ByronCrawford.com

Young Jeezy is the King of the South

If your upbringing precludes you from being interested in the new Neil Young album, you might want to kill yourself check out my post today at XXL, which has to do with whether or not TI is the King of the South.

Honestly, I could care less who's the King of the South, but since TI brought it up, I think Young Jeezy might have more of a legitimate claim. TI is running the game right now on a commercial level, but 2005 belonged to Young Jeezy. King might move more units, but nothing on it will be as big as "Soul Survivor."

And for what it's worth, I find Thug Motivation 101 to be the better album.

Checkit:

• Is TI the King of the South? [XXL]

Living with war

Granted, I have a tendency towards gift for hyperbole, but today's release of the streaming version of Neil Young's new album Living With War is probably the coolest thing I've seen happen in the 10 years or so that I've been following music on the Internet. It's likely you'll be reading about it a lot this year.

The album, a collection of protest songs including one called "Let's Impeach the President" was recorded and mostly written in the span of about a week earlier this month, 2Pac-style. Three of the songs were even written on the same day, as mentioned in today's New York Times story about the album.

On March 31 he wrote three songs: "Let's Impeach the President" before breakfast, "Looking for a Leader" after he recorded "Let's Impeach the President" and "Roger and Out" the same evening.

Gully.

The album is available today as a free stream on his site NeilYoung.com and will be available in a higher quality version next Tuesday at online music stores like iTunes. A CD version will be available at some point next week, as soon as copies can be manufactured and shipped to stores.

But how does it sound?

I'm only listening to it for the second time, and I may bust out a more proper review at some point, but I like this more than I did the widely heralded Prairie Wind, which I reviewed on this site when it was released last year. It's a lot more straightforward, guitar-bass-and-drums rock and mostly free of that last album's uber-cringe worthy lyrical zingers.

***

On a semi-related note, I recently got the chance to check out the concert film Neil Young: Heart of Gold, which is basically his version of the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense. If there's an issue with it, it's that it's way heavy on Prairie Wind. I think they might even do the whole album before they do maybe five or ten of his classics. But otherwise it's about as awesome as you'd expect.

Checkit:

• Stream Living With War
• Living With War - The Blog
• Neil Young @ MySpace
• Neil Young's 'Living With War' Shows He Doesn't Like It [NY Times]

Border Patrol, the video game

Speaking of illegal immigration, racism, and what have you, Aryan website The Insurgent has a whole slew (a horde, if you will) of racist, flash-based video games, including "Border Patrol," in which you try to shoot illegal immigrants as they run across the US-Mexico border.

A total of 88 of them fly across the screen in the space of maybe 10 seconds, but some of them are pregnant women with children, which count as multiple kills per hit. The little drug smugglers are the hardest of all to hit. I've played it maybe 10 times now (I know) and I've still yet to make it out of the 30s, but I'm playing on a laptop.

Other games featured on the site include "Driveby 2 (Feel what it's like in the ghetto.)," "Watch Out Behind You Hunter! (Shoot the fags before they rape you!)," and "Kaboom! (Arab Training Game)." I liked the "Border Patrol" one best myself, but that "Driveby 2" is not to be slept on.

Regardless of where you come down on the issue, you have to admit this is some hilarious shit.

Checkit:

• Border Patrol [The Insurgent]

(via TheThink)

Why women hate hip-hop

Because They're Fat
Yesterday, in my latest masterpiece of a post at XXL, I discuss the fact that you don't see as many women on music blogs because women just plain don't like music as much as men.

As I mention in the post, yesterday I received the results of that Blogads survey I put up a month or so ago. Of the 49 of you d-bags that bothered to fill one out, 44 of you were guys. But as it turns out, this might be about par for the course in music blogs.

Today Tara Henley, who also blogs at XXL, struck back with a post titled Women don't like music nerds. That little minx! In it, she runs down a list of five reasons why women aren't more into hip-hop, and of course each one of them has to do with why it's a man's fault.

But we're not going to hold that against her. Because that would just be mean.

