Playahata Newsletter Jan 20 2004-Superfly (Ron O’Neal) is Dead

I might ramble today since I have not spoken to you all Since Thursday

Last week was a bad week we had 2 deaths and one near death with Beenie Man needing surgery to repair a punctured lung and 2 broken ribs sustained in an early morning car accident in Kingston, Jamaica. Then we had the passing of Ron O’Neal aka Superfly who died Wednesday at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after a long battle with cancer. He was 66.Dr. Barashango, a fiery and profound scholar passed on in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania. Dr. Barashango wrote many powerful books his most popular work was African People & European Holidays: A Mental Genocide. So 2 minutes of silence.Speaking of 2 minute warnings, Beyonce Knowles will sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl in
her native Houston.That gives men the chance to see her and Janet Jackson in the same space for the first time ever. I am told that is supposed to be significant???.

The Superbowl may be a bore again but many of us want to see the new commercials.The security is alleged to be super duper tight this year. As a related side note, this year the federal government and the airlines plan to phase in a computer system next year to measure the risk posed by every passenger on every flight in the United States. The new system, called Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System II (CAPPS II), has sparked so much controversy among both liberal and conservative groups that the new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has struggled to get it going. Delta Air Lines backed out of a testing program with the agency earlier this year, and now the TSA will not reveal which airlines will participate when it tests a prototype early next year. The existing system identifies certain passengers as risky based on a set of assumptions about how terrorists travel. For instance, passengers are flagged for additional screening if they bought a one-way airline ticket, or if they paid with cash instead of a credit card. Passengers who present a threat under these and other criteria are issued boarding passes that bear a coding of “SSS” or “***.” The TS system seeks to probe deeper into each passenger’s identity than is currently possible, comparing personal information against criminal records and intelligence information and then assigning passengers a color code — green, yellow or red. According to people familiar with the program, most people will be coded green and sail through but up to 8 percent of passengers will be coded “yellow” and will undergo additional screening at the checkpoint, and an estimated 1 to 2 percent will be labeled “red” and will be prohibited from boarding. These passengers also will face police questioning and may be arrested.If you get a ticket labeled SSS I suggest you do something. Last but not least I wonder how many people noticed that the program to fingerprint all foreign visitors to the U.S., with the exception of a list of 27 countries – is only giving exemptions to basically European or white nations.In the words of Eyecalone Minus the Japan, Singapore, and Brunei – looks more like an international Klu Klux Klan recruitment roster than anything drawn up in hopes of deterring terrorism. All nations mostly composed of people of color have to be fingerprinted all of Latin America, Africa, South America,Central America, majority of Asia etc.This is like something out of a movie.What is happening is obvious but everybody is whispering – Charlie the Moderator

PLAYAHATA.COM – Talk about a labor of love.

1.HEADS UP! Actor Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays a samurai in The Last
Samurai,telling reporters in Japan that he came about half an inch from
chopping off Tom Cruise’s head with a sword while filming a fight scene for the movie.Cruise’s mechanical horse didn’t fall down as planned and Tom’s head was in front of him when he was swinging a real sword.

2.Mystikal move over: The lawyer for rapper C-Murder moving for a new murder trial for his client; says prosecution withheld information from the defense. The rapper was convicted in September of second-degree murder in the shooting death of a teenage fan.

3.KUDOS! Bono receiving the Martin Luther King Center’s highest honors on Saturday from his widow Coretta Scott King for his work advancing civil rights.

DID YOU KNOW:Queen Victoria eased the discomfort of her menstrual cramps by having her doctor supply her with marijuana

4.From P-Diddy to Michael Jackson: Jackson’s lawyer Mark Geragos announcing that attorney Benjamin Brafman is joining Jackson’s legal team as co-counsel; Brafman is know for winning an acquittal for P. Diddy on bribery and weapons charges. “Michael and I agreed that expanding the team would best serve his interests as we work toward his acquittal on the false charges that have been leveled against him,” Geragos said in a statement.

5.Chinese govt has no Friends: Government-controlled Chinese television acknowledging they’re having problems editing out all the sex talk for the hit American sitcom Friends, set to begin airing later this year.

6. Simon disses Madonna: When asked who’s got the hots these days in the music world, American Idol judge Simon Cowell telling the Television Critics Association that “Beyonce is good-looking. Jennifer Lopez is good-looking. “Madonna used to be good-looking.” He noted that she’s basically a housewife now.

7.OUTKAST & 50 eat your heart out: Bruce Springsteen (our boy) and his mighty E Street Band put up some huge numbers on the road in 2003. But Springsteen was not the top touring artist of 2003, despite numerous media claims to the contrary.The record-setting Rising tour kicked some major stadium-level tail all over the world. Springsteen even threw in a world-record stand in his home state of New Jersey. At 54, he put together the top-grossing run of his 30-plus years of national touring. The Rising tour, the Jersey stand and Springsteen’s remarkable year of touring were well-chronicled in these pages. We love Bruce.But any way you look at it, the Rolling Stones grossed far more than Springsteen did last year.From start to finish, the Stones’ Licks tour grossed $299,520,230 from 113 shows dating back to September 2002. We lumped the entire tour into 2003’s Billboard Boxscore stats because we received them all at once from promoter Michael Cohl’s office at the end of the tour. We do not estimate.For the year, Springsteen’s reported grosses totaled $181.7 million worldwide. If you take away the $90 million or so the Stones did in fall 2002, the band still easily outpaced Springsteen. The Boss’ tour grossed $221.5 million from 121 shows, so tour for tour, the Stones also topped Springsteen’s by more than $70 million.But Billboard ranks tours by box office. And in 2003, the Rolling Stones performed better at the box office than any act in the world.

