So by now, you’ve all seen the ad that has everyone up in arms. Controversial is an understatement.
While the overall reaction to this ad was one of unanimous disapproval, the subsequent thoughts from the frenzy have been loosely divided. However, that’s only a by-product of the ever polarizing debate on abortion itself.
Whether or not the numbers provided by the organization behind the ad that claimed Blacks are at ridiculously high rates of abortion cases in the country are factual, the real issue here is why Blacks show up in high percentages in these statistics in the first place. Whether that number is 20%, 35% or 63%, as only 12% of the population in the U.S. , with an already high number incarcerated, any number in the double digits should be unacceptable for Blacks. It’s an indication that something is very wrong, as I can assure you that while every woman should have her choice, there is NOTHING ok about abortion.
I’ve read from comments on this that it is another attack on Black women and their right to choose. That it’s an inferiority tactic aimed to make Black women feel insecure and uncomfortable. If you remember from a previous post that I wrote on these so called “Attacks” on African-American women, this is still just pseudo feminist rhetoric that I don’t get the logic in. Why would this be a desired outcome? What gain comes from this by the evil factions and powers at play? Just mind games? Ehh…
A more grounded and unfortunately grisly view may be the one that this organization horribly attempted to get across with this fuck-up of an ad. This is the view that organizations such as Planned Parenthood target minorities with a form of coaxing to give up their pregnancies under the guise of empathy. It lends itself to the more stark and grim idea of population control.
This may be old news to some of you, but a heavy documentary about this was released 2 years ago called MAAFA 21. It centers around the Eugenics movement and how it targeted African-Americans and Blacks globally in attempts to stifle the rise and initially, the continuation of the race. There are excerpts from historical documents and newsletters, the origins of Planned Parenthood and it’s agenda are unearthed, and there’s even a connection between genocide and Charles Darwin‘s theories.
If you have never seen this film, I suggest you look for it and watch it and come to your own conclusions. It definitely has a slant, but is backed by so much empirical evidence, that room for falsehood is little. I don’t know how long this link will exist, but I watched it in 3 parts on a Chinese site here http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/3s6MHdSdehA/
While I’m at it, There’s this Dope exhibit going on in my hometown about my hometown by a great photographic artist.
(how cool is this kid?)
Dawoud Bey’s Harlem, USA is an art exhibit at The Studio Museum of Harlem, which is a sorely overlooked treasure smack dab in the middle of 125th that Blacks don’t take enough interest in and advantage of. It’s a photographic look at the people and identities that have created this enormously historic and popular landmark area of NYC. This small stretch of land between roughly 100 blocks has always been a subcultural epicenter in African-American history, and these vintage images display just how.
Although the work has been showcased since November 11th, it has just gained notoreity this Black History Month. It will go on until March 13th. Make a trip as soon as you can and support dope art and the history of the greatest part of the greatest boro! Show the gift shop some love. Shout out to Indigo!
This is a casual conversation that I have often. Kinda funny to see it as an official headline on my Yahoo! News feed. As this Black History Month comes to a close, this little write-up fits in just right so let’s see how much we know about what we think we know…
This question comes from the findings from an experimental tangent of the Census poll from the year 2000. Although this wasn’t repeated for last year’s Census, you can imagine that the wave of African-American surnames hasn’t changed dramatically in 10 years. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Black first names (see; Alize, Starkeisha). Nevertheless, the results showed that of the top 1,000 most popular last names in America, Washington was number 138, counting 163,036 people bearing it, and 90% of those people being African -Americans. That 90% translated to 146,520, and that percentage was the highest for Blacks out of all of the last names, making it statistically the most prominent among African-Americans.
Surprisingly, Jefferson was # 2, rounding out as about 75% Black. Jackson was only 53% Black (tho I’ve never met a non-Black Jackson. Guess I’m not as worldly as I think). And Williams was only 46% Black. In an ironic twist, the last name Black was 68% White.
