Huh?

Lupe is still yappin' and still talkin' sh*t, peep this:

“[Tribe] didn’t sell 10 million records, so why would people think they had a blanket on the world like that? MC Hammer was way more popular to me than Tribe Called Quest.”

“Because there’s kids in Harlem who right now who would never ever listen to Midnight Marauders, I don’t give a fuck what you do, they’ll never listen to Q-Tip and they want to be rappers and they want to talk about positive things. So why would you shoot them down?”

“It’s like, ‘Oh, you ain’t never listened to Midnight Marauders? You ain’t expanding your horizons? Oh, you ain’t real’ cause they did that shit to me! ‘Oh Lupe, that’s fucked up man, I don’t fuck with you now! I’m not buying your next album’ and be dead serious! It made me feel like, ‘You dirty bastards! Like how dare you hypocritical.”

“Those hip hop elitists who think [Tribe] hold the crown and the copyright to hip hop, I listen to 8Ball & MJG and I think they’re better than you [Tribe].”

Lord Jesus. Just stop, Lupe.

BTW Didn't he say in his first statement on okayplayer.com "when it was initially offered to me, I turned it down because I felt it was out of place for me to be honoring them...I was fully aware of their impact on Hip-Hop".

Right. But now 8 Ball & MJG go hard. I'm just sayin...

In Other Hip-Hop News...

Allhiphop.com caught up with the legendary KRS-One at the Hip Hop Honors show and had a lil chit chat with him on what's hip-hop...

I'm confused...he said Kanye's album is brilliant, but not hip-hop because it doesn't have the "boom bap" that 50's album and his previous albums have.

But in the same breath he says that hip-hop is "about innovation" and taking what people don't expect you to do with production tools and flipping it. Sooo...if 50's album has all that "boom bap", which is clearly something of the past (not knocking it, cuz I f*cks with it, but it is what it is), then doesn't that mean Kanye's album is hip-hop because it's something different?

Just curious

I Don't Even Know Anymore...

I love Hip-Hop. If I had to create a soundtrack to my life, it'd be heavily influenced with music from every hip-hop era. It's like what Black Thought said in the movie Brown Sugar "it was like a forced marriage. It was predetermined...I was gonna be dealing with hip hop whether I wanted to or not". Outside of the love and appreciation I have for it, I have much respect for the culture too. So you know I had to watch VH1's Hip Honors last night because, for the most part, they were honoring my favorite group of all time, A Tribe Called Quest (ATCQ).

I first fell in love with ATCQ when I heard "Award Tour" back when I was 8 or 9 years old. I was a backpacker then, in the sense that uhhh yea, I was rocking a backpack to school anyway. I eventually evolved into what the definition of a "backpacker" is now, minus riding a skateboard. My freshman yr in high school I copped "The Love Movement", their last album. Junior yr, I copped the "Anthology". All the songs I grew up loving. Those two albums are great starting points for a catalog of ATCQ joints.

Now, before I actually sat down to watch the program, I made my usual rounds checking out other blogs and websites. As you know, I'm based out of Wisconsin, ain't sh*t poppin' here. But most of the bloggers I read are based out of NY, so they get their info firsthand (which makes mine second-hand, a day late,and a dollar short). I have one connection to an NY blogger, and well, we just don't connect at all. XXLmag.com is like my new favorite spot to check for hip-hop, and I peeped an entry on Lupe's performance at the show. If you watched the show, then you know, Lupe f*cked up royally on the bars he was asked to spit on "Electric Relaxation".

So you know cats were all kinds of pissed about it. Here's what Lupe had to say about it on okayplayer.com

