Purple Sector…

People are always making sly remarks about this being another KanYe fan site. That, this is not. Truth be told, the guy just goes on a run every few weeks of consistently doing fresh stuff week after week, and we’re all about fresh here on PSDN. That being said, one of my favorite shows on TV, VH1’s Storytellers, is having him on, and here’s a preview, it’s him performing Stronger, and the set looks pretty cool. It’s also one of my favorite jams of his, so peep. Forgive the BS before the vid, I’ve been trying to upload better versions with other players, but to no avail.

Moving on, I’ve got a ShamWow parody a friend emailed me. I won’t go into any further detail, just watch and laugh.

I love pricks. Jay-Z, KanYe West, all of them. Pricks make the world go ’round. So, if you see a prick, shake their hand before you stifle the urge to kick them in the balls.

Pricks are a ballsy breed nowadays. With the public’s craving, nay, addiction to peices of the lives of individuals who are more famous than us Jor Six-Packs, any wrong move can spell the end of any celeb’s place in the sun. How do they remain so true to their pricky selves? Why does A-Rod turn down kids in wheelchairs seeking autographs, when he knows a camera phone could catch it all on tape? Why does 50 Cent continue to run his mouth, knowing his album will flop like grandma’s mammories? Cuz that’s who they are. They’re born asshats, these people are.I have a pofound respect for jerks and pricks in the public eye. Why? In this world of celebrityism, any wrong turn can get the tide of public opinion turned on you like women at a shoe sale. I’ve met a great deal of stars in my life: Jay-Z, Manny, Papi, A-Rod, Jeter, Tom Brady, Randy Moss, Torry Holt, Yeezy, Mike Jones, Paul Pierce, Doc Rivers, Ray Allen, Tommy Lee, and on and on. Most of those guys? Jerks.Yes, you heard right. But they seem so nice in the public eye? Why? They need their status. it makes them who they are in their eyes. What is Alex Rodriguez without $25 mil a year and hella dingers? What’s PP without the number 34? Their average joes playing rec league ball, at the bar buying $3 vodka and cranberry drinks. What is Jay without rap? He’s a cocky, camelfaced guy who bags the baddest broad in the venue and wakes up early to get to his job at UPS. You get the feeling he could say “F this, I’m outta here.” and move to Dubai at any wrong public turn. Same for Ye. Why? They know who they are, apart from their skill in their field. I’m not talking arrogant, mean pricks, I’m talking exuberantly confident, prolific, top-of-their-field pricks. MJ was a prick, but who could stop him? He was the best when he stepped on the floor. Babe Ruth was a prick, but he changed an entire sport more than any one man in any other sport. They earned their prickdom, because no one was good enough to knock them down a few pegs. Nobody. So shine on, you crazy pricks, because until your star is eclipsed or burns out, we can’t take it from ya…… you bahstids.

First, the commercial is for Kobe’s new Lo-top kicks, a game or HORSE with Mike Epps, DJ AM, and Mamba himself.

The Air Yeezys AM rocks in the commercial:

And the Quickstrike Yeezers expected to drop March of 09:

Liking the gray ones, and AM’s.

I shouldn’ta left you, without mad blogs to read.

Okay, That sucked. But it’s true.

I’m back like cooked crack ya’ll. Let’s Start off with some music reviews, shall we?

GhostDeini The Great:

This is a wierd album. It’s not quite a best of, not a live album, not a remix or B-Side album, though it contains remixes, B-Sides, and some of his best songs. It’s classic Ghost in its incongruence, in my opinion. It’s not anything, it’s just a body of Ghostface material meant to be enjoyed as such.  And enjoyable it is, for Ghost fans and Newbies alike. The Champ remix is amazing, Mighty Healthy is just as cryptic as it was the first time you heard it, and the Back Like That Remix with Yeezy is a gem that they should have played more. The Run Remix with Freeway and Weezy falls flat, as does the Be Easy Remix with Ice cube, but aside from those, it’s a great buy. I play it in the car daily, and have made an avid GFK fan out of my unsuspecting girlfriend.

Universal Mind Control

Reviewers have given this thing a bad rap. It’s not at all Com’s best, yes, but it’s a damn good record. The title track starts it off with a banger, it’s dance friendly while not devoid of rhyme skill, a rare find in today’s music climate. Punch Drunk with the KonMan is a great song, with Kanye dropping in for a simple yet braggadocious hook. It finishes strong with Everywhere. I can find fault only in two tracks, Sex 4 Suga, and  Gladiatior, the latter only because the beat and break are the most annoying I’ve heard from Common. Don’t believe the hate, buy this album, turn the bass up, and let the former foul-mouthed Chicagoan do the rest.

How does one “keep it real”? And How does one keep it fake?

