breef hy-ate-us. :: gangsta love, vol 2

hey, all 🙂

 all my loafing has finally caught up with me.  things are a little crazy so i’ll be takin some time away from the blog til things calm down.

 in the meantime, please enjoy these soulful ditties (thanks bill–i cant remember ur site address but if i did id link you)

aretha franklin is going to eat beyonce.

do they make bbq flavored weave glue?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080213/ap_en_mu/people_aretha_franklin

Tue Feb 12, 11:52 PM ET

LOS ANGELES – When Aretha Franklin is unhappy, she does not mince words. On Tuesday, the longtime Queen of Soul slammed Beyonce Knowles‘ intro to Tina Turner at Sunday’s Grammy Awards, in which Knowles called Turner, not Franklin, “the queen.”

“I am not sure of whose toes I may have stepped on or whose ego I may have bruised between the Grammy writers and Beyonce,” Franklin said in a statement issued by her publicist. “However, I dismissed it as a cheap shot for controversy.”

E-mails to Knowles’ publicist Yvette Noel-Schure and calls and e-mails to Recording Academy spokeswomen Jaime Sarachit and Barb Deghan were not immediately returned.

In the first few seconds of Knowles’ intro to Turner’s performance, she name-dropped Franklin and a long list of famed female singers. Then the “Crazy in Love” chanteuse focused on Turner.

“There is one legend who has the essence of all of those things: the glamour, the soul, the passion, the strength, the talent,” said Knowles, strutting in hot pants. “Ladies and gentlemen. Stand on your feet and give it up for the queen.”

At a party later that night, Knowles called Turner her “ultimate icon.”

Still, Franklin ended her brief criticism on a gracious note, thanking the Grammys and the voting academy and saying, “love to Beyonce anyway.”

Known for such hits as “Respect” and “Chain of Fools,” Franklin tied with the Clark Sisters for best gospel performance trophy for her duet “Never Gonna Break My Faith” with Mary J. Blige.

mccain 08: like hope, but different.

you thought will i am and terrence trent d’arby were the only guys to have ever set a presidential hopeful’s word to music? you’re wrong and dumb, buddy. check out this vidjoe for john mccain.

the 2008 grammys: now with geritol!

this year was the first that Depends and Ben Gay were included in those fancy pants grammy swag bags.  if they werent, they clearly should have been–between tina turner, jerry lee lewis, little richard, whoever that other old guy was, and prince (dont let the smoove taste fool you), this was officially the most elderly awards show ive ever seen.  i somehow kept expecting jerry lewis to pop out and urge people to call and donate money to help our aging stars pay for their next surgery/hip replacement (I SEE YOU PRINCE).

if nothing else, i found the show very entertaining and would like to pointificate on some of the highlights (or at least what *i* consider the highlights).  first though, i wanna show you somethin that we DIDNT see during the show.  or maybe u saw it if u watched all the pre-awards coverage crap, which i didnt.  actually, i wonder if they showed this during the pre-shows?  if u watched, can u tell me if they did or not?:

no wonder they didnt show him on tv–his hat is just totally wrong for that outfit!

..in case you cant make out what nas’ shirt says, it reads ‘nigger’ as well.  go on and show the man how he aint finna hold you down, nas.  and kudos to kelis for joining the fight–contrary to what whitney and bobby want you to think, THAT is black love.

so anyway.  let’s get on to my favorite moments of the night.

1.  Morris Day and the Time, complete with Jimmy Jam and–Rihanna, wtf?  :: okay.  i LOVE morris day.  i think the only thing i may love more than morris day is jerome, his ever faithful hype man and man servant.  so i was personally *thrilled* to hear that the time was reuniting, and not only were they reuniting, but they were reuniting with JIMMY JAM ON THE KEYTAR.  im never one to pass up some good keytarin’, so that was my main reason for tuning into the show.  i got too excited to see morris day come a-pimp walkin to the stage, and was… slightly baffled to learn that velour tuxedo pants existed.  i’ll provide pictoral evidence just as soon as i can.

so they come out and i get all hyper, and the performance, of course, is terrible musically speaking, but yo, its fucking MORRIS DAY AND THE TIME!  i was all into it!  but.. then… rihanna?  rihanna comes on stage?  singin umbrella?  wtf?  i mean, rihanna’s cool and all, but YO.  ITS FUCKING MORRIS DAY AND THE TIME.  morris and jerome was only up there like 3 minutes!  i was outraged when they left and it was just rihanna and her forehead ella-ella-ella’in all over the creation on stage.  the good news is that morris & nem did come back to do the bird, for which rihanna was all dressed for in her emu-inspired dress.

‘squawk!  hallelujaaa’ indeed.

 also, a little reminder:  morris day does not think you are cool.

