One Night at the Executive Playouse: Kool Herc vs Pete DJ Jones

Today January 15 2014, word has just come to me from writer and historian Mark Skillz that we lost Pete DJ Jones.. For many reading this his name is unknown. He’s not often associated with the pioneering days of Hip Hop because he was older and many saw him as part of the emerging disco/club era when turn tables started to replace live bands.

Both Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster Flash note that Pete was the first one they ever saw rock two turntables and spin two copies of the same record. This was in 1972.. His influence and his importance should not be understated or overlooked.  There are two pieces people should read to understand who this man was and why he was important..

First is an great interview from Tha Foundation Pete DJ Jones Intv

The second is this story we posted below a while back from Mark Skillz….We lost a true legend today May He Rest in Peace.

————————————————————-

As Hip Hop continues to evolve and becomes more of a corporate thing, many of its landmark, golden moments get lost. In this article, veteran writer and longtime DJ Mark Skillz unearthed one of Hip Hop’s pivotal moments when an emerging Kool Herc squared off with well-known popular DJ Pete Jones.

This battle was symbolic on many levels. For Kool Herc to go up against Pete DJ Jones meant that Hip Hop had arrived and there was no denying it. It was Student vs Teacher, Young vs Old, and Hip Hop vs Disco… It’s a moment in time we should not forget.

Props to Mark Skillz and Wax Poetic Magazine where this article first appeared

http://markskillz.blogspot.com/2006/07/one-night-at-executive-playhouse.html

Logo Kool herc vs Pete Jones

Pete DJ Jones vs. Kool DJ Herc:
One Night At the Executive Playhouse

By Mark Skillz

Mark skillz brown-225Back in the good old days of 1977 when gas lines were long and unemployment was high, there were two schools of deejays competing for Black and Latino audiences in New York City: the Pete D.J. Jones crowd and the devout followers of Kool D.J. Herc. One group played the popular music of the day for party-going adult audiences in clubs in downtown Manhattan. The other played raw funk and break-beats for a rapidly growing, fanatic – almost cult-like following of teenagers in rec centers and parks. Both sides had their devotees. One night the two-masters of the separate tribes clashed in a dark and crowded club on Mount Eden and Jerome Avenue called the Executive Playhouse.

The First Master: The Wise Teacher

You can’t miss Pete D.J. Jones at a party – or anywhere else for that matter, he is somewhere near seven feet tall and bespectacled, today at 64 years old he is a retired school teacher from the Bronx, but if you listen to him speak you immediately know he ain’t from New York – he’s from ‘down home’ as they say in Durham, North Carolina. But no matter where he was from, back in the ’70’s, Pete Jones was the man.

“I played everywhere”, Mr. Jones says in a voice that sounds like your uncle or grandfather from somewhere down deep in the south, even though he’s been in New York for more than thirty years. “I played Smalls Paradise, Leviticus, Justine’s, Nells – everywhere.”

“Looky here”, he says to me in the coolest southern drawl before he asks me a question, “You ever heard of Charles Gallery?”

“Yes”, I said, as I tell him that I’m only 36 years old and I had only heard about the place through stories from people who had been there. “Oh”, he says in response, “that was one helluva club. Tell you what, you know that club, Wilt’s ‘Small’s Paradise’?”

“Yep”, I said, “that place is internationally known – but I never went there either.”

“That’s ok”, he says still as cool as a North Carolina summer breeze, “When I played there GQ and the Fatback Band opened for me.”

“No way – are you talking about ‘Rock-Freak’ GQ, the same people that did ‘Disco Nights?’

“One and the same”, he says. He suspects that I don’t believe him so he says, “Hey, we can call Rahiem right now and he’ll tell ya.” As much as I would love to speak with Rahiem Vaughn I pass, I believe him.

pete dj jones-225In his heyday Pete DJ Jones was to adult African- American partygoers what Kool Herc was to West Bronx proto- type hip-hoppers, he was the be all to end all. He played jams all over the city for the number one black radio station at the time: WBLS. At these jams is where he blasted away the competition with his four Bose 901 speakers and two Macintosh 100’s – which were very powerful amps.

At certain venues he’d position his Bose speakers facing toward the wall, so that when they played the sound would deflect off of the wall and out to the crowd. The results were stunning to say the least. His system, complete with two belt drive Technic SL-23’s (which were way before 1200’s) and a light and screen show, which he says he’d make by: “Taking a white sheet and hanging it on the wall, and aiming a projector that had slides in it from some of the clubs I played at.” These effects wowed audiences all over the city. He went head to head with the biggest names of that era: the Smith Brothers, Ron Plummer, Maboya, Grandmaster Flowers, the Disco Twins, “Oh yeah”, he says, “I took them all on.”

On the black club circuit in Manhattan at that time – much like the Bronx scene – deejays spun records and had guys rap on the mike. “I ran a club called Superstar 33, ask anyone and they will tell you: That was the first place that Kurtis Blow got on the mic at”, says a gruff voiced gentlemen who, back then, called himself JT Hollywood – not to be confused with D.J. Hollywood, whom JT remembers as, “An arrogant ass who always wanted @#%$ to go his way.”

“I wouldn’t call what we did rappin’ – I used to say some ol’ slick and sophisticated @#%$ on the mike”, said a proud JT.

“We spun breaks back then too”, Pete Jones says, “I played “Do it anyway you wanna,” ‘Scorpio’, ‘Bongo Rock’, BT Express, Crown Heights Affair, Kool and the Gang, we played all of that stuff – and we’d keep the break going too. I played it all, disco, it didn’t matter, there was no hip-hop per se back then, except for the parts we made up by spinning it over and over again.”

There have been so many stories written about hip-hop’s early days that have not reported on the guys that spun in Manhattan and Brooklyn in the early and mid ’70’s, that many crucial deejays of that time feel left out.

Kool-Herc-the-father-300“Kool Herc and guys like that didn’t have a big reputation back then”, explains Jones, “they were in the Bronx – we, meaning guys like myself and Flowers, we played everywhere, so we were known. Their crowd was anywhere between 4 to 70. Mine was 18-22. They played in parks – where anybody could go, no matter how old you are you could go to a park. We played in clubs.”

With a sense of urgency Mr. Jones says, “I have to clear something up, many people think that we played disco – that’s not true. There were two things happening in black music at that time: there was the “Hustle” type music being played – which was stuff like Van McCoy’s “Do the Hustle” – I couldn’t stand that record. And then there were the funky type records that mixed the Blues and jazz with Latin percussion that would later be called funk. Well, hip-hop emerged from that.”

He places special emphasis on the word ’emerged’. He says that because “If you know anything about the history of music, you know, no one person created anything, it ’emerges’ from different things.