I grew up about 10 minutes north of Boston, in a little, predominantly white and Asian town called Malden, in a housing project across the street from one of the best schools in the state. I attended Private schools through High School, and am enrolled in a private college. I spent every second weekend with my father in his third floor apartment just off Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchester, where, while not the hardened ghetto-esque place like Harlem or Watts, per se, is no sweet place to live and grow.  Going back and forth from one place to another was culture shock every time, and these places are thirty minutes away from one another on the MBTA. The landscape in the Dot was less inviting, there were fewer places to gather, fewer inherently safe places for kids, and hell, even adults to go in the day or night time. The houses were vertical, and any single or two family housewas almost assuredly poorly kept inside and out. The doors and windows were barred; my father had nine bolts and locks on the door to his house. Nine. Police cars took up the good parking spots during rain and snowstorms. We used big, flattened MD 20/20 bottles as bases when we played kickball or baseball in the street. Three of my closest friends in Dorchester, all of whom are either dead or in jail, had at least one parent hooked on some illicit drug. Even my father had his struggles with alcoholism. I don’t know of anyone’s mom or dad who was a manager or mid-to-high ranking worker at a firm, bank, or cushy white collar job. Everyone was in survival mode there, and, from the great lengths of time I spend in areas like it when my mind can take it, still is. Malden was just the opposite. No bars on doors, we used rocks for bases, fewer (visible) addictions in adults, more white-collar jobs, less illegal activity, more inviting landscape. When I told the kids where me and my mom lived, I had to fight to get home that day. Why? I was told I was a sellout, an Oreo, a whiteboy, that I wasn’t real. No kidding I wasn’t real, I was too busy being eight! Ever since then, I’ve had a hard time grasping exactly what ’real” means to most people who invoke it or claim to keep it so.

From what I understand, “keeping it real” is some sort of creed to keep your life immersed in the life you were forced to lead out of the struggle you faced during. To keep true to the habits, worldviews, thought patterns, and desires you formed while doing your time at the bottom of the American Social Totem Pole. Any deviance from said things is looked upon as selling out, being fake, or trying to be like these white boys out here. If that’s the case, where is the line between real and fake? I spent about 30% of my formative years with my father in environments that would breed so-called “real niggas”, and I’m currently enrolled in a Private University, own my own business, so on and so-forth. My style of dress, talk, and self presentation, however, are derived largely from what I learned in “the hood.” However, my vocabulary, worldview, goals and aspirations came from just the opposite influence: my education and upbringing. What would I be? I look like a street kid, walk, talk, dress like, listen to the same music (to an extent), enjoy many of the same activities, places, and things as a street kid. Yet I’ve been told I talk white, and that no “real niggas” would use words like “myriad” or “bricolage.” WTF?! When is the quest to be and/or stay real superceded by the desire to be your own person? When does one lose the cookie cutter and decide to be their own version of themselves?

Furthermore, what is the benefit to being “real”? Does it add years to your life, length to your male organ, money to your checking account? Or does it only serve to keep a bunch of people who happen to share skin tones, ancestry, and socio-economic forces bound together in a negative way? Clearly, I believe it to be the latter. See, while I don’t think they ever had a name for it, staying “real” is as a part of black culture as slavery and Jim Crow. Think of who we would label not real: House Niggas, Michael Jackson, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Cornell West, Bill Cosby. Why? because they’ve developed a common disdain or disapproval for black mainstream culture? Because they made a way for themselves and a select few others out of the poor situations they may have been born into (not the house niggas)? Because they’ve taken their stature as celebrities or public figures to point out some of the shortcomings of the group of people they may not only love, but undeniably belong to? That’s why? Those are the realest things EVAR! My mom is a real nigga. Why? Because she was the second youngest of five children in Albany Georgia, graduated from college two years early, earned two Master’s Degrees early, had children, provided for them, instilled in them a love or learning and a sense of morality, and worked hard for eveything she loved, needed, and wanted to hold dear. That’s real. Outcries against any one person or small group of persons who go against the grain of “real”, simply because it may be ahead of its time, or the harsh truth, or that person’s own vision, is not real, that’s fake, to me. Go ask someone in your neighborhood about any of the people I mentioned, aside from my mom. If they tell you any of them aren’t “real niggas”, do your homework. Look at their quality of life, worldview, sense of morality and individuality. Now duplicate this with ten or so other “real niggas”. Notice a trend? I propose that every one of those real niggas dresses the same, talks the same, listens to the same select few artists, will see the same terrible movies, and probably have eerily similar Facebook statuses. Why? Here’s why, in my opinion. The quest for common personality or identity traits doesn’t do anything to make any of the chasers any better or more quality individuals.  Keeping it real is like joining a cult, of people who frown on innovation, originality, individuality, outspokenness, and anything generally progressive or uplifting in nature. These are the same kind of people who you’ll find wearing wifebeaters and baggy jeans with wallet chains and those annoying skullies with the brims, with dingy, creased white AF1 Lo’s and low-budget knockoff stunna shades at a party. Oh yeah, you’re both real, and a poor excuse for a Shawty-Lo lookalike, you artard.

