Music Video of the Day: Ron Artest, "Champions"

One of the things about Ron I've always loved -- and not to get all OG on the bandwagon jumpers, but dude's been nutty since 1997 -- is that he seems to have disregarded all hip hop culture post 1992. If you look at him in games, he refuses to wear his shorts baggy and prefers them well above the knee; he prefers Rodman-like hair dye to cornrows; he raps, but he eschews gimmicky hooks; And most important, although sometimes he dresses like this on talk shows, at other times he dresses like this (bluetooth and purple-and-gold scrubs.) Other things I love about Ron: He broke Michael Jordan's ribs, but no one talks about it; And he majored in math at St. John's. Here's his video for "Champions."

l'il jon financial

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i'm pretty sure i've posted the above video before, but what can i say? life imitates art: sage investment advice (and an extended explanation of what "crunk" means) from l'il jon. i love the interviewer's obvious discomfort/bewilderment.

You, You Got What I Need

So, if you're even an occasional reader of the blog, you might've gleaned that I'm of South Asian extraction, a fact perhaps made clear--or at least not controverted--by my enthusiastic, albeit controversial, use of "cracker" and "redneck" in quotidian exchanges, but up until the age of 11--hand to teeny tiny baby Jesus in heaven above--I didn't know I wasn't white.

Those sad, awkward days I spent in Mr. Kennedy's 6th grade class, a school term memorable for the vicious literary skewering we--students and teacher alike--executed on school-mandated masterwork, Come Sing Billy Joe (which Amazon sells in whimsical Spanish form as well: Sal a Cantar Jimmy Jo!).

At this point in my life, my goals were three-fold: I hoped to add a Ferrari to my Micro Machines collection, I wanted a pair of Reebok Pumps like Will Rivers wore, and I prayed that I'd wake up one morning in the corporeal form of Shock G, fake nose, honeys and all. Yes, wayward white, suburban youth that I misapprehended myself to be, I prayed at the altar of rap music (the expression "hip hop" would still be a Tribe Called Quest album or two away from seeping into my consciousness).

Fast forward 19 years, and I have no idea where my Walkman-worn copies of As Nasty As They Want To Be or Sex Packets are--though, for the sake of nerdy admission--my original Pakistani record-shop, bootleg copy of Cube's seminal Amerikkka's Most Wanted rocks out in the glove of my '01 Corolla, so don't step. Fast forward 19 years, and the world is a complex place. The black-fetishizing, suburban white boy within me still cries for a pair of Girbaud jeans, but who's he supposed to vote for when 50's telling him that Obama's the path to race enlightenment at the same time that Snoop's saying Obama's fronting for David Duke? If Tone Loc and Biz Markie (see above) don't weigh in soon with an opinion, then I'm at a total loss, and may cast my vote for Marion Barry. What's a poser to do?

So, I used to think the hardest decision facing me these days was between two candidates whose popularity befuddles me. Then I saw the video above and realized the harder decision is this: which smug hack-MC , will.i.am or Common, finally pushes me over the edge to vote for Mike Gravel?

Televising the Revolution

You will remember Ludacris and 50 Cent's dust-up with Oprah last year, but in case you forgot, here's a reminder: After appearing on her show to promote Crash, Luda told GQ, "What I got was that by having rappers on her show, she feels like she is empowering in them..I don't see why Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle, who I am huge fans of, it's OK for them to go on Oprah. They speak the same language as I do, but they do it through comedy, so I guess that's acceptable to her." Now, Luda--whose lyrics, granted, are insanely misogynistic--did have a point: Why the free pass for the non-corn-rowed comedians? Why the total absence of any MC's on the Oprah show?

Well, that moment seemed to pass, but now comes word that Wynton Marsalis (pictured, err, depicted) also hates hip hop, except, unlike back-pedaling Oprah, he's not equivocating. This is the salient bit from his recent interview with the Guardian:

Old school minstrels used to say they were 'real darkies from the real plantation'. Hip-hop substitutes the plantation for the streets. Now you have to say that you're from the streets, you shot some brothers, you went to jail. Rappers have to display the correct pathology. Rap has become a safari for people who get their thrills from watching African-American people debase themselves, men dressing in gold, calling themselves stupid names like Ludacris or 50 Cent, spending money on expensive fluff, using language like 'bitch' and 'ho' and 'nigger.'

It's clear that there are generational and class divisions at work here, and far be it from me to opine about an issue that goes to the heart of contemporary black American society, being that, well, I'm not black, but still why is it that Marsalis, Oprah, Bill O'Reilly and others seem to think the paragons, the torch-bearers, of an entire genre of music--an entire aesthetic, an entire culture (not subculture, mind you)--are its worst offenders?

Okay, that's a rhetorical question. I can imagine what Nelly's album sales look like when compared to Jurassic 5's, but once, just once, I'd like to hear what universally renowned musical geniuses like Wynton Marsalis have to say about Mos Def's Black on Both Sides or Tribe's Low-End Theory or anything Viktor Vaughn's released. Hip hop may include all of the things that Marsalis hates it for--all of the things that I too hate about it--but, still, I know I'm not alone when I say, it's the greatest artistic invention of our lifetime.

In that spirit, and in honor of today's news that Scooter Libby is likely jail-bound, I give you Akon and Styles P's "Locked Up," which includes this gem, "Locked up, they won't let me out/ And I had a long day in court. Shit stressed me out."