Rick Ross - Teflon Don

Rick Ross gained considerable notoriety after he was outed as the only rapper in the known history of hip-hop to have  fabricated and/or exaggerated his drug-selling, crime-kingpin past. It is a well-known fact that rappers never make songs claiming things they never did nor adopt exaggerated cartoonish personas for the sake of their music. Many a loyal fan were aghast at the incredible revelations that Ross (not even his real name) did not in fact move cocaine between Miami and South America in such massive quantities that he was friends with ousted Panamanian dictator Manuel Noreaga, and Colombian drug cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar. It was also suspected that Ross does not have million-dollar piles of cash laying round his house nor does he sleep with a different XXL Eye Candy model every night. Even the title of his latest album - Teflon Don - was controversial since no rapper till then had ever taken on a name or used an album title or spit lyrics that  paid homage to past legendary and sometimes fictitious gangsters.

Suffice to say this is the only Rick Ross I find worth listening to all the way through. It's not that the songs are any different in theme or content from his 3 previous albums - but what Ross does on this album is hit harder than he has ever before. From the first track to the last Ross rips on the high-flying  beats spinning incredible tales of crime and debauchery and death. Ross' rhyme skills have come a long way from Port of Miami and it seems he can hold his own against anybody these days.

I'm not particularly a fan of the message that rappers like Ross send kids about what's important in life, but I mean you don't send kids to watch Scarface or The Godfather in order to learn life skills (or at least you shouldn't.) This is adult entertainment for adults.

It's not very original or ambitious but the point is that Ross has finally done a complete album and pretty much answered his critics. To me this is what I like the most about him - he refused to back down in the face of criticism and attacks. There's a couple of weak tracks like M.C. Hammer and the B.M.F-style pounding beats get used too often but this is clearly one of the best rap albums of 2010 and should have gotten Grammy nod.

 

The really ironic thing is that Ross might be the most genuine, 'realest' rapper in the game today. The music and videos of Teflon Don are so over-the-top and dramatic that no-one could really connect any of it to what real-life is. Rick Ross delivers pure unabashed entertainment and that is what rap should be about.

It's better to be good

There's a phrase that people use in every arena of competitive human life, from pro basketball to warfare: it's better to be lucky than good. When two NBA superstars battle each other to a standstill with their supreme skills, and some 36 year-old washed up veteran on a minimum contract hits the game-winning shot from way outside his range, you hear it. When the newest, greenest kid in the squad gets shot at point-blank range and the round ricochets off his helmet and into ground leaving him without a scratch, you hear it. 'Good' meaning smart, skilled, experienced, strong. But there's another way to look at it - the other meaning of good - something that you can apply to the whole of life I think.

When I was in Standard 4 - I guess I was 8 or 9 - I had this teacher called Miss Nagir. I can't remember if she was married or not because we called all our teachers Miss, but anyway she was very forward-thinking about some things. I say this because I remember we had a spelling test where we had to spell the words PENIS and VAGINA and CLITORIS; which for many of us was the first time we were hearing those words and had no idea what they meant, which caused all kinds of hilarity for the rest of kids who knew what they were. I can't imagine the looks on some of the parents' faces when they asked their kids what they did in school that day. But anyway she had this policy where all desks had to be co-ed - one boy and one girl to a desk. Which was quite exciting for many of us because it would be the first time we would actually not be sitting with somebody who was the same sex as us. Growing up as we did in a small village, we were always shy and tentative with regard to the opposite sex. Maybe it's different in the schools in bigger places. So anyway I had to sit next to this girl named Maria and we started talking and at some point she showed me how she could whistle with her fingers and asked me if I knew who taught her how to whistle. I said no and then she said "my boyfriend." All I remember doing is picking back up the thing I was reading and thinking to myself what an odd thing that was to say to somebody you just met and what a curious thing it must be to be a girl.

I didn't get it then and I still don't. I've never been good with that stuff and I never will be. Part of the reason I like working with computers and math and stuff is that it's always a binary, black-and-white thing: you're either right or wrong. Your program either works or it doesn't, your proof is either correct or flawed, you either understand something or you don't. A model or theory or design either succeeds or it doesn't. Even with trying to write it's always you either suck at it or you don't and most people can't really conceal it one way or the other. My whole life I've always loved knowledge like that. I really never had any opportunity to practice those shadow arts of looks and signs that men and women use on one another, speak in secret alphabets as Jim Morrison put it. People who really know me know that I'm pretty blunt and forceful with regard to showing my feelings. I also never had much use for deceit or manipulation or scheming. You can't scheme your way in or out of set theory or system administration or quantum physics. So this is the model I always applied, quite disastrously, to everything in life when I was younger.

