WOULD JAY Z BE AS BIG OF A DEAL IF 2PAC and B.I.G. WERE STILL ALIVE

With the recent success of Jay-Z a lot has been running through my head. He has been able to make a lot happen over the past 10 years 10 #1 albums, sold out tours, one of the top selling urban clothing lines, countless corporate endorsements and one of the most recognizable labels/brands. I thought back to when I first heard or saw Jay-Z it was in rapper Jaz O’s video Hawaiian Sophie which was heavily influenced by D.C’s Go-Go sound. He also appeared on another one of Jaz O’s songs “The Originators”. Jay was just a kid then. After this Jaz O was out of the light so I thought Jay was a wrap. Growing up in DC in the late 80’s early 90’s I was surrounded by drug dealers and the Hustler Culture. I mean come on our mayor was on crack, literally. I remember watching an old school video show and Hawaiian Sofi came on. One of the guys that was watching with me, who happend to be a hustler said “I know that cat” when Jay came on. This let me know why I wasn’t hearing any more music from Jay at the time.

In college I became a huge B.I.G. fan as well as Bad Boy. My friend Chucky was one of Puffys original producers so I was always hearing new music in his basement. I remember Chucky playing a Jay song that I never heard at the time “In My Lifetime”. However it was through listening to B.I.G that I was put back on to Jay Z. B.I.G was a huge cosigner for Jay. At this time B.I.G was the King of NY and had NY Hip-Hop on his back while out West 2Pac was the raining champ. Jay was relevant but he was definitely in B.I.G’s shadow. As we all know B.I.G and Pac were taken away from us before they even hit their prime. And were were left with out a force in Hip-Hop. That is until Jay Z “found the formula” as he always says. And the rest is history.

So my question to you is would Jay Z be as big as he is now if 2Pac and B.I.G were still alive? Leave a comment and let me know.

Before I say this I want to make it clear I think what Kanye did last night was in poor taste and there is no excuse for it. However he interrupted some one during their VMA acceptance speech.

And I see a million people commenting on how horrible it was. Yet a couple days earlier our President was giving an address in which he was trying to fix health care for us and our families and was rudely interrupted and called a liar on live International TV..

and I didn’t see 1/3 of the comments bashing the man (Congressman Joe Wilson) who was responsible for this outburst. Priorities people what’s more important the VMA’s or Health Care????

What’s your favorite Michael Jackson memory?

So I guess in a tough economy the the good people at AMC Theaters are thinking outside the box. Sometimes you gotta try things used in other industries, and in this case AMC borrowed from Baseball. How many times have you ran into the the movies with no time to hit up the concessions. or you decided to hit a movie solo and didn’t want to get up and loose your seat just to get some treats. Well to battle that AMC (at least the one around my way), has created a portable vendor station that comes into the theater right before the previews. They allow you to buy majority of the same stuff you buy at the concession stand right in the theater…. I think it’s brilliant what’s your thoughts?

So the other day I was in San Diego and after a night at the Ivy I walked outside to try to get some grub. It was packed on the street, some thing we used to call “The Let Out” when I was growing up in DC. Any way as I was walking through the crowd I saw this pimp. I couldn’t resist asking him and his escorts to pose for a pic. I think instead of continuing I will just post this pic and let you all comment enjoy.

1994 was the year that a chubby drug dealer from Brooklyn NYC influenced me. That was the year that “Ready to Die” hit the street, and a rapper by the name the Notorious B.I.G made his debut. I had heard about this cat from my friend Chucky Thompson, a producer from D.C, who was part of Puff Daddy’s Hit Men. I had also heard him and his crew Junior Mafia on mix tapes smuggled back from NY to Howard, by my homie and classmate Swift. B.I.G was the marque artist on A&R executive Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs new label, on Arista Records, Bad Boy. I remember reading an article on Puffy and Bad Boy in VIBE and it spoke about how B.I.G would bring fire back to East Coast Hip-Hop. A couple years earlier Puffy, a fellow Howard Bison, brought B.I.G to Howard for the Hip-Hop Conference, an annual music conference put on by Howard students. I was still in high school in D.C and snuck on to campus with some friends for the conference concert.B.I.G was in the show. He came out to perform and in the middle of his show a fake fight broke out and had the audience going crazy.

Now a couple years later this MC was making his mark on the world. His cadence and ability to tell a story quickly made him my favorite MC. he had a way to paint a picture with out stating the obvious. My favorite lyric was “There’s gonna be a lot of slow singing and flower bringing. If my burglar alarm starts ringing”. In that line he was able to put an image in my head of a masked man breaking into a house with a surprised look on his face while simultainiously the same mans gloomy funeral is taking place. It was this ability that caused the world to take notice of B.I.G.

B.I.G’s popularity equaled to the popularity of veteran rapper and friend 2Pac Shakur caused an unfortunate incident and a series of misunderstandings turn into a coastal beef. These two icons were on the verge of amazing careers when this beef tore them both down. We all know the story so no reason harp on it. However on this March 9th the 12 year anniversary of death of my favorite MC, I want to do the same thing thousands of people did in Brooklyn the day of his funeral and continue to rock to his music and celebrate his life…… B.I.G. FOREVER!!!

I recently had some one ask me “Do you always wear sneakers?” My reply with out hesitation was “But of  course.” The conversation continued deeper in to my love of and infatuation with sneakers, sneaker culture and the aspect of wearing shoes made for sport as a fashion accessory. It lead me to wonder when and what influenced me to boycott other forms of footwear for my kicks. The when is vivid, I remember being 20 and buying a pair of Kenneth Cole bulky ass hard bottoms not because I liked them but because I needed them to get into a party at a club. It was at that point I decided not to waste my money on shoes I didn’t like. Moreover if a party I didn’t allow my sneakers then I didn’t want to be there.

I then remembered the first time I looked at sneakers as more than my ball shoes and more like my mall shoes. When I was a kid in DC I saw this series of commercials for Air Jordan staring not just Mike but another familiar face. In the late 80’s a young radical film maker from New York by th name of Spike Lee was making his mark. I was a fan of Spikes movies and was introduced to them with his 1986 release “She Got To Have It”. I saw the movie on the low at my older cousins dorm room at Howard University. Had to keep it low because I was a kid and it was an R rated movie. If my Mom knew that then she would have killed us. Spike also co-stared in the movie as Mars Blackmon, funny loud mouth Hip-Hopper from Brooklyn. It was a surprise to see him as the same character for a commercial to promote basket ball shoes. These commercials with Mars made the shoes more about a lifestyle than the actual sport. And that was the what that influenced my infatuation with sneakers.

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