For a deeper look at this interesting tidbit of modern Black history, complete with historical relevance and slavery ties, check out this link to the full article – written by an African-American editorialist by the name of Jesse Washington. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110221/ap_on_re_us/us_the_blackest_name
And to think, all this time I thought the Blackest last name was Jenkins…
The Hip-Hop purists (and no, I’m not one of those), well at least the 90’s-centric ones, all may seem to be in agreement that his best album is Resurrection, and the neo-purists rave about Like Water For Chocolate. I challenge both notions with the assertion and dissection of the sinfully overlooked third album as the best. With a long running track record of each album coming in 2 year intervals, One Day It’ll All Make Sense rests smack dab in the middle of both critical darlings mentioned above. Due to its positioning before the first of his dramatic transformations, and the place where Com was as an artist, this album delivers the most balance of his whole career. Resurrection exhibited the height of his sophomoric wit and slippery early 90’s flow and showed the first glimmerings of potential for depth and introspection. Like Water found us with a new, calm voiced – almost monotone, veggie eating Com who wanted to light incense and rhyme over hipster grooves while contemplating on the nuances and ironies of life. This album was the meeting of both of those sensibilities; The Epilogue of one, the Prelude to another, without giving way to one side more than the other. It’s quite a linear transition. A natural artistic growth that unfortunately has brought him to a point that has stained everyone’s mind with only the image of him from the Like Water album on (mostly because that album spawned his very first and biggest radio hit, “The Light”), and pigeonholed him as the poster-boy and go-to-guy for conscious, heartfelt and poetic rap. This is something that he helped foster by his choices, but also something that he’s been trying so hard to shake because no artist likes to be boxed in. So consequently, One Day It’ll All Make Sense is the first album without the word Sense in the moniker, but also the last album where we see Common for what he really has always been; just a regular dude finding his way….A real man, a Chicago-ass nigga from the burbs and the hood who rapped his ass off and wanted you to know it! One of the most prolific and creative rappers of all time who survived the changes of the 90’s without smash hits and wanted to show you just how much he loved his city and wordplay. This album is where he tagged his name all over the shit and did it the most honestly and effortlessly.
Never really the one to be accused of chasing the commercial wave, Com seemed to always accept his place as a non-mainstream fixture in Hip-Hop as long as it was known that he’s a fixture. So he’s never given the appearance that he makes albums with concern over what’s going to be the single. When listening to Resurrection, I don’t think anyone can tell you what the possible singles could have been. Even the famed “I Used To Love H.E.R.” is not a conventional single. It’s an A&R’s nightmare, even for a 1994/95 recording. That album felt like he got all of the stuff that he had on his mind at the time out in the open unabashedly. Maybe it was the youth in him, or the progression from his concern with being a style-over-substance entertainer that was evident on his first album, but it was certainly not with any commercial vision. With an open-book quality in his music and in his approach to it, getting all of the stuff that he has on his mind at the time out is pretty much the feel of all of his albums dating from Resurrection, but on One Day it becomes apparent that he learned the value of a little mass appeal along the way. And by little, I mean little. Common is an organic emcee. He’s not going to jump on a Timbaland track just because that’s what you’re supposed to do. He’s going to reach a broader audience on his own terms, when he feels it won’t hurt the process of his growth or the feel of his project. So there may be a track with a more uptempo pace and a choppy hook, or a track with Mary J. Blige or a nice, easy to rock to sample, but that’s the extent of Com’s reaching. He knows his fan base and he knows what would look just ridiculous on him.
So here, he met the masses halfway…His first single off of this album, and interestingly, the closing song (which is rare for lead singles to be placed sequentially) is “Reminding Me Of Sef” – a reflective single that borrows from a 70’s soul groove and features Chantay Savage on the chorus singing an interpolation of another old-school song, but a popular one. But ahh…Here it goes…Com plays it his way. He gave you all of those oh-so predictable and crucial elements to a hit Hip-Hop song in 1997, but he still gives the industry a slap in the face. When I saw this video debut on Rap City and Yo!MtvRaps, I was surprised myself that this was the first song to set the stage for the release of the album. Whether having Chantay Savage, a fellow Chicagoan, but D-list R&B singer (with the only claim to fame being a neo-soul remake of Gloria Gaynor‘s Disco classic “I Will Survive”) featured was a deliberate choice to middle finger the industry and keep it Chi instead of commissioning whoever was the it girl in R&B at the moment ( I’m guessing Mya??) or if her presence was a reflection of Com’s limited pull in the game and the wackness of his label, Relativitynot being able to afford someone bigger like Monica or Brandy, is a good question. But even if he did go big with the guest feature, it doesn’t change the fact that Com slaps the biz in the face again by turning a sample that most rappers would have turned into the girl single into a platform to reminisce on his carefree days as a youth on Chicago’s Southside, and eulogize over a fallen homey. It’s quite autobiographical and potent in a way that makes the listener vicariously nostalgic. He takes advantage of the feel of the soul sample so well that he paints the picture vividly and relatable for a listener who has never even been to the midwest or lived through the 70’s and 80’s. It’s a great pairing, and Savage’s singing conjures up the emotions that are both triumphant and lamenting at the same time. Her voice adds power to the mellow of it all.
