HustleKnockin'

Ode to Brother J.

If I were a musician today, I’d be Jim Brickman. Who? I said, Jim Brickman.

I met dude on one of my long flights… Sat next to each other and chopped it up for about 3 or 4 hours.

J started out in the advertising industry producing and writing music (mostly instrumentals)for TV spots and radio commercials. It turns out we actually knew some of the same biz folks. Anyway, he did that for years, made some loot but hated the hustle so much he had to get out.

He’d developed a nice little rep and sound and started recording full-length joints. Next thing you know, he’s got 5 Gold Albums, a couple Platinum joints, is a known composer and is sitting in first-class between gigs.

Does hiphop cuss too much?

How sad is this story. Comments to follow:

HIP-HOPPERS CAN'T BEAT CURSING RAP
BY BRENDAN BROSH and RICH SCHAPIRO
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Sunday, May 13th 2007, 4:00 AM

At a Harlem rap marathon last night, the rhymes flowed for hours but the rule against cursing lasted only a few seconds. Nearly 100 rap fans filled the Hip Hop Culture Center on Frederick Douglass Blvd. to see if the dozens of rappers and poets on hand could keep going for 24 hours and break the world record for continuous rapping - while keeping it clean.

Not even the first rapper, Kool Herc, was able to do that. But the hip-hoppers seemed to have enough verbal stamina to power them through the night.

"I'm ecstatic to be part of positive hip-hop history," said Kashana Green, aka Kween Kash, who added that not swearing wouldn't be a problem for her because "I typically stay away from curse words anyway."

The event, which was sponsored by the Global Artists Coalition, a nonprofit organization dedicated to career development for young people, was designed to showcase rap as an art form that does not have to revolve around violence, drugs and money.

"We're here to demonstrate that hip-hop culture is not a negative culture," said Terry Nelson, the event's organizer. "There's a positive message in hip hop that needs to get out."

Despite his age, Lil Crise, a 13-year-old rapper from Brooklyn, was among those itching to get on stage to display their lyrical skills.

"I'm not nervous," he said. "I'm just gonna get my freestyle on."

Koreans sell hiphop

KOREANS MAKE UNLIKELY PURVEYORS of HIPHOP FASHION
HERALD NEWS
ED BEESON

Yong Suk Kim doesn't know a thing about hip-hop. But she does know something crucial about the direction its fashion is taking.

"It used to be big and baggy," the 50-year-old Korean immigrant recently said. "Now they are getting a little smaller."

Kim is the co-owner of Dr. Sports, a downtown Paterson clothing store that specializes in urban fashion -- the colorful, imaginative and often luxury-priced gear made by street-savvy designers such as ENYCE, Pelle Pelle and Miskeen.

But the clothier does not look the part. Clad in a cardigan sweater and imbued with gentle politeness, Kim possesses a grace that does not mesh with rap's rough edges. The speakers in her store pound hip-hop music from the radio station Power 105.1, but she said that in the 20 years since she and her husband opened this shop, she still does not understand rap, its rambunctious beats or slang-heavy lyrics.

HustleKnockin' Baby!

By the way, I have a blog outside of Myspace... Similar material but a little more street" and business focused. It's called HUSTLEKNOCKIN. It's all about smahin constructs thru information, honest dialog and open minds.

If you get a chance, swing thru... HUSTLEKNOCKIN'
We cover all kinds of stuff, including free excerpts from KNOCK THE HUSTLE (2006) and the upcoming KNOCK THE HUSTLE VOLUME 2 (Coming Summer 2007).

luv the visuals? We're tweaking the color scheme and visuals along the way--trademarking at every turn. Get your intellectual property game together, folks. it's real!

bring back Cult Jam!

Music Biz is Crumblin'!

Here's a few more signs that the music industry is about to collaspe on its big, fan, bloated, corrupted butt.

EMI Ousts Top Music Executives, Forecasts Lower Sales
By Aisha Phoenix
Bloomberg.com

Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- EMI Group Plc, the U.K. record company that signed the Beatles, ousted two top music executives and forecast lower revenue after disappointing holiday sales.

Alain Levy will leave after five years as chief executive officer of the recorded music division. David Munns, the unit's vice chairman, will also step down. Chairman Eric Nicoli will become CEO of EMI, the world's third-largest music company, and take charge of the record unit, EMI said in a statement today.

