Well after an extended stay in the land of triflin and procrastination we here at GHz are back on the grind.  Just when you thought the adults had left the buildng.  BOOM guess who steps in the room. We have made a vow to be moe on it in 2012.  Please hold us to it.  Let us begin…..

Far from Krypton: Would You Look Up to Yourself As a Kid?

“Contrast Bohemia to my workplace” – Busdriver

A long time ago, when we were in our late 20s, me and my potna Neil were on one of our many walking excursions around town.  He mentioned that he was not living up to his own expectations.  I asked him what he meant.  He told me that when he was a kid, he knew he would be a superhero by now, and he just did not see THAT happening any time in the near future.

Isn’t that what it’s all about?  Being the adult that the child we use to be wanted us to be?

Maybe this is why I spend so much time thinking about my younger years.  Back then, I was Playdoh slowly taking the shape of who I am via the experiences I chose to live.  Now that I sit behind a computer in some nameless corporate office eight hours a day, I think I owe it to myself to reminisce from time to time.

Back in college, I use to hang around the hip hoppers.  Humans have a way of grouping themselves.  Like-minded people tend to create enemies of people who think differently.  Many times this brings about group cohesion.  But as the group grows, splinter groups form.  So even amongst the hip hoppers, there were subgroups.  I found myself hanging with the bummy, nerdy, argumentative, artsy fartsy subgroup.  We would debate for the sake of the debate.  We would poke fun at the pretty boy hip hoppers (as I am sure they made fun of us).  Our hip hop standards were extremely high.  We tolerated no bs music in any form. 

So one day, the homie Cosmo got a shipment of tapes from one of his homies on the West Coast.  I remember seeing the trademark Eligh rendition of the Eye of Horus, HAND DRAWN (!!) on one of those tapes.  But the tape that made the most noise in my subgroup was coMURShal.

The quality was horrible, but it was still dubbed and redubbed to the point where the hiss and static were louder than the beats and lyrics on some parts.  Eligh and Scarub had the style, MURS had the content.  We even found time to argue about different aspects of the songs we liked so much.

Then, the homie Thomas got a hold of an online tape catalog (http://www.truehiphop.com/atak/) advertising a new MURS tape.  He promptly ordered it and soon after, F’REAL came in the mail.  The quality was still terrible, but it was the original terrible.  Plus, we got the liner notes, which had been hand-cut at Kinko’s, and the blue cassette alluding to a certain gang affiliation.  The name of the work rang true on so many levels.

Thomas gave it a listen in his dorm room.  He then gave it to me to listen to one fateful weekend in my apartment.  I was all too familiar with the sophomore slump, so I did not really take it seriously.  I put it in the cassette player and let it be the ambient music for hanging out with the first woman I ever loved that weekend.

As the sun peeked through the blinds of the large, energy wasting, plexiglass windows of my apartment, F’REAL was still playing as we woke up.  As fate would have it, we both actually started listening to his words when “The Jerry Maguire Song” came on.  Our eyes widened as the lyrics of that first verse sunk in.  Our first words of that day had something to do with rewinding that song.

“Now most of us could waste a whole lifetime doin shit we don’t believe in/
So I’m retrievin words of gold to expose my soul/
On the sheets, combined with the beat, a song, complete, to compete/
Nah, cause most of y’all won’t understand it/
Takin this existence for granted/
Never goin after what you really want cause you ain’t got the heart/
So your life never starts to have meaning/
Fiending for somethin to fill that void, annoyed/
With the surroundings you picked ‘cause they don’t seem to fit your person/
Rehearsin what they said would make you happy/
Until you realized one day, ‘Damn they trapped me’/
But who are they anyway? To tell you how to live/
A college degree, then a career, the only decent way to raise kids/
But I disagree, see I wasn’t put here to make a living/
My living makes me, so even if it takes me a lifetime/
I’ma write rhymes that I feel/
Some shit for when I’m fired, that shit for when I’m chilled/
And even if I never make that ticket to a meal/
I’ll still be a success cause my purpose will have been filled.”

Moments like that leave an impact. Songs like that leave an impact. Even as I sit in my nameless corporate office, feeling the Playdoh I am composed of harden into the shape of something far from a super hero…

MURS – The Jerry Macguire Song

Finally RIAA is growing up–not acting like complete and utter jerks that hinder the growth and innovation of music distribution–and working with music services to get people the music they want to hear when and how they want to hear it, without having to resort to, ahem, other methods.
Here are three music services that you should be checking out that are legal and free:

Pandora
How It Works:
This online music service has been around for awhile. You plug in a musician or a song that you like and, through some scientific computer algorithm hocus pocus, the service finds similar music and sets up a playlist, called a station. You can “thumbs up” the music you like so that the results are even more refined to your tastes, or give it a “thumbs down” and never hear that song again. You can (theoretically) set up an infinite number of stations, for all your music moods.

