Who Is S. Fresh? x Advertorial Fail

I’ve never heard S. Fresh’s music. But after this glitch in the Matrix was pointed out to me by a publicist I highly respect, listening to S. Fresh’s tunes isn’t at the top of my to do list.

Riddle me this, why in tarnation—I’ve been wanting to use “tarnation” in a post for a good while—would four outlets (AllHipHop.com, BET.com, YoRaps.com and HipHopGame.com) post the exact same, word for word “interview” on S. Fresh? Worse yet, none seemed to be bothered by this sentence (in the last “question”):

…thank you for your time and much congrats to your accomplishments thus far and best of luck to future adventures; did you have any last words you wanted to plug for the readers?

Pretty safe bet the phrase “to future adventures” should have been “in future endeavors.”

No shots, but this doesn’t pass the smell test. Better yet, next time, just place ADVERTORIAL in the title, or something. It’s just not the best of looks in journalistic circles to pass off stock content as being original. Okay, my Hip-Hop Internets ombudsman moment is a wrap.

Adidas X Def Jam X Ghostface Killah

"Starsky with the gumsole..." -Ghostface "Nutmeg"

Ghostface Killah gets his own adidas. As I noted for AllHipHop, adidas and Def Jam have connected to celebrate each brand’s 60th and 25th anniversaries, respectively.

The good guys at Street Level just posted some pics of Ghostface’s signature shoe, an adidas Forum in a “purple tape” hue and a gumsole. Someone was paying attention to Tony Starks’ lyrics.

Another pic after the vid.

Hip-Hop, Before The Bronx?

“The story is not just we’re saying that Hip-Hop didn’t start in the Bronx, we’re just saying it pre-dates the 1974 ‘cause Pete DJ Jones, this guys in his 60s and he was playing music in the Bronx in the late ’60s.”—Hasan Pore

Blasphemy you say? Yeah, I’d readily agree. No need for full disclosure since those that know me know very well that I represent The Bronx all day, every day. But, when I heard that Hasan Pore and Amen-Ra Lawrence were putting together a documentary [Founding Fathers] spotlighting DJ’s from Queens and Brooklyn that were rocking before the Holy Hip-Hop Trinity of Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa, I had to see what was up. [via AllHipHop]

Upon interviewing the two friends for AllHipHop.com, it became clear they’re not out to disrupt the established Hip-Hop zeitgeist. Instead they’re looking to bring some well deserved shine to DJs from around their way, and beyond, that only get passing mentions in most Hip-Hop history texts. From their knowledge of the culture and the clips floating around the Internet this Founding Fathers documentary looks like it will be a must see.

UPDATE(s): The NY Times mentioned my story in City Looks, good looks to BoogieDowner.

“The Real Hip Hop is Here (No Wait, Over There)” (via  NBC New York)

Ghost Deini in Sound (UPDATED)

Radio stop frontin' on me.

Ghostface f/ Novel “Message from Ghostface” [Via Nah Right]

“‘Cobra Clutch’ was abstract, an abstract joint. People get me twisted and sh*t. See I created a style when I did ‘Nutmeg’ and ‘One’ and all the other sh*t. I was in Africa and I was like, ‘Yo I’ma make a rhyme not meaning nothing.’  Just put words together but what the sentence might mean, might not got nothing to do for nothing. I did it on ‘Nutmeg’ and the first verse on ‘One’ and all the other sh*t. People started getting me confused. Like, ‘Damn I don’t know what he’s talking about.’ But it wasn’t meant for you to know what I was talking about cause it was just a style that I created. So people f*cked around and got caught. Yeah, I don’t know what he talking about and this and that and a third.”

Ghostface “Cobra Clutch”

I’ve interviewed and written about a gang of MC/rappers/idiots with deals over the years. One of my favs was this interview with Ghostface Killah for AllHipHop, where I nabbed the quote above from.

It wasn’t one of those interviews were I get deep into what makes Ghost tick, his demons or the reasoning behind his favorite colored paired Wallabees. Instead I went over some key tracks from Paisley Fontaine’s discography and asked him to detail the motivation behind each one. I think it came off pretty good. Pause.