I DID NOT GROW UP ON ATCQ!!!..."
It's no crime you didn't grow up listening to them. Even though, I find that a little hard to believe that I heard them as a young'in in Milwaukee, so I know he heard 'em in the Chi.
THE LITTLE GHETTO KID FROM THE MEAN STREETS OF THE WESTSIDE OF CHICAGO GREW UP ON SPICE 1, 8-BALL & MJG, NWA AND SNOOP DOGG...
Okay, again, that's all fine and well.
I WASNT A BACKPACKER RAP ENTHUSIAST!!!...I NEVER CLAIMED TO BE...I GREW UP ON GANGSTA RAP!!!
This is similar to the beef I had with Talib. This isn't a case of trying to put Lupe into a box that he doesn't fit, unless there are deeper issues I will address. No one really gives a damn what you grew up on, we're talking about the here and now. And the here and now is that you appeal to the backpacker rap enthusiast. Your introduction to the world, real talk, was "Kick, Push"--about skateboarding...it don't get no more backpacker than that, homie.
HAVE I LISTENED TO MM IN ITS ENTIRETY?...NO!!!...(Sorry Quest)...
"MM"-Midnight Marauders. Okay, neither have I and I'm a pretty big ATCQ fan. However, you know, ain't nobody mad you didn't listen to it growing up but, if you call yourself a professional at what you do, it would be ideal to have a working knowledge of your predecessors. Because, whether Lupe wants to admit it or not, MM and many of the other Native Tongues Posse albums are the platform on which "Food and Liquor" was created on.
GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSES AND YOUR SACRED COWS...SOME OF YA'LL MAKE ME SICK...
As a fan of Lupe, and as someone who knows folks that went out and copped his album the day it dropped, you can't be talkin' to your fans any old kind of way you want. Especially when they bought your sh*t, and you don't have but 2 lil funky ass hits any damn way. If they support you, then they have every right to hold you to some type of standard. "Some of y'all make me sick"--not as sick as you'd really be if no one went to cop "The Cool"-womp womp.
AND FYI WHEN IT WAS INITIALLY OFFERED TO ME I TURNED IT DOWN BECAUSE I FELT IT WAS OUT OF PLACE FOR ME TO BE HONORING THEM BECAUSE WHILE I WAS FULLY AWARE OF THEIR IMPACT IN HIP-HOP I WASNT REALLY AWARE OF THEIR MUSIC LIKE THAT...BUT GUESS WHO WANTED ME TO BE APART OF IT....HMMMM...HOW ABOUT...Q-TIP!!!...
The fact of the matter is that you said "yes". And once you've agreed to do that, contractual agreement or whatever, you're obligated to deliver. And basically at the moment you said "yes", although you weren't familiar prior to that, you needed to GET FAMILIAR rather quickly.
SO NOW ARE YOU GOING TO HATE ON "ATCQ" BECAUSE THEY WANTED SOMEBODY WHO DIDNT REALLY KNOW THERE MUSIC TO HONOR THEM BY COVERING SOME OF THEIR MUSIC?...THINK ON THAT OKP'S
Ain't nobody mad at ATCQ. Folks are mad at you. Period.
P.S. I FORGET THE WORDS TO SOME OF MY OWN SONGS ON STAGE...HEY IT HAPPENS...
Again, with the 2 songs you do have, and the fact that you stay on tour, basically doing the same routine with each show, I'm not exactly sure how you can flub on your own lyrics. But you know, those are your songs you have an entitlement to do that. The issue here is that you f*cked up someone else's songs, in a tribute performance no less.

So, Basically What I'm Saying Is...
If you couldn't tell, this jig has madd swag and no humility in his lil bullsh*t excuse. It's just like, who are you Lupe? Really. You have one album. You have nann #1 singles. Yea, your album landed #1 on rap charts, but you only moved 80,000 copies in the first week. Plus, I'm really feeling like if Q-Tip, or whoever asked you to perform their song in the tribute, it would behoove you learn the lyrics to the song, or a verse, or sh*t, the bars they asked you to spit. I hate thinking that is whole thing is bigger than it really is. I mean, it could be, truly and simply, Lupe not giving a rat's ass. But I don't feel comfortable letting him off the hook with that. Or with his excuse. Because the fact is, you can't point fingers, or pass the buck to anyone else as to why you messed up. The onus is on you.--reminds me of a lil saying I learned while pre-pledging in college "excuses are for the incompetent".

They didn't ask you to spit Busta's verse on the Scenario remix, it was Electric Relaxation, my jig!

I like 'em brown, yellow, Puerto Rican or Haitian
Name is Phife Dawg from the Zulu Nation
Told ya in the jam that we could get down
Now let's knock the boots like the group H-Town
You got BBD all on ya bedroom wall
But I'm above the rim and this is how I ball
A gritty little sumthin on a New York Street
This is how I represent over this here beat
Talkin bout you...

You know, I didn't really think that was all that hard, and this is coming from someone who doesn't flow, or call herself a rapper. But I bet you I could go hard on this song. Not just because I'm a fan, but because I have respect for what place ATCQ has in the history of hip-hop.

This is what is scary and crazy about this whole, um, fiasco. Lupe has no respect for hip-hop. Period. I mean, we already got jigs out here sayin "I can make a mil sayin' nothin on a track". Folks are out here madd arrogant with theirs, and I can see why people think hip-hop is dead, or at least dying. Lupe is screaming up and down that he grew up on gangsta, and I'm assuming, based on his response, is that he ain't a real "backpacker". Which is feasible, considering that Lupe pushed heroin back in the Chi (and word has it is that he still does).

So is this news, is this shocking?
Yes and no.

No, because we already know of jigs that never had criminal records and bust out on the scene rapping about being a gangster and capitalizing off of it. (MC Gusto, anyone?)

Yes, because it begs the question "has Lupe basically just flipped the script"?

Is there an imposter among us "backpackers" and socially conscientious hip-hoppers? We see it all the time on the other side of hip-hop, but we obviously have been sleeping on the idea that someone would be smart and bold enough to do it to us. Have we been duped? Or did we think it wouldn't happen to us; thinking no one could outsmart us, no one could infiltrate and dilute what our kind of hip-hop is all about or what it's meant to be. Because once that happens, is there anything left in hip-hop that's really real?

It's safe to say that this kind of music is what is keeping hip-hop on life support. But when do we decide to pull the plug, or do we hold out hope that in order for things to get better it has to get worse? And who decides? Or is it something that will eventually kill itself off, and all we're left to do is stand back and helplessly watch it slip away. It's a disparaging thought. Even in watching awards it was evident to me that hip-hop was dying a slow death. It lacked the energy and life. Jigs hearts weren't in it anymore. Folks aren't hungry. People were reaching last night. It's as if people don't know who or what to pay homage to, and the respect is misplaced.

::Sigh::



One of my favs--truly captures the beauty of NYC--speaking of, it's official, the B-Day weekend is going down the 26th-28th in the Big Apple!!!