hiphop

Underground Hip Hop vs. Mainstream

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The Hip-Hop, The Simpsons & Wrestling blog has it’s very first guestwriter! I encountered The Pza at the Wrestlecrap-forum. He had a giant pic of KRS-One on his profile, so I figured since we share a love for Hip-hop and wrestling he might have something interesting to contribute. He sure did, and now I just wonder if he’s into The Simpsons. Here goes:

So I’m talking to a good friend yesterday about music. More specifically who the greatest MC of alltime is. I gave him my opinion and reason (FYI it was Immortal Technique) when he cuts me off, “So you meanto tell me you think some underground MC who NOONE has ever heard of is greater than Snoop Dogg?” I laughed. My laughter, however, was cut short when I noticed theserious look on his face… “Oh my God, you areserious aren’t you?” he responded, “Of course I am…Look, Snoop has sold millions of records, he is a household name, and he has his own line of clothes, that equals success and in turn that makes him the greatest MC of all time.” I was taken aback, shocked, appalled, I just couldn’t believe that someone would be so ignorant to the true meaning of hip hop.

Let’s, just for fun, examine the lyrics of Snoop and Immortal Technique.

SNOOP:

“Cement shoes/ Now I’m on the loose/ Now your family’s cryin’ / Now your on the news/ They can’t find you/ And now they miss you/ Must I remind you/I’m only here to twist you”

Okay, so Snoop just killed some dude and he doesn’t care about the family of this person.

IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE:

“This shit is run by fake Christians, fake politicians /
Look at they mansions, then look at the conditions youlive in /
All they talk about is terrorism on television /
They tell you to listen, but they don’t really tell you they mission /
They funded Al-Qaeda, and now they blame the Muslim religion /
Even though Bin Laden, was a CIA tactician /
They gave him billions of dollars, and they funded his purpose /
Fahrenheit 9/11, that’s just scratchin’ the surface”

Wow, a huge difference huh? Now I will say that Snoop is the most successful MC of all time. But that, by no means, makes him the greatest of all time… Just a little food for thought. And I’ll leave you with another ImmortalTechnique lyric to ponder:

“They say the rebels in Iraq still fight for Saddam /
But that’s bullshit, I’ll show you why it’s totally wrong /
Cuz if another country invaded the hood tonight /
It’d be warfare through Harlem, and Washington Heights /
I wouldn’t be fightin’ for Bush or White America’s dream /
I’d be fightin’ for my people’s survival andself-esteem /
I wouldn’t fight for racist churches from the south,my nigga /
I’d be fightin’ to keep the occupation out, my nigga /
You ever clock someone who talk shit, or look at you wrong?
Imagine if they shot at you, and was rapin’ your moms /
And of course Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons /
We sold him that shit, after Ronald Reagan’s election”

credit: The Pza, I LOVE JINNY PARK Ghosts are REAL… Deal with it!
Read my weblog at: http://theimmortaldsanchez.onfinite.com/

observations, wrestling

Dr. Phil lacks ring-psychology

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Cathy has dragged her husband Paul on the Dr. Phil show. She believes wrestling is consuming his life to the point where the obsession is hurting their marriage. Dr. Phil, displaying the tricks of the trade that made him the richest psychologist ever, addresses Paul and asks the million dollar question: “Do you know it’s not real???”

You sure got him there Phil! Paul makes up some foggy answer about parts being fake, which leads the Doctor to reveal the best kept secret of professional wrestling: “It’s just men dancing!” Dr. Phil does give brief credit to the wrestlers for being great stuntmen, but not soon after he taunts Paul again for “watching men dancing”, which in Dr. Phil’s world must equal the ultimate homoerotic act. Needless to say Paul hardly seems cured from his addiction by Dr. Phil’s revelations, but he does get tickets to a wrestling event of his choice, which pleases him, so the show ends on a high-note. However, the segment left me wondering something that in time led to me writing this column; What in the name of Superfly Jimmy Snuka does Dr. Phil think people watch professional wrestling for?

To use Dr. Phil’s dancing analogy, wrestling is men pretending to live out a battle through well-choreographed moves for artistic purposes + both wrestlers and dancers wear tights – case closed! You can’t argue that this isn’t part of professional wrestling, but it’s also a spot-on description of break-dancing. While Booker T does have a mean backspin, there is certainly more to it than that.