The Second Master: The Cult Leader

Kool Herc drivingThere must have been a height requirement for deejays in the ’70’s, because like Pete DJ Jones, Kool DJ Herc is a giant among men. In fact, with his gargantuan sized sound system and 6’5, 200 plus pound frame, the man is probably the closest thing hip-hop has ever seen to the Biblical Goliath. Today, some thirty years since his first party in the West Bronx, Kool Herc is still larger than life. His long reddish-brown dreads hang on his shoulders giving him a regal look – sort of like a lion. His hands – which are big enough to crush soda cans and walnuts, reveal scarred knuckles, which are evidence of a rough life. During our conversation, Kool Herc, whose street hardened voice peppered with the speech patterns of his homeland Jamaica and his adopted city of New York made several references to ‘lock up’, ‘the precinct’ and the ‘bullpen’, all in a manner that showed that he had more than a passing familiarity with those types of situations.

As the tale goes Kool Herc planted the seeds for hip-hop in 1973 in the West Bronx. Along with his friends Timmy Tim and Coke La Rock, and with the backing of his family – in particular his sister Cindy , the parties he threw back then are the food of urban legend. In the 1984 BBC documentary “The History of Hip Hop” an eight-millimeter movie is shown – it is perhaps the only piece of physical evidence of those historic parties. In the film, teenagers of anywhere between 17-20 years old are grooving to the sounds of James Brown’s “Give It Up or Turn It Loose“. Young men wearing sunglasses and sporting fishermen hats with doo rags underneath them, are seen dancing with excited young women, all while crowded into the rec room of hip-hop’s birthplace: 1520 Sedgwick Ave.

As the camera pans to the right, the large hulking figure of Kool Herc takes the forefront. Sporting dark sunglasses and wearing a large medallion around his neck, Kool Herc is decked out in an AJ Lester’s suit. He isn’t just an imposing figure over his set; he looms large over his audience as well. His sound system – a monstrous assemblage of technology, was large and intimidating too, so awesome was it that his speakers were dubbed the ‘Herculords‘. When Kool Herc played his gargantuan sized sound system – the ground shook. And so did his competition.

Afrika Bambaataa & Kool Herc

Afrika Bambaataa & Kool Herc

Legend has it that with his twin tower Shure columns and his powerful Macintosh amplifiers, he is said to have drowned the mighty Afrika Bambaataa at a sound clash. “Bambaataa”, Herc said with the volume of his echo plex turned up and in his cool Jamaica meets the Bronx voice, ‘Turn your system down…”

But the mighty Zulu chief was unbowed.

So once again Herc spoke into the mike, “Ahem, Bambaataa…turn your system down!” And with that, Herc turned the volume of the echo plex up, and bought in the notorious break-beat classic ‘The Mexican’ all the while drowning Bambaataa in a wall of reverberated bass and funk drumming. According to Disco Bee, “That was typical of Herc – if you went over your time, hell yeah, he’d drown you out.”

In his arsenal Herc had the mighty twin speakers dubbed the ‘Herculords’ and his crew, a mixture of high school friends and neighborhood kids called the ‘Herculoids’. The squad consisted of the Imperial Jay Cee, LaBrew, Sweet and Sour, Clark Kent, Timmy Tim, Pebblee Poo, Coke La Rock, Eldorado Mike and the Nigger Twins. According to Herc, “Coke and Tim were friends of mine, it’s like I got the Chevy, and I’m driving. You my man, so you roll too. So when Coke wanted to play – he play, you know what I mean?”

Coke La Rock

Coke La Rock

Although the core crew was Herc, Timmy Tim and Coke La Rock, many of the people that frequented these parties could also be dubbed Herculoids as well. Even though they weren’t members of the crew, many of these people would become disciples of a new musical gospel. They would help spread the musical message and further build upon the foundation that Herc had laid down. Much like the early Christians, who endured all manner of harassment, the early followers of Kool Herc, would lead what would later be called hip-hop, through the parks and rec centers of New York and then onto the international stage. These devotees’s would be active figures in this new genre from the late 70’s into the mid-80’s.

“Man, Herc was a monster”, remembers D.J. AJ Scratch, who Kurtis Blow paid homage to on the classic record “AJ”. “I wasn’t even on back then – I was trying to get in the game back then”, reminisced AJ, “I was a nobody, I was like a regular dude, you know what I’m saying? I was a Kool Herc follower – I was a loyal follower, I would’ve followed Kool Herc to the edge of the Earth.”

“Yo, Herc was unstoppable back then”, said D.J. EZ Mike – who alongside Disco Bee, were Grandmaster Flash’s left and right hand men, they helped Flash develop his quick-mix theories and rock shows back in the day. “Back then, no one could touch Herc and his system – it was just that powerful.”

Disco Bee

Disco Bee

Disco Bee concurs, “The first time I heard Kool Herc, I used to always hear his music, I used to live in these apartments and I would hear this loud ass music. We used to go to the park and we would hear his @#%$ from three or four blocks away! We would hear this sound coming out of the park. You’d be like ‘what is that sound?’ You’d hear (Disco Bee imitates the sound of the drums) ‘shoooop, shoooop, donk, donk, shooooop. You wouldn’t hear any bass until you started getting closer. But you could hear his music from very far. And you’d know that Kool Herc was in the park. We used to go to Grant Ave. where Kool Herc would be giving block parties. We’d hear him while we’re coming up the street, we’re coming up from the 9 and we’d be coming up the steps and you’d hear his music on Grant Ave. It used to be crazy.”

“Herc had the recognition, he was the big name in the Bronx back then”, explains AJ. “Back then the guys with the big names were: Kool D, Disco King Mario, Smokey and the Smoke-a-trons, Pete DJ Jones, Grandmaster Flowers and Kool Herc. Not even Bambaataa had a big name at that time, you know what I’m sayin?”

According to Herc’s own account, he was the man back then. “Hands down the ’70’s were mine”, he said. “Timmy Tim is the one that bought me ‘Bongo Rock’, and I made it more popular. He bought me that album, and after I heard that album I said to Coke “Listen to this @#%$ here man! We used that record and that was what kicked off my format called the ‘merry go round”.

“Pete D.J. Jones was basically a whole other level”, says AJ. “He played disco music, and Herc played b-boy music, you know what I’m sayin?”

Mark Skillz: “So, when you say he played ‘disco’ music what do you mean? Give me an example of a record that Pete Jones might play.

AJ: Ok, he played things like ‘Love is the Message’ and ‘Got to Be Real’ – stuff like that; he played stuff with that disco pop to it. He didn’t play original break-beats like what Kool Herc was on. He played like a lot of radio stuff. That’s what Pete D.J. Jones did – that’s what made him good. I mean he had a sound system but he played a lot of radio stuff. Kool Herc played the hardcore @#%$ you ain’t ever hear: Yellow Sunshine, Bongo Rock and Babe Ruth – a whole variety of stuff; James Brown ‘Sex Machine’, you know the version with the ‘Clap your hands, stomp your feet?’

