ByronCrawford.com

St. Louis = officially gully

New York, Meanwhile, Is Just Gay
The good news? The Cardinals just won their first World Series since Bol was a young (albeit gully) baby. The bad news? St. Louis is the biggest shithole evar.

ST. LOUIS -- A surge in violence made St. Louis the most dangerous city in the country, leading a trend of violent crimes rising much faster in the Midwest than in the rest of nation, according to an annual list.

Granted, St. Louis has a tendency to show up in the top 10 of these lists, but this is the first time I can recall the STL actually taking the number one spot. It's usually some shithole like Camden, New Jersey, Compton, California, or Flint, Michigan.

To think that St. Louis is now officially gullier than Compton.

Here's the thing: St. Louis is only that shitty if you only the count the actual city limits, where only something like 300,000 people (that's nobody!) live. Meanwhile, there's about one million people who live in St. Louis County, not to mention the Chuck and other surrounding shitholes.

For example, I grew up in Creve Coeur, in West St. Louis County. Geographically, it's not very far from the city, but it's far enough that I can only think of one case where someone actually got shot, and I'm sure they deserved it. Otherwise, it's like living in Canada or something.

Why is St. Louis City so fucked up?

That's a good question, and one I'm not completely equipped to answer. I'm assuming it suffers from a lot of the same problems that affect any big city, as seen on HBO's "the Wire." The effect may be more pronounced though because St. Louis is such an economically devastated area.

I don't know that St. Louis was ever the place to go if you were looking to make a lot of money, but now it's like people can hardly get by. During the week, it seems like we get more people coming into the BGM looking for a job application than actually buying anything.

And these are the white people, I'm talking about.

Ironically, this news comes at a time when money-grubbing developers are rehabilitating all sorts of old warehouse spaces and dilapidated houses in an attempt to get cracka-ass crackas to move back into the city. This news can't possibly bode well for their little movement.

Peep: St. Louis most dangerous U.S. city [News 14 Carolina]

A hipster Halloween party

It's Hitler's party, and he'll cry if he wants to.

The Game - Doctor's Advocate: Album Review

The Game, Doctor's Advocate (Geffen, 2006)
As it turns out, the Game's highly anticipated Doctor's Advocate did see its "Internets release" earlier today. Excepting Diddy's Press Play, it's the first of this fall's uber-massive hip-hop albums to hit the streets, so to speak. Is it any good?

Can Nas save hip-hop?

I'm not normally in the business of publishing press releases verbatim, but here's the one Def Jam sent out earlier today having to do with Nas' forthcoming Hip-Hop Is Dead album. And feel free to check out the story I did today at XXL on several tracks from the new Game album - one of which features Nas - as well as a snippet from the aforementioned Nas album itself.

Nasir Jones has a message: Something is terribly wrong with the state of hip-hop today.

One of the greatest MCs to ever pick up a microphone, Nas has watched as his beloved hip-hop has gone from its innocent days of B-Boy battles and lyrical sport to today's fake-thug posturing and commercial excesses, and he's got something to say about it. Throughout his storied career – which began with 1994's classic Illmatic and has spanned the last decade with over 12 million albums sold – Nas has been more than just the genre's foremost lyricist and thinker. He has become a statesman, some would argue hip-hop's "conscience."

As evidenced by last year's highly-publicized reconciliation with longtime adversary JAY-Z, and his subsequent signing to Def Jam Recordings, Nas has shown that actions speak louder than words: unity is more powerful than divisiveness. The time has come for hip-hop to grow. Now, with the December 19 release of his long-awaited Def Jam debut – the aptly-titled Hip-Hop Is Dead – Nas returns to his role as mentor and teacher, his legendary mic skills as sharp as ever, and takes today's young rappers back to school. The lesson? Hip-Hop – As Nas sees it – is very much alive.

"What I mean by 'hip-hop is dead' is we're at a vulnerable state," Nas recently told MTV News. "If we don't change, we gonna disappear like Rome. Let's break it down to a smaller situation. Hip-hop is Rome for the 'hood. I think hip-hop could help rebuild America... We are our own politicians, our own government, we have something to say."

NiggaSpace

A Place fo' Niggas
Granted, it's only Monday morning, but I think it's safe to say we've found our Genius of the Week for the week of Monday October 30, 2006.

October 29, 2006 -- A new Web site owned by an 18-year-old New Jersey native is causing controversy because of its use of the n-word.

It's called NiggaSpace.com - and it mimics the popular myspace.com site.

Have a look-see for yourself. It's like MySpace, but for "niggas."

Based on a cursory perusal of the site, the idea seems to be white kids setting up joke profiles posing as black kids as well as black celebrities like Rick James. According to the welcome message on the front page of the site, "You definitely don't have to be black to join! We just want to embrace the black culture that continues to innovate and strive!"

A poll on the front page of the site asks, "How black are you?" The four options are, "Brake yoursilf nigga!" "I'm not black," "Niggaspace Emo," and "Creole."

LOL at Creole.

Who's behind this mess, anyway? We don't know.

The owner - who goes by the name Tyrone, and won't reveal his race - said "this is no way meant to be racist, my biggest intention is to change the connotation of the word."

You get the idea that "Tyrone" is some cracka-ass cracka and that this is his idea of a joke, not unlike kill whitey parties or the infamous R. Kelly singalong. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out once word begins to spread and especially once his white counterpart "Tom" and the rest of the TIs at MySpace get wind of this.