Paul tries desperately to give Dr. Phil a sound reason for being addicted to watching grown men playfight: He mutters that he enjoys the plot. Dr. Phil finds the mere thought of watching wrestling for the plot ridiculous. This is semi-ironic seeing as American psychologists such as Jerome Bruner advocate the idea that the human psyche organizes everything in connected stories and plots – we constantly strive to adjust our impressions so that they make sense in reasonable stories.

In wrestling we like to call those stories ring-psychology. When they make sense to us fans, even if they’re surprising, we’re watching good wrestling. When the stories are incoherent, the wrestling is bad – or to use RD Reynolds’ perfectly coined phrase: wrestlecrap.

In “New York – The Rough Guide” the author advices tourists that they should attend a wrestling event and then explains what that includes: the audience seeing the national anthem followed by a ‘real American’ kicking some foreign grabler’s butt. That’s one way of making the story coherent and relevant to the fan – but of course there are tons of others.

Stories vary in size of course. They can be as small as a wrestler constantly putting his opponents right arm under pressure – hitting it and putting it in arm locks until the adversary is worn down and ready to be subjected to a spectacular finishing move. Watching Chris Benoit beat Orlando Jones in 7 seconds isn’t really the same as him winning after a 30-minute display of scientific excellence is it? I’m pretty sure it felt like premature ejaculation to most of the viewing audience.

They can also be far bigger like Macho Man Randy Savage and Ric Flair battling over who was the true love of the late Miss Elizabeth. Even in such showdowns the story is heightened greatly when the match finally does take place – the whole building is cheering for The Macho Man and suddenly he gets a nasty leg injury instantly putting him in the role of underdog. Savage is fully aware of this, so he sells the leg injury for the rest of the match.

The injury is fake – but the story is real!

Watching wrestling should be like reading a good book or watching a play at the theatre. You know it’s a work of fiction and constantly search for the sentence where the author reveals his true colors or when the actor steps out of the role. But there are moments when wrestling captivates us to the point where we feel we’ve stepped inside the ring and are suffering or basking in glory along with our favourite wrestler. Those moments are products of ring-psychology and no matter how smart marks we become, we will always feel that rush when the plot thickens in the ring.

In fact it doesn’t differ much from watching Dr Phil’s show where arguments always end with the good Doctor being right – Sorta like the Hulk Hogan of talk shows. Yet we tune in each week to see how Phil will tell off this troubled soul. We have to suspend our disbelief in order to enjoy the show though. Because it doesn’t really help Paul and Cathy that Dr Phil gives them tickets to a wrestling event of Paul’s choice, but Paul jobbed to Dr Phil and expectedly didn’t put up much of a fight, so the Sigmund Freud of Texas can celebrate his win by handing out prices. The difference between wrestlecrap and shrinkcrap is hardly noticeable.

View a brief recap of the Dr Phil show here!

VMA\'s

P-Ditte unsurprisingly ruins the VMA’s – here’s the whole 9

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Seeing as I’ve been watching the VMA’s ever since we got a satelite-dish back when I was in 4th grade, it’s been somewhat of a tradition to stay up late Sunday, skip school Monday and check out the live broadcast, which back in the day included cursewords and all that good stuff. Usually there’d be great hosts such as Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall who kept the show flowing. In later years Chris Rock and Jimmy Fallon have added some great comedic introductions to the show. So once again I’m staying up late, to see who’s hosting and it’s
…Diddy???

Diddy does have alotta personality I guess, but he’s not funny and he seems to be constantly self-conscious. His hosting of the MTV Europe Awards were only rivaled in suckyness by Wyclef – the only man capable of being bald and having dreadlocks at the same time.

Anyways I knew I was in for a stinker, so I decided I’d take out the laptop to document the action for my long time loyal fans of the Hip-Hop, The Simpsons and Wrestling blog…so after watching The Last Samurai and whatever else crud I could come up with 02:00 rolls around and here comes – da-dadada: The VMA’s!

Here are some recaps of the actions written in real time. (as opposed to fake time?)

02:00 – Green Day set it off outside the VMA’s in Florida. The wind is blowing like a motherblogger, good thing they ain’t have the awards in New Orleans. My fave Green Day VMA moment was when they had to run off the stage ’cause Beastie Boys came in early and turned it out with Sabotage. Yeah!