Why Use It:
It’s a great way to discover new music and you don’t have to worry about queuing up songs. It can just play with no interaction from you.

Turntable.fm
How It Works:
You enter a room (think chat rooms, like back in the day) which usually has a theme and either listen or step up and DJ. There are up to 5 DJs per room. You can upload your own music or grab stuff to stream from the library. As a listener you can “awesome” music which gives the current DJ points and access to more goodies. You can also “lame” music, and if enough people lame a song, it’s skipped. If a DJ gets too many skips, they’re booted off the stage.

Why Use It:
Turntable allows you to interact with other people in the room, giving it the best real-time social experience of all three music services.

Spotify
How It Works:
It’s almost like iTunes, except everything is streamed. On the free version, you can pretty much listen to whatever you want when you want to.

Why Use It:
It’s been in Europe for a while, and was just introduced here in the US. People have been salivating over this thing like nobody’s business. So sign up to be one of the cool kids. It’s the closest you can get to a subscription service, and the paid version is available on a bunch of different devices. You can also share and listen to other people’s playlists.

We’re not taking a whole lotta time off, just a few days. But we’ll be back on it by Monday. BTW for all the Charlotte Grownheadz, we’ll see y’all at Late Movie Friday. This week we’re showing Slam. Peace (for now).

EDITOR’ S NOTE – This post is actually a comment we got about Gods’Illa’s single, You Don’t Have To Be A Star.  The comment was so insightful that we wanted to make sure everybody had a chance to read it.  BIG shout out to seanzbrother; glad to have brought you some music that reminds you why you STILL love hip hop.

From seanzbrother:

Not too long ago, I was watching ‘Tupac Resurrection’ with my 16-year-old son. I pointed out, when they showed clips of Black Panther and SNCC activities, that young people were always catalysts for change in our communities.

Although my generation benefited from the struggles of the 60′s and 70′s, we were children of the 80′s. Our revolution was televised. We expressed our activism, our culture, our frustrations, and our dreams through the music and art of hip-hop culture.

Those who were there know what crack did to the Black communities of NYC during the 1980′s. Hip-hop’s heroes like Tupac, and Sister Souljah, broadcast the daily triumphs and struggle of a youth that felt voiceless. For that reason, we loved ‘Pac as we loved Hip-Hop.

As an adult now, I miss Hip-Hop. I miss Hip-Hop that truthfully conveys the beauty of the Black community; a beauty that shines through, despite the best efforts of those who foolishly presume to wield power. I want to thank Gods’ Illa for ‘You Don’t Have To Be A Star’. I mean, I’m definitely gettin’ my grown man on. But that true love has a way of making you feel nineteen again. Peace.

Check the song below.

Yeah yeah its old news now but Dallas did the improbable and beat the Miami Heat to capture the championship last night.here are some tweets we kinda sorta found funny.

@esbecreative: *Breaking News* tomorrow is lebron james day…everyone gets to leave work 12 minutes early

@DeePhunk: Chris Bosh cryin’ in the locker room soundin’ like a young Chewbacca. Mad claw marks on his locker.

@benmaller: “NBA unable to send unused Heat championship memorabilia to kids in 3rd world because of choking hazard.”

@pittswiley: You saw me suck at my job this week. I didn’t see you suck at yours because you’re of zero relevance. — LeBron James

@TheBillWalton: A reporter asked Lebron & Wade if they choked. In answering the question, Lebron deferred yet again to Wade.

@dangerroom: This is like if Emperor Palpatine had to give a press conference after the Death Star went boom. #Heat

@owillis: LeBron is just like Michael Jordan… EXCEPT JORDAN WINS CHAMPIONSHIPS.

I was just reading a post by Manifesto over at Blackvibes.com, lamenting the pace of technology and how fast things change.  As a grownhead, I truly feel him when he says: 

“I didn’t realize I was in the midst of a media medium shift until about a year and a half ago, when I referenced on Facebook the compact disc wallet I keep in my car, and several friends responded, ‘Who the hell still listens to CDs in their car?’ The concept of only listening to my iPod in the whip was foreign to me then, and remains as such now. 

“I suppose I’m turning into my father — the man who only grudgingly embraces new media; I always make fun of him for just graduating from dial-up Internet less than two years ago and still using as his primary television the one that belonged to his mother-in-law who died in 1994. But am I really much different from a man who still speaks fondly of the 8-track player on his old Buick Century?” 

"What you mean cassettes are out?"

My “Nobody Told Me” moment came about 9 years ago, when I was passing out 15-minute mix tapes to showcase my finesse on the two turntables.  I gave it to one club owner and he looked a little funny, then said, “I gotta find a tapedeck to play this in.” 

