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august 2006 POUND 34

POUND 34 august 2006

august 2006 POUND 34

POUND 34 august 2006

august 2006 POUND 34

POUND 34 august 2006

august 2006 POUND 34

the off center box dept. of you’re so anne frank

This month I’m going to do something that we rarely do here at Pound, which is, talk about Pound. For real, that’s not a sarcastic statement; I think the last time we talked about the magazine in the magazine was in 2001.

Uh-here we go.

One of the decisions that all commercial/artistic ventures face is how much to follow “The Formula.” The Formula changes daily/weekly/monthly/yeary/hourly. It can be tits and cars and jewelry and ass. Or it can be tits and jets and mansions and ass. Or it can be tits and piles of money and hoodies that look like someone vomited salsa on them and ass. Some say tits and ass are eternally de rigueur. This may be true, but no one has really challenged the theory.

One of the first of the many distasteful moments that we’ve experienced over the years occurred during a meeting at a major record label. (This isn’t a record label diss, there are d-bags like this guy everywhere, he just happened to work at a label.) After showing said “executive” the pilot issue of the magazine he put the magazine down and said, “You know what niggas wanna see?” I waited to be illuminated. “Bitches. Niggas wanna see bitches.” He clapped his hands for effect. His weed-carrying assistant nodded knowingly off to the side.

“Gyeah,” weed carrier said.

With that revelatory piece of information in mind and our own insecurities feeding our desires to succeed, we shot a cover with Melyssa Ford. Melyssa was a ’round-the-way-girl back then. A friend from the neighbourhood. She was sweet and professional and this parable has nothing to do with her. It could have been anyone. As with many of the great tragedies and dramas in life, the players are completely interchangeable. Anyway, the cover was a debacle and we never released it (but I kept the Polaroids close by for a few years).

We never tried to shoot some “bitches” again. Or dimes. Or honeys. Or eye candies.

Which leads us to the Snakes On A Plane dilemma. During the making of SOAP, the debate between isolated versus community-led creation experienced a milestone. The producers decided, “let’s ask the audience what they want in this movie—and then let’s actually do it.” The thing is, if you ask an audience what they want you’ll get every conflicting opinion.

Longer. Shorter. Smarter. Dumber. Ad nauseum. Do the opposite—never listen to the audience—and you risk being accused of snobbery, or worse still, falling into irrelevance.

This brings us back to how we define ourselves at Pound. Pound-audience interactions are close to non-existent (probably ’cause the magazine is so arrogant). We do ask colleagues and friends for their opinions, but we end up with the same noise that you’d get from polling the audience. But left to our own devices and imaginations we find that we’re often struggling to define what we are. We’re not an eye candy shop, we won’t pimp your ride or your bride or anything else. We like some material things too, but we won’t lubricate your throats with hyperbole, exclamations and urgency only to shove useless shit down it once we’ve got you all greased up. For the most part we define ourselves through opposition.

Which means we only know what we definitely aren’t.

RODRIGO BASCUÑÁN aka BUNS

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pound worth Fighting for

Publishers Rodrigo Bascuñán Michael Evans Editor-In-Chief Rodrigo Bascuñán Senior Editor Christian Pearce Graphic Design pylit.com Reviews Editor Roozbeh Showleh culture Editor Dan Bergeron Contributors Simon Black Andrew Cappell Chris Coates Herman Chan Susana Ferreira Luke Fox Joe Galiwango Tara Henley Majid Mozaffari Matthew McKinnon Kostas Pagiamtzis Jeremy Relph Young Salt Adhimu Stewart Andrea Woo Photographers Dan Bergeron Nicolas Burtnyk Che Kothari Matthew Salacuse Pound Legal Carina Emnace Cover Photo Dan Bergeron Pound Headz’ Quarters 181 Hallam St. Suite 2 Toronto, ON M6H 1X4 CANADA pound@poundmag.com 416-656-7911 © Copyright 2006 Pound Magazine Corporation All rights reserved Pound #34 August 2006

august 2006 POUND 34

politics as usual It takes a riot

By Simon Black In 1992, the acquittal of four LAPD officers charged with the brutal beating of Rodney King prompted some of the worst urban unrest the United States had seen since the 1960s. What younger ‘heads might be unaware of is that three days of rage in the city of angels coincided with the T-Dot’s very own riot. Los Angeles was burning.

Yonge Street too. Black youth took to Yonge Street in solidarity with the LA insurgents and to protest against the police brutality that plagued their very own city. The then NDP provincial government commissioned Stephen Lewis (now known for his work around the global AIDS pandemic) to produce a report that investigated the causes of the Yonge Street riot and more broadly, the conditions of racism and alienation which fueled unrest among Toronto’s black youth. In the report, Lewis stated that “What we are dealing with, at root, and fundamentally, is anti-black racism...It is blacks who are being shot, it is black youth that is unemployed in excessive numbers, it is black students who are being inappropriately streamed in schools, it is black kids who are disproportionately dropping out.”

The provincial government acted on a number of recommendations laid out in the Lewis report. But by 1995, the Conservatives controlled Ontario and Mike Harris’ Common Sense Revolution had little time for anti-racism policies.

Fast forward to 2006 and the problems described in the Lewis Report persist. Another Yonge Street incident has prompted another wave of government promises. The shooting death of Jane Creba amongst the bustle of Yonge Street’s Boxing Day sales led Mayor David Miller to announce the Community Safety Plan—this latest initiative mimicking many of the recommendations brought forth in the Lewis Report.

The government reaction to the Boxing Day shootout and the Yonge Street riot tells us something about how the ruling elite determine when to intervene in a social crisis and when to let it fester. When elites feel threatened by social disorder they run for the police, but they also reach for their chequebook and start looking for ways to ease their conscience and ensure the safety of their own backyards.

Governments who claim they are cash-strapped manage to find the resources to put out the social fire; they cough up money to deal with social deprivation because the threat of disorder to the system as a whole becomes very real.

For the poor, this has always been the case. History suggests that disruption is the main political resource of the poor. This argument, put forward by intellectuals Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward in their classic book Poor Peoples Movements (if you haven’t heard of it, check it out) contend that throughout U.S. history, governments acquiesced to the demands of the poor when social order was threatened. The 1960s riots in Detroit, Chicago, and across major U.S. cities pushed the government to introduce new social programs aimed at easing the unrest. This trend is not isolated to the U.S. In

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the early 1980s, riots in the UK cities of London and Liverpool forced a Conservative government to rethink cuts to social spending.

More recently, the black and brown youth of France’s ‘banileus’ (the poor suburbs that ring major French cities) who rioted last year initiated both a police response and a response from the French government which provided an emergency funding package to community services operating in poor neighborhoods and pledged to improve job opportunities and schooling.

This brings us back not only to the streets of the T-Dot but to cities across Canada in which youth struggle with problems of poverty, alienation and racism. Whether its aboriginal youth on the streets of Winnipeg or black youth in the boroughs of Toronto, young people in Canada could come to the realization that sometimes, it takes a riot.

-Simon Black is a writer and PhD student in Political Science at York University.

History suggests that disruption is the main political resource of the poor.

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From top to bottom and left to right: Bacon, Skam, Art Child. Ron and Kane Sight, Giant and Kwest Mediah, Housesick, Elicser, Fathom and Lease august 2006Water, POUNDPest 34 13 Case, Webs, Shadow, Abel, and Duro,

From top to bottom and left to right: Rank, Elicser Matr and Cruz Tchug and Sino 14 POUND 34 august 2006

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handjobs alist

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BABYLON SYSTEM

RIZE OF THE MACHINES by: Christian Pearce

“We live in a world of robots,” Canibus told Pound emphatically.

While ’Bus was talking about being inspired to buy his first pair of Adidas after hearing Run-DMC rap about their kicks-of-choice— just like a hundred-thousand other fans who wanted to be down with the kings—he could, just as easily, have been discussing the American military.

In order to “define [himself ] as something other than just a rapper,” Canibus joined the U.S. Army for a year-and-a-half, and was assigned to the freshly formed Stryker Brigade.

In service since 2001, and manufactured by General Dynamics Land Systems in Alabama, Ohio and Ontario, Strykers are 19-ton, eightwheel-drive armoured vehicles that carry up to nine soldiers and two operators, and are capable of performing numerous battlefield functions, including reconnaissance, troop transportation and/or operating as weapons platforms. “They’re like armed Cadillacs, if you will,” Canibus said.

While the fearless soldier and emcee drove and helped write doctrine for the new vehicles—lighter, faster and more versatile than tanks—the Army made ’Bus a scout who dismounted from the Stryker to gather intelligence, mostly in silence. “They didn’t want me talkin’ about rap music all day in the goddamn vehicle,” he joked. If some people get their way, however, it won’t be long before nobody at all is talking in the U.S. military’s goddamn vehicles.

In April 2006 Army Times reported that the American Army is in the midst of testing driverless versions of the Stryker. At the same time, 40-pound PackBots, manufactured by iRobot, the creator of the commercially available Roomba vacuuming robots, have begun replacing the Army’s human scouts in conflicts including Afghanistan. The push to put PackBots and self-controlled Strykers on the frontlines, displacing the need for hard-charging human beings like Canibus, is but a glimpse into a much broader cultural movement well under way in the American military.

In early 2001 the chair of the American Senate Armed Services Committee, one John Warner, proposed what at the time seemed like a radical, even maniacal, concept: have Congress order the Army and Air Force to develop unmanned vehicles. Budgeting upwards of $200 million to support the idea, Senator Warner held that by 2010 fully one-third of military aircraft should be unmanned, allowing until 2015 for the Army to achieve the same goal in its vehicles. “Every now and then,” the National Journal quoted Warner as saying at the time, “somebody like me has to take out 20 POUND 34 august 2006

Above: swords

their shotgun and fire it into the heavens to get somebody’s attention” At this stage Warner’s vision hardly seems so extreme. America’s 2007 defense budget not only includes a “Preference for joint unmanned systems in acquisition programs for new systems,” the Senate Armed Services Committee has gone as far as to demand that the Pentagon prove why an unmanned system would be unworkable for the same purposes before spending money on the development of any new manned system.

Looking to the future, they’re seein’ robots on some Kool Keith shit.

But by now it ain’t news to the cheddar-hungry high-tech sector. At the behest of the Air Force, Army and Navy, the development and testing of robotic systems is steady cooking at universities and defense companies across the States and Canada, fed by bread broke off the backs of American taxpayers. Already, the Decatur Daily reported in September 2005, at least 3,000 robots are involved in combat between Afghanistan and Iraq, including 22 assorted robotic systems.

With this Babylon System we look closer at a trend in science-non-fiction no less scary than any scenario Hollywood could conjure up on screen.

a.k.a. drones, are helping achieve a previously unimagined level of what U.S. planners call “military omniscience.” Robo-planes and robo-copters, equipped with state-of-the-art cameras, patrol the skies above conflict zones sending vast amounts of visual information back to war conductors safely tucked into bunkers kilometres, sometimes continents, away. “These systems,” said Dyke Weatherington, UAV chief at the Department of Defense (DoD), “[. . .] park over the bad guys, watch them continually, never give them a break.”

Mostly operated by remote control, these intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft range from small UAVs (SUAV) such as the Dragon Eye, essentially a highpowered model airplane, up to the ultimate in UAV technology, the Global Hawk, which runs at an estimated cost of US $35 million per unit.

Manufactured by Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation, the Global Hawk, which was involved in more than 50 missions and flew over 1,000 combat hours during Operation Enduring Freedom, “loiters” in the upper atmosphere surveying large areas of geographic interest with “pinpoint accuracy,” according to the U.S. Air Force. Compared to the little Dragon Eye, which is capable of staying in flight for about an hour, up to an altitude of 300 feet and out

At least 3,000 robots are involved in combat between Afghanistan and Iraq.

EYE SKY To let you know, everything’s under control Under surveillance, takin’ over your soul - Rakim, “Keep ’Em Eager to Listen” off Let the Rhythm Hit ’Em (1990)

While many rappers claim they’ve “seen it all,” they can’t touch the optic intake of some robots. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV),

to a distance of 6.9 km, the Global Hawk can stay in the air for as long as 35 hours, flying at above 65,000 feet (more than twice that of commercial airplanes), with a range of over 19,000 kilometers. “We can provide more intelligence than we have targets,” says Global Hawk liaison, Major Ricky Thomas. The Air Force has even examined the possibility that a Global Hawk might be powered by nuclear energy, allowing it to stay in the air for months

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on end (and turning it into a potential nuclear bomb should it explode in an accident, which several Hawks have).

Police have also taken to UAV technology. In March 2006 U.S. Congress heard testimony from cops who intend to make use of micro-drones in a multitude of situations, from local surveillance to protecting border integ-

these assassinations, a predator piloted

by CIA operatives in America was used to eliminate six terrorists packed into a car in Yemen in November 2002. “This is really the first success story of this system,” a representative of Jane’s Defence Weekly then told Reuters.

