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Ludacris as Curator of His Own Hip-Hop Museum

Ludacris, in concert on Tuesday at the Highline Ballroom, welcomed guests representing hip-hop heritage.
By JON CARAMANICA
NYTimes
Published: November 26, 2008


In a video on the YouTube channel of Ludacris’s label, Disturbing tha Peace, he watches as DJ Premier, the primary architect of 1990s East Coast rap formalism, picks out a line from an old Ludacris song, “Stand Up,” and cues up his turntable. Casually the D.J. begins cutting the vocals immaculately into smaller and smaller bits while Ludacris reclines in a chair, pleased with the view.

So distant is the moment when artful D.J.ing was an essential part of hip-hop culture that watching DJ Premier is a little like regarding an exhibit at a folk-art museum — a hip-hop Colonial Williamsburg.

Consider Ludacris an enthusiastic re-enactor, then, and also the rare Southern rapper who considers working with DJ Premier — or time traveling, as it were — a feather in his cap. Accordingly, the smile on his face Tuesday night as he brought Premier onstage at the Highline Ballroom was wide and irrepressibly sincere. Premier produced “MVP,” a no-frills track from Ludacris’s sixth album, “Theater of the Mind” (D.T.P./Def Jam), for which this show was a release party.

Despite accidents of birth (Illinois) and geographic relocation, Ludacris is firmly a New York nostalgist trapped in the body of an Atlanta motormouth. An almost impossibly precise rapper who often mistakes enthusiasm for charm, he would have been exceedingly comfortable in New York’s underground scene of the mid- to late 1990s, where battle-rap champions were the stars and tricky polysyllabic rhyme schemes mattered more than Q scores.

Not that Ludacris is immune to the pulls of celebrity. His film career has grown with roles in “Crash,” “RocknRolla” and “Max Payne.” He cut off his signature dreadlocks in favor of a more clean-cut look. He often goes by his real name, Chris Bridges. And his new album also carries an air of pretentiousness: guests aren’t featured, they’re “co-starring”; songs aren’t produced, they’re “scored.”

This slight reserve spilled over to the early part of Ludacris’s performance, when normally springy songs like “Southern Hospitality” and “Ho” fell flat. Even after delivering his dazzling remix verses from Shawty Lo’s “Dey Know” and DJ Khaled’s “I’m So Hood,” Ludacris had barely broken a sweat. Maybe he was willing to waste only so much energy on rap.

But then came “I Do It for Hip Hop,” a self-consciously lo-fi celebration of precapitalist creativity that on Ludacris’s new album, features his fellow millionaires Jay-Z and Nas.

“I don’t do it for the money/I do it from the heart,” Ludacris rapped. “The van Gogh flow/Luda do it ’cause it’s art.”

Then, quite unexpectedly, all those faux-naïf rhymes came true. A cavalcade of guests emerged to take the stage for a few moments each, a showcase of New York hip-hop history with a devoted fan as curator. It turned this show on its ear.

L L Cool J’s “Rock the Bells” was invigorating, and Jadakiss’s “We Gon Make It” sounded like rolling thunder. When Jim Jones and Juelz Santana emerged to perform “Pop Champagne,” the flamboyant hip-hop anthem of the moment, Ludacris felt comfortable enough to put art back aside for a second: “I made the Forbes list, yeah, I know you seen it/Eight figures so if I say it, you know I mean it.”

None of these guests currently sell more records than Ludacris, but it was clear that it was they who were doing him a favor, not the other way around. With all his fame, his millions of albums sold and his Southern pride, all Ludacris really wanted was one night in the New York trenches.

Kanye West, Flaunting Pain Instead of Flash

Kanye West’s new album, “808s & Heartbreak,” addresses recent events from his life, to a sound leaner and looser than that of his previous records.


