I’m not even going to type out what T-Pain said, but damn you gotta throw a pause after you say something like that…

Video snagged from NahRight

Jay-Z stopped by Carol’s Daughter for a soft opening of their store at the Pentagon City Mall in VA, he’s also performing at the HSAN Ball. It’s a pretty big accomplishment for kid from the projects to be making so many big moves. After all Jay-Z is in the new President’s Ipod.

One New York paper is actually asking for Obama to offer Hip Hop a little bit of help of it’s own stating the since Obama will be the first President who has

Jay-Z and Kanye West on his iPod, the first one who speaks the culture’s language, the first one who embraces its mannerisms, from fist-bumping with his wife to throwing his hands in the air and waving like he just don’t care…

Could a hip hop bail out be in the works?

The Newsday article informs us that, While sales of rock music dropped only 6.5 percent last year, hip-hop sales dropped nearly 20 percent, and hip hop is now the sixth most popular music on the charts just beating gospel music. Could a hip hop bailout really help the struggling industry? While hip hop has it’s bright spots willing to usher in change, it’s has got so bad that even BET has pretty much turned it’s back on the music. Remember a few years ago when you could turn on BET and catch all your favorite videos from 10am until 9pm? Now they show reruns of College Hill, Hell Date and the Wayan’s Bros. rather than the latest blinged out rapper rapping about booty butt cheeks.

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself why has hip hop fell off? Leatrice of Atlanta and owner of Brown Girl Excursions believes it’s “because right now artists lack focus. They hone in on dollars and miss the purity of creativity and passion for the audience” I agree with her, but on the other hand as an artist it takes focus to even be in this game. Shaunette of Florida claims “the masses are complacent with mediocrity such as Solider Boy, Plies, and any other commercial n*gga out there and those examples are purely far from hip-hop. But yet they sell the most..Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Q-Tip don’t sell as much” So, what does that tell you about society? Even though what people believe is good music doesn’t sell the most, there is still an almost unanimous cry for good music. A friend of mine said, they like a few songs, but no one has yet to create anything that makes me want to be a fan.

I think that’s it, you have to be a fan of someone’s music in order to go out and purchase their album. If I’m not a fan, honestly I’m just going to download it and bump a few songs on my ipod. For the sake of argument let’s say that Barack Obama just gave the industry execs the multibillion dollar bailout package what would they do with it?

I believe the execs would spend it on marketing for their friends, cousins and their man’s an em’ who has a little flow and the ability to rhyme words that don’t go together. I believe they would take half the money to buy more cars, jets, vocoders and skinny jeans. Instead of investing in instruments, voice lessons, teaching artist how to read and write music notes and also investing in the community to show them the full range of the arts. A hip hop bailout can be invested in learning the struggle of the people who buy music, which can go a long way to produce music that will actually make people want to listen. Sure we want to dance, sure we need a theme song to f*ck hoes, drink and smoke too, but we also need music to put on after we’ve had a hard day of work. We need a song that captures the feeling we get when our boss has us do something dumb, when the rent has to be paid late, as well as a nice respectful song about how much we love our significant other. We need these things just as much as we need anthems about getting drunk and forgetting what we did. We need this regardless if they are sung by someone wearing skinny jeans and using a vocoder.

Fact is we need more than just one type of music from an artist. We need an artist who is going to cover all these topics because on monday I want to relax, Wednesday I want to love my lady and by Friday I’m ready to hit the club spend a little money getting drunk with people I don’t know. I have a plethora of emotions, wants and needs and I want an artist who can capture all of those things in an album. Take Tupac, he told the ladies to keep their head up and then told the ladies hey I get around. He shot 5 people no reason and then led a revolution of millions. There are no boundaries to music or life, but all too often our favorite artist are put in a box to keep them from reaching their full potential and us from reaching in our pockets to spend money.

So should hip hop receive a bail out? I say no, they’ll just misuse it, and produce even more cookie cutter artist who wouldn’t know what creativity is if it hit them in the jaw with the force of a Mike Tyson punch in 1989.

As my good friend and colleague Kandis Knight said via twitter “Greed made alot of people loose touch with reality.”