When an MQ-1 was used again just inside Pakistan’s border in January 2006, the system

“There’s no place in an urban environment that you can go right now that you’re not being looked at with a video camera and you have nothing to fear from your own government.” rity. June 2006 saw the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) introduce its force to the SkySeer, an SUAV that works off GPS. As Commander Charles Heal of the LASD’s technology exploration project told the BBC, “There’s no place in an urban environment that you can go right now that you’re not being looked at with a video camera and you have nothing to fear from your own government.”

wasn’t quite so successful. A Hellfire intended for Osama bin-Laden’s right hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, killed 22 innocents instead.

Impressed with the overall performance of such systems, the Toronto Star reported in July 2006 that the Canadian Air Force has inked plans to purchase 18 drones at a cost of one-half-billion dollars, for use both at home and abroad. According to the Star, “Troops in

Adding to the Global Hawk, the MQ-1 Predator is a rather more lethal alternative in the UAV world. Also remotely piloted, the medium-range, medium-altitude drone backs up its targeting cameras with two laser-guided Lockheed Martin-built AGM-114 Hellfire antitank missiles. “The MQ-1 is a system,” declare Air Force documents, “not just an aircraft.” Part of that system has been manufactured in Burlington, Ontario, by L-3 Wescam, which scored an Army contract producing the Predator’s electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) cameras.

According to a June 2006 piece in the New Statesman by Durham university professor Steven Graham, MQ-1s have been involved in at least 80 assassination attempts between Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan, where they first saw action. Among the earliest of

Afghanistan say even the distinctive drone of the vehicles passing overhead . . . has been enough to scatter insurgents, who know the drone’s electronic eyes are scanning the terrain.”

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AIBOS ARE LITTLE BITCHES With improvised explosive devices (IEDs) blowing up as undesirably as a lot of rappers on BET, the immediate need for low-risk, bomb-diffusing options has become bloody apparent. Durable little detachments of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) have rolled into battle on mini-tank-treads to help meet that need. In Baghdad, the U.S. military uses robots to deal with explosives approximately 45 times each day.

As opposed to UAVs, which have few if any obstacles to navigate once in flight, the development of UGVs able to deal effectively with diverse terrains and ubiquitous obstructions is a much more complex matter.

Nonetheless, a handful of UGVs have already proven themselves very capable. Foster-Miller’s TALON is one such UGV. Standing in at three feet high and costing about US $230,000, the TALON and its robotic claw can travel at a maximum speed above six kilometres per hour and operate for up to four hours, out to a distance of over a kilometre.

Using its four cameras to project images back to an operator equipped with a 30-pound remote control that features twin joysticks, some simple buttons and a video monitor, the userfriendly RC-robot can be carried in a suitcase and climb stairs.

After the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks, the pride of Foster-Miller was used at Ground Zero in search and recovery operations. Even before that, however, the TALON had been getting props for its usefulness in explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) over in Bosnia. The first robots ordered into war in Afghanistan in 2002, TALONs rolled with special forces on a classified mission, and have since been involved in more than 20,000 EOD missions between Afghanistan and Iraq.

But TALONs ain’t just for EOD anymore.

left to right: mq-1 predator, talon

I’m on a mission that niggaz say is impossible But when I swing my swords they all choppable I be the body dropper, the heartbeat stopper - The Genius/GZA, “Liquid Swords,” off Liquid Swords (1995)

Honoured as one of TIME magazine’s most amazing inventions for 2004, the Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System (SWORDS) is just a TALON with a gun. The result of a research initiative between Foster-Miller and the Army, SWORDS can be outfitted to fire a 12-gauge shotgun, M16 assault rifle, the M249 and M240 machineguns, the Barrett .50-calibre rifle, a 40mm grenade

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launcher or light anti-tank weapons.

SWORDS have even been tested with experimental weapons designed by Metal Storm, Australia’s world record-holding gun maker.

“It eliminates the majority of shooting errors you would have,” Sergeant Santiago Tordillos told the Associated Press of armed TALONs, which reportedly put out bull’s eyes at 2,000 meters in testing. In early 2005, SWORDS also became the world’s first armed robots to be tested in battle, when 18 prototypes joined the Stryker Brigade in Iraq.

LESS BLOOD, MORE KILLING If you envision the robot armies of the future as being like the battalions of homo-droids in wack Will Smith flicks, you’re way off. The robotic warriors of tomorrow will not be created alike. Some will be able to fly at speeds that would drive a human pilot into a state of unconsciousness. Others will run around on four legs like Boston Dynamics’ BigDog, a two-and-a-half-foot robo-mutt that can assist soldiers by carrying 120-pounds of gear. Still others might look like the RoboLobster, which crawls along underwater finding mines. Some will probably look just like ambulances and dump trucks do now. By around 2030, there are hopes to add battle tanks, designed to distinguish innocents from the enemy and annihilate the latter without any human intervention. Even a well-armed “six-legged hunter,” a robo-monster able to chase its targets up mountains, has been imagined.

But while the war-bots will come in many different forms, performing almost as many functions, they will share some basic characteristics. The head of Project Alpha at the U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM), Gordon

Johnson, predicts, “Robots will be more capable than humans. They will be more lethal, more mobile, and more survivable. They will have faster reaction times, and have more and superior sensing capabilities. They don’t have fear, they don’t get hungry, sleepy or tired, and they take humans out of danger.” As a result of these attractive fighting qualities, the USJFCOM anticipates that a fully integrated and networked robot army—an army that would speed through conditions of extreme cold as unconsciously as those of extreme heat; an army relatively undisturbed by nuclear, chemical or biological threats—could be a practical reality as soon as 2025. There is another characteristic of robotic combatants that JFCOM’s Johnson neglected to mention—it is a characteristic worthy of attention.

Just as robots would not be shaken by stress into self-destruction like some soldiers, robots would also experience no emotion in the extermination of human beings. “Part of the process of creating soldiers is disinhibiting people from killing,” John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org said in the January 2006 edition of Popular Science. “Robots have no such inhibition. They will kill without pity.”

“Transformin’ like GoBots, they creatin’ a race of robots Our new rulers are computers, average man know not” - The RZA, “Daily Routine,” off RZA Presents Bobby Digital In Stereo (1998)

You can never totally replace peeps like Canibus. As with his eccentric fit into hip-hop’s million-piece puzzle, the military picture will, for the most part, never be complete without a human finger on the trigger—even if the trigger becomes a button nowhere near the gun.

Although many military planners do dream of Tactical Autonomous Combatants (TACs), robots able to make sophisticated battle-

field decisions without human direction, it’s a technical longshot. Patrolling the streets of a country targeted for neo-colonial exploitation, an autonomous robot encountering a cul-desac might end up circling indefinitely. Human beings won’t soon become obsolete in the theatres of war.

But maintaining the appeal of life in the military is no easy task—especially when more than 2,500 U.S. soldiers have lost theirs on Iraqi soil. “They’re dyin’ every day,” Canibus said gravely of what he calls his blood brothers. “[But] it’s rougher for the families, bro....

The families are fed all sorts of information, half-accurate shit—sometimes it’s better that they don’t know. The censorship is draconian almost, but that’s all part of the machine.”

So while the body count in Iraq doesn’t compare to many conflicts of the century past, the Pentagon is nevertheless fighting a losing battle in the PR war at home. “In my judgment,” Senator John Warner said in 2001, “this country will never again permit the armed forces to be engaged in conflicts which inflict the level of casualties we have seen historically.” With robots replacing human soldiers on the frontlines, there would be fewer posttortured troops forced to feature in terrorist propaganda films, fewer mothers back in America collapsed by the anguish of midnight phone-calls.

Founded by three M.I.T. graduates in 1956 and now owned by QinetiQ, among the many holdings of The Carlyle Group, Foster-Miller claims that one of its TALONs has been blown up in three seperate incidents, but remains “in the fight with new arms, wrists, wiring and cameras.” Not even Canibus is that tough.

And as war becomes more like a video game, the reality of the bloodshed increasingly virtualized, so too is a future in the military more than ever an enticing fit for some young men. Indeed, troops in Iraq were trained to use the RC Dragon Runner, the Dragon Eye’s UGV counterpart, on Sony’s PS2. A project manager, Major Greg Heines, told Wired News, “We modeled the controller after the PlayStation 2 because that’s what these 18-, 19-year-old Marines have been playing with pretty much all of their lives.” What could be more attractive to a young, addicted gamer than controlling multiple heavily armed robots from a sheltered environment with little to worry about but reallife frag figures?

More amazing than the technology itself, however, is the creativity displayed in finding new ways to spend U.S. taxpayer money on weapons. “The military system is a cover for high-tech industry,” M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky told Pound. “The system is, in effect, a huge public subsidy for private profit. The public pays the costs and takes the risks, and private corporations take the profit. That’s the basis of our whole economic system.” ___________________ Sources: Toronto Star 07/06, CNN Money 07/06, New Statesman 06/06, National Defense Magazine 06/06, BBC 06/06, SpaceWar.com 06/06, DefenseTech.org 05/06, ArmyTimes.com 04/06, CNet News 03/06, Popular Science 01/06, Common Dreams 01/06, DefenseReview.com 12/05, Decatur Daily 09/05, Daily Telegraph 02/05, Washington Times 01/05, M.I.T. Technology Review (AP) 01/05, New Scientist 02/03, Knight Ridder 02/03, JFCOM.mil 2003, Guardian 11/02, Wired News 05/02, UAV Forum 2001, Canadian Corporate News 02/99, Foster-Miller.com, AF.mil, Global Security.org, icasualties.org, FAS.org

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Ain’t no investing or none of that.

Man, I definitely wasn’t hearing investing at the time.

You’ve said repeatedly that your music is just a gateway to do bigger and better things.

What are some of your ultimate goals?

Oh, I love—I’m a movie buff, to the tenth power. So I aspire to do some acting, get into that. And I know that it’s a cliché thing for a rapper to do, it seems like, these days, but you know, this stems back from childhood. I’d see people on the screen and always want to be BY andrea woo there, because I feel like, in theatre, you can be anyone you wanna be, go anywhere you wanna go. That’s a big thing for me.

Bobby Creekwater

southern smoke

Bobby Creekwater’s debut comes at an appropriate time. While the South has again found itself the target of criticism from East-coast boom-bap purists who swear that southern hip-hop is nothing more than mindless rhyming, Atlanta-born Antoine Rogers is gearing up below the Mason-Dixon to defend his territory.

Though Creek signed to Eminem’s Shady Records last year, he has yet to drop an album on the label, For this reason he’s mostly known for past projects like, “Dirty Water,” a 12” that he and partner Charlie Hustle—who together form the group Jatis—dropped on Loud Records, and his impressive Anthem to the Streets mix tape.

Creek’s voice has often been likened to Andre 3000’s, and while that’s hardly a comparison one can complain about, it must be said that Creek’s style is all his own.

What other projects you got lined up right now?

We have the Jatis album. My partner, my other half, Charlie Hustle, me and him workin’ on that. And we got a crew album, a compilation.

My crew is BGOV; that’s the Black Government.

We workin’ on that. And then we got the Shady Re-Up [mix tape]; we workin’ on that. Got a couple albums lined up.

Tell me a bit more about the Black Government.

The Black Government consists of a crew of new producers, a crew of new artists. We came up with the name, basically saying we wanted to be the trendsetters in the industry and make the rules the way the government did in society. So, we called ourselves the Government. Then, eventually, it became the Black Government because it had a nice ring to it. [Laughs]

You have a one-year-old daughter. With all the work you’ve been putting into the music, has that taken a toll on your personal life?

I mean, it’s a difficult thing, but I’ve been sacrificing for a while, because this is not a dream that I just had one day. This is something that’s been around for a while, that I’ve been pursuing for a while, so I’m well aware of the sacrifices you have to make when you’re pursuing a dream. So, I made my peace with it.

If hip-hop was a woman, what would she look like?

Aw, man. She would be a B-student. You know, not perfect at everything, you know what I’m saying, but good enough at everything. So she would be, like, a B. She would cook good enough, she would clean good enough. She wouldn’t necessarily be perfect, because hiphop is not perfect, but it does the job.

But what would she look like?

She would be beautiful, in a subtle type of way. You know, like them old-school school teachers who didn’t need all that makeup on, or they didn’t have to have on a red dress or what have you. Nah. She has a natural beauty, a subtlety that you can’t quite explain.

What do you think it takes to go from being a dope unsigned artist, flying completely under

My first big paycheck came from Loud Records. What did I do with it?

You know what? I spent it so fast I don’t even remember what I did with it. I could have bought a hundred pair of shoes, or something like that.

But, uh, I went crazy. Let me just say that. [Laughs] You’re young, you get a big check, you’re all over the place.

Anthem to the Streets II is expected to drop this month, and the Creek camp is aiming for a February 2007 release for his Shady debut, A Brilliant Mistake.

What can people expect from A Brilliant Mistake?

They can expect a melting pot. Everything from a gospel feel to a hip-hop feel to a rock feel, all in one. [I’m] experimenting, having fun with the music. They can expect big class music, on some of that five-mic shit.

Are there any featured artists or producers on it that you want to mention?

To begin the album, we did a lot of in-house.

We have Triangle Offense, which is an up-andcoming production team. That’s my production team. It consists of me, Dre Ellis and Count Justice. Of course [Eminem], of course I’m sitting down with Dr. Dre. And then I’m going in with Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas, so it should be very tight.

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the radar, to being a commercial success?