If this was the lead single, and this was an example of him meeting the industry and the masses halfway while maintaining integrity, then he only met them a third of the way when he made “Retrospect For Life”. Another sample – this time from a lesser-known Stevie Wonder classic, is a super melancholy track that actually boosted the recognition of the original Stevie song afterwards. This is largely due to the appearance of the then, infallible Lauryn Hill, and her tear-jerking rendition of the hook. I’m almost moved to take back my earlier comments about Common’s pull and his label being wack and unable to foot the bill for big features when I consider all of the guests that were present on this album. But then, I have to remember that while they have moved on to be titans, icons and legends in our minds now, all of these guests, from Erykah Badu, Cee-Lo, The Roots, Canibus and even Lauryn were JUST becoming who we know them as now. This was 1997/98. Cee-Lo wasn’t a Gnarls Barkley pop-darling with Grammies yet. He was still the fat singing one from Goodie Mob, struggling to go gold. Erykah was still wearing the Headwrap and putting out singles from her first album, The Roots weren’t household names yet because their biggest single “I got you” was 2 years away, and Canibus and Lauryn’s solo debuts had not dropped yet. Canibus was still just the hottest mixtape commodity and Lauryn was a star, but not a superstar yet. Safe to say, Lauryn and Q-Tip were probably the most expensive features on this album then. And due to Tip’s minimal presence and the whole reinstated Native Tongues connection, much like De La‘s appearance, I’m sure the charge was skimmed down considerably, if not done for the love. But getting back to the song…This was the second single, A profound and instantly classic tome on the strain and reality of child-bearing, the state of modern Black male-female relationships and most notably and importantly, abortion. As 2 new parents, the connection between Lauryn and Com on this song just seemed meant to be. It made sense to both of their fanbases. It made sense in Life. The beat went perfect with Common’s tone, and in the era of slam poetry’s rise to popularity, it read like something straight off of Def Poets. His words are indelible. This is one of those hip-hop classics that carved itself as the 1 for this topic. Much like Method Man set the standard for Hip-Hop love songs with “All I Need”. Almost every woman references this song for deep hip-hop. With lines like “there’s too many Black women who can say that they’re mothers but not wives”, what you get here is a Common that wasn’t present on the previous 2 albums. It’s a maturity that made you feel like you grew with him if you were a day-1 fan. It became his first true radio hit with regular airplay, although it’s so atypical in sound and subject matter. This was groundbreaking in itself that Common defied the norm and won, even if the win was mild and didn’t translate to sales. It speaks to the power of words. It also speaks to the incredible amount of respect that Lauryn garnered from her fellow artist community. Once again, where alot of rappers may have taken the opportunity to have her featured on a song to make a smash hit love song or something, based off the few who have gotten her on record- mainly Nas and Common, most rappers feel compelled to ask her to be on songs with substance. And this is one of several moments on the album where Com’s newfound love of such substantial fare gets brandished almost to a point where he seems like an adolescent who just finished puberty and wants to bone. He approached his more topical songs with full speed, going all the way to church and wanting to share his enlightenment eagerly with his audience. This was the dawn of the metamorphosis of Mr. Lynn into the Common that everyone thinks of now; soft-spoken, contemplative, philosophical and conscious. Ironically, there’s only 2 songs on this album like that – Retrospect being one, but they were soooo heavy and drenched in tone that they leave that much of an impact. I’m not sure if it’s all for the best.
The other of those 2 would be “G.O.D. (Gaining One’s Definition)” featuring Cee-Lo. This is what I mean when I said Com takes you all the way to Church with it. Yeah, the song is about looking into spirituality and defining yourself by what works for you and the moral codes that appear universal, but he takes it a step further with a dreary piano that feels like sunday morning. Cee-Lo’s southern church-boy crooning adds to that feel. On one hand, it’s mission accomplished because a feel is established, on the other hand, it’s very Spike Lee“message!” in your face with the blatant overdoing of a point that you probably could’ve gotten on your own over any beat just by listening to the verses. This was still a signifier of Common’s newness to sharing depth with his listeners. It almost sounded like he had spent the previous year speaking to spiritual advisers and having deep convos with his friends and he came to the studio saying ‘yeah man, I wanna put all these new thoughts into a deep song’. Similar to how you can tell when Erykah’s influence had taken over between Like Water and his experimental Electric Circus phases. It’s just an annoying thing, not anything that ruins the album per se. It’s slow, and it definitely augments the flow of things a little, but “G.O.D.” is still one of the deepest and lyrical hip-hop joints from the 90’s. There’s something to be appreciated by the naiveté that comes with being deliberate with a topic. It wasn’t sneaky or metaphoric. Com said, ‘hey I’m gonna make a song about religion, and here it go…’
Speaking of Erykah tho,
on “All Night Long”, the bubbling chemistry is there. You can tell Com moved on from the midwest hoodrats that he would often lambast on his prior albums and set his sights on the more coffee-shop variety. Over this beat that sounded like something straight from a jam session, Com describes his ideal mate. It’s neo-soul matrimony.
