The whole album is good but this was my favorite before I even knew it was a single. Not only does it have a Black Star reunion over a J.Dilla beat with “History” but there’s an appearance by Slick Rick, the Ruler.

Most of you won’t know who this is so let me tell you about him. He debuts in G.I.JOE the Movie in a scene where the Joes’ resident hard case, Beach Head, tests out each member’s skills only to be annoyed by their personality quirks. In Big Lob’s case, he treats the obstacle course like a sporting event complete while giving his own third-person commentary of his actions. This irks the hell out of Beach Head, which makes him sound like a grouchy comics-only G.I.JOE fan who lives within the cartoon itself. He didn’t appear in later episodes of the cartoon probably because production of the show went to another company after the movie was made. He never got an action figure or appeared in the comic book. He just disappeared. No Colorforms, Shrinky Dinks, Underoos or vinyl pencil case art. Dude just disappeared.

I knew dozens of G.I.JOE fans while I was growing up and none of them had a problem with Big Lob. Most of us wondered why Hasbro never gave him his own figure. That was until I got online and saw how he seems to be one of those characters that some people like to complain about. A few will even try to tell you that nobody likes the character. Whatever, man. Look, Big Lob is a strange character and is probably crazy but who wasn’t on that cartoon? That’s what made it a fun show to watch for kids who hadn’t become morose, uptight sad sacks yet. So while he may not be a mainstay like Duke and Snake-Eyes or one of those figures like Hit ‘n Run or Repeater that hardcore Joe fans (including me) are crazy about, let there be no doubt that Big Lob has a posse. Now he has a piece of fan art to back that up.

Roxanne Shante’s first single? I don’t even have a turntable these days (YET) but there’s no way in hell that I’d pass up something like that. Since I have the luck of a wet turd, I’m guessing it’s a reprint even though the date says 1984.

One of my friends there hadn’t heard of the whole Roxanne thing because she’s too young. It wasn’t until I tried to explain it that I realized how damn insane it all was. Hell, it sounds even more insane after reading more about it and finding out that something between 30 (most likely) and 100 (only rumored) Roxanne-related songs came out. It was so big that even Wikipedia refers to it as the Roxanne Wars. Instead of trying to explain it, I’ll pass the peas to Fat Lace Magazine which has an entire series of posts dedicated to the whole thing.

Here’s a few clips from Atlantic records tries to turn Akeelah the Bee into Lil Kim:

Keke Palmer, is the 14 year old girl who played Akeelah, in the movie, Akeelah and the Bee.She and her mother Sharon have a huge problem with the upcoming record deal they signed with Atlantic Records in March of 2006. The problem is that the record label wants to market the 14 year old as a sexpot but she does not want that image.Keke admits “From the very beginning Atlantics A&R representative tried to get me to record inappropriate music, and my parents and I resisted.”

Who’s behind this nonsense? Well the Senior A&R rep, Mike Caren, was the main antagonist, he kept on saying , ” Keke is urban”, so as long as they refused to record the raunchy tracks that he sent them, he refused to pay for the good clean music they brought him.At one point he even stopped Keke from recording by not paying for studio time.

If that isn’t messed up enough for you…

She is only 14 years old, and when she signed the deal she was only 12 years old, “what did they think she would be singing about?” Anyway, they kept their word and did very little to promote her cd. They refused to provide marketing reports, even when Das management kept asking.Then on Sept 14th they received the report, 4 days before her cd release date of Sept 18th.

That’s just insane. You have the kid from Akelah at your record company and you don’t promote it because it jibes more with her image from a hit Hollywood movie than it does typical bass-ackwards urban radio? If the Congress wants to investigate something in the music industry, they may need to look into this. Of course, any execs that want a 14 year old girl to sex-up her image may need a different kind of investigation.

X-Men fans: Sigh… when are the X-Men going to be the center of the Marvel Universe again?
Marvel: Okay.
X-Men fans: Not like that. NOT LIKE THAT!

Davey-D postings:

Stop White on White Violence at Award Shows
Tommy Lee vs. Kid Rock. Like one of the commenters said there, I’m waiting for someone to mention how Kid Rock’s connection to Hip-Hop helped bring along the violence.

Johnny Rotten Judges Pop Stars and Politicians
I’m just posting a link to it since I’d just cosign the whole damn thing.

It’s nice to see 2-D games coming back into style even if it’s on systems that I don’t own. I’m even more glad to see that some classic titles are being revived as a result. For those who haven’t heard about Contra 4, it’s strictly 2-D and seems to ignore all 3-D Contra lore (and it’s boo-worthy plot twist). On top of that, the Legend of Kage is making a comeback on the DS that will hopefully make enough money for the hero to buy a shirt. Of course, the original was more of a good idea and bad-ass name than a good game. I hope Taito will fix that, though.

and while I’m linking to DS Fanboy is the best subject line/slightly related photo combo I’ve seen in a while. Shame on yuh you if you don’t agree.

