ByronCrawford.com

Beanie Sigel to sign with G-Unit?

Is G-Unit becoming the next Koch Records? How long until we're seeing Grand Puba and KRS-One doing the Tony Yayo dance on MTV Jams?

Beanie Sigel apparently had some talks with Fiddy while he was in jail and may or may not be signing with G-Unit. That way he can avoid the emotional turmoil of picking between Jay-Z and Dame Dash. Nullus?

To wit:

"I got my own [State Property imprint] with Universal," he explained. "I didn't want to be in the situation where I had to pick between my homies. ... I just said the best thing for me to do as a man and true friend was to back up from both situations."

Here's the thing: Dame Dash put out Beanie's last album while he was locked up and was all going out on the road doing promotion and shit. So there's that. But the truth of the matter is that Dame probably didn't have shit else better to do anyway.

We know he's no longer allowed in the Roc-A-Wear building after having been forcefully removed recently. And it's not like he's got anyone else on the Dame Dash Music Group other than ODB's corpse.

If it weren't for Dame Dash's feelings, signing with Jay-Z probably would've been his best option. Even if he has a better deal at Universal, it's not like he's going to sell very many albums.

The Game was a gay stripper

That Teh Ghey was once a male stripper has been known for a while. I know it's been posted here before and probably some of everywhere else. Nullus. Well, apparently, Jay-Z has footage of Teh Ghey dancing for a buncha dudes in a gay bar and getting tips and everything else. Teh Ghey's mom used to own a gay bar, which is where he used to strip.

Because Teh Ghey has had beef with Memphis Bleek for a while and was trying to front like he was cool with Jay and then went and was talking mad shit about him, Jay is planning on going at him at this Power 105 concert that's coming up next month. Presumably, this footage will be shown on a big screen, not unlike those photos of Prodigy from Mobb Deep tap dancing in a bedazzled sweater.

Needless to say, if this is true, Teh Ghey's career is fucking over. I mean, even I once rocked a red pleather coat and rocked out to the sweet sounds that are Thriller. That shit was one of the best albums ever. But rubbing your nuts in another man's face for two dollars? Hip-hop in 2005 is pretty gay, what with all these jigs working out and dancing around on stage with their shirts off, but still.

Raven Symone is a disgusting fat lady

Not to reveal too much about myself, but today's TRL was hosted by Shia Lebeouf, Amanda Bynes and Raven Symone. I would've switched it over to whatever was on VH1, but the remote was about three feet out of reach, and I wasn't about to get up.

Anyway, how much more disgusting is Raven Symone going to get before there's some sort of intervention? While basically all female child stars aren't nearly as hot when they grow up (yes, even Alyssa Milano), this beast is pushing severe Carnie Wilson territory.

Prediction: Within five years, she'll be in some reality show about her getting a gastric bypass operation. If we're lucky, she may be the first celebrity to die from the procedure. Or does that only happen when poor people get them?

And at least Carnie Wilson has got that first Wilson Phillips album to her credit. Don't front, "Hold On" was one of the better songs from the early '90s. Raven Symone has never, at any point, even by accident, done anything at all worthwhile in her life. She never will.

I'm convinced that Disney only keeps her on the payroll because they're afraid that if they fire her, people will think it's because she's fat and they'll lose some amount of money that's presumably more than what they're currently paying her. And also because there's some kind of government conspiracy to keep young black women disgustingly overweight.

ALSO: Interestingly enough, this woman is 20 years old, which makes her not that much younger than myself. I might have to holler at the Disney Channel about getting my own show.

Black vs. white barbecue

St. Louis Stories #7
While we're not as known for it as Memphis or Kansas City, St. Louis actually consumes more barbecue per capita than anywhere else in the country. It's a fact that I once saw on the infamous Food Network, before anybody goes questioning my statistics. Pretty much wherever you are, you're not that far from either a Super Smokers (former employer of yours truly) or its main competitor Bandanas.