Written By BlogXilla

The homegirl Teyana Taylor has a new look, she’s a blonde now. Don’t know how I feel about this one right here, but she’s still cute, nonetheless. Is it me or does she look like Taral Hicks a little bit? Anyway check out more pics after the jump.

Want even more pictures? Check out my man Rizoh over at The Rap Up

When I was at the Bun B event last week I bumped into my man Ricardo who thought I was about to die when I asked The Game about his baby mother’s life story a la 50 Cent. Nonetheless he invited me out to have breakfast @ Gladys Knight Chicken & Waffles with The G.O.A.T himself LL Cool J. I got the chance to ask him about his relationships, his work out ethic and if things between and Jay-Z are good. Check it out under the cut.

How do you keep your relationship fresh?

I try to when I’m home to pay attention and show affection with out smothering and nagging. No what I’m saying And do the little things that matter, small gifts, big gifts and you know treat her like we just met.

What made you start working out?

I’ve always been physically active, if you look my 2nd album cover I was in the back hitting the heavy bag. I’ve always been into that and to even be more real with you… Look I’m from the hood and when I was growing up guys use to come home from jail big and that impressed us. We wanted to exercise because that came home and they was big and I guess we turned a negative into a positive to a certain extent and that never left me but as I moved on to my career obviously learned more and got more and more mature learned more I gained access to different people and learned different things and really got more into exercise. And I wanted to look good. I aint gotta pretend to be 17 I just want to look right for what I’m doing I just wanna look right for who I am.

What’s the wildest things a woman did to get your attention?

(Laughs) You name it bruh! You name it, I done found girls hiding in my set on stage.. You know. (Laughs)

So how do you handle the groupies?

Like a hot grease! carefully

Everything good with you and Jay-Z?

Yeah I don’t have any issues with him I never had any issues with Jay-Z personally. My issues was with the work ethic and what was happening at def jam. I just wanted my project to be worked properly. I can’t say I’ve always mad the greatest records but once the company accepts the music then their job is to commit to it and promote it. That’s all it was ever about with me it was never about anything else but that. As you can see right now you know I’m being promoted and marketed we blessed things are going well and I’m not complaining. You don’t hear LL complaining anymore, so you figure it out.

Exit 13 – The new album from the GOAT

New Music – You Better Watch Me <–Listen]

In a recent interview singer Chris Brown spoke about his relationship which Rihanna.

“Every interview I do, they’re like, ‘So, how are you and such and such doing?’ And I’m like, I don’t know you, ‘why you all in my business?’”

Let me get this straight, Chris Brown still doesn’t want to claim Rihanna? It made me wonder are titles still important?

When I first read his comment, it made me think of my younger days when I didn’t want to claim the girl whose hair I would pull, @ss I smacked, and got all sweaty with 2 or 3 times a week. I remember in depth conversations between my sweetie and I where we discuss the importance of a title. She would debate the need for one and I would claim that it was irrelevant. Looking back I know the reasons why I didn’t want a title to be present in my relationships. They are as followed

Options – When there is no title to a relationship you still have the option to sleep with other people. It’s the male equivalent to “You’re not my daddy” or “I don’t see a ring on this finger” I was basically leaving the door open just in case someone better came along.

Responsibility – With titles come more responsibility, just like in a job, if you’re a sales clerk you’re obligated to sell merchandise, but when you become manager you’re responsibility grows. With being a “boyfriend” you’re now obligated to do stuff that you weren’t obligated to do before, like buy pads, and make the bed after booty calls.

Expectations – Also with titles expectations grow, you’re now expected to be so much more. I think this is one of the reasons why sex confuses things in a friendship or relationship. People have an idea of what their ideal mate/boyfriend/girlfriend etc should be like and with a title you have to live up to that expectation.

How important are titles in a relationship to you?

In a recent interview singer Chris Brown spoke about his relationship which Rihanna.

“Every interview I do, they’re like, ‘So, how are you and such and such doing?’ And I’m like, I don’t know you, ‘why you all in my business?’”

Let me get this straight, Chris Brown still doesn’t want to claim Rihanna? It made me wonder are titles still important?