By JON CARAMANICA
Published: November 24, 2008
“Do you really have the stamina,” Kanye West wonders to himself on “Pinocchio Story (Freestyle Live From Singapore),” the bizarre rap-star-in-need-of-a-Geppetto hidden track from his fourth album, “808s & Heartbreak,” “for everybody that sees you crying/And says, ‘You oughta laugh! You oughta laugh!’ ?”

Oughtn’t he, though? Mr. West is mouthy, impertinent, flamboyant, bellicose, provocative, greedy and needy. But he is also funny, something, given his profound sense of entitlement, he very rarely gets credit for.

On previous albums he’s hilariously taken himself to task for his foibles of style and narcissism. He rarely aims his daggers at others; there’s plenty in the mirror to clown on. On “Breathe In, Breathe Out,” from his 2004 debut album, “The College Dropout,” he distilled the essential struggle that has defined his career into one sharp joke: “Always said if I rapped, I’d say something significant/But now I’m rapping about money, ho’s and rims again.”

On “808s & Heartbreak,” which was released by Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam on Monday, Mr. West is done letting himself off the hook.

The product of a tumultuous year in his personal life, it operates solely on the level of catharsis — no commentary, no self-consciousness, no concern for anything but feeling. On “Pinocchio Story” he continues his lament:

There is no Gucci I can buy

There is no Louis Vuitton to put on

There is no YSL that they could sell

To get my heart out of this hell

And my mind out of this jail

On any of Mr. West’s earlier albums, he would have quickly undermined this sentiment — of course a shopping spree would cheer him up — but here, bluntness is the goal. And so, as he’s dismantling his storytelling structures, he’s also making his productions skeletal, and largely trading bombastic rapping for vulnerable singing.

“808s & Heartbreak” sounds like none of his other albums, nor any rap album of note — “minimal but functional” is how he has described it to MTV. At best, it is a rough sketch for a great album, with ideas he would have typically rendered with complexity, here distilled to a few words, a few synthesizer notes, a lean drumbeat. At worst, it’s clumsy and underfed, a reminder that all of that ornamentation served a purpose. After all, what is Kanye West without scale?

Mr. West would have been forgiven for taking a break after releasing “Graduation,” his third album, last year. His mother, Donda West, died last November following complications from plastic surgery. In April Mr. West split from his fiancée, Alexis Phifer. By any measure, these are seismic changes, yet he persisted with recording.

Some of the results suggest his old, oversize sound. On both “Love Lockdown” and “Coldest Winter,” thunderous drums cut through an electro haze, and “Bad News” features one of the most efficient bass lines Mr. West has ever constructed. “Amazing,” a visceral collaboration with Young Jeezy, sounds as if it were recorded inside a whirring old grandfather clock, a collection of precisely moving parts neatly interlocking — classic Kanye.

Mr. West has cited the electro-pop pioneer Gary Numan and T J Swan, who sang exuberant, nasal hooks on many a 1980s Queens rap track, as vocal reference points for this album, though in truth hearing Mr. West try to sing these songs is far weirder.

Still, it is not quite sui generis. Early New Edition comes to mind. And in places, especially on the breezy, slick “Paranoid,” this music is redolent of the chilly, slightly irregular R&B the producers the Neptunes were making four or five years ago, for Kelis, Omarion and others. Their synth-driven electro had blasts of funk momentum. But Mr. West uses electro (the title’s “808” refers to the Roland TR-808 drum machine) for its sparseness, so that he might emote unchallenged.

Flaunting pain requires a sort of arrogance, too, so it’s little surprise that Mr. West takes to it so naturally. Every song on the album is rife with anguish, and his lyrics, about the shards of broken relationships, though often tediously written, can carry a fresh sting.

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'Buy Nothing Day' protests planned

Early-bird shoppers might find a few other zombies in their midst this Black Friday—protesters dressed as zombies, that is.

"Buy Nothing Day" activists plan to don the ghoulish get-ups as they parade past shops along Chicago's Magnificent Mile. The zombies reportedly will gather just after 7 a.m. to greet shoppers hoping to get a jump on the holiday discounts.