But let’s focus on that irony that I mentioned earlier that makes this album a classic in the first place. Simply because this album is not about 2 prolific songs and a slew of guest appearances, it’s about the fact that Com is a beast and here he made it clear. The majority of songs on this album are songs where Com just lets loose and shows off his lyrical dexterity. Com is not often credited with crafting a rhyme style, but if Hip-Hop was a university, he’d definitely be a professor of 2 classes. In a way, he should be given the trophy for helping to pioneer emo-rap, along with Ghostface and a few others, but he should also be given his props for mastering wordplay. Com plays with synonyms and double entendres like none other, he was making pop culture references for punch lines before it became standard and reverses phrases and sentences til it’s Shakespearian. For examples of each, take on “Real Nigga Quotes” where he lays in “it’s gon’ be some drama – you try to Sit-Com down, this ain’t comedy!”, or on “Food For Funk” where he states “I got my mind made up like Foxy Brown’s Face”. Or on “Making A Name For Ourselves” where he rips “I make my Living off of Singles like Latifah/in-between sheets like Reefer/with, blunted senses/you couldn’t make a statement if you were from a sentence/I’m cold with numb intentions”.
Whoever accused Com of selling out at any point hasn’t paid attention. He’s always been a spitter. He’s always loved pussy but respected real women. He’s always incorporated jazz and funk into his music and that’s never changed. The defining factor on this album however, is that this is where you’ll hear the most boom-bap beats of his whole catalogue paired with dope verses. On the subsequent albums, you won’t hear anything like the attacking horns heard on “Real nigga Quotes” (you won’t even get titles like that from Com anymore), or the stutter of “1,2 many” or the rumbling of “Making A Name For Ourselves”. The samples were well-chosen here. There’s a menace to the funky “Gettin Down At The Amphitheater” that doesn’t compromise Com’s sense of hardcore, nor De La Soul’s presence on there. And with the scratches and old school bells, it feels like these guys were on the set of Krush Groove, battling. The same can be said of “Making A Name…” Where most rappers may have felt the need to rap Canibus-esque and step their game up with him on the track, Com just seems to be comfortable being himself. And while he ups the aggression, he doesn’t change his flow or cadence to match up with the Canadian/east coaster who had other rappers on their toes back in the late 90’s. Most albums that are dominated by braggadocio tracks seemed drowned and tiring, but the sounds of every track where Common spits Southside Bravado are so different and varying from each other that it just makes it feel alive. It also helps that the placement of those songs is so good that just when you need to hear Com spit after a more mellow song, there you have it! Besides double albums and Raekwon‘s Only Built for Cuban Linx, It’s truly one of the few rap albums with more than 14 tracks that’s easy to listen to because of its variety and it’s sequencing.
Something that seems to get lost in the timestream is also the dopeness of Com’s storytelling. The lack of recognition of that seems to have shied Com away from doing it as much these days, but he’s really creative with it… Almost on a Nas level when he goes in on linear, continuous narratives. The one featured on this album is a 3 part tale entitled “Stolen Moments…” It’s simply art at it’s finest. You realize what rap is about when it’s used for this kind of thing. Complete with a skit to set things off that dramatizes the scenario, Com dedicates a long verse to each scene as he arrives home from a trip to find that his place has been robbed over a beat that lends itself to mystery. The beat switches to something more looming and creeping as he moves to the next phase, which is deducing who could be responsible and he’s angered by the fact that he lost a prized Donny Hathaway tape (yeah, I said tape). The last movement sees the pace pick up over a midtempo sample that plays like 70’s Blaxploitaion film chase music. It’s just dope to hear the story unravel and see how Com brings everything full circle with the tape and the skit and the pondering.
