Jon-B is Probably Beating His Black Girlfriend Right Now...

and Colin Munroe's Unsung Hero mixtape is the soundtrack. Don't get it twisted, he probably does lines to Robin Thicke's Something Else first.


Colin Munroe is the Unsung Hero (Mixtape)

These Streets

At YH!SN... we do not directly promote the creep, but as resident real ass niggas that happen to blog we refuse to block anybody's layup. As with most things, if you see fit to travel down that path... educate yourself first!


The COMPLEX Guide To Cheating

Shamelessness is a Virtue

From the Play Cloths event @ C'monwealth DC...

21

"Every Given Sunday" - Raheem DeVaughn ft. Almost every DC music personality except Tabi Bonney

Was listening to the radio when EZ Street premiered this tribute to the late Sean Taylor Thanksgiving weekend back in DC. Definitely deserved. RIP.

This Aint A Shoe Song

Back in October, Wale shot the vid for Nike Boots during HU Homecoming Weekend in DC. Though we no longer document this nigga's every move as the seven internets are doing a bang up job of that, we stay in the know. Below are some pics I took at the video shoot at Mirrors nightclub... sorry no flicks of Mr. Folarin tho.






Chris Robinson's clip came out totally different than I expected (in a good way...) but its pretty dope nonetheless. Goes to show you how ill of a director he is. Enjoy.


Official Wale "Nike Boots" video (Directed by Chris Robinson) from Elitaste on Vimeo.

Mixtape Titles for Dummies

No treatment intended by that tagline but yo... if I had no idea that the Clipse' new album is called Til the Casket Drops, I do now. Nomenclature aside, I had the chance to hear this joint live last night at the Play Cloths launch party and it does not dissapoint.


Hopefully this Columbia budget can do what Jive couldnt 'cuz Lord knows these brothers deserve the shine.


Clipse - Road to Til' the Casket Drops

On My Block

I've decided that I'm gonna start chain smoking and drinking hot sauce and hennessy until my voice is as tough as 'Face. Dont even for a moment think about faking on this joint if you heard the track bearing the same name. You know the routine.

Scarface - Emeritus

Book It!

Language is the universal whore that I must make into a virgin.
-Karl Kraus

Those of you who know me personally know that I majored in English Lit in college, but I hate to read. It's not so much that I hate reading, but it usually takes a lotta work to get me to sit down and read anything longer than 3 stanzas of poetry or 5 paragraphs of prose. Why? Not sure, but I suspect it's my latent ADHD from childhood.

Irony notwithstanding, I majored in English Lit more for my love of hip hop than my love of books. I mean books are cool. They have pages and, when you're lucky, pictures, but it was Jay-Z's Blueprint, Mos Def's Black on Both Sides, Canibus's freestyle that began "I speak a frequency dogs would have trouble hearing..." that made me fall in love with language. Through that door, I entered the study of literary devices and figurative language. When I fell in love with the work of Shakespeare, it was because he had a lyrical dexterity and wit that reminded me of Brooklyn's finest, and the sensitivity of their Queensbridge neighbor.

My course of undergraduate study resulted in the purchasing of a grip of great literature, most of which I've never read. But 99% of the time, when I decided to read a book so I could get a paper done, I always enjoyed it. Iris Murdoch's A Severed Head, Gwendolyn Brooks' Maud Martha, Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, shoot, even Henry James' The Europeans. As labored a task it was to finish most the books I had to read, I was always happy that I read them once I'd finished.

There was a time when I really liked books though: 5th grade. Or more accurately, 3rd to 6th grade, but I think it peaked in 5th. This was mostly due to my affinity for science fiction and the fact that Bruce Coville seemed to have a limitless supply of such books. From Space Brat, I eventually graduated to the more complex Madeleine L'Engle and her A Wrinkle in Time series of novels, occasionally dabbling into the closely related genre of pseudo-medieval fantasy novels popularized by J.R.R. Tolkein. I was never a big Tolkein kid, but Lloyd Alexander's Newberry Medal-winning The High King is a book that I still have to this day. I think I stole it from the library in fifth grade.

All this to say, I haven't read for pure pleasure since the days when I only had hair on my scalp. Since then, I've gained a permanent 5 o'clock shadow and my attention span makes it hard to finish most books I try to read, even if I like them. I started reading Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye a year ago to make up for the fact that I never even opened it in my Black Lit class back in '04.

