That’s How I Met Your Mother - Bill Cosby
Freak Of The Week - Funkadelic
Sophisticated Lady - Art Tatum
Can I Kick It (Spirit Mix) - A Tribe Called Quest
Under Your Powerful Love - Joe Tex
Short Change - Ohio Players
Martin’s Funeral - Bill Cosby
Jezebel - Boyz II Men
Easter Parade - Oscar Peterson
Love To Love You Baby - Donna Summers
Two Scoops of Raisins - Common Sense
Kashimir - Led Zeppelin

Philadelphia finally got a team in the Lingerie Foorball League! The Philadelphia Passion.

I really ain’t sweatin the genetics so much. There have been other, more shocking cases, so that ain’t the big deal. Why these jokers volunteered their story to the news is what’s killin me. For real?

Oh. And I think homeboy is far better than me on the forgiveness tip. If I found out my son had a twin that wasn’t mine, I’d be out before the apology could hit the floor.

I just found out that i got jacked for my copy of Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston. The book’s been missing for a good minute, but I just realized it yesterday. Because I kinda need it for something I”m working on, I decided to try to replace it yesterday. Being me, I went to the local Black-owned bookstore first.

Four, five, six shelves of “hood lit.” Books by Pookie and Ray-Ray ‘nem, about Pookie and Ray-Ray ‘nem. And here’s the thing - looking for Zora Neale Hurston necessarily means that I can’t critique Pookie and Ray-Ray as authors or subjects. Janie and Sykes and ‘Lige Moseley were, for that time, the functional equivalent of Pookie and Ray-Ray ‘nem. You could almost say that they’re Pookie and Ray-Ray’s grandparents. One of the significant aspects of Hurston’s writing was the characters she chose and the language she used to describe them. Huston deliberately chose for her characters the people who would otherwise go unseen and unnoticed. Likewise today. Only with the hood lit characters, we generally wish they would stay unseen and unnoticed.

But, and this is a sofa, while I can understand that the bookstore has scads of hood lit, which I imagine sells pretty well, it’s hard for me to conceive why they don’t have a section of actual literature. I was pretty focused on what I was looking for, so I didn’t roam around the store taking note of who I didn’t see, but suffice it to say that I was very disappointed at not seeing one of the luminaries of American literature. When ole girl pulled up Zora Neale Hurston on their computerized catalog, she was like, “The only ZNH we might have is Their Eyes Were Watching God.” I tried not to give her the side-eye, but when she asked me if I wanted to order Dust Tracks, I probably failed spectacularly.

I could probably trek around the city and find a Black bookstore that has it — there’s a good chance I will — but I might just simplify matters by sliding over to Borders and copping.

From about 1987-1992, O’Shea Jackson was near the top of the emceeing game. While his name doesn’t necessarily come up in the same conversation as Rakim, Kane, and KRS-One, he definitely deserves to be in the conversation. Look at his body of work during that time: He was the principal writer in NWA (with a big help-out from the DOC, I think), then he put out two classic solo albums, with a dope, dope EP in between. Then came The Predator which, while not classic, was still pretty good. As with Outkast, it’s hard to put an order on this, so we’ll just pull up 15.

A Bitch Iz A Bitch - This song represented the first time I’d heard a woman really cuss hard on a record. I was actually quite shocked. That aside, ABIAB was the prototype of what I once called the “definition” record. Where some records have misogynistic content based on the actions of the characters in the songs, this one and others of its ilk try to distinguish what makes a woman a bitch. The ad-libs are pretty good too.

Straight Outta Compton (extended mix) - I just like the extended version better. Straight Outta Compton was the joint. Period. That’s all.

I Ain’t Tha 1 - The companion song to ABIAB, only with more radio-friendly lyrics. One of my more frequently-used phrases, ’spell girl with a B’ comes from this record. Oh, and the classic, ‘they get mad when I put it in perspective/ but let’s see if my knowledge is effective.’ That’s a GREAT line. Oh, and the other killer, ‘I’ll tell a girl in a minute, yo: I drive a bucket.’