I think it takes work ethic and consistency. You have to have a crazy work ethic, you know.

I stayed on it. Em, he’s on it all the time. 50 [Cent], he’s in the studio day in, day out. Just being consistent, you know. Always stayin’ with it.

What’s the difference between Bobby Creekwater and Antoine Rogers?

Antoine Rogers, he’s more of a subtle individual. He’s more laid-back, a little bit more quiet.

Bobby Creekwater, I’d say he’s a little bit more arrogant, forward. You know. He likes attention a little bit more than Antoine does.

Where did you get your first big paycheque from, and what did you do with it?

My first big paycheque came from Loud Records. What did I do with it? You know what? I spent it so fast I don’t even remember what I did with it. I could have bought a hundred pair of shoes, or something like that. But, uh, I went crazy. Let me just say that. [Laughs] You’re young, you get a big cheque, you’re all over the place.

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PSALM ONE

MISS ILL

Go watch Lifetime, get inspired by strong women You ain’t fly, you ain’t soarin’, you the wrong pigeon - Psalm One, “Rapper Girls,” off The Death of Frequent Flyer (2006)

BY Christian Pearce My grandma once warned me about women.

“They’re powerful, manipulative bitches!” she declared, the suffering of her sons never far from her mind. My grandmother was talking about women at their worst.

At their best, women force men to step up our respective game. They also know just how and when to calm or kindle, cooling us down and heating us up at the precise moments. Blowing in from the city of Chi, pyro-lyrical Psalm One represents women at their best.

A native of Chi-town’s Southside, Psalm One has been in the lab for more than a minute, perfecting a formula for verbal spray that should have backpackers wrestling each other in record store aisles like chicks in Axe commercials. The object of their attraction?

Psalm’s sophomore submission, The Death of Frequent Flyer, a fourteen-track follow-up to her fresh-women project, 2002’s Bio:Chemistry, recorded and released while she studied—you guessed it—chemistry at the University of Illinois. Asked what she would be doing if not for her now “bohemian” commitment to a career in rap, the Fighting Illini alum answers, “I’d probably still be dealin’ with chemistry. I was a food chemist, but I probably would go back to school and do my dream chemistry job, which is perfume chemistry, fragrance chemistry.”

“What perfume are you wearing these days?”

I ask tangentially.

“I’m not wearing much right now,” Psalm said, “’cause it’s hot as hell, and I don’t want to attract too many bugs, so I usually just use a little bit of body spray and keep it movin’.”

According to Psalm One, the Second City’s finest are often forced to find a second home, keeping it moving due to the lack of a local infrastructure able to develop the area’s apparently deep pool of talent. “There’s no major label presence,” she explained, “therefore on a business aspect and technically gettin’ shit done and gettin’ that exposure and knowin’ who to call, Chicago doesn’t really know, you know? So that’s why a lot of people leave, because there’s sort of a glass ceiling on where you can go, on just a factual professional level, because we’re not even like Atlanta that has a So So Def.”

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Her style less J.D. than indie, Psalm One seems a perfect fit with the Rhymesayers, the diamond mine of underground talent based in Minnesota. She disagrees that the imprint fails to get the attention it deserves. “Well, Rhymesayers has kinda turned down a lot of major labels too, so it’s almost as if the label knows what it’s doin’. And as far as national exposure on a really big indie level and a national level, it’s there.”

“And what do you think drew you to Rhymesayers’ attention?”

“Um, I sent them a bunch of naked flicks on MySpace and they responded,” Psalm kids, amused by a question that needn’t be asked by anyone who’s heard Frequent Flyer. “I think they liked that they would see me everywhere.

They’d see me places, and see me grindin’, just through shows.” Her friendship with now fellow Rhymesayer Brother Ali also helped, she adds.

The Rhymesayers website describes Psalm One as “A cross between Lauryn Hill and Devin the Dude.” It’s an analogy that might work as well with respect to the mic as to life at large. “I think it might be a little close,” she says, humbled and humoured. “The Devin the Dude/Lauryn Hill combo is pretty funny to me.

That probably works a little bit.”

“What does the Devin the Dude part reflect?”

I ask of the comparison to the rap king of R and B. “Well, I like sex and drugs, sometimes, in moderation. Drugs meaning, of course, like the kind of high you get off life, like life is a drug for me,” Psalm laughs, at once truthful and elusive. Her MySpace portal calls her a “Shot of Whiskey,” a description proffered by Quizilla’s comically unscientific “What Type of Alcoholic Beverage Are You?” online test (I’m a pint of Guinness, btw). “It would either be a shot of whiskey or a lot of vodka,” Psalm tells me. “Because I can down a lot of vodka, but a shot of whiskey really turns me into another person.”

Psalm One’s unmistakable flow is much easier to swallow than a shot of whiskey, though no less powerful. L-Boogie isn’t only the greatest female emcee ever to grace the studio—she

is arguably the greatest rapper ever, period.

Psalm similarly holds more than her own booth-wise. As for those women who broke the most ground for her gender in hip-hop, Psalm says, “It’s kinda a toss-up for me between Saltn-Pepa and Lauryn Hill. ’Cause Salt-n-Pepa they were like the first group to do some platinum numbers and really tour and do some big things, have some big hits. But Lauryn Hill kinda taught me that you cannot only be in a crew with dudes, you can be the best one.”

“Who do you think set female emcees the furthest back?”

“Hahaha, you really askin’ me that? I mean, there are a lot of chicks that have no business doin’ what they’re doin’. Hmmm, Jackie O wasn’t really that dope to me, I thought she was really settin’ us back. I didn’t think little girls should’ve been hearin’ that song, that ‘My Nookie’ song. There wasn’t something I heard that bad in a long time.”

Psalm One’s new album is one of the best things I’ve heard in a long time. The culmination of four years of work, years that saw Psalm work her way through “the post-college sort of mid-life crisis type of thing” and the end of a long-term relationship, Frequent Flyer is a triumph, from the opening title track, to the delicious “Macaroni & Cheese,” to the introspective send-off “Rest In Peace.”

“The album is real funky, accelerated potential,” Psalm says. “I think I’m still realizing it, and, um, it’s definitely very cohesive, very dope, it’s dirty. It’s got a lot of different beats on it so you feel a lot of different sides of me and definitely see how well I can spit. I’m showin’ off a lot. And it’s a fun album, and it’s very inspired, and I think you can hear it.”

You can check out Psalm One live and on stage when she tours Canada with Atmosphere in September. “It should just be a good-ol’ all-American good time,” she concludes.

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Lupe Fiasco

Too Much Information

By Luke Fox “I want people that put fear in my heart, that scare me,” says Kanye West, regarding his decision to put a little-known rapper named Lupe Fiasco on his “Touch the Sky” single.

Fiasco spat a freestyle over the “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” beat that frightened the producer into rhyming alongside his fellow Chicagoan. “Lupe is so ill that me and Jay had to tell him to hold back a little, don’t give ’em too much information.”

In two separate conversations with Pound [See sidebar], the new fly guy with glasses (word to Extra P) doles out information like an Ivy League professor.

Two nights ago, Jay-Z was asked in an interview to name one person who was moving the game forward, and he named you. He said you’re making the most creative hip-hop music right now. How does a compliment like that make you feel?

Well, I’ve been hearing that from Jay for years.

So for him to say it publicly, it really doesn’t sway me in any direction. He’s been saying that for years. It’s good, it’s good. I look at it like, I hope it pushes [my album] a bit more.

I’ve been hearing that for so long from him, so it’s like, Oh, OK.

of time when jazz was big, in the ’20s and ’30s.

So I’m just a fan of that whole movement more than I am of hip-hop. I sit down and study hiphop, I do hip-hop, I did that whole experience in high school, but jazz always reigns supreme.

When I leave a show—leave one of my shows, leave somebody else’s show—I ask my driver to turn on some jazz, and I jazz my way all the way home. Not that it’s musically superior or anything like that, but in a lot of instances it is.

It just has more depth to me.

Did you ever pick up any instruments?

Inspired by Benny Goodman, I tried to play the clarinet at one point, and it was a complete disaster.

When did you discover that you had a knack for putting words together?

I always used to write stories. As a little kid, I used to tell stories to my friends in grade school. I remember we used to go on field trips, and my friends would want me to tell them stories, so I would tell them stories.

They weren’t rhyming or nothing like that, just stories. So I always had this knack to put words together. I’m a horrible mathematician, but I always was good with words. I can shape words and change words, make them do dif-

I’m getting all these rewards prior to having an album out. These are the things you would normally look forward to after an album comes out, so to get all that stuff before, you just be like, Oh, OK, so what am I gonna do when the album comes out? I’m already doing it. If you compare my situation to this rapper or that rapper, it’s like, ah, man, I’m straight.

What’s the significance of 1st and 15th and Fifteenth?

First and fifteenth is the days of the month that people get their welfare cheques.

Why did you take that name for your company?

Because it represents the struggle. I was one of those kids who, on the first and fifteenth, got a big ol’ stack of brown stamps and was excited: “Yeah! We goin’ shopping and gettin’ some clothes!” It was like a ghetto holiday.

Even to this day, you’ll have people like, “I can’t wait till the first, ’cause on the first I’m-a get some shoes.”

When you were on welfare as a kid, did you always feel like that situation was only temporary?

I didn’t really care about material stuff like that. It really had no bearing on me because I was too young to understand really what the world was about or what was going on. So for me, it was like, “Oh, more candy! Yay, candy!” I didn’t get materialistic until high school, when it really became important and people actually started talking about you because you had on certain things.

Your flow is casual and conversational, but

“I’m a horrible mathematician, but I always was good with words. I can shape words and change words, make them do different things, say them in different ways. So I took that aesthetic to hip-hop when I started writing my own rhymes. I guess I was just good at it.

My friends had this epiphany one day: They just looked at me like, “Yo, you’re good.” I was like, “You know what? I think I am. Am I? I’m good?”

When was the first time you met him?

I met Jay in 2001. I was actually supposed to sign to Roc-A-Fella. It was a situation where I didn’t sign because I had my own company [First and Fifteenth]. And he actually came on as executive producer [of my album] in 2003, and the first comment he made was in The Source. So my first piece of publicity was a co-signature from Jay-Z. You’ve been quoted as saying that you love jazz more than hip-hop. How come?

Jazz has more depth in certain areas. The fact that it’s not a talking music—and I’m talking about instrumental jazz as opposed to jazz singing. I grew up listening to jazz. I didn’t grow up listening to hip-hop. I actually grew up listening to classical music and rock ’n’ roll and stuff. I became a fan of hip-hop in eighth grade, so I had a whole experience of being a little kid, all the way up to adolescence and preteen, listening to jazz, being a fan of jazz.

Billie Holliday, Cab Calloway, Miles Davis. It just has more of an appeal to me. I love the period

ferent things, say them in different ways. So I took that aesthetic to hip-hop when I started writing my own rhymes. I guess I was just good at it. My friends had this epiphany one day: They just looked at me like, “Yo, you’re good.”

I was like, “You know what? I think I am. Am I? I’m good?” That was like mid-high school, maybe junior year.

After seven years of rapping, your debut album gets leaked. Granted, you have mixtapes, but you still haven’t released a proper project. Do you get frustrated?

No. Everything happens for a reason; everything has a space in time. And now it’s to the point where it doesn’t even matter. If the album never comes out, I’ll still be comfortable and happy because I’ve done so much in the music industry. I’ve won a Grammy. I had the whole phase when I was flooded in diamonds.

Everything that comes with being a rapper, or being in the music business, to a certain extent I’ve had—and gave away or lost. I got my own shoe before my album came out. So

lyrically there’s a lot of intricate wordplay going on. Do people underestimate your skills because you don’t use an in-your-face approach?

That’s the point, though. That’s part of my whole thing. I love jazz because it’s simple as far as what it takes to make it. A trio—a piano, a drum and bass—is just three instruments.

But the soundscapes they create with these three instruments is so complex and has so much depth and so many different levels and layers… I love that. I love that simple complexity. So I love when, on the outside, my records are just a whitewash of simpleness, where people be like, “Ah, he ain’t talkin’ about nothing.” Then they’ll hear a metaphor, and there’s five different meanings to that one metaphor.

I have kids now that break down lyrics from records that I wrote four years ago, on the website forums. One kid will put what he thinks one line means, and then somebody will come behind him and say, “Yeah, but it also means this…” and somebody will come behind like, “Oh, well, it also means this…” and that’s just august 2006 POUND 34 31

“I love being unassuming and underestimated. That was one of my rap names; one of my old rap names was Lyrical Underdog. I love being the underdog, looked over, behind the scenes, then I come break yo’ ass.”

lines, and it’s six minutes long. I love that. I love being unassuming and underestimated. That was one of my rap names; one of my old rap names was Lyrical Underdog. I love being the underdog, looked over, behind the scenes, then I come break yo’ ass.

How much time do you invest in one verse?

