Via the Washington City Paper Music Blog:

Sunday’s Rock The Bells show at Merriweather is looking to be a defining moment in the future of the hip-hop tour. In the contracting entertainment market, the economy of scale may be the solution to present this many quality underground hip-hop acts on one stage. It also signals a new era where classic performers join up-and-comers for a true festival setting and culture celebration. And with today’s hip-hoppers being such a critical bunch, and its a nod to the state of the movement that a tour of this caliber and selling out dates and hitting so many cities.

There’s a definite buzz around many of the acts on this tour. Make sure you’re up to date on the latest before you pull up to Merriweather on Sunday

Ikeso’s got a party bus, let me know f you want in!

Is this on a syllabus? Can i get a shout out?! PEACE!

Dear DC Hip Hop, I apologize for setting the precedent that Chief Ike’s was a venue you would want to do business with.

This is from my peoples who started a new Thursday night hip hop weekly there:

Society Thursdays is taking a brief leave of absence while we find a new club to hold us down. We ended up having some serious artistic differences with the people at Chief Ike’s. At first we contemplated calling for an all-out DC hip-hop community boycott of Chief Ike’s because of the bullshit way that they treat people, but then we decided against it. Why? Because Society Thursdays doesn’t have time for all that petty nonsense. We’re focused on giving y’all dope hip-hop to dance to, and we won’t let ourselves be distracted by the ugly, petty, hating-ass antics of Chief Ike’s. Really, we have more self-respect than that.

Thanks to all of y’all that have been coming out every week and supporting Society. We’ll back to doing our thing soon. Stay tuned. (If anyone knows of any clubs that might be interested in hosting a fly-ass weekly hip-hop night, let us know).

I swear, I could write a thousand words on why Cool Disco Dan hitting me up on Myspace is a watershed moment in DC Hip Hop. Is Blelvis on Facebook yet?

This is interesting. Imagine if Hip Hop (and Nas) had been acting like this ALL DECADE! Now is the time for the hip hop movement to stand up for media independence. UPSET THE SETUP

Hip hop star Nas will join members of ColorOfChange.org & MoveOn.org on Wednesday to deliver 620,127 petition signatures demanding that FOX end its pattern of racist attacks against Black Americans including presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle. The group will make the delivery at 2:00pm on Wednesday, July 23rd at FOX in Manhattan.
PETITION DELIVERY EVENT DETAILS

Who: Hip Hop artist Nas, ColorOfChange.org & MoveOn.org members in New York City

Where: FOX Headquarters, 1211 Ave. of the Americas, Manhattan (48th St. between 6th & 7th Aves.)

When: Wednesday, July 23rd, 2:00pm

What: Nas joins ColorOfChange.org & MoveOn.org members to present over 600,000 petition signatures demanding that FOX stop its racist smears against the Obamas and other Black Americans.

“FOX poisons the country with racist propaganda and tries to call it news,” said Nas. He caught ColorOfChange.org and MoveOn.org’s attention with a new song called Sly Fox, which has lyrics like, “Watch what you watchin’, FOX keeps feeding us toxins, Stop sleeping, Start thinking” and “I pledge allegiance to the fair and balanced truth/Not the biased truth/Not the liar’s truth/But the highest truth.” Nas’s new album called [Untitled] was released last week.

I wrote this for the Washington City Paper Music Blog, Black Plastic Bag

X.O. is an MC from uptown D.C. off Georgia Ave. He’s been tearing up the D.C. hip-hop scene since he was a high schooler, straight murking sessions at the legendary Tru Skool cipher at Capitol City Records. A self described “De La Wu/Tupac Pun” he’s a witty, innovative lyricist who puts the D.C. street life in a unique perspective that has rarely been captured in hip-hop prose. The authenticity of his flow stands out in an era where every local MySpace rapper claims to be the repping the DMV to the fullest. When he shouts out shoot-outs, it strikes you as “all facts on tracks..check the resume, my number you can call that.” This is the work of a rising star putting his street experiences into a transformative experience, which also happens to be a free download mixtape. Featuring Wale, and beats by Oddisee, Judah, The Unknown, YU. Cop that, it’s big on the internets.

Peeped this today. A worthwhile read:

I mention all this because it is criminal for these people claiming to be radical or intellectual to oppose or refuse to support Obama. I hope we don’t have to hear about “the lesser of two evils” from people whose foolish mirror worship wd have us elect the worst of two evils.

For those who claim radical by supporting McKinney or, brain forbid, the Nadir of fake liberalism, we shd have little sympathy. As much as I have admired Cynthia McKinney, to pose her candidacy as an alternative to Obama is at best empty idealism, at worst nearly as dangerous as when the Nader used the same windy egotism to help elect Bush.

The people who are supporting McKinney must know that that is an empty gesture. But too often such people are so pocked with self congratulatory idealism, that they care little or understand little about politics (i.e. the gaining maintaining and use of power) but want only to pronounce, to themselves mostly, how progressive or radical or even revolutionary they are.

Faced with the obvious that McKinney cannot actually do anything by running but put out lines a solid left bloc shd put out anyway, their pre-joinder is that Obama will be running as a candidate of an imperialist party, or Imperialism will not let Obama do anything different or progressive . . . that he will do the same things any democrat would do and that the Democrats are using Obama to draw young people to the Democratic Party. Also that there is a sector of the bourgeoisie that supports Obama to put a new face on the US as alternative to the Devil face Bush has projected as the American image.

Some of these things I agree with, but before qualifying that let me say that no amount of solipsistic fist pounding about “radical principles” will change this society as much as the election of Barack Obama will as president of the US. Not to understand this is to have few clues about the history of this country, its people, or the history of the Black struggle in the US. It is also to be completely at odds with the masses of the Afro-American people, let us say with the masses of black and colored people internationally. How people who claim to lead the people but who time after time tail them so badly must be understood. It is because they confuse elitism with class consciousness.

Amy Goodman brought this up in her interview of Green Party Presidential Candidate Cynthia McKiney and VP Candidate Rosa Clemente.

Via DemocracyNow

The American Civil Liberties Union released documents Thursday showing that undercover officers from the Maryland State Police spied on peace groups and anti-death penalty protesters for over a year in 2005 and 2006. The police summaries and intelligence logs reveal that covert agents infiltrated groups like the anti-war Baltimore Pledge of Resistance, the Baltimore Coalition Against the Death Penalty, and the Committee to Save Vernon Evans, a death row prisoner. We speak with antiwar activist Max Obuszewski and with journalist Dave Zirin, both were the target of surveillance.

Linked here are two articles, one by Dave and one by Mike Stark who was also targeted in the illegal investigation.

Baltimore Sun editorial

I might update this late, but i’m on vacation…

• Bert and Ernie Ante Up. Props to OhWord. This had us cracking up at work on Friday

• CiphaSounds and Rosenberg new hot97 morning show premiers
• Mad shootings in Trinidad neighborhood this weekend. Checkpoints are back
• Elissa Silverman sets the record straight about those DC jail riots a few weekeneds back
• A Scandanavian Wu Tang cover band? Thats super post modern
• Ta Nehisi is looking for a new spokesman for black people. (Satire)

Me and CP pulled this up on the monitor at work and leaned back in the Herman Millers while drinking iced coffee in the office yesterday. It was kind of like going on a lil vacation, in my brain. Speaking of which…