Before hip-hop was a multi-billion dollar a year industry, it was a sub-culture. All of the elements were coming into place, sort of being cooked like a stew, in a melting pot: a spoonful of funk, a fistful of bass, a heap of raw energy, all cut up on a platter with a dash of angel dust.

The Battleground

Deep in the heart of the Bronx located on Mt. Eden and Jerome was one of the first indoor hip hop spots. The owners of the venue probably gave it other names over the years but the two most popular ones were the Sparkle and the Executive Playhouse.

AJ Scratch

AJ Scratch

“It was real dark [in the Executive Playhouse]”, remembers AJ, “it wasn’t really like put together, it had a little stage, it had like a little miniature light show, you know what I’m sayin’, it was like a low budget venue. Right around the corner from the Executive Playhouse was the Parkside Plaza – that was a disco. The Executive Playhouse was something that maybe the guys went into the Parkside Plaza and got the idea to open up a club. So they went right around the corner on Mt. Eden and Jerome and opened up the Executive Playhouse – maybe they had the idea, but it wasn’t comparable with the Parkside Plaza. You go in there [the Executive Playhouse] and would be looking around, and you probably wouldn’t wanna go to the bathroom, because of the lighting, you know what I’m saying? There were lights but it was dim. That was hip-hop back then everything was dimmed out.”

The drug of choice back then was weed sprinkled with PCP – the ‘dust heads’ and the stick-up kids were all over the place, “That was the vibe back then”, declared AJ “and you wanted to be a part of that. The lights, the breaks, the dancing, them talking on the mike with the echo – that was hip-hop back then. You would go through anything just to hear Kool Herc’s performance. Kool Herc was special back then. It didn’t matter what the venue was like. It was what he displayed the night of the show; he did his thing.”

The Protégé

By day Pete Jones was an English teacher in Brooklyn. However, at night, Pete taught another set of students a whole other set of skills.

“I had several young guys that came around me trying to learn the deejay business”, explains Mr. Jones, “Magic Mike, Herby Herb and a lot of others, but none of them could figure out how to hook my system up. Except for one guy: Lovebug Starski. He went everywhere with me.”

Lovebug Starski

Lovebug Starski

Lovebug Starski was one of the few deejays of that time that could play for either a hard-core hip-hop crowd with an underground deejay like Kool DJ AJ or for the adult audience’s downtown with Pete Jones or in Harlem with D.J. Hollywood. His original mentor was his stepfather Thunderbird Johnny, a man who ran after hour spots uptown in Harlem. Starski was one of the few cats that could rock the mike and the wheels of steel at the same time.

But Pete had another protégé whose talent was immeasurable. In fact, he would forever change the skill set necessary to be a deejay. He was one-part scientist another part electronics wizard who possessed a sense of timing that was not of this world.

“One of the baddest deejays I ever saw was Grandmaster Flowers”, Jones says, “He could blend. He was a mixer. The things he did with records were incredible. He could hold a blend like you wouldn’t believe. He was the baddest thing I had ever saw.” That was until he saw a young man that had grown up in the Hoe Ave section of the South Bronx.

He was named Joseph at birth, called Joey in the neighborhood but would later gain fame under another name, a name which was partly inspired by a comic book hero. E-Z Mike, his best friend since childhood remembers it like this, “He got the name Flash because he was fast at everything he did. When we played basketball as kids, none of us could keep up with him. No matter what we did, he was always faster than the rest of us. He could outrun us all.” Later a local guy named Joe Kidd gave him the title of Grandmaster.

Before he became the Grandmaster Flash of legend, he was a student of Pete DJ Jones’. Friends described him as being intense, “When that guy caught the deejay bug real bad around 1973, we didn’t know what was happening”, said E-Z Mike, “He had a messenger job”, Mike continues, “He would get paid and by the next day – he would be broke. We’d be like, ‘Yo, where’s all of your money?’ He spent it all on records.”

From 1973 to 1977 Flash and his crew which first consisted of Mean Gene, Disco Bee and E-Z Mike and then later Cowboy, Mele Mel, Creole and Scorpio, were struggling to gain a foothold in the Bronx scene. But they could not get around Kool Herc. He was a giant.

“We’d try and get on Herc’s system”, Mike recalls, “But Herc wasn’t going for it. Flash would ask, “Could I get on?” and Herc would be like ‘Not”. You see back then”, Mike explains, “Nobody wanted Flash to touch their system. They’d be like, “Hell no, you be messing up needles and records and @#%$.” Both Disco Bee and E-Z Mike agree that Herc used to publicly embarrass Flash on the mike by talking ‘really greasy’ about him.

There have been many stories told about Flash’s early sound system, both EZ Mike and Disco Bee confirm that although Flash was an electronic wizard (E-Z Mike says, “Flash could build a TV from scratch”), his first system was the technological equivalent of a ’75 hoopty.

Disco Bee recalls that, “Flash built his own cueing system. Anything he could think of Flash would try to invent it”, Disco Bee laughs, “His system looked so raggedy, awww man, we had some raggedy junk. We were soldering stuff together right before we’d get ready to play, because he just built this thing, and he didn’t finish it. We used to get to a spot early and set up everything and he would be soldering stuff trying to get it to work. Man, we had some raggedy stuff.”

“Awww man this is gonna make you laugh”, E-Z Mike says, “Flash had these two speakers that he built from scratch, they were about six and a half feet tall, they were wood, he had three speakers in each one and on the top he put a piece of plastic with Christmas lights on the inside of it, so that when he deejayed the top of the speaker would be lighting up. Then he took white plastic and wrapped it around the wood – so that the speakers wouldn’t look like they were wood. We didn’t have any bass – there was no bass whatsoever. Just mids and highs”, Mike remembers.

The only person willing to give Flash a break was Pete Jones.

“The first time I met Pete was when I went with Flash to ‘Pete’s Lounge’. Like I said, Flash had gotten real serious about this deejay stuff and he would hook up with Pete and learn a lot of @#%$ from him.”

It must’ve been on one of these meetings at Pete’s Lounge that Flash and Pete plotted against Kool Herc.

A Sound Clash on the West Side of Jerome Ave.

Pete DJ Jones

Pete DJ Jones

“When I battled Pete, it wasn’t even a battle, it was telling my audience, what you think you gettin’? And you tried disrespectin’ and all that; let’s see what the other side of the spectrum sound like by a guy by the name of Pete DJ Jones”, said Herc.