02:10 – Diddy enters to recite some cornyness. Actually it’s a good introduction. He stole it from Run-DMC’s Live At The Fun House. RIP JMJ!02:15 – Kanye gets the award for Best Male video. Mr. Cocky manages to diss Jay-Z. Smart move KaYne! When they cut to commercials Danish MTV decides to show parts of music videos. I guess even Yamba’s stupidass Axel F frog didn’t think anyone’d stay up to watch commercials this late. Joke’s on them jack, I got enough diet coke to last all night!

02:15 – gets the award for Best Male video. Mr. Cocky manages to diss . When they cut to commercials Danish MTV decides to show parts of music videos. I guess even Yamba’s stupidass Axel F frog didn’t think anyone’d stay up to watch commercials this late. Joke’s on them jack, I got enough diet coke to last all night!02:20 – Ludacris performs Pimping All Over The World. I guess it’s the sequal to Hoe’ing around the neighborhood.

02:30 – Diddy just announced it’s a classy show so he wont curse. Sissy. Then he curses some but’s it’s been bleeped out (you can tell it’s just ’fuck’ and ’shit’ and other nonoffensive cursing though). Stupid five second delay – I bet they’ll scramble the nudity as well. Afterwards he announces that he’s sellected the three best dressed men – how gay is that. To noone’s surprise they’re all black. I woulda gone with Willie Nelson – cowboy hat and braided pig-tails, you the man Willie!

02:39 – Grandmaster Flash has apparently been hired as DJ for the affair. I bet he’ll be hired as Diddy’s caddy sometime soon. Flash makes Diddy dance to Atomic Dog.

02:42 – Uncle Luke – aka Luther Campbell aka Captain Dick of 2 Live Crew – comes out real quick. Since all his songs contain the same amount of profanity as the average South Park episode he’s limited to just chanting ’Go diddy!’…Now MC Hammer’s out here. He does a fucked up version of Can’t Touch This. No big-ass pants though. Nuts. Noone enjoys it other than Jamie Foxx – maybe he really did go blind while filming Ray. People yell about hammer time, how ’bout goddamn quitting time!

02:46 – Alicia Keys predictably wins best R&B video. She’s wearing a dress displaying her lack of fun-bags.

02:49 – Shaq comes out, to the delight of the Miami fans. He’s wearing a bigger suit than TrooLS & Orgi-E. They shoulda had him doing free-throws. You got 99 freethrows and didn’t make one, holla!

02:54 – Shakira does her hit Tortura – ay ay ay, hija de puta, no me gusta.

03:00 – Leroy from Fame…sorry I mean Usher introduces Clowning Vs. Krumping – a crunk version of clowns breakdancing. To me it looks like a slightly more acrobatic version of Insane Clown Posse.

03:05 – Missy Elliot wins best dance for Lose Control. She almost looks skinnier than her current girlfriend Ciara. Remember when Marilyn Manson had his ass out at VMA’s a couple years back and Missy looked at him like he was the devil himself? 668 the neighbor of the beast!

03:08 – R Kelly performs trapped in the closet. Uh huh, water closet, Mr. Pisserino. He doesn’t even have a mic – at least the other’s pretend they’re not singing playback. Its been ages since we saw Diddy, maybe him and Hammer are trapped in a closet.

03:20 – Diddy tells us the story of his names. He jokes about changing it to Sean-ye West and Condeleeza Diddy and other nonfunnyness. I hope he changes it to P-Ditte real soon.

03:26 – Lil Kim presents an award. Her co-presenter jokes about her jail-time coming up. Nowhere near as funny as when Diana Ross jiggled her titty. Kim claims ”She’s suffered enough.” No applause.

03:29 – Ludacris wins best rap video for Number One Spot. Wackass song by a dopeass rapper, so I’m cool. I love gooold.

03:37 – Diddy is making shoutouts to people in the house. Which means all the black celebrities. He’s wearing a Notorious BIG shirt and bigs up big’s mother. Guess he’ll never rest in peace.

Now Ditte is acting like he’s conducting a symphony orchestra while Big’s ”Juicy/Dreams”-verse is playing. Ironically I don’t think Big ever performed at VMA’s. If you don’t know now you know.
Snoop is on stage doing an incredible verse on Warning. Diddy’s still acting like he’s conducting but in reality he’s just wandering around looking dumber than Jim Carey and his co-star. Jøden woulda done a better job.