Natural Born Killaz - If Cube and Dre were only gonna have one post-NWA song, I’m glad this was it. This was back during the era when we knew Cube was starting to slip, but it was like being with Dre returned him to his prime. Even though the song was as nihilistic as it wanted to be, it was hot fire. I can still remember the first time I heard it. I almost jumped out the car.

It Was A Good Day (remix) - It Was A Good Day was already a great song, but using “Let’s Do It Again” as the backing track put it over the top. Way over the top. In a way, Cube’s opening lines to the song, “Just wakin up in the morning, gotta thank God” seem to go with the track even more than the lyrics of the original song.

Jackin’ For Beats - The St. Ides commercial got my attention first, but this joint was ridiculous. Ice Cube rapping over other artists’ tracks was pure genius. He crushed it. In a way, it was like he pre-dated what The Roots and The Fugees would do later, performing other groups’ songs. He performed his song on their beats. And again with the line, “But I don’t party and shake my butt / I leave that to the brothers with the funny haircuts.”

A Bird In The Hand - Cube was good about writing about things from the everyman perspective, and A Bird In The Hand was an excellent example of that. While I don’t now, and didn’t then, think the character was as stuck as he seemed to think, I thought it explained the situation very well.

The Product - Speaking of which, if I was going to use a song that illustrated exactly what I thought early Ice Cube was about as an emcee, this would probably be it. This was Cube at his everyman finest. Telling the story of a young man from conception to incarceration, it sounds like something everybody can get next to. Particularly ironic is the tone of the song and the fact that the sample driving the song is “You Can Make It If You Try” by Sly & the Family Stone.

Once Upon A Time In The Projects - Cube’s storytelling is on display here. What impresses me so much about this record is his attention to detail. The unstable couch, the messed up black and white TV, the child with the runny nose and stinky drawls…this song doesn’t even need a video. You can see it exactly as it is.

Dopeman (remix) - Come on.

Fuck Tha Police - Among the whole crew, Cube’s verse stands way out because it puts the whole question of police brutality into a larger context. While Ren and Eazy are primarily focused on the “I’m-so-bad” element, Cube actually spends a couple lines looking at it from a systemic perspective fuck the police comin straight from the underground / a young nigga got it bad cuz I’m brown / and not the other color, some police think / they have the authority to kill a minority That pretty much summed it up for a lot of us, especially in the early 90’s.

Dead Homiez - Was this hip-hop’s first elegy? Whether it was or not, one of the lines that has stuck with me for the last 19 years is I look at this shit and I think to myself / and gotta thank God for my health / cuz nobody really ever know / when it’s gonna be they family on the front row / so I take everything slow / go with the flow/ and shut my motherfuckin mouth if I don’t know…” Those are some words to live by.

What They Hittin’ Foe - Again with Cube as everyman, but this time, he deliberately casts himself in that role. “Fuckin around in a crap game, niggas think I’m soft / cuz now I’m in the rap game and I don’t / hang out as much / bang out dope cuts / standin on stage and I’m grabbin my nuts/

No Vaseline - For my money, this is still the king of the dis tracks. Nowadays, people say so-and-so got “ethered,” referring to Nas’ track about Jay, but neither Ether nor Hit Em Up nor any of the 10000 other dis tracks that have been recorded are really fooling with No Vaseline. Cube straight eviscerated NWA on this track. And then he had the nerve to go and be right? It was crazy.