I know, now, that many if not most women wake up in the morning and before they put on their makeup they put on this lying mask and they go through the day with it on, lying to their parents and friends but most of all to themselves. They try their best to cover up how ugly and deficient they are inside with pretensions and charm, and many times they succeed. This isn't something that I knew when I was younger because I was just fortunate or unfortunate enough not to grow up with women like that. The women who raised me, for whatever reason, had very little use for artifice or deception or even nuance, either for the sake of their family or the men who loved them. If you did good they told you and if you screwed up they told you, usually several times, in quite a loud and forceful voice, and that was it. Whatever their faults and shortcomings my family was always open and honest about everything. Coincidentally or not these women didn't seem to invest much time in envy. When the people they knew were happy, they were happy for them, and when they were hurting or brought low, they tried to comfort and pull them up.

So, for better or worse this is how I was raised. I'm not being simplistic when I say that I don't understand envy because it is the truth. I guess I envy Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg or whoever's dating Taylor Swift...except that I really don't and I never will. I want to get my own things in life - I want to create new things. I want somebody who loves me for who I am - the real things inside me. I don't have any interest in what other people have and I never will. The three things that I have always wanted to do in life from since I knew myself were to understand, create, and love. I don't have a lot of interest in anything else. But there are a heck of a lot of men and women who seem to be only interested in destroying things, deceiving people, hatred, malice, and envy.

I also don't understand women who like to hurt their friends because of envy. For better or for worse I've always been very black-and-white with my friends. It is inconceivable to me to try to hurt in any way somebody who I thought of as my friend, especially for the sole reason that he or she had something that other people liked and I did not have. Of course people aren't black and white and part of the wisdom that you get as you get older is that there are different types of friends - different levels of trust. Women I guess if they're lucky learn this from early on, but I daresay many men do not not. I can never understand why somebody would actively work towards hurting her own friend who trusts her a lot, just because of envy. This is the one thing I find unforgivable about envious people - they have no concept of what it means to create your own destiny. They see life just as whatever you can get by whatever means. But I mean that's just how the world is. If you're lucky enough to be smart and wise you might be able to avoid trusting these people, but if you're not then you will basically end up hurting yourself and the people who really care about you.

The wisdom of this world is survival of the fittest - you have to be smart and strong to survive. But it seems to me, no matter how smart you are, you are always going to meet people who are just stupid and low-minded enough to connive and scheme and do and say anything to satisfy their small minds. No matter how strong you are, you're always going to meet people who are going to exploit your vulnerabilities and betray your trust. But I believe, just like C.S. Lewis wrote in his Narnia books, that there is a wisdom that is older than this world. I believe that the one thing you can teach your kids to equip them for dealing with this world, the most important bit of wisdom you can impart to them, the thing that my family always taught me, is that goodness always wins in the end. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far you fall, no matter how irreparable the things you do may seem, in the end life is a circle. Everyone will get what is coming to them.

I really, really used to wish I was smarter and stronger when I was younger - I might have been able to avoid a whole ton of hurt and pain both for myself and for the people I really cared about. But the thing that I've realized is that it's not really about that - those aren't the most important things. I'd like to posit that trying your best to do the right thing, to help others, to at least avoiding harming others, to be sympathetic with other people's joy, to not be envious, to believe in the right thing; to me that is more important than being really smart and really strong. Samson was the strongest man in the whole Bible - no army could defeat him - but he still got deceived by somebody he thought he could trust. But in the end God still crushed his enemies; not because he was the strongest but because God believed him to be good inside. And the truth is that I've never seen the stupid, small-minded, ugly women who wanted to hurt me and their friends for no good reason except pure malice and envy, succeed in anything they do. And I have never seen the women who were pure and beautiful and perfect inside not be blessed and happy. So as far as I see, I'm not very strong or smart especially where women are concerned, but I did always try my stupid black-and-white best to do the right thing. And that has always been the most important thing.

Lil' Mama - VYP (Voice of the Young People)

This album actually surprised me. After hearing Lip Gloss, G-Slide, and Shawty Get Loose I figured I knew what to expect from Lil' Mama, but it turns out that the first 3 singles, for some strange reason, aren't really representative of what the whole album sounds like.

 

It was actually surprising to hear how 'normal' the rest of the album sounds. Like she chose to drop the whole cartoony high school diva dancer schtick and just tried to be a normal person. The fact that she writes her own lyrics are enough for me to give her props. But it's also good to hear a female rapper who doesn't feel the need to maintain an over-sized personality all the time, and wants to be judged just by her music alone.

Musically the album is pretty varied, thankfully, and it's quite decent. What It Is, Swim, Truly In Love, Broken Pieces, College, L.I.F.E, Girlfriend Remix are all quite good. VYP isn't The Catcher in the Rye, but just really good songs about what young people think about these days. Ironically the songs I usually skip are the first three singles I mentioned above, but I'm a dyed-in-the-wool music snob and every debut album needs songs that get made into videos that the kids listen to that push sales. The fact that she made a track called One Hit Wonder and stuck it at number 02 on the album, to me says she's at least given some thought about who she wants to be career-wise. Rap is all about bragging and made-up persona's sure, but even in her videos Lil' Mama isn't projecting something that's catering to the lowest denominator. She is who she is - and who she wants to be. All in all it's pretty good - like I said it's just good to hear a female rapper who doesn't need wigs and fake voices and rapping about shooting up clubs or selling drugs or how many places they've had sex in.