Sometimes it takes all day; sometimes it’s off the cuff. It depends on how I feel. You heard of the movie The Last Dragon? Remember how they had “The Glow?” I have these moments where it’s like a warmth comes over me, and it’s just easy. If I try to write a rap and I feel cold, it might take more time. It’s really weird. I have this warm adrenaline rush that I get—but it’s not like active, wildin’ out; it’s like, in my mind, the synapses are firing at a million times a second, and it just comes easy. But sometimes, on purpose, because you learn something new every day, I’ll write half a verse and then wait a whole day until I learn something new. Then go back and put what I learned that day into that verse. You always see something different when you step back and come back to it. So sometimes I take a long time to write, even two days for one verse. Even though I could do it 10 seconds.

Explain the line “Money talks in another kind of slang.”

The [preceding] line is “I bumped into a bum and covered mine in shame—I tucked my chain in,” which I really did. I remember walking down the street and I had on all my chains and shit, and I tucked ’em in ’cause I seen this homeless person and I felt ashamed. And then the contradiction and the duality of it was, later on that day, I seen some girls, and I took my chain out to impress the girls. So, it’s kinda that duality of money—and diamonds represent money, of course. Money can mean two different things; it’s strange. It’s not just like you pay for things with it and that’s it. It has different voices when it talks.

NO-SHOW: lupe limps live

By Andrea Woo

There were a number of reasons why Matt Dowell wanted to see Lupe Fiasco perform. For one thing, the Californian and his friends were feeling Lupe’s series of Fahrenheit 1/15 mix tapes, as well as the leak of his then-unreleased album, Food & Liquor. “I also wanted to go because Lupe always came off like a real cool, appreciative type of dude, even with the major buzz around him,” adds the 26-year-old marketing analyst. “Someone who deserves some support.”

So in late May, when Lupe hit San Francisco on the western leg of his promotional tour, Dowell and his friends headed out. Though doors opened at nine and the Chicago emcee didn’t take the stage until half-past-midnight— a smidgen late even by rap show standards—Dowell says the crowd of roughly 200 was hype.

After the obligatory greetings and plugs for his label, 1st and 15th, Lupe launched into his verse from Kanye West’s “Touch the Sky.” This was followed by “Conflict Diamonds”—his take on Kanye’s “Diamonds from Sierra Leone”—and then “Kick Push,” arguably his most wellknown song to date.

Others agree. “Lupe was only onstage for a total of 15 minutes, at most,” says Steve K., who drove two hours from Sacramento to see the show. “I was pretty fucked up when I was leaving the place, but it seemed like the consensus from everyone I walked by was, ‘What the fuck did we just pay for?’”

While some might attribute Lupe’s short performance to a case of premature superstar syndrome, that’s not quite it. Rather, the man that Vibe called “potentially the leader of rap’s new school” feels he has already conquered enough of rap’s rugged terrain. Instead of pursuing higher plateaus, the 24year old would rather change course.

“I’m more focused on my design, and the fashion stuff that I be doing, than

“I just do hip-hop now just to do it. It’s like my love, now, is somewhere else. Not really fully on, but the music business of hip-hop? I lost the love for that a long time ago.”

“Everyone went ape shit,” recalls Dowell. “The [“Kick Push”] beat went off and on, off and on, and he was teasing the crowd with it. People were getting more juiced before he fully went into the song, and then everyone was singing along. This is when I thought we were gonna be in for a hell of a show.”

I am into hip-hop,” says the man born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco. “I just do hip-hop now just to do it. It’s like my love, now, is somewhere else. Not really fully on, but the music business of hip-hop? I lost the love for that a long time ago. But I still write, and the whole thing, just to entertain myself.

Now, it’s more the fashion and stuff.”

After the fourth song of the night—“Tilted,” over the beat to Crucial Conflict’s “Hay”—Lupe did something that the crowd most likely did not expect; with a “Thanks, San Francisco,” and a requisite “Peace,” the man Dowell now dubs Lupe Fleeasco walked off the stage.

He is referring primarily to Righteous Kung Fu, the streetwear and design company that he owns. Aside from that, Lupe also recently signed a deal with Reebok to design his own shoe and even got an offer to design snowboards. It is in these ventures where his heart lies nowadays, despite finding enviable success as what MTV called a “lyrical prodigy.”

“Everyone just stood there for about two minutes or so, then the lights came on,” says Dowell. “Everyone was like ‘Huh? Guess it’s done,’ and just turned around and walked out. It was almost surreal.”

“I don’t really rock with hip-hop too much, even though I do it and I’ve been a fan of it,” he continues. “I’ve been in it for so long—I’ve been in it half my life—so now, it’s just kind of like, whatever.”

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rhymefest

brand new blues

BY LUKE FOX

You say he’s just a battle rapper. Yeah, well, he did defeat Eminem in a freestyle contest.

You say he’s nothing more than Kanye West’s ghostwriter. Uh, he won a Grammy for writing “Jesus Walks,” You say there’s not enough room in this game for another dues-paying Chicago rap cat with everyman appeal—Common, Kanye, Lupe, Twista… I think that lane is filled.

But as the charismatic emcee takes the cassette recorder from a reporter’s hand and holds it to his lips, you realize that Rhymefest has a lung full of demons and wisdom to breathe into the microphone. The blues are alive and kicking in 2006. The DJ’s crates are rammed full of hard, honest truths. Feel free to dance to the pain.

What do you love most about hip-hop?

What I love most about hip-hop in its purest form is the fact that it’s honest, it’s dangerous, it’s fun, it has every human emotion you could possibly have. Before we had people rapping, to me, rap was defined as the blues.

was known in the battle circuit, people are surprised when they hear me kick concepts.

I’m not really a battle rapper. That was kind of a trick I pulled on everybody because I’m charismatic. I’m not this technical guy, lyrically.

I’m more of a feeling. So, “Devil’s Pie,” those lyrics come more naturally to me. When you hear my records, you don’t hear me like, “I’m the best MC…” You don’t hear a lot of that. A lot of people are surprised that they don’t hear that. I’m more of a spirit, I’m more of a soul, so when you hear my lyrics, that’s probably what you’re gonna hear more of. That’s music. I’m a musician. And the battling is something I did to help improve myself as a performer, as an on-the-spot type of guy. If the mic cuts out or if somebody’s heckling me, I know how to deal with those things. But when you hear me say [starts rapping]: Times is hard/ Life is hard/ I lost my job/ Baby, oh my God/ My wife is nauseous, she pregnant as hell/ My mistress on the cell sayin’ she gon’ tell/ My uncle in a cell sayin’ he want bail/ My grandfather can’t see, sayin’ he need Braille/ I’m fightin’ for strength/

“I detest when people glorify selling dope. This is why I beg of Canadian young people, stop buying into the bullshit that you see on TV as to what the ’hood is and going around putting grills in your mouth. That is the equivalent of blackface to me.”

They talked about their community, they talked about love loss, they talked about issues. The blues singers didn’t always sing well, but it was so soulful, and it was always raw. And that was rap to me before what we know as rap. And that’s just one element of hip-hop. But what I love about rap now—the blues revisited—is that it talks about everything. Not just love loss, not just painful times, but good times and it talks about having love. It evolved and expanded. And then when you see the art of breakdancing—everybody can’t do that, dude.

Everybody can’t spin on their head. And when you talk about the art of DJing—that’s a whole new instrument and technique that was created. Hip-hop, in its purest form, is the most innovative art in centuries.

You mention the blues. The lyrics on your song “Devil’s Pie” are bluesy yet the music is upbeat. Was that juxtaposition intentional?

Definitely. That’s what I view hip-hop as.

Because my name is Rhymefest, because I 34 POUND 34 august 2006

In the street, grindin’ for cents/ I’m ahead of my time but behind on my rent/ I ask Kanye for money just to pay off my gas bill/ He ask me for it back, nigga, brush up on your math skills/ Nothing plus zip equals zero/ He can’t relate, that nigga ain’t been broke since “H to

august 2006 POUND 34 35

the Izzo”… That’s blues! You could take those same lyrics and say, “B.B. King, sing this,” and it would be great! That’s hip-hop.

Is it a true story that you met your dad when he was in a cell?

No. It’s not a true story for me, per se, but it’s a true story for a lot of black men, a true story for urban white young men, a lot of Latinos.

It’s a true story because it’s symbolic of where our fathers are. It’s symbolic of where we are when our kids are looking for us. That’s a true story. It’s not my story, because I met my father three times and never saw him again. I looked for him when I had my son. I thought maybe he could be a grandfather even if he couldn’t be a father. I was prepared to forgive and have

same fathers, and that’s why we in the same position.”

How did your father’s absence affect your relationship with your mother?

My birthday is July 6; hers is July 5. The day before she had me she turned 16.

Is that line about your mother trying to abort you true?

That’s true. You listen to the lyrics. Oh, man.

Why don’t people just listen to the beats anymore? Uh… the chorus is good! But, yeah, my grandparents, from what I told, when my mother got pregnant at 15, no one wants their 15-year-old daughter having a baby. So my grandparents took her around to three differ-

into it, and they’re not able to distinguish the reality from the entertainment. So I beg of you not to follow these false leaders, these false teachers, these false gangsters. ’Cause these dudes don’t live in the ’hood. These dudes ain’t helping the kids. These dudes ain’t about what they sayin’ they about. But they got you out there doing it. They getting killed over it, they getting beat up, they getting arrested over it.

Man… we say, “It’s all about that money, baby.

You gotta get that money, baby. Get yo’ hustle on. It’s about me and mine; I don’t give a fuck about anybody else.” But if that’s true, then it will come back to haunt you. Because when everybody else is dead from the death that you put out there, who do you think is next?

“I got into Orthodox Islam, which served my spirit better, because I’m not very nationalistic. I believe that black people do need to heal, but I believe at this point in the world, all people need to heal. Canada is in Iraq, too, and shouldn’t be there. There are poor white people, poor Latino people, poor black people that are fighting just to be citizens in parts of the country that were originally theirs. We all need healing, and Islam healed me.” mercy upon him for not being in my life. Even though I know what young men without fathers become, God had mercy on me that I wasn’t that. So I had to have mercy upon him because I was spared. So I went looking for him and found him in a drug rehabilitation centre.

He didn’t even know who I was. He didn’t even remember me.

He didn’t remember that he had fathered a child?

He didn’t remember that he had a son. He was out of his mind. I remember we had three encounters, and on one of the encounters, I stayed with him for two weeks, when I was 10.

But then, when I was 22, he didn’t know who I was. And it’s kinda like, you know, I felt sorry for him. I wasn’t upset.

You weren’t sorry for yourself anymore.

Hell, no! I was past that. When you’re prepared to forgive somebody, you’ve gotten past whatever your thing is. There was times I wanted to punch him. I said, “If I see him, I’m gonna punch him.” But it would’ve been like beating up on a puppy. It was sad. So my thing is, when I talk about the first time I met my dad is through a wire, through a phone, even if you look at that symbolically as when I visited him that he didn’t know who I was, there was a barrier. I was still his son, though. So I looked at him, said what’s up to him. He didn’t know me, and I walked away as quietly as I came in. It was like nothing ever happened. [voice quivers] And you know what the crazy thing is? I could have brothers and sisters out here and never know who they are, and they don’t know who I am. The crazy thing is, when I was running with gangs for a little while when I was a shorty, I used to think, “They don’t know who their fathers are either. We could all have the 36 POUND 34 august 2006

ent places and tried to get me aborted. They didn’t know how great I’d be. But, you know, I don’t blame them. You have to see the pretty eyes to understand. Tried to take me to three different places to have me aborted, and then they flew her to California because no one would do it. They said she was too late in the pregnancy. So they flew her to California to do it, and they wouldn’t do it. So my mother had me, and we grew up together. And when I say that, I mean every mistake she made as a young girl, her child felt the effects of that.

Every mistake I made, she was learning. How do you tell a 20-year-old how to raise an eightyear-old? A boy? A boy! They don’t know. We grew up together.

Did you live with your grandparents or alone with your mother?

Half and half. Some years I’d stay with my grandparents, some years I’d stay with my mom. She went through a thing with abusive boyfriends and drug addiction herself. This is why, in my raps, I detest when people glorify selling dope. This is why I beg of Canadian young people, stop buying into the bullshit that you see on TV as to what the ’hood is and going around putting grills in your mouth.

That is the equivalent of blackface to me.

Like when they used to paint on the big lips.

Now we are caricatures of ourselves. I look at some of this shit, and I’m like, “Is this a skit?

Is this an In Living Color skit? Is this real? Is he being for real?” But young kids are buying

You mention the Gangster Disciples on your record. How close were you to falling into gang life?

Chicago gang life is part of community life.

Organized gangs is a way of life. I’m not saying what’s right or wrong; I’m saying the glorification of it is wrong, because it’s not as organized as it should be to help the community. It tears down the community when we shooting each other, when we selling each other drugs. When we are not going to school and getting ourselves educated, that tears down the community. And if it tears down the community, I’m against it. I don’t care what the circumstances are that led you there. We have free will and choice. And, generally, when you’re doing wrong, you know you’re doing wrong. And when you’re doing wrong, you’ll be held accountable for that wrong that you know you did. So, gang life was a very big part of me growing up. I almost got sucked into it, but by the grace of God, I was saved from it.

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© 2006 51 Minds Entertainment LLC. All Rights Reserved. VH1 and all related titles and logos are trademarks of MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International Inc. TM, ® & Copyright © 2006 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

What saved you from it?