When I first read his comment, it made me think of my younger days when I didn’t want to claim the girl whose hair I would pull, @ss I smacked, and got all sweaty with 2 or 3 times a week. I remember in depth conversations between my sweetie and I where we discuss the importance of a title. She would debate the need for one and I would claim that it was irrelevant. Looking back I know the reasons why I didn’t want a title to be present in my relationships. They are as followed

Options – When there is no title to a relationship you still have the option to sleep with other people. It’s the male equivalent to “You’re not my daddy” or “I don’t see a ring on this finger” I was basically leaving the door open just in case someone better came along.

Responsibility – With titles come more responsibility, just like in a job, if you’re a sales clerk you’re obligated to sell merchandise, but when you become manager you’re responsibility grows. With being a “boyfriend” you’re now obligated to do stuff that you weren’t obligated to do before, like buy pads, and make the bed after booty calls.

Expectations – Also with titles expectations grow, you’re now expected to be so much more. I think this is one of the reasons why sex confuses things in a friendship or relationship. People have an idea of what their ideal mate/boyfriend/girlfriend etc should be like and with a title you have to live up to that expectation.

How important are titles in a relationship to you?

Travis McCoy is not an ignorant n*gga. And remember that if you don’t want a microphone broken over your head. According to Entertainment blogger NecoleBitchie:

The punk-hop group had just finished the first song of their Warped Tour set, “Peace Sign,” when a black audience member near the front row called the New York-based singer a “f*cking ignorant ni**er.”

McCoy calmly asked the man, “What did you just call me?” As security was removing him from the crowd, the frontman reached down and broke his microphone over the man’s head.

Travis was arrested for third degree assault and was released on $500 bail Source

This is sort of like in Hancock when you call him an A*shole… Well I won’t ruin the movie for you. Anyway let this be a lesson to us all. Call a man an ignorant n***r and get a microphone broken head.

Imagine the man you see in the picture just went all in, what do you do? Scared money don’t make money right? So you match him. In an interview with TIME OUT Jay-Z revealed he you can’t beat him in Blackjack or  Poker. “I’m a pretty big, almost professional, gambler,” Jay said, adding “I’m not gonna say any names because that’ll mess it all up, but there are these little private clubs you can go to in the West End where you can hang out and gamble, and it’s pretty cool.”

Sexual Intellectual Tip# 3 – Playing cards, or any game for clothes can lead to sex. Other game that can lead to sex include truth or dare, NBA Live, Madden, and patty cake. To avoid having sex avoid all games for clothes, bet money. This tip has not been sponsored by Jigga N I G G A the ten pound lip N I G G A

]]> http://blogxilla.com/blog3/2008/06/27/jay-z-the-gambling-habit/feed/ 0 http://blogxilla.com/blog3/2008/06/18/50-youre-the-real-btch-for-this-one/ http://blogxilla.com/blog3/2008/06/18/50-youre-the-real-btch-for-this-one/#comments Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:54:46 +0000 Xillionaire http://blogxilla.com/blog3/?p=1377

Yo I’m not doing as much entertainment as I used to but on the real? This right here ain’t even funny. You don’t air your dirty laundry in the streets because someone bad mouthed you. 50, for the next 50 days… We beefing cause you wanna secretly record phone calls to deal with your insecurity issues. Props to Nah Right

Young Buck 50 Cent Phone Convo – Buck’s Crying

Hello, folks, it’s Ninja, holding it down while Xilla is handling his business. Excuse me for a sec, I need to have a talk with my friend for a minute.

Ashanti. Why girl? Listen up sistafriend, you and your handlers….. We worked on the hair problem. We worked on the only dancing with one arm problem. We worked on the overuse of “that’s Bananas!” We even worked on the Ja, Irv, Murda Inc problem.  You’ve been gone for a while, now your “back”, why come in causing trouble?  The word is her online promotion was pulled by the powers that be at Universal/Motown following many protests from the public. The promotional website featured a fake news report about a fake murder, but it’s blood splattered and there’s a bloody knife and……well you get the picture. It’s all for the single “The Way That I love You”.  Since when is solving a cheating problem with murder a game or a joke? MURDAAAAAAAAAAAAA!  With the youth so impressionable, why give them any ideas?

What do YOU think?