Jones remembers it a little differently, “I guess he was somehow down with the club, he was like the resident deejay [at the Executive Playhouse] and they wanted to get a big crowd, so I guess it was his idea to battle me.”

It was inevitable that the two masters would clash.

The way Herc describes Pete’s audience is as “The bourgeoisie, the ones that graduated from the little house parties, you grown now you out your momma’s house. You puttin’ on Pierre Cardin now, you wearing Halston, you getting’ into the Jordache and Sassoon era, you down there where Frankie Crocker hangs out at, places like Nell Gwynn’s, or the big spot, whadda ya call it? Oh yeah, Leviticus, you down there. ”

“I’d say it was a week before the battle”, Pete remembers, “When I was out one night, and I ran into the twins. They must’ve had some kind of falling out with Herc, cause they were real mad at him. They said, “I’ll tell you all of the records he’s gonna play”. And he wrote all of them out for me, right there on the street.”

The twins he was referring to were the Nigger Twins, a couple of dancers who were a part of Herc’s crew. “When they wrote out his playlist for me, they said, “He’s gonna play them in this order”, Pete recalls.

The night of the battle Pete had a few cards up his sleeve so he went on first. ‘I broke out all of the records that the twins told me about, and I played them in the order that he would play them in. The next thing I knew I saw him walking around talking on the mike saying, “It sounds like I’m listening to a tape of myself.” He sounded real frustrated. I figured if I went first and played what he was gonna play, it would look like to the crowd he wasn’t doing anything different. That was the edge I had over him that night.”

But Herc’s followers were a devoted bunch.

After Pete played Herc went on and he dug deep into his playlist for the rarest of records.

“That was Kool Herc’s venue, the Executive Playhouse was a place that he played at constantly, so maybe they was using Pete to get a little extra audience. But Pete had notoriety. Kool Herc was big back then, he was probably number one in the Bronx.” Remembers AJ. “No matter if he took his playlist or not that doesn’t matter.”

AJ – a man who is well into his 40’s is still a devout practitioner of the ‘keep it real’ mentality. “Nah, Pete didn’t get the edge over Kool Herc”, AJ says, “You know why I think he got the edge over Kool Herc to be honest with you. This is only my opinion: Pete DJ Jones was a deejay but he was mad lazy yo. Pete DJ Jones used to hire dudes to come and play for him. The Executive Playhouse was not Pete’s kind of crowd. It wasn’t that he was a lazy dude it just wasn’t his crowd. It wasn’t Nell Gwynn’s or Nemo’s, it wasn’t downtown, so he wasn’t comfortable, so he put on the people that could rock that kind of crowd.”

After Herc played it was Pete’s turn again, this time he played his R&B and funk records – but the crowd wasn’t feeling it. So he pulled out a couple of ringers, in the form of his protégés: Lovebug Starski and Grandmaster Flash.

“Flash tore Herc’s ass up that night”, remembers E-Z Mike. “When it came crunch time to see what was what: Pete put Grandmaster Flash on”, remembers AJ. That was the first time I ever saw Flash play. The people were amazed. You see, Flash was a deejay, he was doing all that quick-mixing and spinning around and stuff – the Bronx lost its mind that night because we had never seen anything like that before.”

To the crowd of hundreds it looked like Pete Jones was winning. No one knew who Grandmaster Flash was that night. He was an unknown deejay playing on the set of one of the most popular jocks of that time. People yelled and screamed because it was the first time that they had seen a deejay with a magician’s flair for showmanship. Nobody played like that before. Kool Herc would haphazardly drop the needle on the record – sometimes the break was there, often times it wasn’t. Pete Jones could mix his ass off – but he wasn’t entertaining to watch. Both men had huge sound systems, but they weren’t charismatic spinners. Flash was.

On this night, the crowd at the Executive Playhouse was entranced with Flash’s spinning techniques, which were really revolutionary at this time. He had perfected a new technique called the ‘backspin’.

E-Z Mike remembers the first time Flash did the backspin: “He spent the night at my house, he woke up out of his sleep and turned the equipment on, it was like 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. The first record he did it with was Karen Young’s “Hotshot” and he backspun it a bunch of times, and then turned to me and said “Yo, remember that and remind me about it when I wake up.” And he jumped back in his bed. When he woke up the next morning, he did it again.”

One could only imagine that night at the Executive Playhouse in front of hundreds of stunned spectators Flash cutting ‘Hotshot’ to pieces:

“Hot shot, hot shot, hot…hot shot hot shot hot…hot shot. Hot shot. Hot shot…hot…hot…hot.

“You know what at that battle, Flash showed the Bronx that he was for real”, said AJ. By Herc’s own admission by 1977 he was on the decline. Whether or not it had anything to do with him getting stabbed at the Executive Playhouse is open to speculation. What is a fact though, is that after this battle between two of the biggest stars of the era the name Grandmaster Flash was no longer relegated to a small section of the Bronx. His fame spread like wildfire throughout the city. According to more than just one person interviewed for this story, the long-term effects of the battle on Kool Herc were not good. In the weeks proceeding the battle Herc’s audience got smaller and smaller. They were leaving the Executive Playhouse for another hotspot: The Dixie, which was the home of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Four.

Soon The Dixie would become so crowded that by 4 a.m. when the house was still packed the only way they could get people out of there was by playing Jackie Wilson’s “Work Out”, but the fly girls and b-boys would still want to party, “We’d put that record on”, said Disco Bee, “And you’d look out on the floor and folks would be doing the Twist”.

The battle between Kool Herc and Pete Jones was also a pivotal moment in time because previous to it battles were all about equipment, records and who moved the crowd – Grandmaster Flash added the next dimension: showmanship. This was at a time when the sound system was king. Breakout and Baron had Sasquatch. D.J. Divine had the Infinity Machine, Kool Herc had the Herculords and Grandmaster Flash would later have a system called the Gladiator. Today’s deejays know nothing of sound systems; even fewer know how to hook one up.

Mark Skillz says peace, respect and special thanks to Jeff Chang, Davey D, Christie Z Pabon, Cindy Campbell, Kool Herc, Kool DJ AJ, E-Z Mike, KC the Prince of Soul, JT Hollywood, Pete Jones, Charlie Ahearn for the photos and Disco Bee.

markskillz.blogspot.com/

Adam Sandler is Back In Grown Ups 2

Grown-Ups-2-Is-Laugh-Out-Loud-1024x640

Adam Sandler and company returns with his sequel, Grown Ups 2, a follow up to his 2010 blockbuster Grown Ups.

The film brings back the whole gang (minus Rob Schneider) Kevin James, Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, David Spade, Tim Meadows and more. Its three years later and Lenny and his group of immature middle-aged dads are all back living in their home town and dealing with family life.