I believe it was Islam. I’m a Muslim, a converted Muslim. I’m not with the Nation of Islam; I’m more orthodox Islam. But in Chicago, the suited guys with the Final Call newspaper, the Nation of Islam (NOI), the Farrakhan guys, were everywhere. And I would see them standing up straight with suits on, with their children and their wives, and I was like, “That’s a man.” See, I never saw a man in the community. I saw the dope dealer, the pimp, the hustler, the alcoholic, the old crazy dude, but I never saw a man. When I saw him standing up, shining, had his suit on, had his family, I said, “He looks comfortable. I wanna be like him.”

So I went and started listening to what they had to say and what made them that way. And to the contrary of belief—a lot of people think Nation of Islam is anti-white—what I heard them say was mostly challenging black people. Saying stuff like, the gangs need to be beheaded for killing their own people and their own minds. [NOI] was saying that the things I was thinking about getting into would make me a traitor, would make me the sellout. Not so much the dude on a corporate level, but me in the community, killing the community, would make me the Uncle Tom. I never thought like that before. But Nation of Islam didn’t serve as much of a spiritual fulfillment to me, so I got into orthodox Islam, which served my spirit better, because I’m not very nationalistic. I believe that black people do need to heal, but I believe at this point in the world, all people need to heal. Canada is in Iraq, too, and shouldn’t be there. There are poor white people, poor Latino people, poor black people that are fighting just to be citizens in parts of the country that were originally theirs. We all need healing, and Islam healed me.

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THE ROOTS

Answer in the Form of a ?uestion Enter a world where The Roots go shopping on 9/11, Talib Kweli gets fed Common’s leftovers, Jay-Z does a spot-on Peter Griffin impersonation, and a Japanese kid joins a New Orleans brass band that needs more cowbell.

By Luke Fox Photography: Dan Bergeron Ahmir Khalib Thompson never met a question he didn’t like. Salad chef at Horatio Sanz’s house may be the only job easier than interviewing The Roots drummer/bandleader/spokesman, he of the Soul Survivor Afro and Motorola TV commercial. Thompson is better known as ?uestlove, an alias that makes a world of sense when a half-hour interview stretches past 60 minutes and nary a dent has been made in the reporter’s list of queries.

Clad in baggy blue jeans and a baby-blue vintage Prince T-shirt, his iTunes playing his band’s new LP, Game Theory, on repeat, ?uestlove gorges on the mini bar’s smoked almonds and an afternoon of rap chat with equal fervour. Four Q&As are on the slate; all four run late.

Tariq Trotter, a.k.a. Roots emcee Black Thought—the one who does all the vocals on-record and on-stage but little otherwise—will not speak to the media today. But after picking the brain of the dude with a pick in his brain, one wonders if Thought is trying to avoid the press or if he’s just doing his friend a favour. Here’s the theory: ?uestlove sustains himself on question marks. He gobbles them up like Pac-Man power pellets, chugs them like protein shakes. They fuel him, fortify him, focus him. Straight up and down, he’s on some Alex Trebek shit.

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There’s moments of The Roots’ new record that sound inspired by the Bomb Squad. The album is noisy, dark, angry and yet funky throughout. Why did Game Theory take on such a dark feel?

Coincidence. The story of it started in May [2005]. The main thing was, “Do we want to give Geffen another record, in light of the fact that they’re not the Geffen that we were on back in 1993?” Messed around a little bit, nothing major. Then we came up with an idea: Why don’t we just ask Jimmy Iovine to let us go? It’s not like he’s gonna miss us. He still has U2, still has Gwen Stefani, still has 50, still has Em, still has Lloyd Banks, still has Buck, still has Sting, still has the Black Eyed Peas, still has Ashlee Simpson… he has ’em all. He ain’t gonna miss us. We’ll sneak out the back door. Surprisingly, he agreed, but the paperwork takes three months, and since it took three months, they stopped our budget. So for the first time in my career, I didn’t have the luxury of going to Electric Lady, like, “Bill it to me.” The studio says, “No, you need a PO. Call the label.” The label’s like, “You’re not on the label no more.” Call Def Jam: “You guys ain’t signed to us yet.” So it’s like, fuck, we’re homeless.

So, a lot of these songs were done on our makeshift, garageband-like setup. Necessity is the mother of invention. It was like guerilla songwriting. Even some of the speakers didn’t work in the studio; it was all right speakers. Having that environment, it’s a little different when you don’t have a luxury couch and a fish tank and a plasma screen and great mics and my choice of five drum sets: “I don’t like this one, Artie. Set that one up.” It was an abrupt halt. What the fuck do we do? We’re trying to make an album out my small-ass closet of a mixing studio. I’m actually glad that we did it, because that makes you work harder, when you don’t have necessities.

Not to mention, we were flirting with doing a New Orleans record—pre-Katrina. There’s a brass band that we were working with called To Be Continued, and three weeks before Katrina, we met these little boys that are some of the baddest brass cats I’ve known.

Actually, they’re so good, an heir to multimillions—this kid from Japan, he doesn’t even speak English—he’s on vacation with his parents in New Orleans, sees this band on the street corner, tells his parents, “I want to join them.” Of course, they said, “No. You’re crazy.” He actually ran away, and he’s secretly funding them. He plays the cowbell.

Doesn’t even have great rhythm. OK? Seventeen black kids in the brass band, and this one Japanese kid who doesn’t even speak English. You ever watch Arrested Development? Remember Annyong?

He’s like an Annyong character—totally sticking out. But that’s how dope they are. They were so incredible, Tom Hanks walked up and put $4,000 cash inside their bucket. They reminded me of us.

So, we were gonna do the Brass Record. It was an angle. It wasn’t the Graceland record, us going to South America or Africa, but I figured, brass? That’s gonna be a challenge. A whole brass album: how we gonna make this shit work? And then Katrina happened three weeks later, and it totally fell apart. The [brass band] got separated, some of them lost their families, we didn’t know what to do. And then, on top of that, because Tariq’s children live in New Orleans, that put a change in him. Literally, the first few days, he didn’t know where they were or anything. He assumed they all went to Houston. And then it’s like, well, how do they survive? New house, new school… that’s something that doesn’t change. So, the idea of us being homeless and the New Orleans situation really caused the climate of where we were with this record. In my head, I was thinking hip-hop Dixieland, and then we took an exit off Kid A, and it ended up being a dark record.

Are Black Thought’s kids OK? Oh, yeah, they’re fine. They were gonna finish off the school year in Houston, and I believe they’re back in New Orleans. They had to literally start over with housing. And God forbid, on your insurance thing, if there was one t not crossed or i dotted, families are still waiting to get insurance cheques.

When something catastrophic like Katrina happens in America, how should hip-hop artists respond? Should they write meaningful political records, or make feel-good music to help people forget?

That’s one of the biggest debates. Because [after Katrina, my friends] said, “Great. Shit’s about to get serious again.” I was like, “C’mon, y’all.

Shit’s not about to get serious.” And they was like, “Why?” I told them, “Remember when 9/11 happened and we was all in New York? What were we doing?” And they thought about it. Sure enough, my point was, “Don’t you find it strange that when 9/11 went down, our first and primary concern was, let’s run across the street to Virgin Records right now and get a copy of Jay-Z’s Blueprint before they shut it down.” I said, “Don’t y’all find that a little strange?” We in New York City! The world’s literally falling apart.

We was doing this big concert event, and coincidentally, because of Michael Jackson’s 30th anniversary celebration, we had like Liz Taylor and all those artists basically hold down every hotel in New York City. First of all, we were supposed to be in the Soho Grand, which is two blocks away from the World Trade Center. Like, I should be able to see it [points out the window], like those buildings over there. Instead, [The Roots] got separated from each other. Some of us were in one, some in another hotel. Kamal [the keyboardist] actually got to see the second World Trade Center thing fall from his hotel, 20 blocks away.

At eight o’clock at night, we’re over in my suite analyzing Jay-Z’s Blueprint: Was it the classic they all say it is? And I caught myself: The world is falling apart, and we’re in here talkin’ about, “Is this Jay-Z in his prime?” And my boy put it to me so eloquently. He’s like, “Yo, man, I know what Third World living is. I grew up in the Bronx River projects with cops outside my door. There’s rat droppings all in your Cap’n Crunch. The sewage system sucks. It’s like poverty conditions. I know what hell’s like every day ’cause I grew up in the Bronx River projects.

These people outside, they getting their first taste of what my life’s like every day.” And then I’m like, “Shit. Is that some desensitized shit in us?” So, that said, we all thought hip-hop’s gonna be more serious. It’s Public Enemy time. And that shit lasted for four months.

The government—program directors, Clear Channel, Viacom, bigwigs that own shit—they decided to change the airwaves and only play a certain type of music on the air, which, strange enough, was beneficial for the Commons and Kwelis and Roots of the world. That was the only time in my career where all of a sudden my publicity went from zero to 100. They weren’t gonna play Puffy at a time like this, but it was OK to play “The Light,” by Common. We thought it would be a systematic change, but after December everything went back to normal. I was like, Ah, OK, America doesn’t want a reminder of how fucked-up it is. We just want to forget. Which is why we were up there analyzing Jay-Z’s Blueprint and not worrying about what just happened earlier that day.

There is hip-hop that is three-dimensional and is topical and talks about things. Now, whether or not it gets exposed, who knows?

There’s a brilliant group from Minnesota called Atmosphere. Dude!

They should be everywhere. Everywhere! But because they don’t fit into the corporate scheme of what is going to hold people’s attention, they’re just gonna fall through the cracks.

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“If a certain figurehead of hip-hop makes his 10th album and really sticks to his guns as to how he says he’s gonna execute said album, then I’m hoping perhaps, maybe, hip-hop will follow said figurehead.”

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It’s like the tree that falls in the forest and doesn’t make a sound because you’re not there to witness it. We all know what it should be, but unfortunately hip-hop’s not at a place where it can reveal its third dimension yet.

Is there any way to change the current one-dimensional trend?

Thankfully, if there’s one character trait of hip-hop that I know, hip-hop loves grafted images. OK, Dr. Dre says, I’m gonna throw away the manuscript of what hip-hop is and produce an album so sonically superior and clear and incredible and grandiose, everyone’s gonna follow my lead: The Chronic. Everyone follows his lead. Loud synths?

Oh, we need loud synths. Violent imagery overtop of radio-friendly beats? Oh, we need to do the same shit, too.

There is… and I can’t get really deep into it without revealing it, but I will say that if a certain figurehead of hip-hop makes his 10th album and really sticks to his guns as to how he says he’s gonna execute said album, then I’m hoping perhaps, maybe, hip-hop will follow said figurehead.

Do you have conversations with said figurehead about his work?

Every day. I think I’m the thinking man’s demographic for what they think online. Play me a beat: “What you think? What you think?”

And you don’t bite your tongue.

He loves me because I don’t bite my tongue. There’s some people that need the buff treatment, and there’s some people who truly respect you because you’re honest. I’m not saying I want hip-hop to go back to the way it was in 1992 and da-da-da-da-da. I just want a fair balance, and I think that said figurehead has such a clear lane to do and commit and execute any idea that he wants to. Even if it were a failure, it would still go platinum. And hip-hop is in a major, extreme need of a makeover right now.

Complete this sentence: The Roots joining Def Jam is like… [laughs, then pauses] I wish Dirty were alive so I could say, “him joining AA.” It’s a double-edged sword. I would like to think that we’re

pened to be there, and [Malik said], “Put a mic up.” And he did it, and it was undeniable. It would be utterly mean and unnecessary to drop his verse on “Here I Come.” So this is the unintentional return of Malik.

“Here I Come,” is a blazer. What brings out Black Thought’s best performances?

Speed. He’s from an era of battle rap. His idols are Big Daddy Kane, Kool G Rap, Special Ed, KRS-One, Chuck D—class of ’88. And most of their rhymes were done somewhere between 100 to 120 beats per minute. When we did the VH1 Hip Hop Honors, Tariq paid tribute to Big Daddy Kane and I was utterly amazed at how his pacing and his breath control was. I was [drumming] 120 beats per minute, and he was right up there, not even losing one breath. I wanted a song that could move like a train. And when Malik got on, that totally shocked me, because I didn’t know he was gonna be on it. That to me was crazy. Because the [album] was moody and slow, there were two or three points in the record where I absolutely needed an adrenaline rush to jolt you, to get you through the next 20 minutes or so of whatever we had coming after that.

Tariq’s more frustrating because he puts so much effort in trying to separate himself from the pack that he may have just gotten overlooked. It’s not like people are really going to put Tariq in their top five, unless they’re an emcee’s emcee. The first names you always hear in the top three are Biggie, Tupac, Jay… Biggie, Tupac, Nas… Biggie, Tupac, whoever. That’s what we lacked. Whereas we were striving for learning how to rhyme on the spot, maybe we should’ve thought about building our celebrity.

Do you push him? How much influence do you have over how he rhymes?

Zilch.

How much influence does he have over the music?