Manifesto isn’t alone in bemoaning the death of CDs.  A download is convenient, but there just isn’t that sense of permanence that comes from holding the CD of the artist; reading the liner notes, peeping the cover art. MP3s just don’t give you the same level of knowledge of the album.  

Even artists seem to be leaving the format behind.  Talib Kweli only released his new CD Gutter Rainbows in digital format (at least, here in the States).  I was kickin it with our own Hip Hop Purist a while back and he was telling me his misadventures of trying to get an actual hardcopy of Blu & Exile’s debut album “Below the Heavens.” Long story short, he downloaded it.  

Like Manifesto, I just gotta say I’m fighting the good fight–but things aren’t looking so great for our hero. 

CLICK HERE FOR THE MANIFESTO POST

As we dawn on a new decade, it’s time for grownheadz to do something new. With that in mind, here are the top 3 apps you should try on your smart phone this year.

These tools have been around for a while, but maybe you didn’t see the point when you first heard about them, or didn’t have the phone to try them out.
Well, no more excuses. By now, you’ve already upgraded to a smart phone (iPhone, Blackberry, Windows 7 or any phone running Android), and it’s time to get the most out of it. If you haven’t yet (what are you waiting for?), here’s something to look forward to when you do upgrade:

Foursquare is a service that allows you to ‘check-in’ through your phone when you are at a physical location.

Why you should try it: More and more businesses are starting to get it, and offer special deals when you check in. I’ve gotten free cups of coffee, discounts and coupons by using FourSquare. You can also leave comments and read other people’s comments about what they did and didn’t like about a joint. Additionally, it’s a great way to prove that you and your homies really did go to IHOP after the club.

What you worried about? Yes, you are telling people where you are, including the nefarious shadow government plotting your downfall, but they can track you anyway through your phone if they really want to — and really, the shadow government doesn’t care about your late night trips to IHOP anyway (…or do they!!??!).

Twitter: It’s a 140 character-limited messaging service that asks one simple question — “What’s happening?”

Why you should try it: While twitter is great for a lot of things, more and more people are using it to report, see, and check what other people think about real-time breaking news. If you think TV is fast, Twitter is 100 times faster. While Twitter can get it right as often as they get it wrong (No, Bill Cosby is not dead, dammit), they do get it first.

What you worried about? What can you possibly say in 140 characters? All you need to, actually. There have been tests to prove that everything that needs to be said can be distilled down to the space you’d use to write a message on a postcard, which is about 140 characters.

Don’t believe it? Here is The Usual Suspects in less than 140 characters: Verbal Kent is lying, he is Kaiser Souze — there.

Google: You know Google…or do you?

Why you should try it: When you think of Google, you usually think of the search engine, but Google’s suite of applications are awesome and all free. Full disclosure: I drink the Google kool-aid, if Google made a sandwich I’d be the first in line. You’ve been warned.

The Google suite of products include: Google Maps, which is GPS enabled for turn by turn directions. No more getting lost.  Goggles: Snap a picture of an object or place, and Goggles identifies it and gives you more information on what it is. And of course, let’s not forget Gmail. There are a bunch of others, but these will start you off.

What you worried about? Give in and bow down to your Google overlords, as you hand over even more of your private information.

In conclusion, while there are many things you could be using your phone for, like actually making a call, there is another world out there that needs exploring and the smart phone is the key.

What other mobile phone apps should we be using? Let us know in the comments.

Hope Your enjoyng your holidays (we are). You’ll hear from us again bright and early on January 3 in 2011. We need the time off, we have some serious, SERIOUS Kwanzaa-ing to do.

Well the results are in and it’s official.  The GOP picked up 60 – 70 seats in the house (DAAAAAAMN) but the Dems retain control of the Senate. It could be worst, it COULD have been a replay of 1994 all over again when the Repubs took the House AND the Senate.

But that’s not the point. Like we said “Didn’t They do this Movie Already?”. Two years ago the nation was suffering under a ruthless Tyrant (okay not really a tyrant, he was just stupid and NObody liked him, but you know this). ANYway the call went out for a new leader, a new direction. We even dare to say there was even a call for a NEW…..

And on November 2, 2008 hope (and joy) came in the morning.  Blah, blah you know the rest.  But now its two years later and the Notorious GOP and their minions have stalled, stopped, held their breath, and done just about anything else they could think of to bring down the agenda of the 44th Prez.

Well its culminated in the results that we have tonight. Apparently there are some folks out there with such short memories that they may need to really consider setting an appointment to see their doctor before they forget.  I’m getting sidetracked again.  2008 was “A New Hope”

And now its 2010 and you guessed it..

Well if this is how its going to go, in 2012 don’t be surprised we all know how it ends.