Thursday, June 26, 2008
Man charged in assault with fork, frozen chicken lol.....
JACKSON -- An Ypsilanti man is accused of stabbing his mother with a fork and assaulting a second woman with 10 pounds of frozen chicken.
Forty-year-old Frederick Duane McKaney was arraigned today in 12th District Court in Jackson. He faces two felony assault charges as well as one count of assault and battery and one count of resisting an officer.
Prosecutors say McKaney stabbed his mother in the back of the neck with a fork Monday night.
About an hour later, he hit a woman in the head with a plastic bag of frozen chicken. They had exchanged rude words while he rode his bicycle. She needed five surgical staples to close her wound.
McKaney has no attorney on record with the court.
A pre-exam conference is scheduled for July 2.
Forty-year-old Frederick Duane McKaney was arraigned today in 12th District Court in Jackson. He faces two felony assault charges as well as one count of assault and battery and one count of resisting an officer.
Prosecutors say McKaney stabbed his mother in the back of the neck with a fork Monday night.
About an hour later, he hit a woman in the head with a plastic bag of frozen chicken. They had exchanged rude words while he rode his bicycle. She needed five surgical staples to close her wound.
McKaney has no attorney on record with the court.
A pre-exam conference is scheduled for July 2.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Shaq raps Kobe, bringing feud center stage once again
What would the NBA offseason be without another chapter in the on-again, off-again feud between former Los Angeles Lakers teammates Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant?
O’Neal, who won three NBA title rings with Bryant from 2000-02, was asked to get on stage at The Underground, a New York City club, and freestyle rap for the audience.
The rap, which contained references to Bryant’s role in O’Neal’s divorce - in which the 2007 NBA Most Valuable Player stated in a report during his infamous 2003 Colorado rape case that he “should have done what Shaq does … Shaq would pay his women not to say anything.”- also attacked Bryant’s inability to win a championship ring without him.
Among the lyrics in Shaq’s rapping were: “I’m a horse, Kobe ratted me out, that’s why I’m getting divorced.”
Shortly after Bryant’s verbal assault on O’Neal five years ago, the 14-time All-Star was traded to the Miami Heat in 2004, a deal that Bryant reportedly played a large role in brokering.
Since that time, the feud has experienced several ups and downs, with O’Neal coming forward in recent years saying that their feud was over before this incident.
Miami was able to win an NBA title in 2006 with O’Neal. However, the Lakers’ disappointing six-game series loss to the Boston Celtics last week kept Bryant from winning his fourth NBA title, the first time he has been to the NBA Finals since O’Neal was traded.
O’Neal later told ESPN that his performance was pure entertainment and apologized if he hurt anyone’s feelings.
O’Neal, who won three NBA title rings with Bryant from 2000-02, was asked to get on stage at The Underground, a New York City club, and freestyle rap for the audience.
The rap, which contained references to Bryant’s role in O’Neal’s divorce - in which the 2007 NBA Most Valuable Player stated in a report during his infamous 2003 Colorado rape case that he “should have done what Shaq does … Shaq would pay his women not to say anything.”- also attacked Bryant’s inability to win a championship ring without him.
Among the lyrics in Shaq’s rapping were: “I’m a horse, Kobe ratted me out, that’s why I’m getting divorced.”
Shortly after Bryant’s verbal assault on O’Neal five years ago, the 14-time All-Star was traded to the Miami Heat in 2004, a deal that Bryant reportedly played a large role in brokering.
Since that time, the feud has experienced several ups and downs, with O’Neal coming forward in recent years saying that their feud was over before this incident.
Miami was able to win an NBA title in 2006 with O’Neal. However, the Lakers’ disappointing six-game series loss to the Boston Celtics last week kept Bryant from winning his fourth NBA title, the first time he has been to the NBA Finals since O’Neal was traded.
O’Neal later told ESPN that his performance was pure entertainment and apologized if he hurt anyone’s feelings.
Shaq gets slapped by sheriff for rap about Bryant
PHOENIX (AP)—Shaquille O’Neal will lose his special deputy’s badge in Maricopa County because of language he used in a rap video that mocks former teammate Kobe Bryant.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said the Phoenix Suns center’s use of a racially derogatory word and other foul language left him no choice. Arpaio made Shaq a special deputy in January and promoted him to colonel of his largely ceremonial posse earlier this month.
“I want his two badges back,” Arpaio told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “Because if any one of my deputies did something like this, they’re fired. I don’t condone this type of racial conduct.”