Which is cool.

Up until I was like 15 or 16 I didn't really know shit about white people's barbecue. I had eaten a few rib dinners at places like Applebees, and especially those "riblets" things that used to be all you can eat back in the day, but I didn't really know shit about a pulled pork sandwich, which is like the main feature at white barbecue resturants.

Come to think of it, I might have had one or two of them from the KC Masterpiece restaurant in Creve Coeur, but there's a reason you never hear people talk about it anymore. In fact, it might not even still be there. But the main barbecue sandwich I was into at that point was the infamous rib tip sandwich from this place called C&K.

That's it pictured above via Maxim Online, which once did a feature on it, but you can't really see that in addition to the actual rib tips soaked in copious amounts of barbecue sauce and the oh, so necessary white bread, it also comes with a layer of potato salad in between the tips and the Wonder. The whole thing comes wrapped in a sheet of butcher's paper roughly the size of a Twister mat and is basically impossible to eat as a regular sandwich.

Needless to say, it's arguably the best thing you could possibly eat. Nullus.

But then a regular old cracka-ass cracka pulled pork sandwich is pretty dang good, too. In typical white people's barbecue fashion, it consists of nothing more than a handful of pulled pork shoulder on a hamburger bun - the idea being that if you put anything else on it, it might take away from the taste of the meat, which I've written about before. Some people, especially southerners, have been known to put slaw on them, which I tried once and found to be actually not a bad idea.

If there's an issue, it's that C&K is deep, deep down in the ghetto, far enough that it's really not worth going. Because it's nowhere near the highway, you run the risk of getting lost and getting yourself into some deep, deep shit. There are other black 'cue joints scattered about, but nobody really bothers with them, unless you're just really into snoots or some shit. White 'cue restaurants, on the other hand, are - like I said - literally all over the place.

When you gotta go...

St. Louis Stories #6
It's the very rare occasion when you see local political issues here in the STL covered in the national media. In fact, this was the only case I could think of where that happened, though I'm sure there could - in theory - be other examples.

In 2002 St. Louis Board of Aldermen was embroiled in a particularly nasty debate about something or other. If memory serves me correctly, the cracka members of the board were attempting to redraw some local districts in their favor. Several local civil rights pimps were running "this close" to being out of a job.

So they decided to pull the old Strom Thurmond-style filibuster. I'm not familiar with what the rules are in the Senate, but I'm assuming it's OK if you need to take a piss every now and again, especially as old as some of those dudes are. Apparently, that's not the case here. Older jiglady alderman Irene Smith had to take a pee pee. The cracka-ass cracka in charge of the board saw his opportunity and ruled that if she were to go piss, they're filibuster would be blown.

Of course a woman's ego would never allow her to piss her pants (or, shit, dress for that matter) for a political cause. But then I guess she knew if she blew this filibuster, she'd be SOL anyway. So she had the rest of the jig aldermen hold up a white shite (why was there a white sheet there anyway?) while she peed into a waste bucket. The whole thing was caught on tape and replayed on the local news about a million times, replete with attendant comments from various angry local jig leaders.

Semi-legalized drunk driving

St. Louis Stories #5
One of the perks of living in one of the all-time great beer drinking towns and home the Anheuser Busch breweries (even though I usually drink Miller High Life) is having legislators that understand the needs of the average "spirited driver." While drunk driving isn't actually legal per se, it's probably more legal here than anywhere else.

Like most places, it's already pretty impossible to get caught, provided a) you know what you're doing and b) it's not some holiday weekend. But the state of Missouri has actually taken things one step further and made it legal to ride around with open containers in the car.

The reason for this: People like to pre-game in their cars on the highway between St. Louis and Columbia, MO, where the University of Missouri is located. Seriously. Basically, A-B is paying to put state legislators into office and then making them ease up any and all laws that might cut down on sales. Normally, something like this might piss me off, but I don't know.