In the first film we followed each of the friends and how they came back together after their high school coach passed away. The friends all rekindle their friendships up at the old lake house with some very funny scenes. Well this movie doesn’t have too many strong family values like the first film. Instead it’s much more slapstick filled with comedy antics, and pranks the keeps you laughing. Grown Ups 2 is very reminiscent of earlier Sandler movies from the late 90’s such as; The Waterboy (1998), Big Daddy (1999), Little Nicky (2000). Adam Sandler takes elements from that era, but isn’t as successful with the set ups and punch lines. However, Kevin James, Chris Rock and David Spade are such strong comedic actors they are able to save the films hilarity and pace. To be honest this film seems to target the teenage boy to mid forty year old man. Although the film has mixed reviews when walking out of the theater, I personally could not stop laughing. I had no expectations and came out happy. This film is unlike the original Grown Ups, but compared to Sandler’s 2011 Jack and Jill train wreck this movie keeps you laughing.

In this film Lenny and his family are much happier, the kids are playing outside and not the little jerks like they were in the first. His wife Roxanne Chase-Feder (Salma Hayek) is no longer a snob. In this film Lenny must contend with the news that his wife (Hayek) wants to have a fourth child. While Eric (Kevin James) unaccountably, must keep his wife Sally (Maria Bello) in the dark about how much time he spends keeping his elderly mother company. Kurt McKenzie (Chris Rock) and his wife Deanne (Maya Rudolph) are dealing with two teenagers and a new baby boy. And replacing Rob Schneider storyline is Marcus (David Spades) who finds out that he has a son that he never knew. Marcus must make peace with the thuggish son. Overall, the movie is a day in the life a bunch of friends and their daily antics. The only stand out moral in the movie is how to stand up from being bullied as a child, like most of Sandler’s film. The underdog always succeeds and gets the pretty women. The is film starts on the last day of school, Grown Ups 2 follows Lenny commandeers his kids’ bus driver, played by Nick Swardson, who is high on drugs throughout the film

As for the weak link of the film, that would go to Taylor Lautner and his band of misfit Fraternity boys. It was too over the top and ridiculous. Although we get the point that Sandler was trying to make about Fraternity life. Personally I felt he was off, being a Fraternity Alum myself. I thought the secret handshake part was hilarious, but making them a bunch of mindless muscled out idiots was not funny in the slightest. Luckily that only takes up 5 minutes of screen time.

Like we said before, this film is filled with gags, one liners and slapstick style comedy like his earlier Happy Madison films. Grown Ups 2 marks the first sequel for Adam Sandler, so we have our fingers crossed that it does well. Overall the movie is just summer fun, it’s not meant for anything more than to make you laugh. Yes it may have lost some of the golden moments of the first, but it’s a great weekend film to go out and bring the kids. The jokes are simple, the setting is basic and the comedy is for all ages, so grab a bucket of popcorn and a couple sodas and you’re off to the movies for some laughs with Grown Ups 2.

FYI: This is great bonding flick for a father and his son or a Big Brother and little brother type of movie.

Grown Ups 2 Film Credits:

Production Company: Happy Madison

Cast: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, David Spade, Maya Rudolph, Maria Bello

Director: Dennis Dugan

Screenwriters: Fred Wolf, Adam Sandler, Tim Herlihy

Producers: Jack Giarraputo, Adam Sandler

Director of photography: Theo van de Sande

Production designer: Aaron Osborne

Music: Rupert Gregson-Williams

Costume designer: Ellen Lutter

Editor: Tom Costain

PG-13, 100 minutes

Related articles

Ice Cube Disses the Hell outta Dwight Howard for Leaving the Lakers

ice cube scowlIce Cube is a diehard Raider fan and a diehard Lakers fan.. The other night during his concert, Cube let the world know how he feels about D12 rushing off to be with the Houston Rockets.. He predicts Kobe will win a championship before Dwight even smells one..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6leufELg1s&feature=youtu.be

A Few Thoughts About Being on the Witness Stand and Rachel Jaentel

Rachel Jaentel

Rachel Jaentel

A few thoughts on Trayvon Martin‘s friend Rachel Jaentel... The minute that sister took the stand, jokes were flying around twitter about her looks and her weight… People were going in and saying nasty jokes about how Trayvon went out with Precious etc etc…

I’m sure the sista has heard such cruel jokes in real life more than a few times.. I can only imagine what sort defensive postures she’s adopted over the years to rebuff such remarks.. maybe she’s over aggressive, maybe she’s shy and stays low-key, maybe she makes lots of jokes, maybe she drowns herself in drink and drugs..who knows?

Hearing that she wanted to stay hidden and out of the public light had me thinking that was because she didn’t want to get the public ridicule.. It’s the type of mean-spirited ridicule that many had levied on Olympic champ Gabby Douglass when she was competing, one could only imagine what this sister, Rachel would’ve been dealing with if she had made herself public long ago..

On top of this, we still have someone who was a good friend to Trayvon who was the last to talk to him who lost him violently..To my knowledge, there weren’t grief counselors who went to Trayvon’s school and made sure his friends could process this sudden loss..

Like so many of us who come from the community, we are expected to suck it up, not cry and see the violent passing of love ones as some sort of truth about how tough we are and how tough are respective hoods are.. We ain’t supposed to need counseling, therapy or any sort of comforting to help get our mind right..

So we have a 19-year-old girl, who is overweight, dark-skinned who is supposed to ‘have her mind right’ because those who were going in on her supposedly could’ve and would’ve if they were on the stand… Some the harshest judgement directed at Rachel were from so-called professional, academic types, the sophisticated folks who saw Rachel as more of an embarrassment vs someone who was good friend to Trayvon..She even had folks like Lolo Jones, the Olympic athlete who herself was ridiculed, weighing in and adding to the viciousness. She compared Rachel to the character Medea and has made no move to apologize even as she herself as recently as a week ago is still upset and battling with those in the media who said nasty things about her..

Instead of thinking of Trayvon and respecting the fact that this was his friend as overweight and as dark as she is, many were projecting their own insecurities and bias on him and her.. Again this all before she started to speak..

Now lets talk about being on the witness stand..Many who talked crazy and judged crazy have themselves never ever been on a witness stand.. Many have not been a reluctant witness.. I recall being on the stand several years ago for the defense and being questioned for two hours before the cross-examination started.. I was not spoken too or prepared by the lawyers as to what to expect.. I’m a public person, I think I’m fairly articulate.. I have education and I speak as journalist for living, so being before a crowd and answer questions off the cuff is second nature to me..