03:43 – Johnny Knoxville and Common present an award and Knoxville gets Common to freestyle. Com Sense is a great freestyler but he seems kinda slow tonight. The finish ”when my video drops I soon plan / next year I’ll be walking with a moon-man”. Probably premeditated but fun nonetheless. He also made a reference to 50 Cent, who looked hella mad at being mentioned.

03:46 – A group named Fall Out Boy won an award. I wonder if they’re named after Radiative Man from the Simpsons’ sidekick Fall Out Boy, who Millhouse gets to portray in the movie version.

Argh the goggles – they do nooothing!

03:52 – Fat Joe introduces Reggae-ton music. He brings together three reggae-tonelos who have never performed together. Reggae-tonelo is a funny-ass word! One of the reggae-tonelos (let’s see how many times I get to write that) looks like a mix between Sammy Davis Junior and Humpty Hump. Daddy Yankee does Gasolina and has all of Miami screaming ”culo”. As all reggaetonelos would know it means “ass” in Taco Bellish.

3:56 – Best Hip-Hop Award is presented. MTV thinks hip-hop is rap fused with new or alternative genres. That’s kinda lame but the nominees (Common, Nas etc) are better than for the Rap Video Award. Missy wins.

3:57 – Fat Joe thanks G-Unit for all the police protection at the award show. (They’re beefing if you didn’t know) Chances of MTV asking the fat man back to present – slim.

3:58 – Diddy says something nonsensial. Meanwhile someone in the audience screams Fuck you fat motherfucker at Fat Joe. Knew it was a good idea to stay up late.

04:00 – Pharell introduces Cold Play. Pharell is wearing a plastic chain with kids pictured on it. Rumour has it R Kelly tried to piss on the chain. I’m hoping they’ll bring back the weird-looking reggaetonelo.

04:09 – Ricky Martin and Joss Stone present an award. Ricky asked Miami if they could feel The Heat. I hear this is concidered a display of great wit in washed up latino lover circles.

04:14 – Kanye West and Jamie Fox perform Gold Digger, the weakest track leaked from Late Registration so far. Remember EPMD’s version? Word. Lots of people are throwing the Roc handsign in the air. Kanye’s rapping pretty good, and he’s wearing the same sun-glasses Jay-Z wore last year – perhaps as a sign of apology for bitching ’bout Jay not paying for his three videos for one song.

04:17 – Kanye just said the ”leave your ass for a white girl”-line that was banned from Canadian radio. He coulda just said culo and puta blanca – that’s the reggaetonelo way of doing it! Money’s flying from the sky – I’m sure that’ll teach the girls to stop digging.

04:24 – Snoop Dogg introduces a comedian called Dave Cook. Apparently they dragged him out ’cause Diddy refuses to tell jokes to whitey. Fight the power!

04:29 – Diddy introduces real-life pimp Bishop Magic Juan. The normally weird-ass dressed pimp has had a Diddy make-over. Noone finds it funny, most likely ’cause noone knows who the don Bishop is.

04:32 – The young husband-cheating Desperate House Wife introduces Mariah Carey wearing a diminutive bathing suit. I bet the conversation between the two afterwards will go:

Mariah Carey: ”BITCH! Outstage me will you? I’m the only diva allowed to wear skimpy outfits!”

Desperate House Wife: ”Whatever Glitter, the coo-coo’s nest called, they wanted to know when you’ll fly back”

Styles and Jadakiss are rocking on the Mariah remix. This is fairly ironic since all Mariah’s dancers are dressed like 50 Cent in the Little Bit video. Dramaqueen or not, Mariah’s singing her ass off on an otherwise boring song.

04:45 – Lil Jon is presenting with some hot girl. He tries to hug her, but she quickly shoves his hand away. WHAT? YEAH! OKAAAAI!

04:48 – Will.I.Am and Fergie are on stage, Will tells a joke, and Fergie thinks it’s so funny she almost wets herself…not really.