Shaq was seen in a video posted on the celebrity news and gossip Web site TMZ.com rapping that “Kobe couldn’t do without me.” O’Neal skewers the Lakers’ star, with whom he won three straight NBA titles from 2000-2002 while with Los Angeles, for not being able to win a championship without him.
“I was freestyling. That’s all. It was all done in fun. Nothing serious whatsoever,” O’Neal told ESPN.com Monday. A call to the Suns on Tuesday seeking comment from O’Neal was referred to his public relations firm, which didn’t immediately respond.
Arpaio, who describes himself as “America’s Toughest Sheriff” and is best known for feeding jail inmates green bologna, clothing them in pink underwear, and making them work on chain gangs, said he didn’t expect his actions would teach Shaq a lesson. But he hoped he learns that as a role model who wants to someday be a full-time sheriff, he needs to know his words matter.
“Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I don’t think that either conduct should be out there publicly, even if media wasn’t there,” Arpaio said.
O’Neal previously served as a reserve officer with the Miami Beach Police Department while playing for the Miami Heat. He also volunteered with the Tempe Police Department after being traded to the Suns in February .
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Saturday, June 21, 2008
J Dilla Leaks Cause Estate To Suffer
Who's Biting J Dilla's Beats?
Hip-hop producer's legend ascends posthumously; estate struggles to maintain control
No art form lionizes its fallen quite like hip-hop. Forget Biggie and 2Pac. Their reputations were sealed the moment the doctors zipped the body bags — though, to be fair, few can argue against their posthumous crowning in the pantheon. More telling is the postmortem red carpet rolled out for Big L and Big Pun, two prodigiously talented artists who released a mere single great album each, dying before they had a chance to ruin their reputations with the inevitable 2005 Houston bounce track. No, in hip-hop, molehills are turned into mountains, with even lesser talents like Dipset flunky Stacks Bundles earning a spate of po-faced eulogies and a prominent “R.I.P. Stack B, Ima keep you alive, kid” shout-out from Lupe Fiasco on last year’s The Cool.
A beatmaker on track to a first-ballot Hall of Fame career
J Dilla is a different case. Unlike the aforementioned names, when the 32-year-old beat-maker/rapper, born James Yancey, passed away at L.A.’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in the winter of 2006 (due to a cardiac arrest stemming from complications related to Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, a rare and incurable blood disease), he was neither savior nor supernova. Instead, he was an underground legend in those pre-Internet days, when the term actually meant something. Racking up a string of left-field hits capable of stacking up against any producer of the late ’90s/early ’00s, Dilla quietly dropped bombs working with the Pharcyde (“Runnin’”),” De La Soul (“Stakes is High,” “Itsoweezee”), A Tribe Called Quest (“1nce Again,” “Find a Way”), Erykah Badu (“Didn’t Cha’ Know,”), and Common (“The Light”). Meanwhile, with Janet Jackson, Dilla had his only brush with mainstream success, carving Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” into the lean proto-chipmunk soul of “Got Til It’s Gone,” his only single to ever reach the Top 40. In what would become a pattern, Dilla never saw full credit, with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis “mistakenly” getting credit in the liner notes. Nonetheless, the track’s sonics directly influenced the next generation of crate-diggers, with Just Blaze, 9th Wonder and a certain college dropout all taking notes.
Like most great producers, Dilla’s mike skills couldn’t match his otherworldly ear, but he still managed to amass a respectable discography as one-third of Slum Village (whose Fantastic, Volume 2 is often regarded as a subterranean classic); a Jaylib collaboration with Madlib; and Welcome 2 Detroit, an uneven solo effort. Cumulatively, it wasn’t as eye-popping as it was a portent, a start to what would inevitably have made for a first-ballot Hall of Fame career, considering Dilla’s notoriously rigorous work ethic.
He died the same week that L.A.-based Stones Throw released Donuts, an impossibly soulful trip of head-nodding, hip-hop instrumentals that served as a gorgeous, plaintive requiem. It was also Dilla’s finest work,earning him the 2007 Plug Independent Music Awards for Artist of the Year and Producer of the Year. Donuts’ greatness and the sentiment engendered by Dilla’s passing helped to kick-start construction of the Church of James Yancey.