I’m not even sure if Common himself knew what he wanted to accomplish with this album besides just sharing his new wisdom and showing off the full extent of his skills. The opening track perhaps sums it up best when he says he wants to ‘open his mental window, hoping you climb in’ and comments how he’s been “doin’ it for a while”. But even more so, the theme of the album is set from the following track, “Invocation” where the jazzy beat is balanced with hard scratches and even harder lyrics by Com that straddle between bragging and life lessons. That there is what this album is about. It was sincere. It was against the tide of Hip-hop in it’s lost era post- Biggie and 2Pac, but it was undeniably Hip-Hop. With the exception of his zeal to be deep on those few tracks, and a slight sloppy slurring quality to his voice on his harder songs, every moment on here is pretty bright. Even the dope spoken word break by Malik Yusef.
My favorite tracks are “Reminding Me Of Sef”, “Stolen Moments..”, “Real Nigga Quotes” , the second and best ever of the “Pop’s Rap” outros, “All Night Long” and the super Hip-Hop “Hungry”.
This album gets 16 Candles out of a possible
4, 8, 12 or 16.
4(Classic Just because where it stands in Hip-Hop, whether it be the time of it’s release, it’s influence, or the popularity of it’s singles overall)
8(Classic because it was solid for it’s time, but may be a little dated or less than amazing by today’s standards)
12(Classic as a complete release and probably celebrated widely on the surface, but possibly lacking one key element – be it one song that doesn’t fit, a wack guest appearance, lyrics, lack of depth or beats)
16(Classic all around)
If you don’t see why, One Day It’ll All Make Sense…
Since I slacked last month, and this is Black History Month, I figure a double dose of Negroes In The News is in order.
First off and most importantly, the good news;
There’s a 2Pac movie in the making and the casting will begin at the end of this month. Not Only is the film – tentatively titled All Eyez On Me, a biopic of my favorite rapper of all time, but it’s also being helmed by my favorite Black director, Antoine Fuqua (The man who brought you King Arthur, Brooklyn’s Finest and Training Day). There’s going to be an online casting contest where unknowns who feel like they can capture the look and essence of Tupac Shakur can participate in a virtual audition for the lead role as fans vote. I am super glad that they’re deciding to go the newcomer route. 2Pac’s personality is too strong and distinctive to have someone who we have envisioned in other roles blur that. I’m a fan of Anthony Mackie‘s acting, but his portrayal of Pac in the slopfest that was Notorious did not hit the mark. I can’t begin to imagine the pressure that Fuqua might feel to ensure that this movie doesn’t fall to similar criticism. There’s not much room for this story to get watered down. Pac’s life is a layered one, with many paradoxical elements and real historic points. Hope he consults with John Singleton on this one as well.
Now, the ugly…
You ever notice how Jay-Z distances himself from his former artists and associates right before they screw themselves out of the chance of a lifetime?? Call it the touch. He’s almost like those cartoon characters that see the anvil about to fall on who they’re standing next to and eases away without warning them of the impending doom.
He has good reason tho. Take for instance last fall’s major federal drug sweep that scooped up his former Roc-A-Fella partner Kareem “Biggs” Burke. While this self-destruction was more delayed than the usual 6 month to a year downfall timeframe for former Jay-Z affiliates, it still goes to show. For all we know, Biggs could’ve been dabbling in this shit at the onset of the Roc-A-Fella break-up and that could have contributed to Jay moving away because it’s so below the scale of what they were trying to do. On the other hand, this could just be the by-product of that very break-up and something that Biggs felt he had to resort back to doing to make up for the deficit caused by not generating industry revenue like he used to in the hey-days.
In either case, Jay must have had that same foresight when he quietly left Trouble-making rapper Tru-Life behind and pulled the plug on the experimental Roc La Familia imprint.
Tru life and his real-life brother have found themselves charged with murder for what police are deeming as a retaliatory crime over an ongoing street beef. Taking plea agreements, Tru now faces a 10 year bid and his brother a 12 year stint for his role in the act. I guess that beats the inevitable 25 to Life that they would otherwise be serving, but damn niggas…There’s never really been a question about Tru Life’s involvement and connection to the streets. Dipset tried to make light of it during the heat of their rap spat that was more of a deflection of the real tension with Jay, but their taunting never hit any nerves. This is a guy who first started making waves by appearing on street DVD’s bragging about his crew bustin’ off shots and how they ran up in Mobb Deep‘s recording studio with guns ready to rob the group for backtracking on a verse. Once again, I wonder, is this the result of Jay dropping the kid and leaving him an unsigned, hungry, disgruntled rapper who only saw going back to the streets as an option?? Or is this the shit that the kid was on out of knuckle-headed impatience that made Jay dip in the first place?? Whatever the case is (and apparently, Murder was the case that they gave him), this is when keeping it real doesn’t pay. No one can give you years back off your life. And that’s Tru.