Peep: WEB SITE N-WORD OUTRAGE [NY Post]

Common is the best Chicago rapper

According to Last Week's Poll
MTV just recently did one of those My Block specials, which I guess means the Windy City is poised to be the next big shit in hip-hop. Last week's poll sought to determine which of Chicago's prominent MCs is the best overall.

Best Chicago rapper?

1. Common (210 votes)
2. Twista (74 votes)
3. Kanye West (68 votes)
4. Lupe Fiasco (59 votes)
5. Rhymefest (30 votes)

As you can see, Common pretty much ran away with this one, having received about three times as many the next closest competitor and seven times as many votes as poor ol' Rhymefest. Which I suppose shouldn't come as that much of a surprise; the guy is kind of a legend, and he's about as popular as he's ever been, with Be having sold over 800,000 copies.

At the rate that it's going, Food and Liquor won't hit the platinum mark anytime this decade, but I was surprised to see Lupe Fiasco only came in fourth in this poll, just ahead of Rhymefest. A few weeks ago, this ass-clown was all the rage on les internetes: could it be that his star has already begun to fade, only like a month into his "career" so to speak?

Kanye West is the most popular artist on the list by far, but I don't think very many people regard him as a particularly capable MC, which would explain him coming in third, behind the relatively less popular Common and Twista.

I would've liked to include more underground Chicago MCs on the list, but the truth of the matter is that I'm not that familiar with the scene. I did get the soundtrack to that MTV special the other day which has a lot of lower-level Chi-town rappers, so I'll have to check that out.

***

For next week's poll, which is already up, I'm running a slightly remixed version of a poll I ran earlier this year about who will be president first between, primarily, a black man, a woman, and a Jew. Vote early and vote often.

Cocaine Cowboys

The new Scarface?

Here's a trailer for a film called Cocaine Cowboys, which supposedly hits theaters today. I haven't heard that much about it, but a guy sent me some clips from it the other day. It's a documentary on the drug trade that took over Miami in the '70s and '80s and eventually inspired such films as Scarface and Miami Vice, not to mention a million shitty rap records.

After the jump is a clip from the film and a couple of interviews with Miami rappers Trick Daddy and Pitbull.

Lil' Wayne and Baby kissing (nullus)

Singled Out revisited

Last week or the week before or whatever I did a post on this story in the Washington Post called Singled Out, about yet another one of these aging black women who can't find a spouse.

jimbrah izrael, who's busy these days frying fish(?), caught it and ended up doing a nice long post on the myth of the ineligible black man, including an amusing "eligibility test" for black women. Robyn Thorpe, the great olympian chick from the Singled Out story came across it and ended up reaching out to jimbrah.

Was there a love connection made? Probably not.

There was an interview though, and it's got some pearls in it like the following, courtesy of the fish fryer himself:

There are a lot of broke sisters out there, and all of them are looking for someone to "take care of them", financially. Since women want to be treated like equals, why does the idea of supporting a man financially turn them off? Why can't a man sit at home and eat bon-bons, or just take care of the kids and watch judge shows? If women truly want to be equal, why does it matter if a man has a job or not?

To which the great olympian responded:

I know of women supporting their husbands and it works for them. It would not work for me, I grew up in a home where my father was primary and then sole provider so while I could have a relationship with someone making less than me, the idea of supporting a man is unattractive. I like a man with amibition about something.

Interestingly enough, I hear this same debate among lower class white women in the kind of shitty stores and restaurants where I've worked for the past couple of years, and I can say for a fact that no woman, regardless of race, is that keen on supporting a man financially. It's just one of those things.

That said, I don't find that any other race of women lives to denigrate men the way black women do. What's with that, anyway?

Peep: jdotscom EXCLUSIVE: Robyn Thorpe, subject of "Singled Out:, talks back

Miss Meredith Edwards

Don't say I never gave you d-bags anything.

So the other day I was reading some shit in the New York Times about how hip-hop is becoming increasingly local. The story had to do primarily with a rapper named Lil Boosie, who's apparently responsible for yet another one of these YouTube mintrel rap dance crazes not unlike the infamous Chicken Noodle Soup.

Lil Boosie's modern day minstrel dance is called the ratchet and the story linked to a video of some broad doing the ratchet on YouTube. I clicked on it just to see what poor black kids are up to these days and, come to find out, the broad doing the dance has a killer bod.

Like, killer!

I clicked through the video to her YouTube profile, but, alas, this was the only video I could find of her on the site. However, there was a link to the chick in the video's MySpace profile in which we learn the following.

1. She's a Muslim.
2. She attends "Louisiana State University at Alexandria."
3. She's a journalism major.
4. She works part-time at an Outback steak house.
5. She's a "moderator" for a hip-hop site called zo23.com.
6. She's a member of one of these black sororities.
7. She prefers Burger King to McDonalds (classy!).
8. "I dont accept random friends request"
9. She's a huge Chamillionaire stan.
10. She's been legal for over a year.

In her MySpace photo gallery, there's a series of pictures where she sort of leans back so as to accentuate the size of her rack, which is always appreciated. Unfortunately, her face is kinda busted, but what are you gonna do.

Peep the video for yourself after the jump.