HAPPY BIRTHDAY WISCONSIN!!!!

On April 20th, 1836 the US congress passed a resolution declaring Wisconsin to be an organized territory of the United States. It wouldn't become a state till May 30th 1848, but we will celebrate that one too.

Did you know that all of Iowa, Minnesota, and both Dakotas were part of the Wisconsin Territory? Yes they were. One more reason why we are better than them and anyone else.

Lawyer Review #1: TI's Lawyer=Better Than My Parents

A long time ago, both my parents were lawyers.

After law school, still feeling the hippy vibe, out to help and protect the people from the government, my dad would travel around the state, working for the Council of Indian Affairs defending Indians, commonly defending Indians that shot down eagles to use their feathers for religious Indian what not. Problem was, the Great American Eagle is the symbol of America the Great and it's in real poor taste to shoot it down. You could make the argument that an Indian might not be so happy with this nation and might not view America the Great as being as Great as America is. But I digress. Point is, is you shot a Great American Eagle and got caught, my dad was your man. If it weren't for him, there would be eagles all over the place shitting on your head right now as you read.

Meanwhile my mom was a prosecutor, worked for the city of Milwaukee as an A.D.A. Tough as nails, never lost a case. She put the bad men away and never flinched. Legend has it she single-handily dismantled the Outlaws, and when one of them threatened her with a shotgun she told him to go point it at the goddamn eagles.

And as rad as they were when they were still both knee deep in the game, they did legal work, they were never able to pull off pure magic. And pure is what happened in Atlanta less than three weeks ago. (to think that real magic has not yet been discussed on this blog?)

As far as absurd hip-hop arrests go, this whole business ranks pretty high. It's no DMX impersonating an FBI agent and trying to steal a woman's car at JFK just because, but, it's at least on par or better than Slick Rick getting knocked by the INS. To pull into a Walgreen's parking lot on the way to the BET awards to buy some machine guns, well, it deserves applause. But the photosquantity of all the guns snatched during the subsequent raid of his home was what really elevated this one. Not only was the number of guns shocking, but these guns were insane. I've never even seen some of these in movies. And I like to watch movies with guns.

After a 2.2 million dollar bond he's been sitting in house arrest till two weeks ago when he enters a crazy plea deal.
A year and a day plus 1000 hours of community service. It's insane. Just to compare sentencing, Prodigy got popped for a fucking revolver and he's going upstate for three years. And, TI's a felon to begin with and it's illegal for him to have any guns, let alone guns which are illegal in the first place. It's amazing.

I don't know what kind of back room deal went on, and I'm sure T.I. rumors of snitching will haunt T.I. at least long enough before he gets himself into more trouble. Point is, what his lawyers were able to pull of was pure magic.

You know what he's like is Magic Ben. This guy performed at my 24th birthday party and it was the greatest thing ever. A few of my friends hated on it but that's because they were jealous and don't really understand the nuances of magic. He did a card trick where he I picked a card and put it back in the deck and he tried to guess it but he couldn't and he tried a bunch of times and then he said "oh it may be in this deck" and grabbed a deck of cards that was sitting on the corner of the table since he started the show and opened it up and my card was facing the other way and it said "happy birthday Adam." Now I think we can all admit that's unbelievable. The guy is really the best magician in the world. David Sedbach and his wonders of Magic. Please. The only wonder of magic in that whole show is the fact he still has a job. In fact, he should wonder about that himself..

Anyway, that card trick=T.I.'s lawyer.

Bye Larry Krystkowiak

It's about time your ass got thrown out of Milwaukee. 31-69 is immpresively umimpressive. You had so much talent at your disposal and you choose to do nothing with it. I for one was furious when we got rid of Terry Porter to hire and fire Terry Stotts to then hire and fire you. It's time we quit wasting our time and got a real man like Larry Brown to step in and take fucking charge. There is no reason why this season should have been as dissapointing as it was with the increadible amount of talent available. I do not believe we have a bad car, we have a fucking mazaratti, you just don't know how to drive it.

simmer to a sizzle like the days of old

When I first bought Voodoo, I didn't get it all. At the time, I was a two and half year deep into a Prince/James Brown obesession that would prove to be one of the longest, deepest musical obsessions I would ever have. And everything pointed towards Voodoo being the album for me. I'd always liked Brown Sugar but thought it was a bit too sweet and neo-soul for me, and all sources and advance reviews pointed towards Voodoo being it's dirty, messy, jammed out, evil step-brother.

Like I said, when I first bought it, I didn't hear it that way. In fact I don't even think I listened to more than once until a friend yelled at me a month later and demanded I go listen to it again, which I did. And it's one of those few times in my life I was able to totally experience something in a completely different way. (no homo) I don't know how I heard it at first, but I was fucking wrong, I realized what I was listening to might just be one of the greatest albums to ever be released in my lifetime.