04:50 – 50 Cent comes out to Disco Inferno. He’s either wearing really shiny black jeans or leather pants – how very Tyrol of him. Mobb Deep are out on stage, mad anonymous. Tony Yayo runs out, cursing his ass off, so we can’t hear anything he’s saying. Free Yayo. 50 and Yayo end their performance by saying Fuck Terror Squad and various threats totally bleeped out. Rappers should really think about not cursing when they want to diss their rivals on world-wide TV, so everyone can enjoy it.

05:02 – Lil Bow Wow and Paris Hilton are comparing diamonds. Lets hope they’re not from Sierra Leone.

05:04 – Green Day win the viewers choice award for American Idiot – the only song with a credible message this year. I guess the viewers aren’t necessarily into the Hammertime 2005 vibe P-ditte’s oozing.

05:11 – Jamie Fox starts his presentation of the presenters of video of the year by screaming ”Hi everybody”. The audience yells ”Hi doctor Nick!” in return (The first part happened). The presenters Destiny’s Child thank god, for giving them the jams to rock hard, before Green Day also take home best video for Boulevard of broken dreams. Green Day manage to be the only band adressing issues like the war in Iraq, live aid and so forth.

05:17 – Diddy’s wearing a ”God is the greatest” t-shirt now. Apparently his thank you speech is delivered by shirts this year. He introduces Kelly Clarkson who despite being a slightly more tolerable version of Avril Lavigne manages to rock pretty hard.

05:22 – Diddy finally says good bye, ending a show that was at least half an hour too long and didn’t have any kind of spectacular end-performance.

That’s the 2005 MTV Awards. The night was dominated by rap and r&b and regular music like Audio Slave and Foo Fighters seem totally left out. I’m as big a hiphop fan as anyone, but if I wanted to see rappers dissing rappers I’d order Source awards. They’d even shoved Green Day outside, what a jib. I’ll give credit to the reggae-tonelos and Mariah Carey, but other than that I think the VMA’s this year showed us how the entertainment industry has used bling bling rap as an excuse to present music without message.

Diddy was of course not only embarrasing on the mic, but also presented a show largely without humour, instead having presenters present other presenters in a never ending stream of babble. The elaborate stage-shows from previous years was replaced by a small revolving stage like the one from Les Miserables. Speaking of which all the performances aside from a few good verses by K West and Snoop were large miserable and forgettable.

Remember when Nirvana performed and Kris Novoselic hit himself in the head with his bass-guitar? Yeah. This show was nothing like that.

hiphop, observations, wrestling

Marky Mark on steroids: John Cena

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Many people believe that after Mr. Good Vibration, Funky Bunch having Marky Mark retired from rapping he turned into Mark Wahlberg, horrible actor of Boogie Nights and Planet of the Apes infamy. Not true.

What actually happened was, after Marky Mark’s shortlived rap-career and Calvin Klein add-jobs he gassed up on a crazy amount of steroids and became a professional wrestler. No shit. At least that’s the only way I can explain the phenomenon that is John Cena. The current WWE champion looks like Marky Mark, dresses like Marky Mark, acts like Marky Mark and raps like Marky Mark. Well, actually that’s the only difference – he raps better than Marky Mark.

But before we get to that, let me describe John Cena. Cena sports a baseball cap turned backwards, a pair of jeans cut into shorts, and a giant chain with a lock in it around his neck. His followers are known as the chain-gang, who will hoot and holla as Cena works the mic by reciting 8 Mile styled battle-rhymes like “Oh and Big Show, don’t think that I forgot about you homey! He’s a giant! Well I’m a giant whistle, so go ahead and blow me” to diss his opponent. His catch-phrases include You Can’t See Me and Word Life. While most hip-hoppers will remember these terms as classic mid-90’s rap-slang along the lines of everything is everything, these terms seem to puzzle the WWE-audience. Another popular Cena line is Ruck Fules which is funny if you’re trained in the art of bakke snagvendt.

Cena started out as a heel (slang for bad guy) but turned face fairly quickly because the younger audience really enjoyed his antics. Older fans were concerned that he: dosn’t look the part of a wrestler, wearing basketball boots instead of wrestling boots, devaluates the titles he holds by turning the title-belts into blingbling-styled spinners and of course the fact that his wrestling isn’t too scientific and his FU finisher is just a variation of a boring fire-man’s carry slam. However he’s grown with the challenge and his last match at Summerslam this past weekend was fairly good.