It gets better, order another round…
This bastard here just admitted to killing his mother back in November after Thanksgiving in Philadelphia. How did he kill her? With a claw hammer. Why did he kill her? Because they had a 90 minute argument that ended with the 37 year old single mom taking his PlayStation system away. Not only did the 16 year old son strike his mother 20 times in her sleep with the Hammer, this was something that he spent 3 hours thinking about after the argument took place. I don’t even want to say anymore. Read the full story here. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/02/17/2011-02-17_teen_kills_mom_with_claw_hammer_for_taking_away_his_playstation_court.html
One thing about Negroes (and yes that includes hispanics and other brown minorities) is that they never cease to amaze, shock and awe you. Whether good or bad.
While getting my hair cut earlier this week, I couldn’t help but notice a radio ad that played for Black History Month and listed an African-American as the inventor of the rollercoaster.
I’ve heard this loosely before, and I know that within the last few decades, Black folk have made a habit out of claiming people and accomplishments in an effort to empower ourselves even at the expense of being historically inaccurate.
I wanted to find out just how true this really was. What I found on a brief search through the internet was not one mention of anyone Black in the timeline of rollercoaster ingenuity, but in fact, a discrepancy that would lead to the confusing information. The discrepancy comes from the claim of two Black inventors by the name of Stephen E. Jackman and Byron B. Floyd who developed a ride at a Massachusetts rink in the late 1800’s that set toboggan-style sleds on a track with multiple hills. They claimed to be the very first to use the name and term “rollercoaster”. This has never been documented in history as fact and therefore leads to gray area. But it lends itself to my initial scrutiny being that a loosely stated declaration such as the one of the radio ad that purported to credit Blacks with the invention of the rollercoaster can be taken all the way wrong. Even if the 2 men were indeed the very first to use the term, they are not the inventors of the coaster at all. The original patent for what we’ve come to know as the rollercoaster was granted to a white man named LaMarcus Adna Thompson years earlier, and the prototypical basis of the design comes from Russian constructs from almost a century earlier.
Even more interesting than that, were my findings on yet another Black Man whose name had popped up within the footnotes of my Black History studies, but never fully given his proper light. Granville T. Woods, who has helped in the sophistication of rollercoaster track engineering (particularly at Coney island), is the foremost and singlehandedly most influential Black mechanical inventor of the industrial revolution.
Known casually throughout text as the “Black Edison”, Woods was primarily a self-taught electrician and mechanist. He attended college to sharpen his skills and moved around the world as an engineer until finally settling back in his home state of Ohio and developing patents. Though born a free-man in Pre Civil War America, can you imagine how ridiculously hard it had to have been to be a Black Inventor at the turn of the 19th Century????
As his race played the most important factor in his lack of notoriety and upward mobility, many of his patents were forced to be sold to larger corporations such as the American Bell Telephone Company. In addition to that, he faced a number of legal woes as his White Contemporaries at the time, such as Thomas Edison, made claims to his patents. Ironically, he won against those claims, but ultimately lost when he was the one doing the accusing and served jail time for Criminal Libel.
Like many geniuses in their time, he died broke and under-acknowledged for his contributions to the field of Mechanical engineering and electrical systems. However, not many inventors have resumes that boast such a versatile range.
His patents were usually improvements to existing inventions that have managed to stand the test of time. They include those to an advanced telephone transmitter and the telegraphony, which combined voice and signal messages. This also included patents to an incubator for farms, street car wheel that gave birth to the name “trolley”, and his most famous invention, the Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph – which revolutionized electronic railway communication and travel.
Google this man today and learn something new that’s very old…
Every now and then, I break what has become the norm for this Crush Alot segment of the blog and highlight a crush that I may have on a woman who is already super-famous for being drooled over and seemingly on everyone else’s top 10 list. But Cot-Dammit, this is Valentine’s Day! And furthermore, This is Kerry fuckin’ Washington! And I feel as tho I staked my claim to her looonggg before the Vogue and Maxim spreads and her becoming a household name and a face that the Whiteboys recognize and wouldn’t mind scoring with.