And so began the spring of 2000, in which I listened to nothing, literally nothing, other than Voodoo. At home, in the car, at work, on the way to class, everywhere. And I couldn't stop talking about it. Everyone I talked to I'd have to bring it up, did they have? Have you heard it? Is it not the single greatest album ever made by a musician ever? The way I carried on you'd think I'd be getting points off the album.

That summer, I saw him twice, two nights in a row, and was going to drive all the way to Detroit on some deadhead shit to see him a third time when cooler heads prevailed and my common sense was severely questioned. And both nights he put on such a hell of a goddamn show that of the ten greatest concerts I've ever been, two of them have been those two D'Angelo shows. Dude was front and center all night commanding and conducting a thirteen-piece band circa early 70's James Brown. In a sense, it was the show I'd been waiting to see since I dived into it all two and half years earlier.

Unfortunately, there hasn't been much since. After all the hype and publicity, D'Angelo quickly slipped back into the shadows of self-destruction and seclusion. Drug busts, flipping over his car, and one absurd looking mugshot showing everyone showed us all how far he had fallen.

So this spring I'm thinking I'm going to make the spring of D'angelo. It's been a while since the shit has been in constant rotation, but it's about to happen again.

So the clip I've posted is really what did it, what changed my mind about the album an got me to hear it in a different way. It's a live version of Chicken Grease off the Chris Rock show, and it couldn't be any fucking better.

I Was Right When I Called Bullshit On The LA Times

Here's the basic summary of what happened

On March 17th, Chuck Philips wrote a piece for the LA Times detailing Tupac Shakur's ambush and shooting at New York's Quad Studios back in 94. For those a little hazy on their east coast/west coast beef history, this is or less what started it all. Tupac survived the shooting, checked himself out of the hospital, went to court to hear the his guilty verdict in a sexual assault case, then to prison. But after that night, he blamed Puff and Biggie for setting him .

Philips' article argues Pac was right all along. He was set up. His article relying on FBI documents and an anonymous source contends Puff got with James "Henchmen" Rosemond(whose about to got to prison on a ten-year bid for stomping a DC radio dj who made a joke about his blue tooth ear piece), a hip-hop talent manager/thug along with Jimmy Sabatino, a fat Italian kid who used his father's mafia connections to get himself into the rap world. The deal was to lure Tupac to the studio to drop a guest verse, and have their hired goons jump him when he got off the elevator.

Problem was, Tupac wouldn't give up his jewels, He reached for his shit and the thugs pulled their guns and started firing. According to the fabulous journalistic flair, Tupac gets back in the elevator after getting shot, takes it up to the floor Biggie is on, gets out, sits on the couch, rolls a blunt, and Puff yells, "get the fuck out of here."

I read this, called my friend Jordan and told him on the spot, this is bullshit. This is the same guy that wrote an article claiming Biggie actually flew to Vegas and paid some crips a half a million dollars to kill Tupac that night. Never mind there is no record of Christopher Wallace buying a ticket for any airline, never mind Biggie's estate was able to come up with a credit card statement from his account of purchases made in New York on that night, and never mind Puffy had Biggie so tied up contractually that the only money he saw at the time was from touring and he was about as close to a mil as I am right now.

Point is, he had his bullshit sources then, but he still went ahead and ignored all common sense and wrote it. And the LA Times went against even more common sense and published it. But they never learned their lesson.

Now, Philips writes this brand new piece of bullshit and his main sources are a classified FBI document and an unnamed anonymous tipster. Both reek. The original LA Times articles had a link to the FBI documents and it was clear as day to me these documents were a complete fabrication. The Smoking Gun did a number on this and really got into how shitty they were; spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, not to mention they were written on a typewriter and the FBI has not used typewriters in 30 years.

Turns out, the whole thing was an elaborate con by Jimmy Sabaition, whose father described him as "needing attention like he addicts need drugs." He wants Puffy to pay him 170,000 for who knows what, and Diddy won't do it. I guess this is Sabatino showing Diddy what he's capable of. And what he's capable of is scary. He's capable of getting the LA Times, the paper with the second largest readership in America, to print a total hoax, absolute fiction.

Chuck Philips, you claim you were taken advangae of. You claim you were naive and should have done more researchinto the authencitity of the documents provided to you. But you are full of shit. You one a Pultizer Prize. You've been duped once before in a high profile article about the same subject. I don't beleive for a second you woudl let yourself be taken advanage of again. I think you are a fucking liar. I think you thought you could get away with writig a story that you knew to be false, that you knew was fiction, and that you knew would damage a lot of reputations and possibly incite a great deal of violence. You are a fucking fraud and I hope this little adventure costs you your fucking job.



Anyone interested in reading a quality piece of journalism about the LAPD, Tupac,Biggie, etc, should check out this out. It's not a piece of hip-hop journalism, it's a very in depth look at how high-profile cases are investigated in a corrupt police department.