2.  Fergie & John Legend Duet; John Legend visibly thinks it’s a bad idea. :: so, fergie is cool for what she is, and what she is is a stylized poppy singer who should not perform deep, soulful ballads that demand a strong singing voice.  last night, she attempted a strong, soulful ballad that demanded a strong singing voice.  i’ll let you guess how that worked out.

but what made this moment alive in my heart was john legend’s expression immediately after ther performance was over.  i really hope i can get a picture of this later, but after he stopped playing the piano, he looked around and told everyone ‘hey, i dont know what this bullshit was about, either.  dont blame me.’ without saying a single word.  brava, john legend.  brava.

3.  Amy Winehouse’s totally sober performance & speech. :: i love me some amy.  really i do.  and i was very anxious and excited to see this particular performance because based on what ive seen of her from her pre-rehab days, she absolutely positively sucked in person.  i was really rooting for her; i wanted her to prove to the world that not only can she perform in the face of all the bullshit the media gives her, but she can do so soberly.  and she did!  you could really tell that she really was sober, and that was the good news.

the bad news is that her preformance still blew warm, tangy, bile-filled chunks.  and that’s not so bad though, because it proves that drugs or not, she’s just a bad performer, and now it makes me look back on her pre-rehab days and think ‘maybe i had her wrong–just because her tone was off and she couldnt remember the words and she moved around like a 12 year old trying to pole dance, it didnt mean that she was high!  or at least not as high as i judged her to be.  ive been hard unduely on you, amy.  please enjoy your reprieve. 

also spectacular was the acceptance speech.  she was just as cute as a lil bad-toothed british button as she stood their all stunned while her background singers/dancers (I LOVE THEM, BTW) all had conniptions in the background.  little humble amy looked about her totally afraid and confused and only took the mic to say her thank yous when her mother came to her side.  it was really, really precious. 

crikey!  i wanna thank mi mum & dad..

and then girlfriend just got all west philly on muhfkers when she started big uppin her husband in jail and shoutin out ray ray and pookie and who the hell ever else she was talkin abt.  lol!  it was fantastic, tasty absurdity.  i loved it.

..AND ALSO RAY RAY NEM, NAHMEAN?!

4.  The Oldest Show On Earth! ::  omg.  so, do u remember that ‘goodness gracious great balls of fire’ song?  remember who sang it?  it was jerry lee lewis.  here is what he used to look like.  remember little richard?  of course you remember little richard.  here is what little richard used to look like.  do you know who john fogerty is?  i didnt either.  but at any rate, here is what he used to look like.

the three of them now look like unwrapped mummies.  except little richard looks like an unwrapped mummy with way too much makeup, a bad wig, and a hitler mustache.  and that fogerty guy looks like a unwrapped mummy who has had major reconstructive surgery.  and i guess jerry lee lewis just looks like a really fat unwrapped mummy.

this was like, a circus of old people.  actually, fogerty prolly aint as old as the other two, but this is his fault for gettin mixed up in this geriatric insanity.  jerry lee lewis was awesome.  the occasional look of confusion, the struggling to hit the high note during the refrain, the absence of teeth.  it was just amazing.  my favorite part of the performance was easily the end, when little richard and fogerty were performing and they just shut lewis’ mic off and left him sitting on the stage banging nonsensibly on the keys, kind of like a child who has been given a leftover piece to play with as the older kids all play a board game so the little one doesnt feel left out.

‘goodness gracious–wait, where the hell am i?’ (c) jerry lee lewis

5.  Kanye:  ‘It Would Be in Good Taste if you Gave Me Whatever I Wanted.”  ::  kanye’s a brat.  we all know it and we love him for it anyway.  but he like, totally just laid the smack down on the grammy ‘wrap that shit up, b!’ music guy as he was giving this acceptance speech for one of the awards he won last night.  he had done his fair share of babbling before he began speaking about his mother, and it just so happened that the grammy music guy got to work a little bit before he began to speak about her.  granted, i think that he should have been allowed to get that out, since she just passed–i also think that he had plenty of time to do it–but the music started, and my dude said, “i think i would be in good taste if you cut the music off now.”  and this was AFTER he had already told them to shut up the music.  yo, he said that…. and they shut it off.  LOL.  kanye was just like, ‘BITCH DIDNT I TELL YOU TO CUT THE MUSIC OFF?!’ and the grammys was like ‘im sorry, daddy!  im sorry, i’ll shut up!’  lol.  classic.

if this website has any credibility at all, kanye stands to be fined for that little stunt.  lmao.

