will not watch all 3 of these crazy videos (And I wouldn’t blame you because it’s like signing up to get cursed out. How much verbal abuse should a woman sit and take?? But I wish you would, since you already started listening to this tirade for the first few minutes. Finish what you start is what I say), to really extract the tone, ignore the bashing, try to filter out the nerdy voice and over look the lack of professionalism and tact, not to mention racism and Afro-centric propaganda. I want you to put aside your feminist tendencies, and ideals of equity and equality, and REALLY TRULY ask yourselves…

Is there ANY truth to this??

Do you see any of yourselves of character in these descriptions??

Are some of these claims backed by sound historical elements??

Do you see a Problem??

Do Black Women have anything to answer for in relation to their transformations in modern society?

Or are we all okay as a people and this jerk is just living in a race-obsessed, gender-obsessed warp of anger dying to rant due to the unhappiness of his own pathetic failures in life and close-minded blockage??

I would like to leave this up for the weekend, and see what kind of feedback this generates. I’ll end by saying that I Love my independent Black women and they are the greatest high on Earth to me, but I have always noted that the gender – role displacement and invisible power struggle between black men and women has been a crisis that has crippled African-Americans for decades. This was prompted by the systematic breakdown of the Black family, but cultural and socio-economic factors have added to this. Our overall grasp of unity has been forever confounded, conflicted and damn near condemned to fail.

Either way, it’s something to think about now isn’t it? My job here is done…

So…Cars that fly…

We’ve heard this before…

But have we seen it?

Some are saying the new military vehicle prototype proposal by DARPA(defense advanced research projects agency) is inspired by the Classic Jetsons cartoon and their transport pods, made famous by the opening sequence.

Could you imagine? rolling out like any other old 4 wheel machine, but with the added bonus of being able to levitate and move above the clouds on a single tank of fuel? Then land Vertically??!

Of course I’m jumping the gun here, because this proposal is not entertaining the commercial use of such a vehicle. It’s primary intent is to serve as a means to provide fast transportation for soldiers in emergency situations or drop-offs. The project is officially named the Transformer (a.k.a. TX), and is hoped to begin in 2015 with proper funding.

This isn’t the first mention or development of a flying car. There have been numerous models, experiments and videos documenting the test driving/piloting of them. This just stands to be the simplest and most comfortable ideal yet.

Here’s a more in-depth article on it courtesy of Discovery.com

http://news.discovery.com/tech/flying-car-pentagon-jetsons.html

All I want to know is, Where does all of this money come from??

Breast Cancer – Right underneath your arms….

If any of you know me, you know Iam super serious about Cancer research and prevention.

I received this notice in my e-mail last week and I just wanted to share it.

Whether you take it at face value or not, consider it as nothing more than just information.

You may all have heard things surrounding this connection.

Why breast cancer is usually found near the armpit?

Some time ago, I attended a Breast Cancer Awareness seminar and I asked why the most common area for Breast Cancer was near the armpit.
My question could not be answered at that time.
This e-mail was just sent to me, and I find it interesting that my question has been answered. I challenge you all to rethink your every day use of a product that could ultimately lead to a terminal illness.  As of today, I will change my use.
I showed it to another friend going through chemotherapy & she said learned this fact in a support group recently.
The leading cause of breast cancer is the use of anti-perspirant..
*What???*
*Yes,*                                   *ANTI-PERSPIRANT*.
Most of the products out there are an anti-perspirant/deodorant combination, so go home and check   Deodorant is fine, anti-perspirant is not!
Here’s why :- The human body has a few areas that it uses to purge toxins ; behind the knees, behind                                  the ears, groin area, and armpits. The toxins are purged in the form of perspiration.
Anti-perspirant, as the name clearly indicates, prevents you from perspiring, thereby inhibiting the body from purging toxins from below the armpits.

These toxins do not just magically disappear. Instead, the body deposits them in the lymph nodes below the arms since it cannot sweat them out.
Nearly all breast cancer tumors occur in the upper outside quadrant of the breast area. This is precisely where the lymph nodes are located.
Additionally, men are less likely (but not completely exempt) to develop breast cancer prompted by anti- perspirant usage   because most of the anti-perspirant product is caught in their hair and is not directly applied to the skin.
Women who apply anti-perspirant right after shaving increase the risk further because shaving causes almost imperceptible nicks in the skin which give the chemicals entrance into the body from the armpit area.

