1.12.2004
oh, he retired from the AL
the only thing that makes roger clemens' latest defection okay is fantasizing about how maddening all this must be for george steinbrenner. first pettitte, then wells and now clemens. between clemens and jeff kent, the astros are now the surliest team in baseball. what? white baseball players aren't surly? oh yeah, they're the ones with the 'linebacker mentalities' who 'bring the lunchpails to work.'
random thoughts relating to something I'm working on: if you think about it, 2003 was a pretty remarkable year for hip-hop-as-spectacle. aboveground: puffy (who has been known to compare himself to gatsby - someone tell farnsworth to finish reading the book to him) ran the city, jay-z 'retired,' russell bumrushed the rockefeller back-and-forth, Reebok gave us 'S.Carters' and 'G-Units,' the democratic candidates namechecked outkast and concocted campaign raps, 'black music' swept the pop top-ten for the first time ever and 'bling' made it into the OED.
we didn't need 2003 to tell us what fat joe told us years ago: shit iz real. but I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say that 2003 catches us at a fascinating crossroads. hip-hop is big and global--duh. it seems like a lot of folks on the inside are finally starting to wonder what to do with the great responsibility that comes with that big-ness, that global-ness. if you're russell or puff, you play tangents and give politics a go. if you're jay-z or 50 or eminem, you keep adding to your pyramid schemes and wonder aloud about the ethics of what you're doing--thus a whole generation of 'conflicted' and misunderstood rappers having their cake and eating it too, but also pretending they feel bad about it. all this (the arc as well as my thoughts on it) is incomplete, but it's something I find exciting nonetheless.
random thoughts relating to something I'm working on: if you think about it, 2003 was a pretty remarkable year for hip-hop-as-spectacle. aboveground: puffy (who has been known to compare himself to gatsby - someone tell farnsworth to finish reading the book to him) ran the city, jay-z 'retired,' russell bumrushed the rockefeller back-and-forth, Reebok gave us 'S.Carters' and 'G-Units,' the democratic candidates namechecked outkast and concocted campaign raps, 'black music' swept the pop top-ten for the first time ever and 'bling' made it into the OED.
we didn't need 2003 to tell us what fat joe told us years ago: shit iz real. but I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say that 2003 catches us at a fascinating crossroads. hip-hop is big and global--duh. it seems like a lot of folks on the inside are finally starting to wonder what to do with the great responsibility that comes with that big-ness, that global-ness. if you're russell or puff, you play tangents and give politics a go. if you're jay-z or 50 or eminem, you keep adding to your pyramid schemes and wonder aloud about the ethics of what you're doing--thus a whole generation of 'conflicted' and misunderstood rappers having their cake and eating it too, but also pretending they feel bad about it. all this (the arc as well as my thoughts on it) is incomplete, but it's something I find exciting nonetheless.