6.  The Ole Blonde Diva, She Ain’t What She Used to Be.  ::  tina turner.  lmao.  first, let me say that i love tina.  she’s a real legend, a real class act.  …but she’s real old too, and she showed us just how old she was at the end of her performance with beyonce (and i know im totally wrong for this, but as they were performing, in my head i envisioned beyonce gettin on the mic in the middle of the performance and yelling breathlessly:  “and now, ladies and gentlemen.. im remembrance of ike turner… i am going to BEAT.. TINA’S.. ASS!” and she just starts chasing her around the stage.  lmao.)

dang i got myself all sidetracked with that aside.  focus!

so yeah, at the end of the performance, tina decides it’ll be a great idea to give the audience a judo fan kick or some other such martial arts shit, but halfway through her leg’s journey into the air, she clearly decides otherwise and just stops while she tries to figure out what to do now that she’s 100 years old and she’s on stage in front of millions of eyes with her leg in the air and absolutely nothing to do with it.  i was laughing too hard to see how that teledrama ended.  i’ll have to find video of it later. 

overall though, i will stop hating long enough to say that tina did awesome last night.  may we all be so lucky to move like that when we, too, are 98 years old.

despite her age, tina never missed a beat, even as beyonce tried to eat her soul mid-performance.

7.  Aretha Franklin.  sigh.  aretha franklin.  just…. aretha franklin.

i knew id seen her in that dress in a nightmare before.. crunk & disorderly confirmed it.

the picture to the left is aretha at the show last night; to the right is aretha sometime back in 07.  i guess its good to see her getting into her skinny girl clothes again after the weight loss.

i was definitely able to fill my hatertank last night.  thanks, entertainment world!  you’re the best! 

———- 

** pics appear courtesty mtv.com, crunk & disorderly, rollingstone.com, young black & fabulous, hocus-baloney, and seat42f.com.  dont sue me.  k thanks!

 

wait–r. kelly’s ‘sex planet’ was nominated for a grammy?

what in the urinating pedophilic hell?

why?  how?  wtf?  ‘sex planet??!!?!’

i think this officially confirms that r kelly, while nearly illiterate and unable to form a grammatically correct sentence, has figured out the formula for successful mind control.  somewhere within these lyrics:

Jupiter /Pluto / Venus and Saturn /I’m leaving Earth girl to explore your galaxy /Ten to zero /Blast off here we go / We’ll be climaxin til we reach Mercury

…embedded in there somewhere is a subliminal message that says, “completely forget about all the little  girls i’ve peed on in my day and spend all your money on my mediocre, terrible metaphor laden music.  and oh yeah, grammy people?  hook it up! nominate in the name of love!’  and those grammy motherfuckers heard it.  and it worked.  may the lord save our souls. 

according to nymag.com, there are several reasons that i prolly shldnt watch the grammies, and lemme tell ya, that r kelly shit is tops on the list.  you prolly shldnt watch, either.

 but truth be told, with morris day & the time complete with jimmy jam performing, i probably will.  JEROME!  bring my my mirrah!

black music nobody remembers but me: ‘b-girls’

i mentioned this song/video in a past entry.  i found the video, and as a part of remembering black history, im sharing this classic with you all now.

the best part of this song, bi-polar chorus notwithstanding, is EASILY the adlibbing at the end.  i was 8 years old when this came out (1990), and since then, ive remembered every.  single.  adlib.

baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars on a ca-duh-lac.. brOOOOooooOOOoooOOoghm!

does anybody remember this??  the ancestors need pleasing!  (and i need validation!)

uh, yo. yeah. uh huh, yeah. ay yo, uh. aight. here we go. uh. let’s go. uh huh, yeah.

so american idol sucks this year.  i think we’re all just burnt out.  it was awesome when it was new, but im finally working on admitting to myself that it is now a snooze fest.  american idol?  more like american NYQUIL! HAHA!  u get it?!  cause see nyquil puts people to sleep, and when people say that something else put them to sleep, it signifies that that something was too boring to hold their interest and keep them awake, and plus if u say it with the back of ur tongue then ‘nyquil’ and ‘idol’ *kinda* sound the same, and..

whatever.  i find myself hilarious and that’s all that matters.

so as i watch these first round auditions, and i see and (unfortunately) hear the splendorous delusions of catterwaulers who really, honestly, and truly think they can see, my mind always ends up thinking about the family members who travel there with them, stand in those long ass lines with them, and then cry & get angry with them after simon tells them to kill themselves.  what’s the deal with these people?  are they as batshit as their non-singin ass relatives? do they genuinely think that little quanika’s tapdancing rendition of ‘and i am telling you’ is good?  are they loving relatives who just dont have the heart to tell susie that she’d be far more successful at stripping than singing?

or are they just mean, spiteful, hateful people who feign support just to get hopefuls into the auditions and masturbate furiously when they crash and burn?  ive always felt that this was the case, and last night, two people FINALLY had the identical balls to admit it on national ass TV. 

there’s plenty of comedy here, from the creepy ass threesome-esque story of the twins and their girlfriend ashley, to one of the twin’s suck-ass ‘lean wit it rock wit it,’ to the gratuitous thug rapper-isms, to simon’s theft of ashley’s dog, panda.  but the real treasure, the REAL glory comes when it’s time for ashley to audition, right around the 3:55 mark.

they totally made me forgive them for the sin of their ridiculously irritating cultural appropriation in the middle of all this.

almost.

boom kat’s music video.