PLEASE pass this along to anyone you care about.

Breast cancer is becoming frighteningly common.

This awareness may save lives.

Hot 16…Or More…DRIVE SLOW

If 2006 was my introductory year and the debut of the man you’ve all come to know and love as Malik-16, then 2007 was certainly the year of the pop-up appearances.

In this sense, I mean some of my cohorts from my D.C. days who still considered me cool enough to do a mixtape track with would hit me up periodically throughout said year. This was before everyone started relying on blog attention to define them and letting the hype get to their heads. A time where somebody could hit you up and  just make a collab happen, not a ‘speak to my management’ kind of situation. *Sigh*…

Anyway, one of these cohorts of mine is a young man who thought enough of me to ask me to lend 32 bars to his Let My People Know mixtape series. This young Man is none other than the DMV area’s own, Laelo Hood, and he’s extended fam from my long lost Coalition Crew. Speaking of which, with a rush mix by Coalition leader and founder, Shak-C, this is one of my most unpolished sounding verses, but one of my favorites.  The homie Laelo’s been putting in work for an area that still hasn’t gotten it’s proper kick start yet, but is well on it’s way, and he’s one of the reasons why. Always wanting to bring balance to the game as a reality rapper, Lo asked me to spit a thoughtful verse over the instrumental of Kanye West’s “Drive Slow” that would fit the tone of what he was trying to get across with his rendition. Basically using storytale style verses to take the listeners into our personal experiences growing up in the hood, it was cautionary by being exemplary, not preachy…Similar to 2Pac’s “Shorty Wanna Be A Thug”, which uses the same sample Kanye did for his.

So here in this verse, is the hood experience from my angle, where I touch on the stupidity of it’s glamorization, and take pride in being toughened up by it, but rising above it.

Here goes…

“I got my 7-session driving lesson in the streets of new York,

And my direction was the best one after seeing dudes caught…

Up in the same routine,

Myself said

‘self!

ain’t no way you careenin’ out your lane – use speed!‘

So I took them sad songs up off the page you’ve seen,

and now my sad songs pay… I made Blue,

Green…

(And I sing…)

Cause you don’t know the half on a nigga,

you should ask ’bout him, if you live in glass houses – and you throw rocks!

(And where he get his swagger from?)

Straight from Douglass Avenue, where they love they cash, and don’t love no cops!

(On the Road of Life)

I channeled my anger…

with my hand on the grain,

feel like Danity Kane, I ShowStop!

Before my Granny passed,

I remember that she asked me to keep being a good boy – become a good man!

(Now look at where you at!)

Now I’m in an industry that say ‘you gotta keep it hood boy, to make a good grand!‘

And if not,

you flop!

You ain’t got no street credit; Delete – edit you out the box!

But you know that Malik’s never been orthodox,

he usually think with his head out the box!

-Like it’s…

encrypted in code…

It’s been cold ever since that New York Blood & Crip shit – he drenched in…

That old street sentiment,

so he park the car, and breeze thru the tenements,

if these walls could talk….

They’d speak with their eyes closed…

and it eats at me when,

THESE nerdy niggas who ain’t never drove…

get all geeked tryin’a rep it,

but the piece I don’t get is…

How you gonna speak on some streets you ain”t been in???!

– Drive Slow.”

Hope you learned something.

To hear or download this track, you can click on the link to my newly formed music page courtesy of Bandcamp.com http://malik-16.bandcamp.com/track/drive-slow

It’s all free, and all me! Catch up on all of my mixtapes if you’ve been sleeping all of this time.

And since we’re talking about ignorance….Ode to UNCUT!!

It all started with One Video. A low budget video from a low budget group of ragtag D.C. area (Or uurrheaaa for my peoples who know what’s up!) rappers who looked like they were well into their 30’s. If you know music like I do then you knew from the second you saw it come on that, A) you were up waaaay too late, B) Obviously these guys were in some kind of time warp or regional haziness thinking that they were actually gonna pop with this and C) This was gonna be some shit!

At first, most of us didn’t know what to make of it. We now knew there may have been something entertaining on television at the UnGodly hour time slot, so it cushioned our insomnia or knack for staying up B.S,ing while we knew we should have been catching sleep and preparing for our next days. And this was usually the video that started each episode off! We knew when that stopped being the first video to play, that this show was taking off and we weren’t the only ones staying up past midnight to see gratuitous booty clapping at a time when the vixens and their inuendo-drenched scenes had just began to get trimmed down on daytime video play.  I even remember seeing Nipples in this video!