In the early days of this blog was a Funky Friday, a day where I’d post links to music videos that’d either have a theme or not have a theme. Then I called it ‘Make the Music with your Blog” because I found someone else was using Funky Friday. But back in the first post ever was one of my favorite videos from one of my favorite groups: Whodini. Unfortunately, the video was deleted almost right after I linked to it. Hell, just about all of them were. That’s what killed the feature in the first place. After checking out the usual place, I found that someone uploaded it again. So I present it with what I said in the old post:

‘Funky Beat’ by Whodini
- When I was a kid, Whodini was my favorite group, period. I’ll eventually do an entire post on Whodini. For now, just dig the only music video on Earth to feature the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dinosaurs, multiple chef hats (a true primal element of comedy), the ‘Funky Beat puppet’ and Theodore Huxtable.

Much respect to the uploader for allowing future generations to see the glory of the Funky Beat Puppet. “FUNKY BEAT! FUNKY BEAT!!!”

Evorgleb from Highbrid Nation (which I just had to add to the Blogroll) inspired some rare envy in me by linking to a great interview he had with Mele Mel of the Furious Five. As always, Mele Mel had some important points about the current state of Hip-Hop. He also dropped a few jewels on crowd psychology and other seemingly-lost arts of Hip-Hop performances. That interview is further proof that the group deserves to be the first Hip-Hop group in the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame.

Gotta get back to the artwork. Later!

I was going to post a link to a Davey D story about Immortal Technique being blocked from performing at an anti-War demonstration by a maze of misdirection courtesy of the authorities, but there’s a ton of new stuff that I don’t have time to read yet. I’m dying to read the “Confessions of a BET programmer” stories that I didn’t notice last time. I love the fact that there are sites like Davey D’s and Playahata.com (which I keep forgetting ot add to my redone blog’s link list) out there exposing nonsense and bringing light to some of the positive stuff out there.

I’m working on the April 1st Nutroll preview and it’s pretty news-heavy. I have to keep looking at pictures of news desks and news anchors. The news anchors I’m drawing aren’t just plain characters in my head any more and have taken on a life of their own with frightening results. Some of the page layout may make it impossible to preserve a perfect TV screen shape, but there’ll still be lots of screen graphics cluttering things up just as in real life. More on that later.

People keep asking me what’s up with Nutroll and when he’ll finally get some online comics. What’s up is that I have three story ideas and I’m unsure of which to start with. Besides a remake of the old Escapism story, I’ve had a story idea about a therapy session between ‘Roll and Dr. Sakimoto that’d establish her role. I still call it an idea because I could never decide on how to start it and worried that it’d be too boring of a way to introduce him. That was until I came up with a new intro story idea that’d blend all the early Nutroll basics into one story that wouldn’t bore you to tears. With any luck, I’ll have news (or the story itself) in April.

On Illmosis, I added a slightly updated version of the Mindsight redesign pic and updated the Artists link page. To help spread the word of these two places (not that anyone reads this blog or anything) , I’m also posting the links here:

Nyte Varisector – An artsite/online comic/every dang thing site that belongs to Dynamowolf, one really talented and creative cat. Like Rakim, his style is identical to none and this world is better for it. Plus, his list of favorite music artists is nearly identical to mine right down to including Whodini. Gotta spread the word of any

Titanium Knights – This artist is linking to me, so I’m linking right back at him. Like Dynamowolf, he’s another creative artist with his own comic book universe. Some has a cosmic/sci-fi feel to it, but he has stuff from a bit of everywhere. I really want to see him draw more spaceship designs like the one on this page. .

Check ‘em out and give them some love (and a DeviantArt add if you’re on there). Once I “get the lead out” and start producing more artwork at a higher rate, I need to draw some fan art for those two.

When I heard about the Payola Settlement in the news, I knew that Davey D would have a post to break it down. , he has a blog post about the FCC giving big business another chance to keep radio in it’s brain-dead state. Apparently, part of the trick is that independant labels aren’t always small companies. Jive Records, which has Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, R. Kelly and Usher, is an independant label. So, really, they don’t have to change their playlists. Except some oldies channels and college stations, most radio stations are garbage anyway.

There’s an interesting topic on Newsarama.com called WonderCon ’07: Gender and Genre about female characters in action-based genres. A lot of good, intelligent points were brought up in the story. Of course, the response thread about the story almost completely derails on page one for multiple reasons. If anything, I’m kind of shocked that the Women In Refrigerators issue (or as I used to call it, ‘Gwen Stacy’s Disease’) didn’t seem to turn up. Yeah, I know it’s an old topic now, but it still happens and there’s at least one more disappointing instance where it looks like it’s going to happen again.