The Peanut Gallery Speaks: QA with myself*.

1.How come Nas doesn't make an album with just DJ Premier, Pete Rock, 9th Wonder, or Kanye West? 

Peanut Gallery's answer: If you know nothing about weed heads you should know this: they can come up with some of the deepest theoretical meditations, but will spend 5 fever pitched minutes looking for keys that end being in their right pocket. Nas is a masterful lyricist who can create some of the most imaginative and insightful stories through his words. Nonetheless, Nas is also a weed head, so we're sure that sometimes the most obvious thing in the world can go past him. Ok, we know what you're thinking, "so you guys think the quality of some of Nas’s albums have been solely affected by his weed habit?” Well of course that really can't be the full reason why; we're joking. But for someone as talented as Nas you would think he would have more classic albums, right? Unfortunately, he doesn't and the reason we fill he doesn't is due to the fact that while his lyrics are always on point, the soundscape that he flows across don’t fit him or his style. Take God's son for example. Yeah, it was straight, but not a classic or even a really good album. But if you listen to 9th Wonder's God's Stepson album, 9th wonder's remake of God's son, you'd swear you were listening to the lost tracks to Illmatic. God's Stepson is by far a better album because the 9^th Wonder’s neo boom bap production style compliments both Nas's flow and the album’s overall conceptual development. So Nas, if you're reading this, please understand that as the goldenchild of the boom bap era your flow and rhyme schemes are kind of outdated in comparison to contemporary Hip Hop. This isn't a bad thing; it just means that your flow needs to be behind beats that hold onto the essence of the boom bap era(for instance, imagine Nas over the Grind’ in beat. Ridiculous). Pete Rock is still producing, DJ Premier definitely gets gigs, 9th Wonder is definitely still doing it, and judging from his work on Common's Be(classic) and Finding Forever (underrated); Kanye can do it as well. So Nas, if you really are reading this, please consider working with these producers in any combination that you desire. But do it before history really closes the books on you. Oh yeah, good luck on that whole divorce thing dun. 

2. What's up with Dick Chaney and the waterboarding controversy?

Peanut Gallery's answer: Dick Chaney is a fucking lunatic and waterboarding is torture. First, how can you say waterboarding isn't torture when the SERE training that the Bush administration used to develop its advanced interrogation techniques was actually developed so government trainees would know how it feels to be TORTURED! It's just so hilarious to us that in America there is an actual debate over whether what went down was torture. Waterboarding is torture; it was considered torture when it was first used during the Grand Inquisition, it was considered torture when the military was court-martialing soldiers for waterboarding people during the Vietnam War (peep dude sitting on top of homie’s legs in the above black and white photo), and it was torture when we did it to the detainees at Guantanamo. Shit, during the aftermath of WWII, America convicted a Japanese soldier of war crimes because he engaged in such “advanced interrogation technique” as waterboarding and ended up executing him. So it’s clear that we in America not only view waterboarding as torture, but we view it as such a heinous crime that it worth of capital punishment. Therefore, how can Dick Chaney and the rest of the Republican elite get away with this bogus nonsense that our usage of waterboarding was justified because it saved lives? That's just like saying a cop is justified in beating up a suspect because he or she might have information that could be vital to someone’s life. But in the America we know, suspect can't be tortured because our judicial system views all suspects innocent until proven guilty. For the majority of detainees being held in Guantanamo the evidence against them is insufficient and therefore makes them suspects of a crime. And in the America that we know, people who don’t have enough evidence to prove that they are wrong are let go. Yes, many of these detainees could pose a threat to national security if ever let go, but so do many criminals who are let go everyday in America. So if we hold onto our detainees indefinitely, what’s to stop us from sliding down the slippery slope of unconstitutional practices by indefinitely detaining men and women who have paid their debt to our society? Real talk. Besides, there are millions of people who want to destroy America, what’s a couple hundred extra bombers going to do. Ok, that’s not a good point. What we meant to say is that as America we have been responsible for being the moral compass for the rest of the world. That means we live by a moral code that we’ve established for ourselves and we do so even if it forces us to do something we don’t want to do.