This isn’t the first time wrestling has taken it’s cue from rap. Men On A Mission were assisted by the horrible rapper Oscar, who made MC Hammer sound like Aesop Rock and other forgettable wrestlers such as PN News have tried to use rap as a gimmick. Even veterans like Macho Man Randy Savage have cut rap-records. What makes John Cena work is that behind all the Marky Mark and Eminem gimmicks he is a certified hip-hopper.

Esoteric of 7l and Esoteric and Rebel Alliance fame remembers this about John Cena in an Artofrhyme-interview: “Trademarc would bring his cousin around every now and then and he was always this diesel muthafucker, John. Then all of the sudden he was in the World Wrestling Entertainment jumpoff and Trademarc told me he was spitting my old lyrics in the ring! So naturally we hooked up and 7L produced his ring music. The shit the crowd goes wild to every Thursday night on Smackdown, that’s a 7L beat.”

This year Cena along with Trademark released a CD aptly titled “You Can’t See Me”. While out thru WWE distribution the rhymes are credible, and Cena’s not only assisted by Esoteric and Trade Mark but also Freddie Foxxx who’s diesel as hell in his own right. If you want to check a clip of Cena rhyming he’s in the “Hustler” video by veteran west coast MC Murs from Living Legends. You can even see Cena body-slamming Murs into a dumpster! Yeah!

So while you may see this as hiphop being exploited by the wrestling entertainment industry I certainly see it as a case of Marky Mark surviving the small turd otherwise known as Donnie Wahlberg‘s baby-brother. Hopefully wrestling will save more rappers gone actors, so in the future we can all appreciate Mos Def dropkicking competition instead of embarrasing himself like he did in Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy.

hiphop, self-promo, story-telling

This guy at White Castle asked for my autograph…

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I’ve been collecting autographs ever since famed Danish poet and writer of childrens books Benny Andersen signed my copy of Snøvsen back in 4th grade.

When I got into hip-hop I quickly realised that artists would stay after shows and sign autographs. I also noticed that if you had brought the artist’s album along (or even better bought it from his merchandice stand at the venue) the chance of getting the John Hancock heightened. For instance when I brought a 12 inch to an Arsonists show it was the first time they had seen the final print of that record so it got heavily signed. I think autographs on records are cool ’cause they tie the music together with meeting the actual artist.

Run and Jam Master Jay autographing my copy of their debut album at Rock Show in Aarhus was a pretty sweet deal. Run and DMC would mostly sign T-shirts, but Jay was walking around the crowd and seemed genuinly happy to see that old vinyl. Common Sense was another early autograph, and he added “just another case of PTA” which was a freshfest for me. On a rap-level Masta Ace writing “Death To The Wack MC’s” on Slaughta House is a top autograph too. Thes One of People Under The Stairs damn near wrote an entire essay on the back of their 12 after I pointed a misspelled word out, Double K just wrote “I’m Faded”.

A lot of the records I’ve had signed were due to me working as a helper at the Aarhus Took It hip-hop festival. Usually this involves picking the artist up at the airport and checking them into the hotel, making sure they can get to the venue and then later bringing pizzas for the festival crew. Foreign Legion were unknown to me when they arrived but they were real friendly and put on a hell of a show. Same deal with brittish Killa Kela and DJ Plus One. J-Live was a favorite rapper of mine, but he was mad stuck-up and his show wasn’t that good. JuJu of Beatnuts was a pretty cool guy but he stole a buncha records from my fave. store – so screw him. MOP, Pharoahe Monch and Big Daddy Kane are some other rappers to perform @ Took It. The nicest of the bunch was Last Emperor who not only signed my records but also helped me beat Jøden and J-Hef at table-fussball and invited me on stage.

A few of my autographs are from Copenhagen shows, for instance Souls of Mischief and Smut Peddlers @ Loppen, Christiania. I actually introduced Smut Peddlers and the rest of Eastern Conference ’cause DJ Noize had failed to show. Generally I never get autographs at shows @ Vega ’cause you’re not allowed to bring a recordbag into the venue, but I did manage to get Pete Rock‘s autograph. He musta been in a hurry cause all he wrote was PR!!!!

I’ve also gotten records signed during interviews like this Rise 12 inch and Dizzee Rascal‘s first album. Usually I don’t ask for autographs while interviewing but sometimes it just seems cool to do.