Organizers say their aim is simple: to promote a day of non-spending in the face of the traditional holiday shopping splurge.

"It has a very dark edge to it this year," said Kalle Lasn, who co-founded Adbusters Media Foundation, the Canada-based "anti-consumerist" outfit that coordinates "Buy Nothing Day." Protests occurred in 68 countries last year.

The zombie stunt isn't unique to Chicago. The ploy emerged five years ago, its shock value making it a popular form of protest.

"Young people just like to have fun," Lasn said. "It's a good way to get shoppers to say 'What the hell is going on?' And for them perhaps to start questioning what they are doing there."

With or without zombies, retail experts predict holiday sales will fall this year for the first time on record—perhaps by as much as 5 percent—as consumers focus on what they need more than what they want.

Such economic realities could inspire more people to abstain from the mass consumerism. But newbies beware: Achieving a purchase-free day can be surprisingly tough.

"Suppressing the impulse to buy is like giving up smoking. It's an addiction," Lasn said. "A lot of people break down around midafternoon and buy a Mars bar or a coffee. It's a very personal thing."

THE ISSUE: AIDS

TEENS ARE DOING IT- BUT NOT DOING IT WELL OF THE 5,000 YOUNG AMERICANS DIAGNOSED WITH HIV THIS YEAR, 70 PERCENT WILL BE BLACK

When 16-year-old Maché chase came across a new study noting that one-fourth of all teenage girls, and nearly half of all black girls, have a sexually transmitted disease, she barely took notice. “It wasn’t a shocker to me,” says Chase. “A lot of [teens] out here are having sex, and you can tell a lot of people don’t protect themselves. At my school, we have a lot of girls in the lower grades pregnant.”


Chase lives in Washington, D.C., ground zero in the war against HIV—experts say that one in 20 residents of the city is infected, more than in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. And more than 80 percent of D.C.’s HIV patients are black. But while Chase may be at risk, she’s also more knowledgeable about the facts of life than many adults. And the facts are not good: According to the latest data, the rate of new HIV infections is nearly 50 percent higher than previously believed.


Twelve years after powerful new drug therapies led the media to write about “the end of AIDS,” America has seen a resurgence of new infections, and 70 percent of the estimated 5,000 young people diagnosed with HIV this year will be black teenagers. After school, instead of hanging out in the neighborhood, Chase comes to a small basement office in Southeast Washington with a sign on the front that advertises free HIV testing. This is the home of Metro Teen AIDS (MTA), a community health organization founded in 1988, as the AIDS epidemic began ravaging the country.

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Carmen

Hottentot Venus

Spam Murked By Facebook

Popular social network wins $873 million lawsuit


Everyone hates spam. But no one has ever beat the annoying pop-ups and unsolicited materials– that range from penis enlargement, to weight loss- like Facebook, who has recently been awarded a record $873 million by the US District Court in San Jose.

According to eNews 2.0, Facebook filed suit against Adam Guerbuez of Montreal and his company Atlantis Blue Capital this past August under the Controlling Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act.

Facebook alleged that between March and April, Atlantis Blue sent millions of annoying unsolicited messages to Facebook users.

Though Guerbuez is hardly expected to be able to fork over the millions he now owes the social network, Max Kelly, Facebook’s director of security, believes they’ve already been rewarded.

"It's unlikely that Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honour the judgment rendered against them (though we will certainly collect everything we can)," Kelly wrote on his blog. "But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users."

John Forte: Out the Slammer By Christmas

Thanks to President Bush, rapper and producer John Forte will be out the pen by Christmas.

In 2000, Forte was sentenced to 14-years in prison after he was found with 31 pounds of liquid cocaine at the New Jersey International Airport. Two female couriers set him up. He has served seven years, and faces five additional years of supervised probation. According to the Washington Post, Forte has been chosen as one of 16 people to receive clemency from Bush.