If there's a problem with this it's that the federal gov't has one of those dumbass blackmailing laws, not unlike the ones they used to get the legal drinking age raised to 21. States that don't outlaw open containers of alcohol in motor vehicles have to spend 3% of their road construction funding (which is pretty scarce to begin with) on traffic safety programs.

The 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born

Like any true hip-hop fan, when I got this month's special issue of Blender in the mail the first thing I did was spend about a half an hour scanning it to see which was the highest ranked Gin Blossoms song. "Hey Jealousy," I figured it would be, though "Found Out About You" is a really good song, too.

Come to find out, there wasn't a single Gin Blossoms song on the entire list.

In fact, unless I somehow missed it "Mr. Jones" by the Counting Crows didn't even make the list. Um, exsqueeze me (nullus), but weren't "Mr. Jones" and "Hey Jealousy" both Buzz Clips back when that actually meant something? Shit, people used to compare Adam Duritz to the likes of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, and they weren't even trying to be ironic.

An insane percentage (maybe half) of the songs on this list aren't even good. Here's the top 20 just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

1. "Billie Jean" - Michael Jackson
2. "B.O.B." - OutKast
3. "Sweet Child O' Mine" - Guns N' Roses
4. "One" - U2
5. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - Nirvana
6. "Like A Prayer" - Madonna
7. "Love Will Tear Us Apart" - Joy Division
8. "Sucker MCs" - Run-DMC
9. "Baby One More Time" - Britney Spears
10. "In Da Club" - 50 Cent
11. "My Name Is" - Eminem
12. "The Message" - Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
13. "Fight For Your Right" - Beastie Boys
14. "You Shook Me All Night Long" - AC/DC
15. "Hey Ya" - OutKast
16. "I Want It That Way" - Backstreet Boys
17. "Super Freak" - Rick James
18. "I'm Coming Out" - Diana Ross
19. "Just Like Heaven" - The Cure
20. "The Show" - Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew

The Real World: Austin - Episode 15: Episode Summary

So I guess this is the episode where Johanna does the nasty with the guy that showed up to give her a ride home from jail Saturday morning - a time honored tradition in the "latin" community, I'm sure. Then once that's over and done with Wes is going to make his move.

First she shows up to his job looking extra, extra hot (really) and sits there and gets drunk, all stalker-like, which was probably not the best idea to begin with, but it turns out he might also have a girlfriend, or at least another drunk stalker girl.

So she realizes he doesn't actually like her, but she's going to bang him anyway because she's got a thing for dudes that know how to pour drinks and also he gave her that ride home from jail that time. I'm not surprised at all that Lacey's been sitting in a room the whole time watching various roomies get it on via closed circuit TV. Hopefully, it'll lead to some nasty confrontation at some point.

Sidenote: They're playing like 4-second clips from the new Death Cab album tonight in between the show and the commercials. Which is a nice touch I guess, but you wonder why they couldn't just work the songs into the actual show.

Johanna's on to the TV thing and is worried that people think she fucked Leo. But apparently she hasn't just yet, though it's certainly not for any lack of effort. She goes to some bar and basically attacks the dude while Wes stands outside and watches longingly, as most guys have at one point or another. Then he goes home and starts throwing random shit into the pool.

But later the dude shows up with a box of bratwurst for Wes, which I know would make me feel that much better, even if I knew he was about to drop one in my woman. They retire to Johanna and Lacey's room to get busy and Lacey tries to go upstairs and watch it on TV, but the two of them are on to her and are like, No, just stay here and watch. Amusingly enough, she actually does.

And it turns out they actually fucked this time. Embarrassed, Johanna leaves the dude on her bed, claiming she has to go get a pedicure. It looks like all she did was go outside and wait until he left the house. So he's probably done with that. She's pulls another one of her showing up to his job with her boobs all out routines but to no avail.