When you’re on the stand and the job of the lawyer cross-examining you is to discredit you, its one thing to know it in theory and intellectually, it’s a whole other ball game when it’s happening, especially if you never gone through it..I recall when on the stand, the prosecutor asked me a couple of questions and then out of left field he pulled up an article I had written and read a sentence which on its own made me sound crazy and foolish..

He set me up my asking if I wrote the article? I said yes, then he asked me if these were my words.. and read the quote.. I said yes and tried to explain and was immediately cut off.. In a harsher more stern tone of voice that made me feel like I was 6 years old, he repeated the question are these your word? Yes or No..

I tried to explain and was instructed by the judge to answer yeh or nay.. I answered slowly almost like Rachel.. ‘Yes I wrote those words’.. My mind-set was anger and wanting to let everyone know in the courtroom there was a larger context to what I was saying..

The prosecutor upon hearing my ‘Ye’s answer said to the court “this is the type of individual we are expected to believe, someone who thinks like this who will pen these words in an article…”

Next the prosecutor pulled up my MySpace page and read my status update.. All this caught me off guard.. I wasn’t on trial I was a witness for the defense.. and he read my status which was ‘NYPD are dipshits’. Again i was asked yes or no is this whats on my page..

I tried to explain, and was cut off which had me even more heated.. Then the prosecutor said something to the effect that my juvenile ramblings were not very becoming of someone of my stature and profession.. Officers of the law gave their life on 9-11 and are more professional than you..

I wasn’t asked a question, but I responded, very slow and deliberate with major attitude just like Rachel.. ‘I wrote that because the officers who you claim are professional shot Sean Bell 50 times and not one of those so-called professional officers apologized..”

The prosecutor without missing a beat said something to the effect that my ramblings had sullied my profession and he was glad I wasn’t covering a story he was involved in….then he dismissed me.. I started to answer back.. and was stopped by the judge..

With all that I know about media and public speaking experience, degrees etc..and the 20 + years in age I have over 19-year-old Rachel Jaentel, I let my emotions get the better of me.. especially when my words were twisted and ridiculed.. I was only on the stand for cross-examination for 20 minutes, not 5 hours like Rachel.. I wasn’t on TV and there weren’t newspapers around digging into my past or making fun of my looks..Nor was I traumatized because of losing a friend..

I was angry that they took my words out of context and was mad that they saw my MySpace status update and ran with that to try and discredit everything I said earlier during being questioned by the defense..

I share all this to remind folks, what seems easy and no big deal isn’t always the case.. All I had that day was my truth and I left feeling like I was the one on trial.. I’m sure Rachel felt that and whole lot more.. The closest thing I can think of that might make this experience a bit more relatable is when you get pulled over and have to deal with rude arrogant cop who treats like you like crap.. Some are able to bite their tongue and endure the humiliation, others lose patience and wind up arrested or even dead.

I think Rachael told the painful truth..and was made to feel like she was on trial in that court and still on trial in the court of public opinion.. Even the daughter of the defense lawyer was taking instagram pictures calling this sister stupid.. Rachel is seen as everything under the sun, but a good friend of Trayvon Martin who she lost to unwarranted violence..

That’s some food for thought…

-Davey D-

HKR: Bobbito Garcia Talks About Doin’ It in the Park, Elon James Speaks Stop-n-Frisk

HKR-Tues 05-21-13: We talk with long time deejay Bobbito Garcia aka Cucumber Slice aka Kool Bob Love about his new film ‘Doin’ it in the Park‘.. It’s an incredible movie that captures the excitement, the science, the culture and the essence of pick up basketball in New York City..

In our interview Bobbitto talks about the way he and his partner film maker Kevin Couliau traveled to over 180 parks in NYC by bike to capture the magic of pick up basketball. He also gives an insightful history and makes the important connection between Pick Up basketball and Hip Hop.

Later in the show we sit down and talk w/ Brooklyn activist and comedian Elon James White about his new project the remix of 10 Frisk Commandments..This was a song which was original penned by Pittsburgh rapper Jasiri X who took a popular Notorious BIG song ‘10 Crack Commandments‘ and redid to focus on 10 things one should do if stopped by NYPD under their infamous Stop and Frisk program. Elon shot the video to that first effort..

With this new venture, he led the effort to crowd source a remix to the song , which features White himself picking up a mic and rapping.. As he noted in our interview, Stop and Frisk is still a problem, not just in NY, but all over the country under various names..

Click HERE to Listen

Click HERE to Listen

HKR Bobbito Doin’ it in the Park_Elon James Mixdown 1

The President Needs all that Data to Fight Terrorist-But Which Terrorist is He Fighting?

Brack Obama in San Jose President Obama is in San Jose this morning.. right smack dab in the heart of Silicon Valley which is home to many of the high-tech companies that have been collecting all this data and intel from millions of innocent people… Now I know he’s scheduled to speak on Healthcare today, and Lord knows, we need some decent healthcare with all the stress caused by us learning that a guy who campaigned on being opposite the man who preceded him (George Bush) has doubled down and went far and beyond where Bush has ever gone when it comes to surveillance and violation of our privacy.

We all need some nurturing and good healthcare to recover from this spying crap…but who knows, maybe while he’s here, our beloved President will  head on over to Google or Facebook and personally gather up the data they been collecting so he can continue his valiant, unwavering  fight on the war on terror.

In fighting the War on terror ya gotta wonder if President Obama is gonna look at all that data to fight corporate terrorism.  I know people get uncomfortable when you say things like corporate terrorism but wage theft, wage depressions, increased privatization of public goods, decreased benefits, unsafe and toxic work environments resulting in debt and deaths is something we can’t ignore..

In fighting this war on terror will president Obama look at the phone records of the CEOs of Wal-Mart, JC Penny, Target, Disney and other retailers who are responsible for turning a blind eye to unsafe conditions in factories in places like Bangladesh where they pay $38 dollars month to beleaguered workers while buildings catch fire or outright collapse resulting in hundreds getting killed?

Maybe while examining those phone records our President can find out if there has been any sort of illegal collusion amongst those companies to not pay a living wage and to bust up any attempts by workers to organize. Certainly President Obama, a former community organizer will be putting his best foot forward to fight economic terrorism being waged on people here at home..One out of seven Americans are in poverty.. One out of 4 kids are in poverty. Its a hard pill to swallow, but its true..

Koch Brothers

Maybe Obama will fight these economic terrorist the Koch Brothers

Will President Obama armed with this data crack down on unlawful, unethical and questionable business practices by the likes of  ‘evil’ corporate entities like the Koch Brothers, Monsanto, Wal-Mart, Wall Street banks and the Correction Corporation of America (CCA) who as Kanye West recently pointed out has teamed up with the DEA to make us their ‘new slaves’?