Parental Discretion Iz Advised / The Grand Finale - I count these two together because they’re kinda like the bookends of the full NWA team, with DOC actually rapping on the tracks instead of just writing for Eazy or Dre. As good as Ren and DOC came off on these tracks, Cube showed why he was that man. On The Grand Finale, he actually busts out one of the greatest forced rhymes I’ve ever heard, bordering on lyrical impressionism: “because I’m gone, you say I left you all/ but I stay in your ass like cho-les-tre-ol”

Over the weekend, I messed around and watched parts of the X-Men trilogy again. Each time, I was struck by how poor a choice Halle Berry was to play Storm. I don’t know if I can quite say it was the worst casting I’ve ever seen, but it was pretty bad. The only thing that character had in common with Storm is that they were both Black. Other than that, nothing. All that “regalness” that comes with being a princess/goddess? Not even close to being there. Honestly, her performance is painfully bad. And I know the producers are more interested in selling tickets than necessarily remaining true to the comic book mythology, but Angela Bassett would have been a far, far better choice as Storm - even down to the look of the character.

Now, Afronerd is saying that they’re thinking of casting Beyonce as She-Hulk. No. No. It wouldn’t be as epic a fail as Halle as Storm, but it’s bad just on the face of it. Honestly, I can’t see any real upside except that Beyonce can get certain fans into the theater. But if they wanna use a Black actress for She-Hulk, there have to be other options.

Oh yeah. On an unrelated note, the dude, Ovechkin might get me to watchin hockey again. Cuz is likes that.

I’m notorious for not seeing movies during their theatrical release. But these right here? These might be on “point seen, money gone” status.

And of course,

Now I haven’t gotten all fanboy an checked to see whether certain things are gonna happen, like Optimus Prime dying, cuz I’d kinda rather be surprised in the theater. However, I do hafta say that for a generation of boys in the 80’s, seeing him die the first time was one of our earliest experiences with crying over a movie. I’ll need to be prepared if it happens again.

DarkStar called it a long time ago. Pontiac is done.

I was hoping that following the new Camaro would be a re-release of the Firebird. So much for that.

Got the idea for this from Blackink (as usual). Most of these are prolly songs I ain’t go no business listenin to. Some are just songs I could be embarrassed to admit I like so much. But here they go:

Alone Again (Naturally) - Gilbert O’Sullivan. One time this joint came on when I was in the middle of a bad break-up. It got quite misty out there.

Bitch Betta Have My Money - AMG. Actually, in this case I’m probably talking more about the album than the track. For whatever reason, and I’ve never been sure exactly what it was, I LOVE this album. I can play it from cover to cover with very little skippage. And I know good and well…

Bitches Ain’t Shit - Ben Folds. If Dr. Dre’s version ain’t bad enough, this one’s even worse. Lyric-for-lyric faithfulness, meaning that you got a white dude sayin — no, singin the word ‘nigga,’ on top of the whole rest of the song. It’s truly a mess. And I liiike it.

Infamous Prelude - Mobb Deep. Even though I never believed a word of the superduperkillanigga raps, this little speech? I dug this joint right from the get-go.
“..Yo, l’ll let y’all niggas know right now, you ain’t gotta waste your time or your money on your hospital bills; I don’t back down easy. And if you step to me on a personal level, it’s a good chance ya ass either gon get shot, stabbed, or knuckled down, one outta the three…” Classic.

Findum, Fuckum, & Flee - NWA. Horrible, horrible, horrible song. But Dre freaked that beat right! And the way he dropped the bass during Ren’s verse? Come on. That’s production right there, yo.

Good Morning Heartache - Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Only reason this is here is because I think it’s my favorite version of this song. Across the board. Like, if you asked me, ain’t nobody messin w/ this song better than Dirty. And it shouldn’t be that way. But it is.

Sing Song - Buddy Baker. The Beatnuts got their samples from everywhere. This song proves it. When you listen to it, it’s like they’re singing a list of the signs they see on the way home. It’s really absurd. Not absurdly good, just absurd, like somethin you’d think of when you’re good and high. Let alone to make a song off it. But then, about 2/3 of the way through the song, you hear that sample and then they flip to a jazzy walking bass and it’s like…okay, this joint got some traction to it.

Prince Ali - Aladdin Soundrack. Yup.