Still haven't finished it.

So when I decided, on a whim, to pick up Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao one day in October, I honestly figured it'd be another ordeal similar to my purchase of Carl Phillips' Riding Westward, a book begun, but never finished. (Yeah, didn't finish that jawn either.) I caught wind of Diaz's book pretty late, during an appearance on the Colbert Report back in June. I learned the following: dude is Dominican, his book won the friggin Pulitzer, and the story's protagonist is a Dominican dork that defies all stereotypes of what it means to be Dominican.

To be fair, that doesn't tell you much about the book (I wasn't gonna give you many details regardless), but I'll say this: I couldn't put this book down. (And any book that generously uses "nigger" colloquially and yet gets the Pulitzer is a winner in my book anyway.) It's a story that is amazing in its breadth and depth, and even more impressive in its method of narration. I have never read a book like it, and I hope I never do. It's easily one of the greatest personal reads since I read Giovanni's Room in college, and prolly one of the most enjoyable. It has an honest universal appeal. And the way Diaz describes some of the Dominican women makes me wanna pack my ish and move down to the DR inmediatamente.

Like all good books, it's a tragedy, one that is immediately obvious given the title, but the joy of course is in the doing, so I recommend you holler at a Borders or whatever the other bookstores are called and pick this up.

Finally, a cinematic adaptation (read: a movie) is in the works now. The rights were bought by the same producer who did No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood, which is to say, I'm looking forward to 2010.

And ya say Chi City

Too many quotables. Watch and enjoy.

Tell Everybody That You Know

Interview | Freestyle

I'm hella late for this, but The Paxtons have been grinding as of late. Of course, there was the party at Casa Frela in Harlem back on the 14th, but these niggas have been on a serious hustle since the release of the monster mixtape, Members Only. They got a chance to holler at Howard University radio station and even blessed them with some styles for free last month at Homecoming. In case you missed it, or in case you did catch it and wanted that good mp3, I guess that makes me a genie...

Still got big ears tho

This song has so many glaring problems. It's the kinda song that nobody likes except your girlfriend, and you kinda wonder if she's serious or just tryna get u back for that one time u farted on her leg. The video is even weirder, as it seems to make you watch with the hopes that Mya might do something a tad bit on the "My Love Is Like..." tip. She doesn't. Some dude dry humps for a combined 2.173 seconds, and she wears this corset that looks like an electric wire fence made out of silverware, but that's about it. Don't watch it and say you did.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I try to hold out on Holiday posts till Black Friday, so yes, Jeezy's "Black President" will be in full rotation till then, but if you're already in the mood for Christmas, check out my boo Janelle Monae in these new Gap ads:


"Winter Wonderland"


"Jingle Bells"

There are more, including one with her, Trey Songz, and Flo-rida, but you can get those yourselves.

All I Need is a Corner

Young Chris - Freestyle

Now that's a real Obama...

A piece of a piece off thedailybeast.

I recently interviewed Jimmy [Jones] about the play while sitting on the lip of the stage, and toward the end of our talk, I asked him how he felt about Obama’s victory. Since Election Day, every conversation I have eventually turns to Barack Obama and our emotional reactions to this American epiphany. Jim confessed that the election inspired him to drop the word “nigga” from his vocabulary—where it was a nearly ubiquitous presence—and replace it with “Obama.” He gave me a few examples: “What up, my Obama?” “Yo, did you see them Obamas last night?” “Now that’s a real Obama.”


I was blown away. Black men have used nigga for more than three decades as a way of expressing a certain gallows humor. It is a way of saying, “Hey, if America thinks we’re the national boogie monsters, then fine, we are. Boo!” It stems from a peculiarly black sense of the macabre.

Yeah.

This guy too.

This dropped last wknd but got lost in the sauce of the wknd long celebration in NYC. In other words, you should have this by now, but if you don't, it's right behind that album cover.

Mr. West is in the building

Yeah, this too. Click that album cover.

You bring the popcorn

Luda's latest. Click the album cover to download.

I'm sittin in the crib, dreamin'

Featuring arguably the best rap conversation ever. To think about the potentially massive load of classic footage like this sitting around in DJs cribs...

Recovering from the wknd that was

Taking it to the Suburbs

Paramore - That's What You Get

I like this song. And in case u didn't notice, blogger took down the Jay-Z "History" post. I'm seriously considering making that move to wordpress...