One hundred per cent. He controls The Roots. I’ve made the most offthe-wall shit, like, Oh, man, wait till they get a load of this. But he has his system. He listens to a song, and if nothing comes to him after an

“Malik is the heart of The Roots. Tariq’s the virtuoso; Malik’s the heart.” joining the Def Jam that has the rich history. Of course, we know that this is not your mother and your father’s Def Jam. This was the label I dreamed about being on 20 years ago in high school. We’d sit in class and do mock-ups of our album covers, and the Def Jam logo would always be at the bottom. I’m happy we’re on the label, however I know that people’s expectations for this record were like, “OK, they about to cash in. We know what’s up. They rollin’ with Jay-Z. They gonna cash in.” It’s funny: If this were 1988, us joining Def Jam would’ve seemed like a very natural thing: “Oh, wow, Def Jam! Congratulations!” Now it’s like, “Def Jam? Really?! Jay-Z? Hold on, let me grab this popcorn!”

Who is the best you’ve seen at coming up with rhymes on the spot?

I got to eye-witness Jay-Z in the studio doing his sequel to “22 Twos,” “44 Fours.” In the studio, him actually sitting there “writing.” I was taking photos, but I wanted to peek around and see his cheat sheet. There wasn’t a cheat sheet. He stood there, and he would go eight lines at a time. He would go eight lines and then stop. [Mumbles inaudibly.]

He’d do that for five minutes. He sounds like Peter Griffin on Family Guy—that laugh. [Mimics Jay-Z’s high-pitched mumble again.] “OK, run it!” And then come out with eight smashing lines, and then [mumbles].

That’s a weird process to watch. To see him running lines and not have to stare at the speakers for 12 hours, that takes confidence, especially to do it in front of people. I know motherfuckers that even make the engineer leave when they’re doing their vocals.

How significant is the return of Malik B? Very, very significant. It didn’t hit me until this record, but I get it: Malik is the heart of The Roots. Tariq’s the virtuoso; Malik’s the heart. And they need each other to sort of balance each other out in certain situations. But of course, with [Malik’s] habit, there was skepticism: “OK, how do we deal with this?” There’s never a situation of, “Can he operate?” There’s always a situation of, “Do we want to be like his codependents? We know this shit works for Charlie Parker, but what about him?

Do you necessarily want this blood, this guilt?” At the end of the day, two of the songs he did, he did without us knowing. The engineer hap-

hour straight, he’ll leave it alone. I’m like, “Yo, dude, I fuckin’ just slaved for like two weeks over this fucking organ shit. You better do some shit with this shit. We paid a lot of money for this organ shit!” “Sorry, man, I can’t do it.” Near the beginning we were almost at pugilism levels: “You better write to this shit!” But I learned that’s how every emcee is; you can’t take it personally.

I have a trick with Tariq. Whatever beat I want him to write to, I now have to put twice as much effort into doing two or three inferior songs and then surrounding [the good beat with inferior beats] on my beat CD. The first two songs I’ll make inferior so that, relatively, when the third song comes on—the jackpot song—that’s the kicker. And then the fourth song I’ll bring [the quality] down again. In any given week, if there’s four songs I really like, I’ll take a week off so I don’t burn myself and I’ll come in and do a rushed, 15-minute idiot beat just to make the beat that I really want him to use that much better. And this is the first time he tricked me. He chose all the inferior ones. The ones I worked my ass off for, he was like, “Ah, that’s cool… but I like this one.” I was like, “You’re not supposed to like that one! That was just some throwaway shit!”

What happens to the good beats that don’t get chosen by Tariq? Do you shop them to someone else?

I’m very particular, and I see my beats like hot-buttered biscuits. I don’t want nobody selling me no day-old bread. I get real embarrassed. I’ll tell you something funny. I made a beat CD for Kweli, and put all the stuff I had listed on my iTunes and burned it to CD. So he puts it in his iTunes, and the names of the titles came up. And under the album, they were called “Be-jects.” He was like, “Wait a second, man. Why are you giving me Common’s rejects for Be? What the hell? I don’t want no Be-jects! Gimme some new shit, man. Don’t give me no damn Bejects.” I was like, “It’s not Be-jects, man. I just called it that.” He’s like, “Nah, man. You made these shits for Common, and he didn’t like ’em, so I don’t like ’em.” He gave the CD back to me. Half the clients I work with, it’s like a horse-and-pony show.

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Case in point: Joss Stone. When they came up with the idea of doing [a cover for] White Stripes’ “Fell in Love with a Girl,” I knew how I was gonna execute it in my head, but sometimes you got to put on a horse-and-pony show. I don’t know why I’m saying this in this periodical, because people will be like, “OK, we know what you doing now.”

But sometimes [the vocalist] just wants to know you put work into it. I could’ve easily taken those beats back, waited, changed the titles, and then given them to [Kweli], and he would’ve been like, “Oh, yeah, this is more like it!” With the whole Joss Stone thing, I was like, “OK, let me get my vision ready.” Do all these effects with this type of mic and that type of mic and this type of mic. [sighs] And at the 45-minute mark I knew I was going to use this particular mic and this particular EQ setting. I’m gonna do it in one take, and I’m-a go home. But somebody will get uncomfortable with that. I’ll do a song in one take, it’ll take five minutes to do a beat, and they’ll wig out: “Oh, he didn’t put enough effort into it. Took him five minutes.” But it’s just that easy.

What would you like to do that you haven’t done yet?

“Take a vacation” used to be the joke. But I’d take two days off and then pull my hair out. There’s different ideas I want to do. We’re flirting with the idea of doing the Double Roots Quartet: two bassists, two guitarists, two drummers, two keyboard players, two emcees. The Graceland idea, either South America or South Africa. Really, Cuba, but with the whole embargo shit going on…. I also wonder what would happen if me and Tariq did a DJ-emcee show all by ourselves. But I’d be afraid that he would do the old “And now hit it!” [points to hypothetical DJ] and I would be forced to do some DJ tricks.

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“I have a trick with Tariq.

Whatever beat I want him to write to, I now have to put twice as much effort into doing two or three inferior songs and then surrounding [the good beat with inferior beats] on my beat CD. The first two songs I’ll make inferior so that, relatively, when the third song comes on— the jackpot song—that’s the kicker.”

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The Original Hip-Hop Band daddy-o talks stetsasonic’s legacy and the roots Daddy-O, lead emcee of Stetsasonic, hip-hop’s first band, is now the head of A&R for Kedar Entertainment. The bespectacled artist has a few gray hairs in his beard, but his passion for the music is as fresh as when Stet burst on the scene in 1985.

How did you make the transition from the rap game to the business side of things?

It wasn’t really that hard because I did it in steps. If I tried to make a jump, it would’ve been different. I always say that I cut my teeth in Stetsasonic, and by cutting my teeth I mean I learned how to do everything. I learned how to produce records, I learned how to administer stuff, I learned how to clear samples, everything. So putting that together and doing it like that, all I had to do was stop rapping to be on the business side, because I was doing all that stuff anyways.

Was it hard to stop rapping?

No, it wasn’t hard to stop rapping because I never stopped rapping. I still rap.

Do you still do shows?

We don’t still do shows, and here’s a shameless plug: We’re looking to do shows, but what happens is, there’s seven of us on the road, and we won’t go out without the band.

Does Stet get the credit it deserves?

The real answer is, sometimes. At the times that people actually do mention us, they mention us with a lot of honour and a lot of reverence and a lot of things that I’m proud of. But there’s other times that cats don’t mention us, and then with the infusion of anything from the Fugees to the Black Eyed Peas, I don’t think we should go without mention. Because we started all that, and I think it’s important that they do [give props]. So, yes and no. Like when they do stuff like the VH1 Honors and they don’t call us—that gets on my nerves because we’re really hip-hop’s only band on that level, besides the Fugees. And that’s no disrespect to a few of the others that came along, but I don’t look at them the same way. We could be a backing band!

How do you view The Roots?

A jazz band with probably the best rapper on the planet. [Black] Thought, to me, is my No. 1 or No. 2 guy as far as pitching rhymes.

It’s between him and Posdnuos from De La Soul. But The Roots is a jazz band. They’re good, they’re really good. They’re a jazz band; they’re not a hip-hop band.

Have you met those guys?

I didn’t even know those guys, and when I first met them, they totally gave it up [to Stet].

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VILI ION: CAITLIN WRIGHT & STYLING and ART DIRECT HARI PHOTOGRAPHY: CHE KOT

Henry Abernathy 11 0

Biology

90

Chemistry

98

Calculus

95

English

75

Tapdancing

74

Typing

55

Henryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tapdancing is suffering as he insists on only dancing to Paul Wall.

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ALife sweatshirt from Lounge Evisu collared shirt from Lounge Ambiguous shorts Nike Air Force 1 (all sneakers from Goodfoot) Suspenders & glasses stylists own

Roxanne Tang 12 28

Business

95

Communications

89

English

74

Music Appreciation

88

Physics Pottery

74 32

Roxanne has only completed one pot this year.

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Sean John shirt Ambiguous shorts Obey hat Nike Blazers SB

Tony Lebowski 10 67

English (Basic)

49

Family Studies

98

Math (Basic)

15

Music (Advanced)

97

Phys. Ed.

74

Typing (Remedial)

38

Tony would benefit from attending classes more regularly. Sober.

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Patricia Ogilvy 12 0

Anger Management

41

Arabic

92

Communications

95

Debating

97

Farsi Hebrew

93 91

Pattyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s desire to bring peace to the middle east may be impeded by her temper.

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Luxirie sweater on/over the shoulders Enyce jeans Adidas Country sleek

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LRG jacket Green Apple Tree tee/ LRG underneath tee Artful Dodger jeans Nike Delta forces

Elroy Cohen 11 12

Auto Mechanics

76

Choir

95

English

75

Music

88

Poetry Typing

92 72

Elroy. Elroy Cohen.

Gets the big gas face.

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Rose Park 9 18

Anger Management

66

Business Management

71

Communications

64

English

77

Modern Dance Spanish

91 82

Rose has the bad habit of kissing her teeth whenever someone asks a question.

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You’re a Problem!

By Tara Henley

Are the dope boys killing hip-hop?

Not to jump on the Hip-Hop Is Dead bandwagon (I’ll leave that to Nas), but there’s just no denying that the art form is in a slump right now. Sales are down. The vast majority of the albums that have come out this year have been steaming piles of dung. Rap’s capital city is floundering, screaming “Bring New York back” all day long, but failing to drop decent records. Some of the most talented artists out can’t get a release date to save their lives, while clowns like Rick Ross are given the green light to flood the market with their sub par trap star nonsense. The South is on top and while its crunk and snap bangers are hot in the club, the tracks don’t have much to offer lyrically. And lyrics still matter to some of us.

How did things get so damn bleak? I blame the dope boys.

The trap music movement has unleashed legions of wack rappers onto the game who have their minds on their money and their money on their minds. Unlike the Champagne Era, dope boy magic is not about the luxuries cash can buy—it’s about the process of getting that paper in the first place. It’s not about the party, it’s about the grind. Essentially, it’s all about getting over.

In the last year, The Hustler has become the top icon in hip-hop culture, easily trumping The MC. Rappers are so busy trying to be entrepreneurs and pitchmen and Hollywood actors and record label CEOs that they don’t seem to have the time or the inclination to make good music. A rap career has become a pit stop on the road to riches; it’s no longer an end destination. What’s more, as Buns said to me the other day, being a rap artist—someone who sincerely aspires to spit mind-blowing rhymes—has become kinda corny. As a result, you have one of the biggest rap stars out, Young Jeezy, adamantly denying that he’s a rapper.

The message seems to be that thugs don’t worship at the altar of hip-hop. Nope, they just use it to get money. Trap music is nothing more than the new street hustle.

Funkmaster Flex, of all people, pointed this out in The New Yorker

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recently. According to the magazine, the Hot 97 DJ “complained that the decline of the small-time drug business, and resulting unemployment, has brought a ‘persistent, annoying’ element into the hip-hop biz.” Flex was quoted as saying: “People who can’t make a fast buck on the corner anymore, now they think maybe the music business is a fast buck.”

Now, I have nothing against dudes getting paid. Everybody needs to eat. But the problem with the hip-hop hustlers is that they’re often pushing bullshit products. Their goal is to charm you with their slick persona, and then get you to shell out for a mediocre album, or some overpriced sneakers, or a weird energy drink. In some circles, dudes like this are called con artists. And nobody wants to feel like they’ve been conned.

Which is exactly how you’ll feel if you bother to purchase, say, a Yung Joc album. With bland, predictable snap beats and ridiculously simplistic rhymes, New Joc City is quite possibly the worst album of the year so far. And that’s saying a lot. Joc doesn’t even have his own swagger. He’s basically just jacked Jeezy’s whole snowman shtick, which wasn’t interesting to begin with.

Don’t get it twisted, I’m not hating on the South. The region has its share of talented MCs. But the dope boys aren’t that. (T.I. being the sole exception.)

And I’m not arguing for a return to previous eras, either. I don’t subscribe to the Cult of the Old School. I love that hip-hop is constantly shifting, innovating, reinventing itself—that it’s perpetually casting out the old and embracing the new.

I’m just saying: let’s keep it moving. It’s time to press fast forward on this boring-ass Hustler Era.