In the short span since, Dilla’s stature has increased exponentially, both critically and commercially. His higher-profile collaborators have ceaselessly kept his name alive, with Badu, the Roots and Common dedicating songs and/or entire albums to his memory and constantly praising him in lyrics and interviews. In turn, a new generation of producers and rappers has started taking cues from Dilla’s sound, chief among them two of hip-hop’s brightest stars: Black Milk, a fellow Motown native who got his start working with Slum Village; and Jay Electronica, a Badu-affiliated New Orleans native who has gotten the Internet crazy by kicking fierce rhymes over long-lost Dilla beats. To say nothing of the hordes of MySpace MCs aping Dilla’s style and in the process discovering what Kanye West found out on Finding Forever: how inherently difficult it is to mimic Dilla’s twisted alchemy of tweaked-out soul samples, black mountain drums and twinkling keys.
But as successful as the deification has been, the budding Dilla empire has foundered, thanks to astronomical health bills, which forced Dilla to go into hock with the government and die with high six-figure IRS debt and few tangible assets — save for a few hard drives of beats and a publishing deal with Universal Music. Ironically, as Dilla’s stock is at an all-time high, the executors of his estate have been bedeviled by a one-two punch: scrambling to pay his tab while fighting rampant Internet piracy of his material, both aimed at the ultimate goal of providing an inheritance for his two young daughters. “It’s frustrating,” says Arthur Erk, the estate’s executor and Dilla’s former business manager. “People have been cropping up left and right, trying to make money off Dilla’s name and likeness. There was something called the Dilla Foundation, which doesn’t even exist legally, yet it was trying to host charity events, claiming authorization from the estate. If there weren’t young children involved, we’d give up. No one needs this type of aggravation.”
Enforcing copyright in the Internet age is a Sisyphean task, and trying to protect one of the first big names to die young in the RapidShare world, Dilla’s estate has been beset with a dilemma that figures to plague families of all prematurely deceased musicians henceforth.
Explains Erk: “The problem is that Dilla was friendly with a lot of people — many of whom I know, many of whom I don’t — and there have been dozens of bootleg situations we’ve had to expend estate cash on to shut stuff down. If we don’t, it cheapens the value of his brand. We’re trying to protect his legacy and his heirs.”
Keeping track of the wealth of Dilla beats floating around the Web is practically impossible. Most notably, Busta Rhymes released a free Dillagence mixtape last year, featuring an introduction from Dilla’s mother, a matter that Erk claims is currently in mediation. This April, the recording masters of Pay Jay, Dilla’s never-released MCA record, were illicitly leaked to the Internet, sabotaging an estate plan to rerelease them at a yet-to-be-determined date. In a last-ditch effort to assert control over the heavily pirated material, the estate recently took out a full-page ad in Billboard, informing the industry that the only person, including friends and family, legally authorized to execute transactions or make any decisions regarding the commercial use of Dilla’s name, music, merchandise, photographs, video appearances, artwork, etc., is Erk.
“We’re not sure how many Dilla beats are floating around,” says Micheline Levine, Dilla’s former lawyer. “It’s been an absolute nightmare. [Erk] and I have been working without fees, and neither of us dreamed that copyright infringement would be so extensive and harmful to the estate. We’re trying to get the message out to third parties, who may in some convoluted way think they’re helping out the heirs but are really depriving them of income.”
A Dilla tribute is tentatively planned, as are several lawsuits against copyright infringers; both actions are meant to deliver at least a modicum of income beyond the modest royalties. With the gospel of Dilla secure and reasonably certain to grow, his legacy and brand certainly have the potential to provide for his children. Whether or not they do lies in his empire’s efficacy in striking back.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Mad Funny Lol...Ice-T Tells Soulja Boy To "Eat A Dick"
“Fuck Soulja Boy! Eat a dick! This nigga single handedly killed Hip Hop.”
Those are the words of Gangsta Rap veteran, Ice-T, who appears on DJ Cisco’s Urban Legend mixtape with a few choice words about Soulja Boy.
“That shit is such garbage man,” Ice-T continues to snarl. "We came all the way from Rakim, we came all the way from Das EFX, we came all the way from motherfuckers flowing like Big Daddy Kane and Ice Cube, and you come with that Superman shit? That shit is garbage.”
Apparently, Soulja Boy isn’t the only one in Ice-T’s sights. The rapper had a few things to say about another young rapper.
“Hurricane (Chris) take them fucking beads out of your hair nigga! Man up. You niggas is making me feel real fucking mad about this shit.”
The Urban Legend mixtape is available now.
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