Her and my infatuation go back to the days of the film Push, and more firmly, after one of the few Spike Lee films that I like, She Hate Me. I like her so much that her name has come up in other Crush Alot posts featuring other women. She’s like that ex that you can’t forget. I feel almost too familiar with her…She’s a true New York City chic. An Aquarius – which is one of my favorite signs. I’ve watched her career blossom. I identify with Anthony Mackie in the films that they have done together and sometimes I feel like his characters in relation to her. This is my folly. In real life, I heard she has a mean case of Jungle Fever (that makes 3 of my crushes), and she smokes cigarettes – which is an immediate deal-breaker for me. And on top of all of that, she’s a Bronx girl. A No No.
Still, one is allowed to dream right? And all kinds of dreams occur with visions of Ms. Washington. What she perceivably brings to the table personality-wise is that effect that men love; That cool without conceit. That NYC realism without the harshness. Just the right touch of sexiness, and an awareness of it that she doesn’t overdo. Balance. That’s what she represents. Isn’t that what we all want at the end of the day?
Logically, as her star has risen, so has her glam. Although she has a knack for showing up wearing the same dresses as her star-studded peers and outdoing them, she’s now at the point where she is a Fashion darling and someone who the stylistas rave about. This is part of why she has become such a recognizable Black face. And what a face it is…
I get the appeal now. It took me a while to figure out why everyone else was dying over Kerry, because I’ve always known why I like her. But now I see her universal beauty; it’s simple…A silky skinned, Almond-Brown girl with a typically Anglo-Saxon face and symmetry, accented by Bold African Features. It’s in the shape of her face, the thinness of her nose, those are the safe parts. The mystique and lure lie in her pronounced Cheekbones and that super-sexual quality of permanently pursed lips made famous by Angelina Jolie and loved by men and lesbians all over the world!
All that is Dope, but I’ve always loved her for her eyes and the way she talks. Voice is one of those things that define femininity, and hers is one that is definite, direct, but seductive. She speaks as if she practiced for years to shed her Bronx accent under the veil of sounding proper. Her words are measured, slow, but have a sharpness to them. Of course, the way her lips move when delivering such words adds to that all. And her eyes are a beautiful shape. She bats them often which accentuates her super-girlish lashes. And the way they sit on top of those high cheeks just make them look like they were made for entrancing and trapping people in their gaze. That gaze is tricky tho; Half doe-eyed, half Vamp executing a compulsion.
Make no mistake, Kerry is Beautiful, NOT Bad. She rests somewhere inbetween…too sexy to be just a cute queen, yet lacking the bodily dimensions to be a vixen. She was meant for Couture. And tho she’s been in videos (and directed as well), she’s far from a video girl. Her shape is great. It’s not exceptionally curvy and she’s not carrying any parts that protrude or present themselves before she does. But the total package is what you fantasize over…The way she carries it all….How she walks, how she wears those high fashion dresses, how she accessorizes. Her confidence makes up for any lack of T n A. The aura of sensuality and sexuality that surrounds her is so thick that I want to take her to bed quicker than Kim Kardashian, who has all of the physical traits that I lust over. That characteristic is more of a commodity in the sack than D cups.
Underneath it all, there’s that New Yorker there that just makes you want to cheer her on. Her look isn’t typical for Hollywood. She screams Black Girl despite her mix of features and appeal. She doesn’t have that ambiguos fair-skinned thing that Halle Berry or Selita Ebanks have. She is proud of her look and she wears it like anything else that she wears; Flawlessly! Maybe because she has that NY thing going on and looks like the kind of women that I have been smitten with off sight while perusing the city, I feel like I can just walk up to her and approach her like any average woman in the city. And she’s anything but average, but I just may do that one of these days…
Remember last year when I posted up those ads that were so ridiculously worded and imaged that they were unbelievable?
Well this definitely falls under that category.
I was just so befuddled that it took me some time to visit the site to verify that it was an actual site and not some mean parody or theme-porn spam.
But no, this site is very real. Considering itself the technologically evolved medium for Muslim singles to meet and match, this answer to modern world dating purports to be a safe platform to launch a successful and meaningful Islamic marriage – seeing how that is the only way to truly ‘date’ within Islam.
I didn’t even think this was possible, but there you have it…A faith-based social networking site that is actually 10 years old, boasting to help make “4 marriages a day”, full of women- with or without their hair covered, posting up their pictures with men doing the same. No abs or backshots, no cleavage or chest hair with provocative usernames, just brief descriptions with definitions as Sunni, Shiite or “Just Muslim” for those less engulfed in sects.