…i’m sure that most of you know that this entry will not end well. let’s do it quick and dirty, like rippin off a band-aid.  (im havin trouble embedding the vid on this page, so if it doesnt show below, click here to watch it)

*ahem*

BITCH SIT THE FUCK DOWN.

..im sorry, babies. put some ointment on it, it’ll feel better.

no but seriously, i hope puff meets her in an alley and catches another charge. aim for the vocal chords and kneecaps next time, puff.

black history month spotlight: ‘being bobby brown’

 

don’t let the smoove taste & normal outward appearance fool ya!

every so often, a man, or woman, or a man and a woman, or any combination therein comes along and completely revolutionizes what was previously a fixed landmark on the horizon of our blackness.  and sometimes, that revolutionary goes completely unnoticed, unheralded, or even scolded because people just dont understand his/her genius.  right now i want to give propers to a very deserving revolution that took place in 2005 that the majority of the world didnt even feel:  the reality show “Being Bobby Brown.”

first i’d like to thank Young Hache for reminding me of the sheer genius and immense importance of this show, both in my life and, i’d argue, in history in general.

for those who dont know, ‘Being Bobby Brown’ was a reality show that chronicled the daily goings on of Bobby ‘pelvic thrust’ Brown and his then-wife, Whitney ‘crack is wack’ Huston.  now this show was great and impactful because it totally flipped the script and turned everything we knew as irrefutable truth completely on its ass.  when i, like many others im sure, first heard of the show, i expected to hate bobby brown, or be continuously annoyed with him at the very least.  cause i mean, when cameras *werent* on bobby 24 hrs a day, there was enough about him in the press and on tv to make me feel that way.  plus i was already a little biased anyway; whitney houston had been my favorite singer since i was a little itty bitty girl (she was my second favorite singer ever; the first was cyndi lauper.  lol), and i just didnt understand why such a nice, sweet, respectable woman like her would ever ever EVER align herself with someone with a penchant for humping floors and getting arrested for indecency.

 come to find out, though, WHITNEY HOUSTON IS CRAZY AS BATSHIT.  crazy as a shit. house.  rat.  just crazy.  i dont even know how to accurately describe it.  bobby, on the other hand, while at least slightly touched, was loveable!  he was sweet, caring, loved his family, and was funny!  my fondest bobby brown memory on the show was of bobby, drunk, and trying to take off his shoe.  he eventually got it off his foot, but it was still stuck to him somehow and he walked around the house going ‘stop following me, shoe.  stop following me.  stop following me!’  ah, me.  such a loveable drunk.

whitney, on the other hand…

the soup did wonderful things with that clip, by the way.

quoth Langston Hughes:  “we know that we are beautiful–and we are ugly too.”  how fuckin true that is.  this trainwreck of a show really drove that point home, and that’s why its important!  we’re not perfect!  we’re human!  we make racial slurs while getting massages!  we break into liquor cabinets in hotel rooms!  we scream KISS MY ASS for no apparent reason whatsoever!  we sometimes have ugly daughters that look like kenan thompson in drag!  we break out in song and dance at completely inappropriate moments!  and you know what?  who doesnt?!  *its okay!*  one of the beauties about being able to enjoy the full comforts of American freedom is the right to simply be human, to be flawed, and to be forgiven for (or aleast TREMENDOUSLY AMUSED by) those flaws.  i get so tired of watchin black folk break their necks to be perfect in frunna white folks.  bobby and whitney came out and just said “you know what?  fuck effort.  KISS MY ASS.”  god love em. 

so, bobby and whitney, i salute you and your emotional and mental issues.  you make me feel normal at least, and vastly more sane than you and your progeny at best.  and perhaps the best achievement of this show:  you gave maya rudolph and opportunity to showcase the best, most worstest and hilarious impersonation on SNL.

i salute you.

obama: 76 and still sexy.

so i think that ive decided that Fear the Beard is gonna be one of my new favorite sites.  its funny, informative, and–most importantly–almost completely obsessed with obama’s sexiness campaign as i am.  something i’ll need to know as an (official) obama supporter is:  does he have what it takes to be a sexy ex-president?!  i mean clearly he’s got the goods right now, but i dont know how i’ll feel if he ends up a lightskinned california rasin in his older days.  well, at least i didn’t know before Fear the Beard (and Freaking News) cleared that up for me:

yes we can… find obama a good hood barber.

not so bad, right?!  even with that lopsided Mayor John Street-type afro, i’d still hit it.

 …well we might have to shape that up just a little bit cause that’s borderline unacceptable.  u gotta keep ur wig right.