It was clear that the programmers at BET network weren’t quite sure what to do with this music video vehicle and time slot. It probably originally started because they just needed somewhere to dump all of the video submissions they were constantly getting from random no-name, independent artists with lower distribution and finances. They probably were receiving plenty of complaints from them for not getting granted equal exposure to that of their counterparts with major industry backing. And I’m sure that on the flipside of that, there were a good amount of complaints from viewers of Rap City who would get angry when their good hour of Hip-Hop video watching (bad enough it had gotten scaled down from 2 hours to 1 at the turn of the century, and been flooded with a handful of corny hosts) was compromised by inbetween moments of WTF? artists. I know I used to get mad when After my dope Camp Lo, Nas or Snoop video went off, some cornball video by M.C. Never -blow-up would come on and take away 3 minutes of my life!!

However it came about, what’s more important is what it became. The growth of UnCut seemed unstoppable. You could feel it building up with each bootleg video clip from every bammafied, non-lyrical, dollar hungry perpetrator calling themselves artists. I have a theory that the wacker a rapper is, the realer they are. I know that that’s a silly notion, but something tells me if you were busy flipping weight and doing drive-bys and stick-ups, that you didn’t really have time to be paying attention in english class to know where to delicately place your metaphors and a,b,b,a patterns lined up with the alliteration and double entendre. So OJ da juiceman…I BELIEVE YOU!!!

These niggas clearly had lots of drug money to sponsor their rap star dreams. Or at least to give them the satisfaction of having their own anthem to hear in the strip club! But popularity is a mutha. The more this show became a safe haven for warm blooded, Hetero-sexual men to bond over and release their visual-cheating tendencies, the more variety came. It went from being a platform for your favorite black lipped, trapper-rapper making booty songs, to being open to anyone with an outrageous enough video. So in come in the nerds and gimmicky rappers (like The Firemen – a trio featuring former DTP affiliate, 4-Ize and Tec, from MTV fame),

the wannabes (like Won-G, a Mystikal-meets -Da Brat M.C. Hammer clone)

and the female rappers (Rasheedah, La Chat).

You know it had reached it’s height, when it became so big that the celebrities and more well known rappers began to make videos to join in the race. And with that, is exactly when we witnessed the Death of UnCut…

Guess it was just too big for it’s own good. It grew too fast. It got talked about too widespread. It’s like a member broke the code of a fraternal order. Somebody snitched on the boy’s club and it was no longer an underground meeting of the…uhmm….minds… It was too much once you had dudes’ girlfriends and female friends staying up and tuning in, dying to see what all the fuss was about, only to be disgusted with both us and the videos, but strangely intrigued at the same time. It’s the same way they treat men with Porn. The cool chics wanted to watch it with us because they would get just as much of a kick out of it, but still and all, there was no point of return once the doors had opened that wide.

Not everyone was so amused.

You can thank Nelly, Hip-Hop’s Media darling at the time for the beginning of the end. After the now infamous “Tip Drill” video, people who never even heard of the show started trying to watch to get a glimpse of the controversial Credit card swipe (re-enacted by me in the similarly infamous “Subway bus or Walking” video). It became a fascination, then a conversation, then an outrage. Boycotts ensued, including one that canceled a bone marrow drive at Spellman College that could have potentially helped save Nelly’s sister’s life. The double standard was astounding to me. These conflicted half -a -feminists Black College girls, who I’m sure were just dancing to a Luke song or Ying Yang Twins hit telling them to drop and shake, went from wanting to see a video with their favorite rapper that everyone was talking about, to wanting to see the very program that it was shown on taken off of the air! I guess things were ok when it was just the grimey looking guy from Arkansas putting up a video on there, but when it’s the same guy who was slow dancing with Kelly Rowland in the streets of the suburbs a year before, it was Unacceptable! How dare he go to a strip club and make a video about it with Real Strippers in it!! What blew my mind, was that people seemed to forget that fact – these were Strippers!! Nobody was mad at them for allowing these dudes to exploit them. It was all the rappers and BET‘s fault. I may have joined that bandwagon, had there not been such an obvious attempt made by BET to make sure that it was known that this was ADULT programming at an extremely ADULT time slot. Yeah it sucked that we only had One Major Black network at the time, and this is what these dumb-ass rappers chose to do with their time and craft, but Iam much more worried about and offended by what I hear and see during the daytime and peak hours where the younger folks are the predominant audience. I would only hope radio took as much responsibility as to put songs in content-based time slots, but nooooo! How much money would be lost if we couldn’t hear Nicki Minaj talk about licking other chics on Usher‘s single, or hear Rihanna tell some guy to “Take it” repeatedly, or whatever hot new rapper tell a chic to get drunk, high and bend over on the dancefloor. Your daughters and sons are soooo much safer with 106 & Park right??