Plus, like the character "Nice Guy" Eddie said in the movie Reservoir Dogs, "if you beat this prick long enough he'll tell you who started the Chicago fire. Now that doesn't necessarily make it so." Please understand that not only is torture wrong, but you're more likely to acquire felonious information from a prisoner by torturing them than you would anything else. So basically when we tortured the detainees at Guantanamo it was something that was both illegal and didn’t work. Wow! Shit, if you waterboarded us long enough you'd find out that Andre the crackhead was the second gunmen on the grassy noel that fateful morning in '63. Nonetheless, that doesn't make it so. Rather, we would be just saying that to stop from feeling like we’re drowning. So yeah, Cheney is a fucking lunatic and waterboarding is torture.

 

Why is Drake the most popular rapper right now?

Peanut Gallery's answer: On the real, Drake's a hybrid of Kanye West, Lil' Wayne, and Chris Brown. We think that at some point in time Trina, that chick from Harlem Heights who dated Kanye, and Rihanna pooled the respective bits of their famous ex-boyfriends' "essence" and created the genetic monstrosity called Drake. Has anyone really listened to this dude? His flow and his tone sounds like Kanye's, his lyrics have a tendency to make sound like Lil' Wayne, and when we heard him singing we thought he was Chris Brown’s left nut. And as we continue to study this Drake phenomenon even further we’ve realized that he could be the beginning of new type of Hip Hop. What we mean is that the kids love this dude and in time the kids might only want to listen to rappers who can both sing and rap. Haven’t rappers been using the auto tune machines for at least 2 years now? Therefore, doesn’t it make sense that Drake has come to game as the next evolution in Hip Hop. Crazy, right? Well, stranger things have happened. On another note, it’s kind of hilarious to us that the guy who played the physically disabled character Jimmy Brooks on the show Degrassi is a rapper now. It’s funny because in the annals of teen television, Degrassi is just one step above Dawson's Creek and a step below from 90210. So if Drake is the biggest rapper out right now, we're guessing that the world can expect James Van Deer Beek to come out with the next great west coast gangster rap album sometime in 4th quarter (Westside!!). Also, the homie Drake looks softer than Theo Huxtable from the first season of The Cosby Show (drugstore cotton doesn’t even come close to describing how soft that is). He looks like this dude we went to high school with who never played any sports, gossiped with the other girls in our grade, and wore eyeliner. But our real problem with Drake is that he’s like the realization of the perfect marketing scheme. Think about it: he has an established fan base through his role on Degrassi, He’s light-skinned (trust me, it makes a marketing him that much easier), he rhymes like the 2^nd most popular mainstream rapper, he sings like one of the most popular teen heartthrobs, and he is co-signed by the most popular mainstream rapper out right now. It’s like the perfect storm and everybody is being caught in its inescapable vortex. Sorry, but we for one are not impressed and it is our feeling that artists like Drake and Asher Roth are examples of why Hip Hop is turning into the most sugary sweet substance in the world. Where the fuck is M.O.P when you need them? How about some hardcore? Indeed!

*The Anatomy of Anger: Dame Goes Off

*Before you read this, please take a minute to read my ode to Ol’ Dirty Bastard. 

Dame Dash vs. Def Jam part 2 (from This is Choke No Joke) from Miss Info on Vimeo.

Choke No Jokes: Dame Dash's outburst Pt 3 and Jay-Z in Puerto Rico from Miss Info on Vimeo.

I know it’s been a minute since Rocafella parted ways with Dame Dash, but once I saw these videos I was somewhat missing his presence.I can't help it, the arrogant son of bitch in me loves Dame in this video right now. Yeah he was bullish, but are so many people in the industry. If anything Dame's aggressive demeanor is somewhat justified in this situation. I mean why are Def Jam staff members having a meeting about Jay-Z without having Rocafella staff on hand? Why didn't Def Jam go through the customary channels of communication with Dame? Granted, sending an email is the universal way of communicating nowadays, but it seems that the customary means of communication between Dame and Def Jam wasn't through emails. Then again, the music industry is fast paced world where the train doesn't stop for personal hardships like a funeral.Regardless of what happened in this particular situation, I just hate the fact that Dame and Jay, two men who proved that through hard work you could accomplish anything, ended up severing all ties to one another. I also think it's interesting that this videographer, Choke No Joke, probably caught the moment when Dame realized that their was a conspiracy to kick him to the curve (if their was a conspiracy to begin with). I also think its funny that if you watch the documentary, Backstage, Dame talks about how crews get destroyed and has a premonition of the Roc's own destruction. By the way, where the Hell is Dame? 