And of course when she gets back to the house, who's there waiting but our boy Wes. If I was him, I would've been standing there with a drink ready. Knowing her, he might have even hit it that same night.

NEXT WEEK: Their gay boss reminds them not to drink on the job. Heh.

This post is part of:

The Real World Austin Episode Guide

VH1's Hip Hop Honors 2005

Like most true hip-hop fans, I opted to watch the first half of the PBS Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home last night instead of VH1's Hip Hop Honors. But once it went off I couldn't really bring myself to move from the sofa and come to find out VH1 was rerunning the shit immediately after it went off. So I ended up catching most of it.

My thoughts:

• Most of these old dudes can't rap anymore. Flash and the Furious Five were just painful to watch, but most of the rest of these fogeys weren't much better. Even Big Daddy Kane has obviously lost a step. He was just that good to begin with.
• Most of these younger dudes couldn't rap to begin with. With that said, Kane and LL still managed to outclass the rest of these younger so-called MCs. Fat Joe and Snoop might have excuses, being overweight (obvs) and dying from emphysema respectively, but the rest of these d-bags (TI, I'm looking at you) need to pack it in.
• Grandmaster Flash is not actually a genius. This has actually been obvious to me all along (or at least since I first caught Wild Style), but it was made especially clear last night putting him on the stage as DJ Jazzy Jeff, who really is that good. Seriously, Grandmaster Flash is about "that much" better than I am, and I don't even DJ.
• Boyz N The Hood is still a horrible movie. Honestly, I was never impressed with the shit to begin with, but at least 15 years ago it had a certain ripped from the headlines appeal to it. Has anybody actually tried watching that shit recently? Hustle and Flow is like The Bicycle Thief by comparison. And that shit was hardly the first so-called hip-hop movie.
• Kanye West could care less about hip-hop. How come out of all the modern performers in the place, Kanye was the only one that had to hold up the show to promote his new shit? Actually, come to think of it, Diddly trying to plug some new Biggie album during his supposed tribute was pretty bad, too. Melle Mel should've ripped both of their heads off and eaten them backstage.

With that said, if there was a bright spot last night, it was watching Kane try to rip shit as if this was 1989. Right at the end when he started dancing was the only real Oh Shit moment of the evening. It would've been even better if he accidentally pulled or broke something and had to be carried off stage by Scoob and the fake Scrap Lover, the midget.

Darnell the Bossman McGee

St. Louis Stories #4
Back in the mid to late '90s it wasn't uncommon to hear stories about these crazed jigs who would go and spread AIDS to like 400 different women. At the time I accepted this as proof that all the women in the world were only sleeping with like three dudes and therefore it was only right that they all got AIDS.

Not that it really helped my cause one way or the other, but you know.

Probably the most famous example of this would be this fellow Nushawn Johnson, pictured above, who had dropped it off in numerous white chicks somewhere in upstate New York. Which of course generated no small amount of controversy. But then ol' Nushawn, the fucking piker, only ended up infecting like 13 girls.

The all-time world champion of negro AIDS predators was none other than St. Louis' own Darnell the Bossman McGee, having spread the magic to over 100 women - an especially impressive number when you consider that St. Louis really ain't that big. 100 broads in the STL = like thousands upon thousands of them in New York.

If there's a difference, it's probably that the Bossman was dropping it off in young black chicks. You guys are going to think I'm just making this up to be mean, but his technique for picking up women basically involved hanging out at either the local ghetto mall or this skating rink called The Palace and going up to 13 or 14 year-old black chicks and promising to buy them clean white tennis shoes and McDonalds.

Like I said, don't shoot the messenger.

The weird thing about it is that, because he had such a taste for young snatch, all of the girls that he spread the magic to 10 years ago are exactly the same age as myself. Hopefully, most of them are dead or extremely sick by now, but if there's a message to be learned from all of this, it's that if a woman will have sex with you for a pair of clean white tennis shoes, she probably has AIDS.