Well, that’s how the cookie crumbles… They started moving the show to later times and making it even shorter until it eventually went away without a goodbye. I remember being on campus and seeing a girl who used to be quite promiscuous turn into the ringleader of a petition to get the program banned from BET. This was all due to some kind of spiritual rebirth she had underwent during the previous semester. I couldn’t help but think that it was her and her minions who were responsible for the demise when I saw that it was NEVER going to come back on again.

Make no mistake. This was ignorance at it’s finest. The kind of ignorance that should have never existed in the first place. But what I hated is the reasons surrounding it’s fall. They were steeped in contradiction and ridiculosity! Much like the videos accompanying the songs themselves, which ranged from dark songs about getting money, to silly sex solicitations, to almost-rape themes. It was a sad awakening that was so bad that you couldn’t do anything else but be entertained by the fact that this was not a joke. These fools were serious! The legacy is a lifetime of memories, bad visuals and horribly infectious hooks and taglines that we laughed at so many times that we actually began to like them. Word to Black Jesus!

Now here are a few of mine and your personal favorites!

And The Best song ever!!

R.I.P. Uncut, you had your time

Freaknik(aka The Worst Thing To Happen To Black People In 2010) – thank You T-Pain!

And THIS,

is the reason that I still use the N word.

Because sometimes, Niggas are just…NIGGAS…

(and now that we know even mr. Civil rights himself, Jesse Jackson uses the word, we can all just shut-up about it now can’t we?)

Anyway, I wanted to believe so badly that T-Pain and co. were being ultra satirical, but alas, I’m afraid these muthafuckas can’t even spell SATIRE. I actually like a good amount of T-pain’s music, and I’m surprised at some of the people who participated in this project. I think they all just got high and made stuff that would make them and like-minded niggas (which I’m supposing is ALOT of you) laugh.

Hey, you niggas might think it’s dope. After all, it seems like most of you are pothead rapping ass fools with porn collections anyway. And since I’m so on the left that I hate everything from Friday to anything by Tyler Perry, You already knew where I was going to stand.

I hate myself for laughing at the few parts that I did, because honestly, even though this is ONLY A CARTOON, it speaks Volumes, My niggas. Volumes!!

It’s amazing to see what niggas do when you hand them some money and creative license.

And I really do hope you’ve taken notice of how many times I’ve said “Niggas”!!!

Freaknik(aka The Worst Thing To Happen To Black People in 2010 so far)…Continued…

Oh wait,

it gets worse…

After this, Can you PLEASE just promise me that we’re only going to do Genius, Brilliant, Charitable and Uplifting things for the rest of the year?? Cause that’s what it’s going to take to even out the shift in the axis of the black world that this stupid ass cartoon created!

Jimmy Fallon Reunites the Cast of “California Dreams”

This is totally random, and I don’t know how long this video will be up,

but how cool is this??

Really. I can’t name more than 2 people who even remember this show, but I’m glad that there are those who exist to reassure me that this is not a program that I made up in my head. That’s what happens to me when there’s stuff I remember that NEVER gets mentioned again… I start thinking maybe I just imagined it in my pre-cable, isolated, latch-key kid with an over-active creative-minded childhood.

But I have to give it up to Jimmy Fallon for putting this together. He may be single-handedly downgrading The best Hip-Hop band in the world and making them look like the Negro corner of his show, and he may be the corniest thing to hit late night since Carlos Mencia, but dammit Jimmy, ya done good!

P.S. Jennie Kwan might be my New Crush! All I’m saying tho is…Where’s Lorena??

