Hip Hop Babylon
After cooking up some of my patent Smart Dog mozarella melts, I caught the second half of VH1's Hip Hop Babylon program, hosted by Q-Tip. Aside from the usual artists and events, there were some notable inclusions such as Kwame the Boy Genius and shots of 3rd Bass in the "has beens" section. What was weird about the has-been section was that it seemed to revolve entirely around Joe Budden.
In fact, what was most odd about the program -- in spite of its high production value -- was that each segment of the show was somehow tied to Joe Budden. Each new topic just happened to fit perfectly with the Joe Budden footage they shot. The sad thing is that Joe comes out looking like he just got beat down by a girl scout troop. The message was simply: he had a huge hit single over the summer... now look at him. But the reality is that Joe Budden is so desperate for publicity that he is willing to be in a show that completely disses him.
Anyway, Hip Hop Babylon got me thinking about the state of the hip hop (aka the hip hop industry (aka commercial hip hop)). The message of the show -- aside from Joe Budden being a one hit wonder -- was that artists don't mean shit and their careers will end in misery, if not obscurity. The only three artists sited as having busted the short-term-career mold are KRS-One, LL Cool J, and someone else I can't remember.
The best parts of the show were easy to pick out: Biggie disses Kwame and Wu-Tang baps Cheo Coker. The first story is a little sad, but they got Fat Joe on there saying Kwame was dope, which was a nice thing to do. As for the Wu-Tang incident, Raekwon responded by suggesting that journalists think carefully about what artists they criticize or deride, wittingly or not. I guess Raekwon is not in support of free speech. Needless to say, he was completely unapologetic. And a big fat jerk, at that. Come get me. Cheo Coker came off sounding like the Inspector Gadget of hip hop. I could use the publicity a lot more than Cheo.
Now all I gotta do is see the other half of the documentary. Anybody else here seen this??
The second half of the program definitely got me thinking about how rap is a "monster," as someone on the show put it. The artists have ZERO influence on the business. When asked about the current state of hip hop, most artists criticized the vapid, self-serving image projected by today's mainstream artists. RUN DMC and the Wu-Tang Clan were portrayed as a counterpoint to the 2-dimensional artist. But the reality is that even these two groups had shortcomings. RUN DMC was definite junior high material, while Wu-Tang is something of a mystical facade that obscures some very mortal characters.
All in all, Hip Hop Babylon got me thinking. I just hope the first half isn't more of the Joe Budden story.
Posted by Eric on December 2, 2003 03:51 AM
i havent seen this show yet (heard good things about it but i turned my cable off a while back) but there's nothing i hate more than the attitude you describe from raekwon. this is exactly why i go i out of my way to clown benzino, and suge knight though he's become so irrelevant he can't even provide any fodder for mockery these days. anyone who thinks they can intimidate us into silence needs to get checked, and vigorously. and i feel steongly enough about that to take a beatdown if it comes to that.
funny thing about that wutang/cheo coker incident, a few weeks before it happened i was at WNWK 105.9 FM, the now defunct home of many classic underground mixshows. A guy named chris lamonica was there who worked with the Wu at loud records, and we were looking at Rap Pages together and cracking up about these drawings of the wu in there, like "this is corny as hell look at these superhero outfits!" Chris said "i gotta show this to the guys at the office, there are gonna trip." then a few weeks later this beatdown occured, and iive always worried that i helped set it in motion by passing along the the article in question. hopefully it was just a coincidence..
Those offending caricatures were probably the responsibility of the editor and design people, right? Did Coker have any say on the pictures?
Each night I pray a rap celebrity will beat me up. It would be great publicity. It would be like: "Yeah, I got clocked by Raekwon because he heard rumors about all the nasty things I wrote in my NEW BOOK. He he....
Hip Hop Babylon is definitely a serious production. I can't believe I didn't hear about it in our blogosphere. If I remember correctly, I think they even had Caz and maybe Theodore up on there... but it's all just a blur at this point. I totally dropped the ball. Gotta check for the rerun.
NEW BOOK IN 2004!!!
RAEKWON EXPOSED!!!
THERAPY AND COUNSELING RECOMMENDED!!!
That is correct, Cheo would have had no role in selecting those illustrations, probably didn't even know about them until after the mag hit newsstands.