After reading the mission statement of the site, I understand it better. It’s a little weird, but it’s dope at the same time to see such a strict religion moving forward with the times and knowing that there’s a place out there where judgement is reserved and attraction is not primarily sexually rooted. I don’t think there’s one person on there who feels some of the initial awkwardness or social isolation that some users of other sites like Match or Chemistrydot com feel. This is a bunch of people globally sharing a common goal under the premise of a common belief.
Click the picture and check it out for yourself if you’re curious.
I’m pushing HARD for this movie because whether it’s a classic or not, just the fact that it tackles such an unorthodox subject matter is compelling.
I appreciate these small indies that come from life experiences as observed or encountered by the writer or director themselves. They usually contain great realism and show flawed protagonists with interesting conflicts.
This particular film resonates with me, not only because it features an all Black cast with names and faces that we haven’t seen in a while (but who are great when given the right roles), but more importantly because it circles around 2 things that are close to home for me.
The first being the impact of the 9/11 attacks and the fervor and sentiment surrounding that during and after. The film is set mostly on a college campus, where the main character (played by Diana Ross‘ son, Evan) is attending and adjusting. I was in college when the attacks took place…Living directly across the street from The Pentagon to be exact, so I clearly remember all of the frenzy and madness.
Secondly, and more personally, this speaks to my coming of age as I was raised under Islamic principles and faith by a passively militant father who was a member of the infamous Nation Of Islam; known for its socio-political stance and race-motivated rhetoric, but more notorious for its outspoken members and imagery of Black men selling newspapers and bean-pies. Their adaptation of the Islamic following – preferably Sunni, developed a hybrid that usually Americanized and negroized alot of the religious dogma and highlighted certain parts and neglected others. The now satirized way of saying the universal Muslim greeting was coined by members of the Nation and their mispronunciation of the Arabic to the point where most Americans know it as ‘Salaam-A-Lake-Um’ as opposed to its correct pronunciation of
Asalaamu Alaykum!
This is just a reflection of how that adaptation and subsequent blending in with the very lostCulture of African-Americans has given way to many of the popular ideas and misconceptions of Islam held by the majority of the U.S. The melding with political and racial agendas has made the ideals of a community-based and peaceful religion very murky and has even lead to off-shoots such as the 5% Nation of the Gods and Earths that was heavy among Afro-centric pot-heads in the 90’s. From fallacies of oppressed women having to dress like ninjas, to imagery of a constantly aggressive and non-smiling people who starve themselves for one month out of every year, Muslims have a bad rap in this country and most of the Western world. Alot of that is based on the inherent ignorance of our societies. And alot of that has been the doing of Muslims worldwide themselves. I’m pretty fuckin’ sure that Islamic Extremists causing mass atrocities aren’t helping that either.
As my father was more of a Muslim by description than practice, I was not one of those kids walking around with 4 Arabic names and white robes and kufi’s going to private neighborhood schools. In fact, I took more of a vested interest in the faith upon entering my teens, when I set out to teach myself how to pray in Arabic and bonded with my boy Randall, who was the first Muslim kid I ever met in life that was one by choice. Most Muslim kids that I knew of were all just like me; hood babies with Muslim names given by their fathers who were members of the Nation but failed to instill any hardcore Islamic influence. I had reached a point where I felt like more of a Muslim than my own father, who doesn’t even spell his adopted Muslim name the Arabic way…but eventually, after leaving college, I succumbed to the conflict that has always surfaced within myself about the inconsistencies within Islam. I started to analyze it again, remembering passages I’ve read, and looking at everything that’s been done in its name, and this caused me to distance myself from all religion as a whole. I’ve considered myself agnostic for a while now.
However, my upbringing under the codes of conduct have influenced my life choices irreversibly and it cannot be denied. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. A life without pork and alcohol is not a life lost. I do like balance. And I feel that the skewed view on Muslims is so much the majority that the actual beauty of the core essence of the religion is never seen. What it provides at the heart, is a structure that promotes a nearly rape-free culture that doesn’t objectify women and places her value at such a level that she is to be protected, not restricted. The teachings of appreciation for and usage of the Planet Earth is almost Zen-like, and the hygienic guidelines rival others in just how close to God one can be. There’s a solidarity between most eastern Muslims that is admirable to the point where everyone can learn from. Once again, it’s those things done by people in the name of their beliefs that fuck it up for the world!
Hope this movie touches on all these things while entertaining. As most movies that I wind up promoting and suggesting, this film is only showing as a limited release, and in NYC that means only at AMC theatre in Times Square, starting Friday February 11th. If nothing else, maybe folks will never pronounce it as “Mooz-Lum” again!
16's Candles 