Autographs vary greatly in quality. For instance I was set to interview KRS-One, but someone else took up the time I guess cause I all I got was this crappy autograph that looks nothing his cool tag. Busy Bee was also on hand at that non-happening interview. Guru on the other hand has a fine autograph style and even wrote Gangstarr 4 Eva on the album – we’ll see how that turns out. Redman not only signed Whut Thee Album but also drew an extra mustache on his own image.

Some write more than others. Kut Masta Kurt and Motion Man not only signed my album but also a miniposter when I had brought to Billund Airport after their Took It show. Kurt’s note read: “Peter you’re a good driver but you need a new Run-DMC shirt”.

More recently I’ve gotten autographs from Tim Dog as well as Bootie Brown and Imani of Pharcyde @ Rust. Rust is really turning out to be a cool spot for autographs cause the artists usually stay for nightclubbing.

I almost never ask for or get autographs from Danish artists which is a shame, ’cause their music is just as memorable. Gísli wrote this cheeky comment on the innersleeve at his release party.

Some of the first autographs I got were unfortunately lost (or stolen!) so my Kool Keith/Dr. Octagon autograph from his show at Aarhus’ Ridehus circa. 97 is still MIA. Others like ?uestlove from Roots refused to sign autographs and instead opted to talk to the fans for a while, so he’s still cool in my book. There are only a few artists I’ve seen live I regret not getting autographs from, mainly Kool Herc, Jay-Z and Nas. Slug from Atmosphere as well as Eyedea who I was lucky enough to freestyle with would have also been great.

I’ll probably keep collecting autographs as long as I go to shows, but since I hardly ever buy new music these days. Tankpasser from Odense came up with the idea of having producers sign breaks they’ve sampled. I kinda like that. Maybe I’ll have to switch to a plain old autograph-book.

observations, the simpsons

Who is the Greater Aviator? Leonardo Dicaprio Vs. Mr Burns

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Everybody was hyping the Aviator – a story about excentric millionaire moviemaker and aircraft-builder Howard Hughes – like crazy around my way. Needless to say I had my doubts as Leonardo had singlehandedly ruined Gangs Of New York although Daniel Day Lewis pulled one of the greatest villain performances ever out of his ass. I sorta enjoyed The Aviator though, but I quickly realised I had seen the whole thing before – better! Where you might ask, could you catch a better Aviator than Leo’s academy award nominated portrayal? Whereelse dummy, The Simpsons.

In the episode called $pringfield Mr. Burns mimics the role Howard Hughes to perfection and within a few minutes does everything that took Leonardo hours to show us. Here are some similarities:

* Burns and Leo portray businessmen venturing into new fields. Leo gets involved with the airplane- and movie industry, whereas Burns becomes a casinoowner. At first they both excell in their field of choice but slowly things worsen.

* They both become obsessed with germs to the point where it overtakes their intire lives.

* They start living in seclussion. Leo hides away in his home-cinema, and Burns stays in his monitor-room. Their personal hygine leaves much to be expected as well. Oh, and they both start storing their urine in bottles – freshfest!

* Both men have a pet-aviation project that seems insane to the common man. Leo wants to build a giant aircraft out of wood called the Sprouse Goose. Burns wants to build a miniature aircraft out of wood called the Sprouse Moose.

In the end there hardly seems to be any doubt that Mr. Burns is a far superior interpreter of Howard Hughes’ life, with only one flaw. Howard Hughes was such a racist that upon learning black people had used the seats of his personal cinema he never returned to it again. Burns of course employs Carl Carlson thus showing no obvious signs of bigotry.

Burns even speaks German in several episodes. Anyone who speaks German can’t be bad.

blog-related

The premiere of the PTA blog for all you nasty motherbloggers out there!

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Welcome to the blog of Hip-Hop, The Simpsons & Wrestling. This page is meant as an outlet for my writings about the stuff I find interesting in contemporary American pop-culture.

Now I’m no great pop-art fan or particularly enjoy prog rock or any of the many other forms that American pop-culture can be found in – I just happen to like hip-hop, The Simpsons and wrestling a whole lot.

So in the future expect a bunch of updates about these subjects aswell as other crud I find interesting and possibly links to my various other undertakings.