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the

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oh no exodus into unheard rhythms stonesthrow pound picks µ black, know better, lights out

This release will come as no surprise to Stones Throw aficionados thanks to Egon’s commitment to spreading the music of Galt Macdermot via Kilmarnock Records. The concept is to have prducer Oh No sample only Macdermot’s work to make the music found on this album. Unfortunately, it hardly works in emphasizing the genius of Macdermot’s compositions and the equally brilliant production of Oh No. Instead, it’s yet another excuse to put a mix of different emcees from the underground, with the majority being Stones Throw artists, and package it as a cohesive release.

Kinda like how Scarface solo LPs sound. Mr. Obie’s has lost his humour, elasticized his flow and delved two feet deeper into the ghosts of his upbringing. “Moving on up was just the Jeffersons/ Rest of us watchin’ the tube got less than them,” he hurls off the top. The rampaging “Cry Now” is a gut reaction to the author’s brush with death when he got shot in the head. And “Out of State,” which bounces like your mom’s aerobics class, makes drugtrafficking road trips fun again. With some careful editing, the 3rd round could be the charm.

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obie trice second round’s on me shady/aftermath pound picks µ cry now, wanna know, out of state

Obie Trice’s sophomore-slump dodger, the salty Second Round’s on Me, bears all the markings—good and bad—of a typical Aftermath release: polished, pounding production; fully crafted songwriting; a largerthan-life, back-against-the-wall cinematic grandiosity; a Nate Dogg hook; an Eminem energy jolt; and about four songs too many.

Subtract a handful of R&B drop-ins, and the listener would be left with the blood, sweat and shrapnel of Detroit’s most haunted, a concretescraped slab of hood-pulled-low alleyway rap.

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nas presents nashawn napalm x-ray pound picks µ write your name, shit ain’t sweet, ms. cocaine

luke fox

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dabrye two/three ghostly international pound picks µ my life, viewer discretion, that’s what’s up

roozbeh showleh

beats

I hate to analogize using players from the same game, but Ann Arbour producer Dabyre’s sound is sort of like “El-P meets Detroit” This is a very good thing. Generally moving away from the ambience of 2001’s One/ Three—save a handful of godly instrumentals like “Machines Pt. 2” and the liquid “In Water”—Two/Three focuses on a respectable roster of underground rappers to add another dimension to Dab’s already-impressive stylo.

This works most of the time. “My Life” featuring AG of DITC is the autobiography of a struggler and the album’s best track, “Viewer Discretion” reveals what appears to be the beginnings of another lethal group out of The D (Invincible and Finale) and “That’s What’s Up” is one of Harlemite Vast Aire’s wackiest be-likewater-like-Bruce cuts to date, accounting for two of Two/Three’s best beats. While the sophomore Two/Three is not without its flaws, the production is light years ahead of its time, making this one of the more intriguing releases of the year so far.

When an artist is presented by another, better artist, expectations run low. Truth is, a grip of Nas catalogue completists will pick this up the way they did the Bravehearts LP a couple years back. As he disses the Dips, Nashawn coughs out a choppy Queensbridge flow reminiscent of Mobb Deep and their old weed carriers, restricting his writing to single-syllable rhymes and relying instead on ’hood cred and nepotism. Guns start airing and custies come running from jump. The energy on “Tribute” leaps off the speakers… until you realize Nashawn is simply reciting verses from Biggie, ‘Pac and Pun. It’s cool to see young cats pay respects, but it would be so much cooler if that time was spent developing fresh concepts and experimenting with newfangled flows.

Seriously, this makes 10-year-old Big Noyd joints sound crispy. Sweet Alchemist beat on here, though. luke fox

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roc c all questions answered stones throw pound picks µ hear me now, don’t stop, murda

You ever notice how whenever your favourite underground hip hop producer is asked which emcee they would love to work with, they usually answer mainstream emcees? Well, this album attempts to fulfill that desire as Roc C has the most mainstream appeal of any artist

chris coates

the undercard - rated but not reviewed beats

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dmx

akir

dl incognito

masta killa

year of the dog, again

legacy

organic music for a digital world

made in brooklyn

sony

viper

urbnet

nature sounds

58 POUND 34 august 2006

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on the Stones Throw roster. The lucky producer in this case is Oh No. It could even be said that if Roc C’s image was put at the fore to help push his album then it could definitely have club appeal. Oh No’s production on this record is fantastic, though a little more minimal in style than on his The Disrupt release.

Surprises appear in the form of Chino XL on “El Capitan” and Bizzy Bone on “Watching You.” Chino XL contributes a killer verse chock full of battle heat and Bizzy Bone makes it sound so easy setting himself apart as a professional. Go figure!

THE HIGHLY ANTICIPATED DEBUT ALBUM FROM THE GRAMMY AWARD WINNING MC RHYMEFEST

roozbeh showleh

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yung joc new joc city bad boy south pound picks µ it’s goin’ down, dope boy magic, hear me coming

Young Jeezy might want to holler at his lawyer, cause fellow ATL rapper Yung Joc has straight-up stolen his identity. And the second time around Da Snowman’s Southern dope boy swagger loses what little appeal it had in the first place. What you’re left with is repetitive beats and puffed up, monosyllabic trap star boasts. I don’t think they’ll like him, snap, snap, better yet I know. tara henley

beats rhymes life

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kon and amir/dj muro kings of diggin’ bbe/rapster pound picks µ take me with you, quiet village, don’t lose what you got

FEATURING APPEARANCES FROM

No rappin’ on this double mix CD, yet worthy of a mention since all involved in this project give it up to that hip hop shit by showcasing all the fabulous break heavy gems from their personal vinyl collections. NYC’s Kon & Amir known for their On Track break mixtapes agree to split duties with Japan’s Muro who pissed everyone off by crowning himself the “King of Diggin.” I don’t know how he feels now that he has to share that title with Kon & Amir. But trust me, everyone proves themselves

Kanye West, , Ol Dirty Bastard, Mario

WITH PRODUCTION FROM

Mark Ronson, Cool & Dre AND NoID

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smitty

tumi and the volume

voice of the ghetto

tumi and the volume

na

urbnet

CD AVAILABLE JULY 11 Text RHYMEFEST to 299299 to get the latest ringtones from shop.muchmusic.com

august 2006 POUND 34 59

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worthy. A warning to all those who think this is the dustiest of the dusties, the banginest of the bangers; both Kon & Amir and Muro’s mixes are dancefloor heavy. The first mix compiled by Kon & Amir opts for that Herbie Hancock Headhunters jazz fusion sound while Muro is on the b-boy tip, progressing into Latin beats and rounding off his forty-four track stunner with deep 60’s rhythm & blues and soul, full of heavy drum breaks, sprinkled with additional percussion. Check Muro’s mix for a nod to Aguilera/Primo, laugh for a while and then realize you bought that 12”! roozbeh showleh

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boot camp clik the last stand duck down pound picks µ yeah, worldwide, ...but tha game iz still the same

I must warn you before you continue reading this review: I can’t look at this record as an exhibition of flattering emcees and instead must comment on the placement of beats throughout. For you diehard BCC fans, I’ll just say you have nothing to worry about.

Your heroes are still sharp, entertaining and all display the distinct personalities you’ve enjoyed for the past 15 years. 9th Wonder still sucks, but I’ve been feeling his sound a little more lately. His sample choices are much deeper and soulful and he’s using different drum sounds too! By now you’ve all noticed the third track on every record is the best cut.

“Yeah” produced by “Materazzi-nazi” Marco Polo continues that notion. Pete Rock’s track is mediocre, ditto with Da Beatminerz. Large Professor’s beat on the other hand is so technically superior it reassures all of us that Paul C’s teachings prevail after so many years.

One last thing, the insert states “This is the last stand not the last BCC album.” Just so you know. roozbeh showleh

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d-tension contacts and contracts II brick records pound picks µ pretty little whores, bobby brown, lay ‘em down

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Civil War migration of blacks from the South to the North). With consistently dusty beats and genius bars like “I greet the fallen angels with a second chance/ Under blankets of death like winter Indian chants/ My thoughts broke through the city/ Homeless men heard and found more dreams in my rhymes than that flask of Wild Turkey/ Open and pour it, withdraw it...’ this joint is easily the best Wu Revivalist shit out and has a cat thinking shit like: “Hmmm...okay, Ghostface, for sure...Rae, then...Bronze Naz?!” chris coates

There’s a thin line between a good compilation and a bad one. For most compilations, cohesion is usually the deciding factor. If the unison only works on paper, like most comps, then it’s on the bad side, and the music is mostly skippable. The unison in Contacts and Contracts II comes from most of the Boston producer D-Tension’s consistent production througout—backpack, but still contemporarily underground. The line blurs because his beats bang for rap tough guys like Krumbsnatcha on “Lay ‘em Down”, but also become passively funky on tracks like “You’re a Bitch Too” by Slug. “Pretty Little Whores” by Vinnie Paz and Outerspace is the comp’s standout track. Both MCs are as raw as ever over a dark melodic beat with a Julie Andrews sounding vocal sample singing “All the pretty little whores…”

That alone pushes this compilation onto the good side of the line, at least during that song it does.

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mr. lif mo’ mega definitive jux pound picks µ the fries, lookin’ in, for you

joe galiwango

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bronze nazareth the great migration think differently music pound picks µ black royalty, good morning (a nice hell), rare breed

The Jukies are growing up. We heard it in Cage on last year’s highly personal burner Hellz Winter: an increased engagement with the subject matter and less fantasy. Lif is the next to follow, cutting down on the cryptic conspiracy theory robo-innuendoes of earlier releases in favour of more first person perspectives. With El-P handling what seems to be most of the production work, thoughtfully saving the royal blitzkreig for more suitable projects and employing instead more of a dance-party-at-the-Jetsons’-on-mushrooms approach. Lif shines while demonstrating the most character in his nine plus years in the game. Highlights include “The Fries’” commenting on the fast food industry in the vein of Supersize Me, the lament of a young black man to his absent father on “Lookin’ In” and “For You,” is Lif’s address to his unborn seed. Mo’ Mega is a solid album and represents an impressive step forward for this mid-range veteran. chris coates

True to Wu form, Detroit producer/MC Bronze Nazareth’s debut album is on that street-God political tip (soulful yet gritty) that made the Clan in the 1990s (note: The Great Migration refers to the name for the American post-

the undercard - rated but not reviewed beats

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ray cash

pharrell williams

inspectah deck

jurassic 5

cash on delivery

in my mind

the resident patient

feedback

sony

star trak

urban icon

interscope

60 POUND 34 august 2006

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rick ro$$

j dilla

port of miami

the shining

def jam

bbe

pound picks µ hustlin’, push it, cross that line

pound picks µ so far, so good, love, won’t do

For a trapper like Rick Ross—whose skills are mediocre at best—image is pretty much all he’s got to sell himself with. And his image sucks. According to the industry rumour mill, the Miami street slanger isn’t half the hustler he claims to be. (We don’t believe you, you need more people.) What’s more, pillow talk songs like “Hit U From the Back” that try to position him as some slick ladies’ man are laughable. If there’s anything sexy about a fat, sweaty thug with a messed-up beard, I’d sure like to hear it. tara henley

It’s hard not to project one’s own sadness onto Dilla’s first posthumous release. Remember listening to Life After Death? That shit hurt. I think the general public calls it bittersweet. It’s a sentiment that hip-hop fans know too well.

The Shining displays all of Dilla’s mastery: snapping snares, crispy and crusty hihats, chunky drums, ethereal beeps and boops, airy instrumentation and all the other technically immaculate musicality that made young Jay Dee every producer’s favourite producer. Dilla’s rapper friends do good too, with Common, Pharoahe Monch and Black Thought all contributing appropriately virtuosic performaces. My only hope is that Dilla left us beats like ‘Pac left us rhymes.

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bonecrusher release the beast body head entertainment pound picks µ the one, southern gorillas, pistol fo

In an attempt to recapture the ’bow-thowin’ magic of his smash-mouth single “Never Scared,” the Crusher goes down kicking and screaming all over his sophomore slumper!

Dropping N-bombs galore and nearly frightening the listener into liking his clichécluttered music, but the Beast seems to have lost clout somewhere in the last two years!

Produced entirely by Chris McGill, Chris Rossar and Conrad Rossar (no, you’re not supposed to recognize those names), whose synthesizers appear to be in perfect working order, Release the Beast can’t even muster a half-ass Busta Rhymes cameo! Oh, well! luke fox

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“head,” Black Thought, shines throughout, and is especially strong on the title track, “False Media” and “Clock With No Hands.” “Can’t Stop This”, an 8 minute good-bye to their inspiration and collaborator, Jay Dee, is a stellar dedication to their deceased friend. buns

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mf grimm american hunger day by day pound picks µ see below

A lot of artists record more than 60 songs for albums that end up standard length. I know Grimm is trying to give fans something extra, but more than half of these are throwaways. If shrunk to an Illmatic number of cuts, American Hunger is much better than it rates overall.