8.This film still sucks: Cold Mountain leading the nominees for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts with 13 nods, including Best Picture, while The Civil war drama is catching flack in the U.S. for ignoring slavery as if it did not exist.The Brits say it is a awesome film.
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Charlie’s Compilation Question- Carol Mosely Braun has ended her run for the Presidency, as the only female canidate.She has dropped out of the race for President and backed Howard Dean. Does this effect how you plan to vote in the primary?

Eyecalone- No… I never quite understood why she was running anyway. She didn’t even seem to be attempting to bring any issues to the table.

Gumby Dammitt – Nope. I’ll write in a vote for Shirley Chisolm, and I’ll do it EVERY year til I see someone I like. Which means I will be voting for Shirley Chisolm TIL I DIE.

Angry Pizzle- I don’t care who backs Dean, I still wouldn’t vote for him in the primary.But if it comes down to Dean vs. Bush, I have to go with the lesser of the two evils.

Ooh Papi – “Carol Who?” ..it’s too early to pick a canidate for me

Why is Kobe calling himself a Thug Poet?
www.playahata.com/audio/thugpoet.mp3

Prime Time Still Eludes Brawling Hip-Hop Mixtape Awards

Justo Faison

Halfway through Justo’s Eighth Annual Mixtape Awards on Wednesday night in the basement of Club Speeed in Midtown, the microphone was passed to Loon, the sleepy-voiced rapper who records for P. Diddy’s record label, Bad Boy. After paying tribute to the gathered D.J.’s and rapperati, he demanded to know why the awards ceremony “ain’t televised nationally.”

A few minutes later, Loon had his answer when an attempt to clear the stage for a performance nearly erupted into a brawl. (Last year’s ceremony, at the Hammerstein Ballroom, was cut short by a backstage fight.) Through an impressive combination of exhortation, cajoling and threats, a truce was negotiated, and the show went on — and on and on. The last award was given out just before 1 a.m., nearly five hours after the announced start time.

This was a fittingly contentious and chaotic celebration of hip-hop mixtapes and the men (and it is nearly always men) who make them. Compilations of rare and unreleased tracks, nowadays on CD despite the name, they occupy a gray area between bootlegs and official releases.

The paradigmatic mixtape success story is that of 50 Cent, who used appearances on mixtapes to make himself a star, and now lots of up-and-coming rappers are hoping to duplicate his success.

This was one awards show that wasn’t dominated by acceptance speeches. DJ Whoo Kid won the top prize, best mixtape D.J., but he was nowhere to be found. And when DJ Lazy K won best female D.J., she limited herself to a couple of sentences, cheered on by members of her all-female crew, the Murda Mamis.

There were appearances by Fat Joe and Chingy and brief performances by the R & B singer Teedra Moses and the veteran hip-hop duo Mobb Deep. But the evening’s most enthusiastic applause was for Ghostface Killah, the Wu-Tang Clan’s best and wildest rapper, who tore through his frantic current single, “Run,” which has been a mixtape staple for the last few months.

Mixtape D.J.’s have been helped immeasurably by hip-hop’s high-profile feuds: mixtapes are often the only way to stay current on who hates whom. On Wednesday night, just about everyone seemed to be embroiled in some sort of beef. Loon announced that he and DJ KaySlay (known as the Drama King for his beef-centric mixtapes) had settled their differences “like men.”

But other disputes raged on: between hosts, between D.J.’s, between detractors and supporters of Club Speeed, even between rival jewelers. The only consensus was that anything worth doing is worth fighting over.

In the end it was hard not to admire this fighting spirit; after all, cutthroat competition has helped keep hip-hop fresh for almost 30 years.

DJ KaySlay had won the best mixtape DJ award three times in a row, which means he is no longer eligible. But he couldn’t resist grabbing the microphone to announce that he was still hot and that his mixtapes still sold. Whoever disagreed, he said, should “holler at me outside.”

by By KELEFA SANNEH

Jay-Z Meets the Beatles via Dangermouse…The Grey Album

DANGERMOUSE – ‘THE GREY ALBUM’
In November of 1968 The Beatles made music history with ‘The White Album’

In November 2003 Jay-Z presented ‘The Black Album’

Today, the world changes forever, as Danger Mouse presents….

‘The Grey Album’

Dangermouse

The Grey Album is an experiment in music that uses the full vocal content of Jay-Z’s Black Album, recorded over new beats and production created using the Beatles White Album as the sole source material. Danger Mouse explains that “all the music on the Grey Album can be traced back to the White Album. Every single kick, snare, and chord is taken from the original Beatles recording”.

The resulting record is a unique hybrid of work from Danger Mouse, one of hip-hop’s fastest rising stars. This re-interpretation is already being touted as the one of the greatest remix albums of all time and is bound to be remembered as a ‘must have’ album of the year for collectors and critics alike. Given its underground street nature, it can only be found via select hip hop record stores and secret hand shakes.

In an incredible year so far for Danger Mouse, he has already received massive critical acclaim for his DM & Jemini Ghetto Pop Life debut on the Lex/Warp label (“remarkable debut” says SPIN…”an Instant Classic” says URB…”Spellbinding” says Q ]

Later this year, Danger Mouse will begin producing albums and tracks for an array of artists including Prince Po, MF Doom and Tha Alkaholiks.

At the time of writing neither Jay-Z nor The Beatles were available for comment.

For More information, please check out http://www.djdangermouse.com and http://www.waxploitation.com. Danger Mouse is available for productions, mash ups, remixes and the like.

Contact Frank Lee @ Waxploitation (frank@waxploitation.com)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERDTa-c8djY