Look At His Disposition: A Belated Ode To Ol' Dirty Bastard

Ol’ Dirty Bastard was one crazy ass dude! Granted, that might be the understatement of the year, but I can’t help but reintegrate this as my speakers pump the sonic equivalent to an acid trip, Return to the 36 Chambers (The Dirty Version). But as I sit here and marvel at Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s off kilter personality, I’m also attentively appreciating the depths of Ol’ Dirty Bastard's lyrical ingenuity. For instance, Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s lyrical brilliance can be heard on the Brooklyn Zoo when he states that his “Hip Hop drops on your head like rain/ and when it rains it pours.”  Doesn’t sound too complex, right? Shit, you might even consider it be a rudimentary rhyme if you didn’t know that his voice stutters and drops in tone on the word ‘rain’ in order to mimic the fading of sound rain makes as it moves away from a listening body. Please, name one MC before Ol’ Dirty Bastard that ever did something like that? Or better yet, name an MC that came out before Ol’ Dirty Bastard who was known to use the rhetorical device of onomatopoeia to create a rhymes (i.e.: cherry bombing shit,‘boom’/just warming up a little bit, ‘vroom, vroom’)?

Yet, regardless of what you might think of Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s skills as a lyricist, I think we can all agree that he will probably go down as one of most loved personalities in Hip Hop. I mean who else do you know would take MTV on trip to the welfare office in a limousine besides Ol Dirty Bastard? Yet, the reason we really loved Ol’ Dirty Bastard wasn’t because he had a propensity to make us laugh, but because throughout his life he lived by a credo of transparency. For instance, remember the time that he interrupted the ‘98 Grammy Awards show by proclaiming to the world that the Wu-Tang Clan was for the children? On the onset that shit was a hilarious moment in TV history. But what many people don’t realize is that for Ol’ Dirty Bastard it didn’t matter if he was speaking his mind on a corner in Brooklyn or at a prestigious venue like the Grammy Awards, if he felt he had something to say he said it. Yeah, he might have been a little off, but we trusted and respected Ol' Dirty Bastard because he always kept it real. I can't imagine how TV producers must’ve felt whenever Ol' Dirty Bastard was on set because with Dirt anything was possible. They knew, like all of us knew, that Dirt walked with an unabashed sense of self which feed his oozing aura of unpredictability. Yet, it wasn’t as if Dirt lacked shame; it was just that his idea of shame was being anything other than his true self. In life our identities are molded by our past experiences. And no matter what happens to us at the present time or in the future, we are execrably the sum of all our experiences. I think Dirt understood this fact and embraced the multitude of experiences he undoubtedly had while growing up in the abject world of black urban America. Yet, unlike many people who grew up in similar conditions as he did, Dirt didn’t just embrace his experiences but also reveled in the beauty of their imperfections. I say revel because I think Dirt understood that when someone comes from the bottom they experience and witness all of the extremes of the human condition. In witnessing the unadulterated reality of the human experience you gain an understanding that the differences that exist between yourself and the next man cowers in comparison to the similarities both of you have. I think Ol' Dirty Bastard lacked the same sense of self consciousness that the majority of us possess because he knew that at the end of the day we all had a little bit of Dirt in our souls. From this understanding, Ol' Dirty Bastard went onto express the unrelenting, horrifyingly stark, yet audaciously beautiful reality of his world. He was the embodiment of the enigmatic spirit of Hip Hop; in his voice you can hear the subterfuge of happiness, anger, and fear that ran, and continues to run, through all those who subsist on the outskirts of Babylon. Dirt was truly A sun unique and will be forever missed. Peace to the god.