***

After the jump is the commercial Jack White did for Coca-Cola, courtesy of a site called spinachdip.

TI on illegal immigrants: "Send 'em back!"

"If they came here illegally, man, they might need to, you know... It seems rough, and cruel, and harsh; but to be fair to everybody, the people who trying to get over here the right way, I think they might need to be put back over there so they can, you know, find a way to get over here the right way." -- TI, King of the South Hip-Hop

Amusingly enough, I called for hip-hop to come out against illegal immigration a couple of weeks ago, and now TI makes this statement. Coincidence? Think about it: When's the last time you heard one of these rappers, especially one of these d-bags from the South, make a political statement about anything?

This could be the beginning of something.

Checkit:

• T.I. is King of the South [asap]

Kanye's gayest picture yet?

Seriously, what the fuck?

Props to milk&sugar for sending me this. Nullus.

29 is the new 15

Word to the Gin Blossoms
Granted, I'm not the first one to point this out, but trends that start out in the black community usually manage to find their way into the white community. I'm not sure if this means we're all eventually going to die of AIDS (No!), but it probably does mean that we'll begin to see a lot more white men taking a classically black, if you will, approach to providing for their families.

Tara Henley's latest post at XXL points to a story in New York magazine about "the ascendant breed of grown-up who has redefined adulthood as we once knew it and killed off the generation gap." In other words, a lot of grown motherfuckers today, well into their 30s and 40s, are acting more like teenagers than their parents did at that age.

But as Tara mentions in her post, it's not like a lot of these dudes have any other option. Despite what the Robert Kiyosaki types who invariably pop up in the comments section here will tell you, it's becoming increasingly difficult to take care of yourself these days, let alone a wife and kids. Black dudes already figured this out a long time ago, but now it's about to be everyone else's turn.

The only difference, I imagine, will be that white dudes might see this coming and opt not to procreate with the same profligate nature of your average black kid in the ghetto, who watches too many rap videos. Indeed, as chronicled in the  ever-prescient Pat Buchanan's The Death of the West, nobody is reproducing nearly as much as they used to these days, except for Mexicans.

White bitches approximately

Or Why Bryant Gumbel Is Gullier than P Diddy
Often it's suggested that black men who prefer white women do so because they're weak. And actually, I'm going to agree that this is probably true. I know I barely rolled off the couch this morning. As far as men go, I'm certainly not the strongest.

You know what I find even weaker though? These black dudes who will go and get themselves either an hispanic broad or a mulatto of some sorts, knowing good and well what they really want is the black man's god given partner, a white woman.

Take for example this picture (click to enlarge, nullus) from the ad campaign for Diddy's best-selling cologne of all time Unforgivable. Diddy is shown sitting on the edge of the bed with a sheet draped over his joint, having obviously just ethered two broads - one vaguely Asian (?) and one vaguely hispanic.

You'll notice that both of these broads are suspiciously white-looking, to the point where at a glance you wouldn't necessarily notice that they aren't. The "latino" broad in particular is way skinner than the average hispanic woman you see these days. But I can't imagine it's a coincidence they aren't actually white. God forbid.

Which brings me to my point: Is there anything particularly progressive about the kind of dude that will date hispanic chicks and mulattos, rather than either a black or a white woman. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that these kinds of d-bags are even weaker than dudes that date white chicks exclusively.

Furthermore, I'm going to suggest that it's impossible, by definition, to prefer mulatto women to either a black or a white woman. Either you like one or the other, and I'm going to guess that nine times out of ten it's the one rather than the other.

***

After the jump is an ingenious (like, really) video some mixtape rapper put together using clips from a buncha Jay-Z videos and the film Trading Places.

The Real World: Key West - Episode 9: Episode Summary

So the gang temporarily relocates to West Palm Beach. Not to be confused with any other parts of Palm Beach, which I'm assuming is where the black people live. Because MTV is concerned that this season fucking sucks balls, it's arranged that all 7 of them (even the gay one) stay in the same room together.