GemStars present; Bobby & Komp’L x Dj Furious Stylez – CHANNEL SURFING Mixtape

As mentioned in my previous post when I debuted the “Ransom” freestyle video by the homey Komp’L (See here – http://wp.me/pFRgn-aa),The new Mixtape from the other 2 thirds of my group, The Have-Knotz is dropping!

The Ransom track is featured on there and the tape is hosted by Dj Furious Stylez.

Click either picture of the Cover to download the mixtape

The Boys Bobby and Komp’L go track for track dropping bars over the current crop of hip-hop joints flooding the airwaves and blogosphere right now, as well as some classics. My Personal Favorites are “Great idea“, “Gun harmonizer“, “Help Is Coming“, “Speak French“, “Oh Shit” & “Get Silly“.

This is just the first Volume in a series primed to whett your appetites for the solo projects from Pel and Bobby respectively, Titled Mr. Brooks, and Komp’L has the experimental Sneakers & Cardigans Project coming this summer. All this sets the stage for the premiere of our group Project as the Have-Knotz. Don’t forget to check out the latest and gr8-S on the GemStars blog, http://www.gemstarsllc.com/

Stay tuned!

Reality? sHOs

Are You a Former Urban starlet who’s faded quite distant from the limelight?

Are you a Pseudo celeb looking to extend your 15 minutes that may have come about from a scandal or your involvement with someone slightly more famous than you??

Well apparently Cable television has an offer that you just cannot refuse! The masterminds of TvOne and Viacom have devised a way for you to taste notoriety Just one more time and have people remember you for something other than your last accomplishment a decade ago.

I digress from the sarcasm a bit just because at the later point in my career when there’s some new fresh faces eating up all of the moment, I can only hope that someone thinks enough of me to throw me a show as well.

From Lil Kim to Keyshia Cole, To Fantasia, Monica and Pepa, and even (Dare I say it) Tiffany “New York” Pollard, notice a trend? There appears to be some kind of lifeline being tossed at subjects from this world, particularly female subjects, with colorful enough backgrounds to ensure that they bring Drama enough to generate water cooler talk. This lifeline brings them back to a surface that seems to have eluded them in the more recent years, be it from their actions, or the results of a frivolous public that incessantly looks for the newest, youngest and freshest! This is true for all the aforementioned ladies except Cole, who has yet to lose the grip that she has had on her fan base. This may be due to the unprecedented move of her having a show during the middle of her career as opposed to the norm of people doing them to revive theirs. Even Kirstie Alley needs a vehicle every  few years or so. And she’s Emmy award winning!

Personally, I’m all for these ladies getting more shine and getting more exposure. Some of these women are those who have put in a lot into the game of entertainment and gave us memorable moments, but are overlooked and close to forgotten when it comes to recognition. What Iam against is the aimless, dense premises and super cliche, damn near played out structure and episode patterns and set-ups. Of course these shows are very scripted, not so much in dialogue, but in terms of unfolding and exposition. It makes you wonder how dumb do the programmers at these networks think we are? Or better yet, How dumb are we for actually indulging in the guilty pleasures of staying tuned and peering into other people’s lives who honestly aren’t any more special than us besides the places they’ve been seen or heard. This particular breed definitely embodies that. They are so common that it’s like watching Tiana down the hall have her own show, or your ghetto cousin. Oh yes, that’s a defining factor with all of these uhm….young ladies…whether bourgie or just straight out loud, country or sassy, they are all some variation of Ghetto.

Some of it is like watching a train wreck, but best believe half of us will be faithfully watching to see it all burn down. With upcoming seasons of new shows like Tiny & Toya, Lisa Raye, The Fabled Stacey Dash reality series, and the last milking of Ray J‘s cash cow – where he brings in his sister Brandy and his parents, it seems like the networks are churning these shows out like hot cakes! You can only wonder, who’s next?? Vivica? Toni Braxton? Kelly Rowland?

I’m a Brandy fan, so I’ll definitely be watching that one, But I can guarantee that they’ll be lots of cringe-worthy moments. I also am partial to this Chili series coming up.  In a crazy twist of fate, it would appear that her relationship life coach is a former high school classmate of mine, albeit a loud, Brooklynite, younger former classmate of mine who used to be quite fond of me and a friend of mine. Life is funny. Shout out to High School for Environmental Studies!!

Tell me which ones you’ved enjoyed watching and/or plan on watching. Then afterwards, Go Get your Cousin!