Rass Kass: Still A Slave

Here's a little gem... An opened letter from Rass Kass, underground hiphop legends. He of Soul on Ice, RassKassination, etc. He and others have long compared the record insutry to pimps slave system, etc. Truthfully, it's more like sharecropping. All legal. All ethical. Little moral. Very little of it is moral.

What stuns me is how many artists continue to play the game and sign such awfu,l awful contracts. It's like seeing oncoming traffic and then just running out into it, then complaining afterwards about getting hit.

Still, here's Rass and his lawyers take on things, courtesy of my man, Davey D.

Last hired, first fired... Sony axes Blacks

SONY BMG AXES BLACKS ONLY: Label found to have discriminated in layoffs.
(January 10, 2007)

*Sony BMG, which is home to artists like Beyonce and Christina Aguilera, was recently found to have discriminated against its Black employees in its Manhattan office during layoffs in 2004.

The company went through a merger and restructuring in the summer of 2004 and the New York office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found the company guilty of discrimination against its Black employees. The EEOC found that the six Blacks in its Manhattan office were issued pink slips, but none of their white counterparts. The only black worker that remained was a mail clerk. Of the six Blacks fired, three accepted severance packages and three were asked to leave "involuntarily." None of eight whites and one Asian at the office were given the ax.

This ruling gives former field marketing rep Tamieka Blair, 32, the right to sue Sony BMG, saying she "was the victim of race discrimination."

Blair, who introduced new releases to Long Island music stores, told The New York Post she loved her $31,000-a-year job. She went on to explain that she initially accepted her layoff after a boss told her "it was just a numbers game." But once the workers who were fired compared notes with each other, "we realized it was all the black people," she said.

Sony BMG maintains that it based its layoff decisions on job performance, but the EEOC said the company had "no documented procedure for determining who the best players were," and "lacked performance standards."

Ms. Blair, via lawyer Mitchell Carlinsky, will file suit this week in Brooklyn federal court holding the company accountable.

Blue Scholars--Hustleknockers

There's a cool new group out of Seattle called Blue Scholars. They're a Filippino crew that's into political and community activisim--a lot of the grassroots stuff that more artists need to get into. They spit it then live it.

I first heard about them from David Meinert over at fuze music. he's at: davemeinert [a] fuzemusic [dot] com. he hit me up after reading a couple articles that i'd written for Davey D over at Daveyd [dot] com--a strong industry/community brother out of the Bay who's been carrying the torch for hiphop for 25 years now.

Payola in Radio? Nahh...

Just when i thought i was the angriest hustleknocker going. meet paul porter--the man, the myth, the highly blackballed and probably out of work whistle blower from IndustryEars.com... How this guy is able to rant like this and still pay bills, God only knows.

maybe it's because much of what he says about radio at least is true. Enjoy.

Is the FCC Selling Us Out on the Payola Tip?
Paul Porter
Industry Ears.com

Last October I was a panelist at the FCC Town Hall in Oakland,California. Commissioner Adelstein addressed those in attendance on 'the smoking gun"of evidence that the FCC held referencing their payola probe. Several months later it seems that Chairman Martin has turned the gun into a useless water pistol.

KTH EXCERPTS!!! N'joy

(You Can’t) Knock The Hustle

A realist is always hated in a society of
sanctimonious hustlers, which is what America is.
—Gore Vidal

My hustle of choice: the advertising and marketing industry. Been in it for 15 years. Now the best way to explain marketing is this: Hold up your hand, either one: Go ’head, get it up—I’ll wait (lol)... Okay, now think of your hand as the marketplace:

p.e.

these guys used to scare people....

make folks think.....

Rahzel versus... everyone?

One of the more intriguing things to come out of YouTube is the way in wich it spreads culture or rather helps culture get spread and disected. Here's an example: Rahzel. formerly of one of my fave groups:

THE ROOTS

Rahzel, is, well...

Yeah. a Human Arkestra—a one man Sun Ra, if you will. Between him and Kenny Muhammad and Scratch (Roots' current organic beatman), the craft of beatboxing will be forever passed down.

Review: After The Music Stops (Lecrae)

REVIEW:

Title: After The Music Stops
Artist: Lecrae
Label: Cross Movement Records 2006

Sorry Malice, sorry Hov, but Lecrae’s the real reason my favorite emcee is no longer my favorite. As a Christian, I have to say that I’ve almost always hated Christian rap. It’s made me cringe since I was a shorty.