This is freaking hilarious

NMA continues to be the most awesome news show ever.

EDIT: The original vid seems to have been pulled due to fear of backlash...but I think today is one of times we should embrace and cherish free speech...

Perfection

Like other people have said, I still can't get over this dress. It just takes your breath away. It's like something out of King Arthur. I'll never get tired of looking at it.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me,

‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is sort of like this dress: short, simple, perfect, deadly, unforgettable. It's a book you can finish in a few hours and no matter how many times you read it you never get tired of it.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in. The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—

then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.

‘I’m p-paralyzed with happiness.’

She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)

At any rate Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of

11

apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me. I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth—but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered ‘Listen,’ a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

It's passages like this you read that make you want to be a writer.

One of my most vivid memories is of coming back west from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a December evening with a few Chicago friends already caught up into their own holiday gayeties to bid them a hasty goodbye. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This or That’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances and the matchings of invitations: ‘Are you going to the Ordways’? the Herseys’? the Schultzes’?’ and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate. When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour before we melted indistinguishably into it again.

My friend reminds me from time to time, in an indirect way, that one of my biggest problems is the inability to accept that perfection doesn't exist in this life. There's no perfect solution to any problem, no perfect computer code you can write. No perfect situation, no perfect people, no perfect friends, no perfect relationship. The only thing that's going to happen to me if I don't drop this obsession with perfection is that I'm going to smash myself into bits and have nothing to show for it. Which is true to a large extent - and has happened to a large extent. A lot of times I wonder just how much the components of my pathological personality - avoidant, borderline, narcissistic, obsessive, self-destructive - are just manifestations of my inability to accept that myself and other people and the whole of life can't be perfect . Like I start a dozen things and abruptly leave them 1/3 finished because I can't bear to not get them absolutely right. I see people in very black-and-white terms - I either like them and go all out for them, or I don't even acknowledge their existence. In anything I create I can't stop myself from searching out the tiniest imperfection and then throwing the whole thing out and starting over.

But it's cool.  Because the first act of creation - that act of giving birth - is always painful as hell. I am all these things and I am trying to do better, but I'm prepared to accept that these things will always be part of me. And whatever I go through, to me it's not really that important. Because I might not be a good person, but I'm not an evil person either. I know this for a fact because evil - envy,  selfishness, deceit, malice, hatred, hypocrisy - is purely about destruction. Regardless of what I've done in this life there isn't anybody on this planet that can say that I partook of these things. Every day I try my best to avoid these things, to do what is right, to do no harm to anyone. I don't always succeed and a lot of times I end up doing the exact opposite of what I intend to do, but I do try. Because I have knowledge - that wisdom that was given to humans to know the difference between good and evil - to understand the difference between creation and life, and destruction and death. I try my best, every day, not to hurt people. A lot of times I don't succeed but whenever I hurt people,  the vast majority of the time it's just an indirect way of hurting myself.

I'm pretty sure that Sarah Burton and F. Scott Fitzgerald got called a b---- and an a-- frequently and had people who hated them, who felt they were too arrogant, too sure in their own ability, too obssessed with getting it right all the time, too impatient with other people. But I'm pretty sure they had that knowledge and wisdom to understand the difference between good and evil. And the fact is that the people who pretend not to know the difference, who pretend that they never received that wisdom, who say in their heart that this world is, was, and will always be the same so let me get everything I can regardless of what I have to do to get it - those people are the absolutely worthless ones in life. They are born, live, die and are forgotten. They care not about making something new, something that will be remembered, something that will last when every stupid thing their small minds crave has passed away. This planet needs new things, new creations, new solutions. There's billions of people in this life who go to bed every night wishing somebody, somewhere would find something new to help them - maybe some new technology to help them get enough to eat from their land, or some new cheap hardware and software they could use to organize their villages into a potent enough group to fight the politicians who oppress them. Or even just some book or essay or op-ed, written by someone somewhere letting the world know that not everybody fights on the side of darkness, not everyone is blind and doesn't care. Some new, small thing to help them and give them hope.

So maybe I will just end up as debris, victim of a massive implosion caused by a fruitless lifelong search for the things that are perfect and right. But if, just one time, I can ever create something perfect; something that takes your breath away; something people never get tired of looking at or reading or using or listening to; something that causes a spark inside someone, somewhere, that reminds them that perfection and wisdom and truth and knowledge and beauty and love do exist in this life; if I can ever create a moment like this for someone, then it would have been worth it.