So, if you want to really keep it real, do yourself a favor: be yourself. Do what you want and need to do on your own terms. No stereotype or strict, rigid set of rules or guidelines ever made anyone any better of a person. And that’s real.

Sorry Shawty-Lo.

I’m beginning to warm up to Ms. Santi White. She’s not MIA, she’s different, sorry I thought you bit Maya, Santi.

The beat is Ye, the verses are Jay, it’s one heck of a track. Peep the Zshare HERE

DOPE. PEEP. ITUNES ONLY.

I, like most Americans, like many things and hate many others. hated things seem to outnumber things I enjoy, or at the very least do NOT hate, almost three to one. What do I hate? GLAD YOU ASKED!

Jeff Dunham is absolutely, positively, 100% NOT FUNNY. He’s not. Don’t try justifying the fact that he’s getting recognition. Ventriloquism sucks. He’s not at all funny. None of his characters are original or inspired, the Walter one is even a tad racist, I’m watching it right now. The Christmas special is worse than Soul Plane.

Black media sucks big ones. DL Hughley’s show? Decent, they should just let him do his own writing. The Chocolate News? It has potential. Other than that? Here’s the thought processes behind them:

Hey y’all, let’s take a successful white show, and make it for niggas. Nobody will know, and niggas will watch, cuz niggas will watch anything u tell em to!
OR
Hey. let’s take these commonly accepted and utilized stereotypes and ACT UPON THEM under the guise of a situational comedy or half-assed done movie, and sell it to people. Cuz Niggas will buy anything niggas is sellin to otha niggas!

Katt Williams is not funny. He was funny as Money Mike, not funny in Soul Plane, and his stand-up has its flashes. Michael Jackson, white kids on leashes, Hustlin’, those were good. Black America, it’s time to put the permed pimp to pasture. He’s not friggin funny.

Stop rocking fake shoes and gear. We know, we see, and even if we big you up to your face, we clown you when you leave. If you do rock it, just let us know that YOU KNOW it’s fake. I won’t lie, if I need shoes to play ball in, and I don’t want to rock any fresh Js, I’ll go to the flea market and cop some fake IVs, but when people ask me where I got them, I LET THEM KNOW.

Stop being so elitist about ish. Just because you were up on it before it got big doesn’t give you the right to hate on people who just caught on. You won’t believe how much hate I catch when I say I’ve only been up on MIA since Kala. Just because I hadn’t heard Piracy Funds Terrorism, doesn’t make me a poser. Just because flashing lights was the best song on the album and you got it the day it dropped doesn’t mean everyone else who waited can’t dig it as much as us. And just because you waited in line for your steps the day they dropped for 6 hours in the Dust Bowl and I got mine off Flight Club doesn’t make mine any less fresh.

No Homo? Instead of No Homo, just don’t say ish that could be interpreted as gay. That’s it. If I think people will look at me weird when I say “Your Butt looks mad sexy in those backless chaps” to my male friend, I don’t. Why? Two reasons. 1= I DON’T THINK THAT. 2= Even if I did, I would let it slide. Why are you thinking, and then being so anxious to say things that sound Homo? Hmmmm?

P.S. Pause is still alright in my book.

Women keep your breasts in your shirt. If i wanna see breasts, there are plenty other ways to go about it besides….well, walking anywhere women are. It devalues the breast. Don’t do that to us OR yourselves. I don’t want to treat headlights like I do Vans Sneakers, with a casual “oh, those are kind of nice.” whenever I see an otherwise decent set. If I never saw a van, and then saw a decent one, I’d be like “OMGIH DID YOU SEE THOSE VANS! I WANT THOSE!” You smell me? If you don’t want guys to treat you like some bust-down, STOP DRESSING LIKE A BUST-DOWN.

Guys, be a bit more tactful when other guys are around. You make it hard for the rest of us. Some of us make sure we look nice, smell nice, and are dressed to impress whenever we step out of the house, save for gym time. We brush teeth and hair, LOTION, and don’t wear the same shirt the rest of the block owns. When we see a fly girl, we don’t want to make steps towards her, only to be cut off by some foul smelling, straight-outta-some-low-bu

He’s got Tell Everyone You Know and Amazin’. The first features Weezy, the latter con Jeezy. It’s an -Eezy connection.

Download/Listen HERE and HERE

I hate DJ Khaled too. But Yeezy tears it down here, and T-Pain, despite his teeth and tophat, lends himself well too. Peep the video for go hard.