Maybe our President in fighting terrorism will look at the phone records and emails of shady lawmakers who teamed up insidious types to get harmful Stand Your Ground laws passed via ALEC…Or perhaps our President will be looking at those phone records to see what sort of off the book sinister dealings have been going on with the NRA members,  its leadership and gun runners who have flooded our community with cheap easy to get firearms,  while steadfastly refusing to pass gun control legislation, not even background checks..

Yes I’m certain Mr Obama is here in Silicon Valley collecting data to see who exactly is responsible for the sale of illegal guns which if resulting in a reign of terror that has far surpassed the loss of life than 9-11…Or wait.. perhaps our President is here in Silicon Valley to fight the war on terror in the form of Monsanto who has crippled so many with GMOs and has economically tanked lots of farmers in countries all over the world by patenting seeds and contaminating fields with their own trademark crops.. Will he be checking their phone records and see what mischief they and other agribusinesses have caused. Maybe its me but the use being flooded with GMOs is chemical warfare.. and last I checked chemical warfare is terrorism.. So maybe our President is hot on the trail to shut that down..

Or maybe, just maybe our President is here to fight environmental terrorism, like the one waged by Big Oil which have polluted our air resulting in unprecedented cases of asthma amongst our kids.. Now that’s terror for real.

Maybe Mr Obama will be checking to see just how much was known before hand, what warning signs were ignored and what sort of deliberate systemic neglect was going on prior and what our environment ravaged by corporate based disasters like the Gulf Coast oil spill caused by BP.

Maybe the data collected will reveal if there are any underhanded shenanigans going on around the Keystone XL Pipeline.. Y’all know that pipeline, that’s the same pipeline former Ambassador Susan Rice who he just put back in his cabinet has substantial investments in..On a side note,  I wonder if it rude of all those little  kids who came out to protest the president yesterday in Palo Alto.. They were mad at the Pipeline situation.. Those damn rude school kids.. but lets no digress.

Police spyRecently the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement updated their Report on police killings in the Black community.. Its now showing that every 26 Hours law enforcement officers kill a Black person in America. With police brutality at all time highs and the policeman’s bill of rights firmly inplace making it difficult for citizens to know the records of officers patrolling their streets, I wonder if Obama and those looking at the intel will reveal what sort of ugly things are really going on in those departments.

It wasn’t too long ago that pompous, holier than thou pundits were beating their chest yelling USA! USA! USA!, bragging about American Exceptionalism and crowing to the world that we would never ever be like China..But alas here we are, spying on folks, collecting data from millions, keeping people imprisoned indefinitely and turning a blind eye to our President declared the world a perpetual battlefield via NDAA , resulting in him justifying the making of his weekly Kill List..

Well anyway… Go Mr President.. Get that Data Mr President! Black Power Mr President..

-Davey D-

Rapper Being Held on $1 Million Bail for Making a ‘Terrorist’ Themed Song

Cameron D’Ambrosio aka Cammy Dee

Cameron D’Ambrosio aka Cammy Dee

Just reading this story about a teenager being held in prison for 1 million dollars bail for posting up rap lyrics deemed offensive on Facebook.. Here’s whats in the NY Daily News..

A Massachusetts high schooler is facing federal terror charges for posting to Facebook rap lyrics mentioning the Boston Marathon bombing and the White House.

Cameron D’Ambrosio, 18, of Methune, was picked up by feds at around 1:40 p.m. Tuesday after a friend saw the lyrics and called the principal of Methuen High School, who called police, the Valley Patriot newspaper reported.

“Ya’ll want me to…kill somebody?” the lyrics said, according to the Boston Globe.

“A Boston bombing wait till you see the [expletive] I do. I’m a be famous rapping, and beat every murder charge that comes across me!” the message said….

The teen, who appeared in a handful of self-made YouTube clips rapping under the handle “CammyDee,” was charged with communication of terrorist threats and being held on $1 million bail.

According to posts on YouTube and Facebook, D’Ambrosio lived in “da hood” of Methuen and appeared to have a strong interest in “gangs, violence and a criminal lifestyle,” the Valley Patriot said.

His Facebook page contained satanic images and a picture of his face on a “Wanted Dead or Alive” poster.

Read the rest of the story HERE or you can check out another story HERE

Paris sonic jihadNow there’s a lot to unpack here..Over the past few years we’ve had militias and armed Tea Party folks show up to the White House lawn with guns talking reckless about President Obama and nothing happened except maybe the IRS looked at taxes and you see where that’s gotten us/
No matter what this kid has said we’ve heard and seen images that are far more ‘politically charged’. For example shortly after 9-11, with the Patriot Act on the books and the term enemy combatant defined, we had artist like Paris do an entire album called ‘Sonic Jihad’ smashing on President George Bush and his Post-9-11 policies.. Who could forget this infamous album cover of a plane flying into the white house..That’s just for starters.. Since Paris there’s been a slew of songs that have referenced the World Trade being blown up. Some have made the case that George Bush ‘knocked down the towers’… We seen an explosion in ‘terrorism’ shows ranging from 24 to The Cell to the recent movie ‘Olympus Has Fallen‘, where the white house is attacked and destroyed by terrorists.. If someone saw the scripts to those movies or caught wind of the dialogue, would they be carted off to jail and held with 1 million dollar bond?
Obama Being HungDuring the Democratic Convention some guy showed up and drove around Charlotte with a effigy of Obama being hung.. There was no arrests or anyone sent to jail, even though it was disturbing and highly offensive.If this is happening now, whats gonna be the rules everyone has to follow to avoid jail time? Don’t reference a recent bombing? Don’t talk greasy about the President unless you’re a deranged Senator or Congressman or Tea Party member? Will the net of jailable offenses be expanded to include forbidding one to talk about the military or police?? Will we start have folks define ‘terrorist threat’ any expression of anger toward authority figures and lawmakers?Meanwhile if you’re a rapper like Chief Keef sporting a 2 million dollar bill, you can talk about stabbing a woman for not given you head or be a rapper who’s actually shot and been accused of killing someone like Snoop Dogg and Gucci Mane and be not only handsomely rewarded but celebrated. Seems like with each passing day the Obama administration are pushing the envelope to see what liberties they can snatch away with.. This is especially scary when you consider that we’ve killed 4 Americans with drones without any sort of due process..To me that’s an act of terror, but thus far no one has been punished for that..Lets keep our eyes on this story..

After I posted this article some folks sent me a video of the cops in Salem harassing folks who went to the court to find out whats happening in this case.. This is the police being over the top..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5gpIWRMo3s&feature=youtu.be

We Want You to Be a Part of the #10FriskCommandments Remix Video!

photo (10)

We. Want. You.