Cheo definitely had nothing to do with those pics in the Rappages story. As the writer he would submit his story and that would be it.
I've was a big Raekwon fan [before immobilarity](like it matters). That being said, I never support any artist I like by agreeing to when they say and do dumb things. Unlike Tupac, Biggie, Wu-tang, and other hugh artist's fans who basically idolize these people and fall for their stupid politikin, I don't. As it might sound, I didn't see the show, so I'm assuming that Eric and the other commentors are on point. Out.
Do any of you people even know who Kwame is/was?
WWW.CDFUSE.COM/NEWT
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/GLIVENT
NEWT.TURNER@YAHOO.COM
One critic was quoted saying. “He is arguably the most provocative and the most controversial artist since Tupac Shakur. His words are infectious. They provoke the human emotion to feel what it has never felt before.”
After serving eight years out of a ten-year sentence for the Robbery and Kidnapping of a City of Milwaukee detective’s daughter, Newt Turner has finally been freed from State prison to implement his prison-conceived ideologies and philosophies to innovate and conquer the entertainment and publishing industry. He has unselfishly opened the gates to his heart and soul so the world can graphically experience how emotional darkness transforms into redemption.
After repeated thoughts of abortion, due to societal and family pressures, his mother gave birth to him on the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence, Kansas, where she was a sophomore majoring in Psychology and Child Development. Soon after she graduated and married, they moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Like most black children, he never knew or seen his father. So he looked to his mother’s husband for love and guidance. But instead, he found himself entering a world of malicious acts of child abuse. Take a second and think. Imagine being four years old, naked…crying on the kitchen floor, while a man is standing over you, beating you with an extension cord.
With the consistent mental and physical abuse by his stepfather, he found a place where he could be loved and accepted…the streets of Milwaukee. The hustlers, the winos, the pimps and the prostitutes, the drug dealers and the drug-addicted and any other lost soul that walked the ghetto…became his father…became his next direction.
Though the street life consumed most of his soul and mind, he still found time for education. Nicknamed “Braniac”, the kids in High School ridiculed and teased him for his academic progress and standing. Chess Club. Perfect attendance. Honor student. At the end of his sophomore year, he surrendered to the peer pressure and chose a new direction…crime.
From putting handguns to his victims heads, to having a girl prostituting during Summer school when he was only fourteen (just so he could get the same year Jordan’s), to hustling’ “marks” for $50.00 a ball at his neighborhood pool hall, to snatching’ purses, to knowingly selling crack on a well-known drug dealer’s corner, (which caused him to have a shotgun pressed against his forehead and be killed if he didn’t leave the block)…he did whatever was necessary to take care of himself and those he loved, and to be respected by those around him. Barely seventeen years old, he exemplified the word hustler. Whatever he thought with his mind and whatever he touched with his hands had to turn a profit.
Although he barely graduated from high school and was accepted to two different colleges, in the spring of 1994, he was arrested for the Kidnapping and the Robbery of a City of Milwaukee detective’s daughter. He adamantly feels that he could’ve beaten the case if his cousin didn’t cooperate with prosecutors. In fear that his cousin would become a State witness, he accepted a plea agreement of ten-years in prison. He served eight.
While in prison, he laid down the foundation for G’Livin’ Entertainment, an independent entertainment company that specializes in music, publishing, modeling and films. With well over 1000 written pieces of poetry and lyric sheets, not including seventeen novels and twenty screenplays and the mind of a business tyrant, he has a substantial amount of ammunition to go to war with anybody in the entertainment and publishing industries. He was quoted saying, “The world is about to witness something cruel and unusual, yet beautiful and inspiring.”
His first project, “Paroled Sinner”, is a brutally honest and emotionally shattering testament about life in hell and redemption. Paroled Sinner is scheduled to be released on February 17th, 2007, marking the 65th birthday of murdered Black Panther Party for Self-Defense Co-founder, Huey P. Newton.
From almost being an aborted fetus, to an abusive childhood, which led to a violent life of crime and his incarceration, Newt Turner has emerged from the “depths of hell” with a vision and a plan. He has used his stumbling blocks as stepping-stones. His character, his words, his love for poor people and his subject matter are emotionally infectious.