One person who lobbied for Forte’s early release is singer Carly Simon, who along with her son (a former prep school pal of Forte), held the Grammy-winning artist down since his arrest. Simon reportedly sent messages to Senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch on his behalf.

When Forte was first arrested, Simon put up $250,000 towards his $650,000 bail.

Besides being a solo artist and producer for The Fugees, Forte has worked with everyone from Tricky to Herbie Hancock. His friends range from Mark Ronson, to regulars at Martha’s Vineyard, where Forte was known to charm women, guzzle Guinness, and dress sharp.

In a 2002 interview with Rolling Stone, Forte said that the company he kept caught up with him.

"I allowed elements to be near me -- not drugs but people," he said. "That's what caught me up. I was too accessible. I was too here, I was too there. The price the government wants me to pay for that is fourteen years."

Forte will be released Dec. 22.

Felix

R.I.P. MC BREED (r.i.p. Pac lives)

Thank You Atiyana and Amari

As we know Thanksgiving us just a few days away. I just wanted to take this time to offer thanks to some important people in my life; my daughters Atiyana and Amari. It’s funny how our children are always thanking us for the things we provide them but as parents, we rarely ever thank them for the things they do for us. I mean of course they don’t pay bills (yet) and they may not be able to provide us with food and shelter but they do offer us things that are often over looked.

Their mom and I split when we were young and they don’t live close to me. Anyone who knows me also knows that this breaks my heart every second of everyday. Although we don’t see each other as often as I would like, the relationship I have with my daughters is very special. Even though we are miles apart they always say “Dad, we understand, and we love you so much”. Once I was low on cash and they offered to send me $100 out of their piggy banks to help me get to NY. Just the thought almost made a grown man cry. After that, I said to myself if my daughters can offer me their hard saved cash to get me there, I can use the last bit of dough I have to get there even if I would be broke when I got back. When I arrived God blessed my in ways that were nothing short of miracles. Real talk. (And I didn’t take their money … LOL )

So I thank my daughters for showing me that all we need in life is faith. I thank Amari, who at 11 years old said “Dad, if you want to do something bad enough you’ll do IT, or maybe you didn’t really want to”. I thank my daughter Atiyana, who at 12 years old told me that “She will always love me no matter what she hears about me”. I thank them both for teaching me what sacrifice is all about and what it really means to love someone enough to die for.

I thank them for teaching me to never give up because I wouldn't just be giving up on me … I’d be giving up on them as well. I thank them for keeping me from cussing these people at work out almost everyday. Because I look at their picture at my desk and tell myself that no one can do or say anything that will take food out of my kid’s mouth. I thank them for helping me to be more selective with the women I date. I know now to look for the type of women I want my daughters to be one day.

And lastly I thank them for loving me when at times I feel no one else does. Unconditional love is what they’ve given me from the moment they opened their eyes in the delivery room. I will continue to live my life, if not for any other reason but to make sure theirs is better.

Thank you Attie and Mo Mo! Daddy will always love you … kisses and hugs!

run for ur lives!

Wu-The Story of The Wu-Tang

The Wu-Tang Clan is a New York City–based hip-hop musical group. Wu-Tang Clan consists of nine American rappers: RZA, GZA, Raekwon, U-God, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, Method Man, Masta Killa, and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard. Among its members are multi-platinum selling solo artists, multi-platinum record producers, Grammy winners, TV and film stars, screenwriters, product spokespersons, business owners and, most recently, major motion picture composers.

One of the most critically and commercially successful hip hop groups of all time, Wu-Tang Clan rose to fame with their uncompromising brand of hardcore rap music. Since their debut, they have introduced or launched the careers of numerous other artists and groups, and already in 1994 there were credited to be over 300 Wu-Tang Clan affiliates, known as the Wu-Tang Killa Bees, consisting of rappers, producers, and record label CEOs.

"PAiD in FuLL" ($unday movie feature)