With the release of the #10FriskCommandments remix TWiB! is preparing to release a new music video for the song highlighting the issue of Stop and Frisk. To show this is an everyone issue we want to ask you to record yourself rapping (lip synching – you don’t have to spit hot fiyah, just mouth it like you were in the shower) to the song and we will add you to the official release of the video. Grab your camera, cell phone, web cam or whatever you use to capture moving pictures and rap the lyrics to the song (lyrics are below.) We want all types, young, old, all races and religions. This isn’t something that only young black and hispanic males care about.

Send us the video via youtube, dropbox or whatever  works best for you (clips can be sent to shoutouttothechatroom – at – twib – dot – me.) Make sure its 16:9 (in other words turn your phone the long way) and spit some fire Try to frame your shot in a similar way as the image above to help us out in the editing room. Send your clips by Saturday morning (preferably by Friday night) and lets make magic.

#10FriskCommandments Remix LYRICS

Hands up if you ever seen a handcuff…

Hands up if you ever seen a handcuff…

My little man touched me in the heart, we was at the park

Watch him run the rock, time to go cause its getting dark

Last play of the game, hard foul fight starts,

i’m peeling out because i don’t want my son to see the night sparks

before i get the 5 feet, the blue lights behind me.

Pulling over, cool as ice til something reminds me

My little man is in the car, that something was him

asking me if i was gonna get taken away by them

I laughed like i wasn’t concerned

But in the back of mind i remember the time when i made a U TURN

And got pulled over for suspicious action

My white friend got pulled out so they could ask him

what he was doing with me, that incident was one among many

I wanna tell my son that that’s silly

He’s only 3, and im not even sure its wise

or fair to have to teach him to survive before he’s five

That night I read him 10 commandments and I nearly cried

cause it wasn’t the bible it was from Jasiri’s rhymes

Its the 10 frisk commandments…

 

I’ve never known a time when I wasn’t really warned

about how blackness is perceived with some malice and some scorn.

But Mama I’m sure I didn’t do nothing wrong

And then she said that’s not the point I just don’t want to see you gone.

Growing up it was me who was questioning the fact that being black

That I was somehow always under some sort of attack

It was the bad kids, the thuggish ones, I will be okay

and that’s the same bullshit they used on Kimani Grey

Its 2013 how is not being white still a crime

and the innocent still get stopped and frisked all the time

I’m American, I thought that came with some sort of rights

That was undeniable whether my skin was dark or light

Such a fright, abuse of authoritative might,

Such a sight, to see young folks scared to even fight

For their rights, guess what, we need more voices who are white

lets unite, and put this shit to bed and say good night…

It’s the 10 Frisk Commandments

 

Driving through New York I see’em inside my rear view

Lights on, sirens sound, pull over, yeah I hear you

I guess you see four black men in an SUV so you expect we sling

I felt like Ice T, it was six in the morning

He asked where we going, we rolling to a performance

He asked if was I drinkin’, I told him I don’t indulge in the spirits

but he wasn’t trying to hear it

He pulled out the breathalyzer, like i was the best of liars

but my man Radee, had the Canon 5D

Commandment number 9 yeah we film the police

And because were were recording, we got off with the warning

I asked why he pulled us over, What a surprise

He said my lights were off but it was passed sunrise

And I was thankful that none of us died

Stopped and frisked in N-Y but at least we survived

By the 10 frisk commandments.

President Obama Wants the FBI to Have More Access to Spy on You

Obama got a game plan about this gun control stuff

Obama wants the FBI to have more access to you

Was concerned when the local news reported that President Obama is pushing new legislation to make Skype and other popular technologies available for the FBI to eavesdrop and spy on.. Obama says that people aren’t using phones as much and Skype is now being used so-called bad people they need to keep track of.. Now before folks go sounding off about how we need to do this to save lives.. I say BS.. If the FBI or anyone needs to track a SUSPECT there are other ways like old-fashioned surveillance or placing a bug on the person you are following … With all these warrantless wiretap laws this new push from Obama just furthers the rising police state.. Folks need to wake up..

here’s a more indepth article about what our government is doing..

http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/former-fbi-counterterrorism-agent-all-digital-communications-and-phonecalls-are-recorded/

This petitions comes courtesy of  http://act.demandprogress.org/act/calea/

Skype, BlackBerry, and other Internet communications services are under attack!  The Obama administration and the FBI are pushing legislation that would ban online communications technologies like these unless their developers make it easy for the government to wiretap them.

The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) requires telecom companies to make it possible for the government to wiretap their networks. Now Obama and law enforcement want to expand CALEA to cover all online communications technologies, including peer-to-peer and social networking apps.

Companies that want to avoid stifling regulations, and those that actually care about our privacy rights, would have to leave the U.S. That’d reduce our prominence as a technology leader, and encourage the government to devise ever more heavy-handed ways of blocking Americans from using the offending technologies.  Other companies would comply by creating back-doors that could lead to more privacy violations and make the Internet more vulnerable to attack: experts say wiretap-ready technologies would be much easier to hack.

An expansion of CALEA would be a tremendous blow to a free and open Internet.  Lawmakers need to reject it: Will you sign our petition demanding that they do so?

FULL TEXT OF PETITION TO CONGRESS:  The CALEA expansion would lead to more privacy violations and make the Internet more vulnerable to attacks, and would put U.S. technology developers at a disadvantage to their peers across the world.  We need you to reject it.

Just sign on at right and we’ll deliver the petition to Congress before they act on CALEA

Lauryn Hill Drops a New Song.. Are You Feeling It? Lauryn to Do Jail Time

lauryn hillLauryn Hill is making moves.. She comes with a new song.. perhaps a teaser as to what we can expect in future offerings which will hopefully help her retire her tax debt.. What do y’all think of this new joint..

Important Update.. On May 6th 2013 Lauryn Hill was sentenced to three months in jail for  tax evasion’.. The song that is released below was supposed to help her stay out of jail, but apparently not..The judge wants the mother of 6 to spend 3 months in jail.. Not sure what that will accomplish.. Does the US want its money or do they want to disrupt someone’s family life?  When will some of these corporate tax cheats do time for not paying taxes? Thus far a slew of artists ranging from Wesley  Snipes to Beanie Segal to Ja Rule all have been sentenced for not paying taxes..The message should be clear.. If you’re not a rich white corporate CEO the government will come and get you..

If thats not enough Lauryn Hill is also being ordered to undergo counseling to deal with her ‘conspiracy theories’.. lauryn who recently talked about the music industry being overly commercial and part of the illuminati raised concerns and now they want her to do counseling on top of the 3 months jail time and 3 months home confinement read about that HERE

One would think some of these lawmakers who ran around with crazy theories like economic trickle down or rape having a variety of categories including legitimate rape would be required to take counseling, but alas such is not the case in America

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl0u_m0TeB4