From what I understand, this episode may involve a situation with Bananas and the gay guy, which ends in violence. If this is the case, it can only be blamed on the TIs at MTV. Bananas was probably on edge from having to sleep with one eye open all weekend. A man can never be too safe. And it's bad enough he has to deal with Lesbo Paula cock blocking.

Is West Palm Beach supposed to be some sort of gay mecca? They go out to a bar there and it appears to be rather teh ghey, even though from what I understand it's not an actual teh ghey bar. The gay guy allegedly hears Bananas making an "egregious" gay joke (even though you can't hear it), and decides to throw a drink on him.

Bananas then throws his drink on him - for which the gay guy claims to be "glad," and then opts to
move this part outside, lest it erupt into actual fisticuffs. Tyler is his name, by the way. I can't believe we're almost 10 episodes into this shit and I still can't remember people's names. That really says something.

Like this lame-ass hurricane itself (where are the floating corpses?), this incident between Tyler and Bananas is decidedly underwhelming. Turns out Tyler wasn't going to make an issue about the whole gay thing, but Bananas crossed a line when he used the word "faggot." Meanwhile, what's a gay joke without the word faggot, really?

Svetlana should be more prominently featured in these episodes. Geezus H. Paula meets a guy who kinda reminds me of ESPN Kevin from the Back to New York season, but then catches him staring at Svetlana's boobs, which causes her to throw yet another bitch fit. Maybe the two of them will get into a hot lesbian fight of some sorts.

Back in Key West, which doesn't appear any worse for the wear, Paula is back to working her old alleged domestic abuse angle to get back in Bananas' good graces. If I was him, I'm not sure I'd believe her without seeing any photographs. Chicks will say anything to get some action.

The Real World: Key West - Episode 8: Episode Summary

It's been ages (i.e. two weeks) since I've done one of these, and I "borrowed" a bottle of [yellow tail] from my parents' project apartment, where I'm house sitting. So you're going to have to bear with me. Though I notice I'm better at typing drunk than I was when I was 22. That's what I call progress!

Because they're such talented people, the gang is presented with a new Mercury SUV to be used while doing official tanning booth business, even though it looks like they won't have their shit together to open on time. It seems MTV has failed to make whatever graft payments are necessary to various city inspection offices.

I'm sure that'll be magically taken care of by the end of the episode. Meanwhile, the group takes Friday off to go snorkeling. Huh? Don't blink or you'll miss it, but the Halfrican American broad's generally underwhelming boobs like rather decent in one shot. Fake boobs have a tendency to look decent at times. Huzzah.

But the main thrust of this episode of this episode has to do with this fued between Johnny Bananas and Paula Bananas over chicks they'd like to score with. You see, Paula, in addition to being a crazy anorexic, also has somewhat of a lesbian streak, and gets jealous of the trim Bananas meets in bars.

[Not to reveal too much about myself, but anyone should be jealous of some of these bitches. I'm talking blonde with big boobs. That's like a good-looking plate with a steak on it. Word to Kevin Smith.]

So they get into a rather epic argument, once Bananas becomes convinced Paula may have prevented him from scoring, which is understandable. I mean, if ever there was a reason to get into an argument with someone, certainly this is it, no? Fight the power!

[Sidenote: MTV is running commercials for XBOX 360 games. They look impressive, to be sure, but not that impressive. Even if I had the money, I'm not sure how tempted I'd be to go there. Nullus.]

Paula's "I Am a Lesbian" speech to Bananas is definitely one for the ages. In addition to her overall level of upset-ness, it appears as if this might be the first time it ever occurred to her that she was a carpet munch. See how red she was? I thought she was seriously about to crack up.

This sub-plot about a possible Hurricane was quite the non-starter, no? Fucking MTV. Bananas and the hispanic one head to the tanning booth to move some furniture away from a window, lest any rain water seeps in. Meanwhile, Paula and the gay one commiserate right there on the dock, as the alleged stomr is brewing.

But they evacuate anyway. I think. Whatever.