Between Hammer’s Pray, Kirk Franklin’s joints and even Ye’s Jesus Walks from last year I thought that nobody would ever do this thing even close to right. (And of course, you gotta walk the talk, so maybe Mr. West is a stretch—not that I’m throwin’ stones with all the bones in my closet. (But that’s another story.)

Jive Turkeys... Jibbs clones

here's what happens when the kids get carried away with chains and poorly updated slavery minstrel songs. Thank you Jibbs!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0VpeeJR9nM

now is this better than Borat from Khazakstan? I mean, by Sacha Cohen's identity the problem isn't with the kids, it's with our perception of the what the kids are doing here, right? That's assuming we have a problem with what the kids are doing. Which we don't, because it's just a song...

Jibbs--how's it hangin'?

There's a popular song out... "Does your chain hang low?" by Jibbs, an up and coming rapper. How long will he be around? Who knows. But the joint has been ring-toned over 50,000 already. Can you say Cha-ching? I know his label is.

It's a pretty juvenile song, no doubt. Reminds some of an child's lymric. Reminds others of something a little worse. Check out the video. See what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMxgFDmyEsY

CRACK RAP

CRACK RAP

I was listening to some old Clipse today. They’re one of my guilty pleasures, right up there with Guiness, fried food and Reality TV. (Almost looking forward to Survivor this year. Sorta. Then again…)

Roscoe P. ColdChain was this vicious kid from their ’02 Lord Willin’ seminal. Dude had this bizarre off-kilter, staccato spoken-word flow—bordered on old man talking, which was weird because he was only about 19 or 20. It was part-Method Man/part-Sauce Money, with a little G. Rap smoke. It was familiar, but at the same time it wasn’t like anything you’d ever heard.

Karsh Kale: No mash-ups needed.

ARTIST: Karsh Kale
ALBUM: Broken English
LABEL: Six Degrees, 2006
STANDOUTS: Manifest, Innocence and Power, Louder than Bombs, Rise Up
REMINDS ME OF: An East Indian Beck, Andre 3000 goes to Nepal.

Indian music is hot. The latest flavor to be eaten alive by The Hustle… By 2008, East Indian-everything will be the flavor of the month all over the US… and it’ll have a friggin’ logo on every incarnation. So, until in the meantime, you might want to get exposed to some really good Indian music before Viacom, Clear Channel, and the boys get around to programming the soul out of it.

Percussionist/DJ Karsh Kale's Broken English is one of the better albums of its kind.

breakin atoms and bread and constructs...

TIME TO BREAK BREAD…

ARTIST: Lecrae
ALBUM: Real Talk
LABEL: Cross Movement Records, 2006
(www.lecrae.com / www.crossmovementrecords.com)
STANDOUTS: Tha Church, Crossover, We Don’t, Wait, Who U Wit, Nothin’
REMINDS ME OF: Fire ‘n’ Brimstone with southern bounce. Ludacris with a bible. Holy Rukus.

Ahh, Christian Rap the stepchild of Black Music… You almost smirk whenever someone says it, even today. And as a Christian (a highly flawed one, but one none the less), there’s not a whole lot of hiphop rappers that I get into. Mainly because so much of it has just been bad.

But there’s a generation of spitters and flowers out there that are really nice. Not just “nice for Christian rap,” but nice period. Lecrae is one of ‘em.

country girl from UK...

TIME FOR ANOTHER HUSTLEKNOCKIN’ HEADBANGER…

ARTIST: Corrine Bailey Rae
LABEL/YEAR: Capitol, 2006
STANDOUTS: Lots. Trouble Sleeping, Put your records on, call me when you get this…
REMINDS ME OF: Joni Mitchell’s horny quirky black teenage niece from London who came up on Sade and Stevie Wonder. Norah Jones with more flavor and less hype.

How many constructs do black females face? Corinne Bailey Rae’s still has to answer condescending questions like “What made someone like you wanna pick up a guitar?”

Critics are actually talking about CBR as an “alternative” to the sisters in the thongs. Like one’s got something to do with the other or like the music industry cooked Corinne up to solve a problem created by dumb consumers. People actually brag about the fact that she’s a black singer songwriter like we ain’t never had such a thing before.