I recommend using iTunes to strip the three discs down to the following:

buns

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the roots game theory def jam pound picks µ can’t stop this, game theory, clock with no hands

There’s a certain maturity that The Roots’ seventh album, Game Theory, projects. You can here a comfort with their music and style that had been missing from the last two albums as the group became overwhelmed and unfocused by their own ability and creativity. Gone are the self-indulgent dramatic orchestrations and rock-ruminations (save the album’s only lapse, the horrific “Here I Come”), and back is, as ?uestlove himself put it, the group’s “heart,” Malik B. The group’s

#15 - “My Mentality”: You can’t go wrong sampling Young Buck. #27 - “I Love You”: Sing along—“I know it was you, you broke my heart.” #32 - “Agony (No Jugamos)”: Grimm varies vibes very well—loving light cuts like this. #34 - “Things I’ve Said”: Another look at the artist’s range. Baron really helps. #35 - “Broken Glasses”: Inspiring rap-Rocky let’s-box type-shit. #40 - “Fuck You”: Yes, you. #51 - “G.O.D. (Government of Deception)”: Bring on all Bush dis tracks. #57 - “Ten Stories”: Star of an upcoming graphic novel, Grimm’s got a thousand. #58 - “Twin Peaks”: Guest Hasan Salaam sounds nice, like a neo-K-Solo. #59 - “Simple Rhyme”: Is MF Grimm rocking off-beat over the theme music from Braveheart?! One love. michael evans

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dr. octAgon

myka nyne

Field mob

pimp c

the return of dr. octagon

citrus sessions

light poles and pine trees

pimpalation

ocd records

citrus records

geffen

rap-a-lot

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Kayslay Me or the Tapes: For Promotional Use Only Tearing himself away from a quick politick session with Dipset capo Jim Jones in New York’s Koch headquarters, DJ Kayslay takes a moment to school the Poundlings on the importance of the hip-hop’s ubiquitous mixtape hustle.

“A street mixtape don’t take me no time,” asserts the Drama King, whose Street Sweepers CD-R empire cranks out grimy compilations on the regular and has branched out to drop his third official mixtape album, The Champions: North Meets South (with Greg Street).

Ranging from the immediately disposable to the highly coveted, the seemingly infinite label-free, slimcased mix CD not only help DJs get production, radio and club gigs, but are an outlet for rappers to keep their name in your brain.

“It’s the best form of marketing that’s out,” Kayslay

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asserts. “Besides the Internet, there’s no other place to get hot from a wide angle. ’Cause if you don’t got a record playing on the radio that’s on rotation, how can you move ahead?”

Spinning since before DJs used crossfaders (let alone Serato), East Harlem’s Kayslay says the DJ’s role in blending the mixtape is just as crucial as the “hot exclusives!” (insert echo) he obtains.

“You gotta know what beat sounds right with what artists, or else you’re gonna have a disaster. It’s like, you know, you get hamburger and you have three selections. Anything else other than that, if you try it, you might get shit,” he laughs. “I pretty much say ketchup, mayonnaise and mustard. Anything other than that is a disaster.”

Oooh. I bet relish is recording a mixtape dis verse right now. luke fox

life

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papoose

j. period

dj neil armstrong

the best of papoose

cl smooth: man on Fire—The freestyle sessions

oscillate wildly

pound picks µ born in nyc, sharades, never come back

pound picks µ get down freestyle, electric relaxation freestyle, guess who’s back freestyle

pound picks µ one night in bangkok, rumors, died in your arms

Papoose’s problem is he has too many songs floating in the ether. Best Of... cuts all the fat and features his best material showcasing his talent, not just his rhymes. joe galiwango

While it would have been in the man’s best interests to maintain a friendship with former partner Pete Rock, CL Smooth proves he still knows how to pick beats on this primer to his first solo LP. Rhyming seemingly effortlessly over mostly NYC instrumentals from the ’90s (“Electric Relaxation”) and the ’00s (“Hate It or Love It”), the Mecca returns to spit forgettable content atop first-rate production.

If you insist on listening to ’80s music, this is the way to do it: portions of 47 dance-pop remnants blended masterfully and rapidly by a notable disc jock. Where else can you hear Afrika Bambaataa, Erasure and Cutting Crew in the same session—and have it make some strange sense? luke Fox

luke Fox

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dj e.nyce life

nothing but freestyles pt. 6 pound picks µ beanie freestyle, kweli freestyle, lil wayne freestyle

life

Having Jim Jones introduce a freestyle session is like Bahamadia hosting a beauty pagent. That aside, Beanie rips it, Peedi Peedi reestablishes the most annoying nasal tone in the game, Lil Weeezy gets his political on, the Dips introduce another ex-con/garbage rapper (Max B.), Fat Joe spits stereotypes, Budden and Kweli sound simultaneously dope and out-of-place and most of it happens over Southern beats. buns

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tapemasters inc. the inc Files pt. 9 d-block edition

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tragedy khadaFi thug matrix 2 pound picks µ calm down, T.o.N.Y., L.A. L.A.

The Inc Files Pt.9’s highlights are loaded up front.

Jigga’s live performance of “44 Fours” is instant history.

But Luda’s revealing and poignant “War With God,” coupled with his first official single “Tell It Like It Is,” demonstrates his disquieted state of mind with what hip-hop has become.

For better or worse, it doesn’t look like Tragedy Khadafi is going anywhere, even though the best of his music has come and gone. He’s got his own label (25 to Life) meaning he puts out music whenever he feels like it, plus he’s still got one of the coolest names in rap history. It also means there are probably more volumes of Thug Matrix on the way. This volume is a mixture of new (a.k.a. bland) and old (a.k.a. classic) material.

buns

joe galiwango

pound picks µ 44 Fours, war with god, watch how it go down

THE GAME

DISCUSSES G-UNIT RADIO PT. 21 When we asked The Game what he thought of the latest disses aimed at him on G-Unit Radio Pt. 21, the ever cocky Game told us, “All I gotta say is two words: ‘300 Bars.’” But, as rappers are prone to do, Hurricane Game went on, “It’s too late for all of that. It’s over. I’ve succeeded. I’m the best. I can’t be fucked with.” As for the fake image of Game in his skivvies that graces the mixtape’s cover, “I actually thought it was funny. I actually thought it was real cute. I think they’ve exhausted all their opporunities. It takes a whole team to try to end my career.” buns

64 POUND 34 august 2006

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50 cent and dj whoo kid g-unit radio pt. 21: hate it or love it pound picks µ stop crying, 5 heartbeats, nightmares

$* +253( 3TEPPING 3TONES 4HE 3ELF 2EMIXED "EST 4WO VERSIONS )N 3TORES

6ERSION ,YRICISM 6ERSION 3OUNDSCAPES

)NCLUDES #OMPANY &LOW %STHERO "LACK 4HOUGHT -ALIK " FROM 4HE 2OOTS -OS $EF $* 3HADOW MUCH MORE

"OTH VERSIONS AVAILABLE ON #$ AND 6INYL SONY/JAPAN

4OUR $ATES 4UE 3EP 4ORONTO -OD #LUB 7ED 3EP -ONTREAL #LUB 3ODA 7ED 3EP 6ANCOUVER #OMMODORE "ALLROOM august 2006 POUND 34 65

$*+RUSH?HALFPAGE?POUND INDD

0-

vo live st fr ok o ,r m us sia

battle of the food groups

pound for pound 2-5

5+

daily servings division

vs

daily servings division

vs

dairy

meat

fruits and veggies

grains and cereals

height:

handy servings

height:

satisfying morsels

height:

succulent portions

height:

wholesome slices

weight:

homo to skim

weight:

fatty to lean

weight:

raw to cooked

weight:

toasty to crispy

reach:

nails to bones

reach:

hair to muscles

reach:

eyes to organs

reach:

Fingers to toes

kos:

the lactose intolerant

kos:

oprah, peta

kos:

carnivores

kos:

dr. atkins

2-5 daily servings division

dairy

meat

Oh, you don’t want me to bite you, ’cause once it hits the lips, it tastes so good/ Eat a food group, wash it down with a 40-ounce of 2% ’cause I’m so ’hood/ Like your stepdaddy scoldin’ you in a porn theatre, I’m-a beat meat twice/ Pull pork, then I shoot skeet nice/ Gobble a whole team of Holstein, lick the bones clean/ When them chickens cooped up, tell me what them moans mean?/ Dude, I hold cream/ Hit and run with your bucks on some road-kill venison shit/ Your blue-rare blood trickles off the meat rack in a menacing drip/ Lookin’ for more protein, huh? You all on my tip/ This ain’t real beef, you just a nice big plate of fish/ Which is my favourite dis/ Like the War in Iraq, you’ll wish you never started this/ Once you’re dead, Meat, I’m going after meat alternates/ Got eggs and nuts asking, “Where’s the beef, partner?”/ Catch him in the diary aisle on the side of a milk carton….

Milk is chillin’/ Cold dead after I kill him/ What more can I say, I’m not kidding/ That’s when you lost, got it? good/ Until you’ve understood/ I’ll curdle your cheese, that’s how I murder MCs/ Flood your brain with so much blood you’ll have burgundy dreams/ You must learn/ So I burn then churn/ Your bones to paste/ It’s like butter, baby/ Ferment into obnoxious nauseous cottage glob ‘cause you’re fuckin lazy/ Spin your spine 180 degrees/ You’re fucked but still a virgin, like Coleman, Gary/ You won’t beef with this fish, left with no teeth and a total fairy/ You’ll cry over your spilt milk, peace to Nas but I’ve got an ill will/ Wild animal cannibal ox that cannot stop with a vet’s chill pill/ I turned Yogurt to Trugoy/ Me beating you inspired that song “What happened to that boy?” Turn ice grills to ice cream/ Make your life bleed and die, scream, cry/ Plead for mercy but I don’t know what that means, I’m not a nice beast/ I’m live meat with rabies, grabbing my dick, telling you to bite me!

5+ daily servings division

fruits and veggies

I’ma leave kids all rickety like ‘Come back, zinc!’ on many nutrional tables missing a leg/ There was pizza but let’s go to Fressen instead, vegan women chewing slaw and they’re looking to bed/ Looking for bread? Not since the Atkins diet did anyone buying food want a carbohydrate/ Banana clips and the apple on your melon caught sunlight, left him dying at the family bunfight/ Sweating when I’m shedding kilocalories and B-9, smoothie and a movie and some yoga with my fe-line/ While you were sitting, food-fucked like Oprah in the ‘90s, or guilty at the market tryna find me/ Mojito and a lime, G; had some super penne primavera that you tried to ruin with the glyceme/ You shoulda been a wood grain, pip; you’re just a pupil of the metamucil on how to regulate shit...

grains and cereals

You can bring up Atkins, but bring the napkins/ ‘Cause when gangstas get hungry, they gon’ get to snackin’/ And no, OGs ain’t packin’ apples and arugula/ Naw homey, real OGs is cereal-killers that bang straight at your jugula’/ Face facts, all your best dishes got my grains in ‘em/ Try to bake your friend a “best wishes” without my strains in ‘em/ That’d be a fruity creation like The Game my son/ Or better yet, like that six-eight nigga from the Bulls, Dennis Rodman/ Come clean, the only G you got in you stands for Genetically Modified/ That means you was born in a lab, true story, my word is bonifide/ Spread this morsel to your seeds so they can cop the alibi/ Never go against the grain, ‘cause we dirty to the roots but our stocks still stay high.

Finals

dairy

Milk does a body good/ But I’m sour enough to body Suge/ Your chances of screwin’ Milk are 2%, no homo/ Dissing you in real time, no slo-mo/ Don’t interrupt my verse with your voice, no promo/ Call me Snoop as I stomp the Big Apple, no Cuomo/ You’re a nun in church—ain’t no way you’re cuttin’ the cheese/ Haters chuck tomatoes, I’m duckin’ with ease/ Must be the champagne room, ’cause melons is gettin’ touched/ Lean back and curdle, word to Beanie, I don’t do much/ Bury berries, beat beets with a double-A stuffed in a sock/ Chomp so many carrots, my catchphrase be “What’s up, Doc?”/ Thought dicing onion would be fun, son, but it hurt to done ’im, peep the tear drop/ Blind dates, behead lettuce/ To the lactose-intolerant, a streiht up menace/ Even though I don’t know which side you fall on, tomato, you gettin’ squished/ Ace and Gary–ass produce, you’s an ambiguous bitch/ Cereal killer, ran through the garden just to bust ass/ Whole salad bar on my tip, which explains the milk moustache…. and the winner is...

66 POUND 34 august 2006

Stock up on the Lactate pills, ‘cause Dairy is coming for that ass.

fruits and veggies

You are the teat derivative, drained the milk, left the cut/ Bag in the crate, today’s the early expiration date/ Smellin’ like curdled curds at Quebec deps/ Coulda been a poutine—that’s just the way the egg cracks/ You yogurt ass cats with fruit at the bottom/ Are fin’ to take a slow stroll through the produce aisle/ You’re like a farm-ass cat tryna go on a diet/ Listening to Kelis, proud while you’re milking a bison/ You’re like Tyson? I peel banana clips like Mario Kart/ And spread butter over bagels and Lox/ American kids with boy breasts, plump from the Neilson’s/ Just won’t stop whether they’re able or not/ A fuckin’ formula for infants is government plots/ Getting cow money and meanwhile they’re payin’ the hogs/ I sell the onions that you shed tears over ‘cause you oversliced/ Murder at the beef kitchen where I spilled custard, yo/ What should we do with this cream puffer?

Pass a quick mop through the dairy freezer and replace stock!

august 2006 POUND 34 67

68 POUND 34 august 2006