40 years of Hip Hop by KRS-One

A most valuable lecture on Hip Hop consciousness, culture, products, and celebrity, by the living legend ‘KRS ONE’. Every now and then I post something hip hop on my blog, and it’s because hip hop culture and carnival culture are descendants of the same root culture, and are both subject to the same type of external entities that commercialise them, corrupting the magic of the original art forms. Listen to KRS ONE if you will, replace hip hop with mas or carnival if you must, see the parallels and connect the dots.
See...

KANYE WEST, DOPENESS, AND MAS

This Zane Lowe interview of Kanye is a fantastic, as a recording artist, West is loved and loathed by many, but say what you will, no one can deny his genius. In this interview West not only vents his frustrations about the people or organisations that seem bent on preventing him from expanding artistically and financially all his talents, but he also talks about rap and the industry and the mediocrity that now sells as the ‘dopeness’.

“Dopeness is what I like the most , dopeness, people who want to make things as dope as possible, and by default make money from it, the thing that I like the least, are people who only want to make money from things whither there dope or not and especially make money and making things as least dope as possible.” 

“There are plenty musicians that sold the fuck out and changed the art of music where people don’t hold that

to the highest level of genius anymore...If there is a high level visual artist or clothing artist they will be held at a higher level of genius than a musician because the things in music that are selling the most are the least inspired by the most part and the least genius...”

The aspirations and passions that west wants for the industry and himself and the masses that is stunted by the mediocre majority can be paralleled to contemporary mas in Trinidad and her satellite carnivals.

  Mas now lacks the creative passion, that once made it great, single celebrated genius such as Bailey, Berkley and Minshall, and their carnival presentations that not only defined the periods they were produced in and are now established part of Carnivals memory and woven into a nations history, have been replaced by big brands with multiple designers who don’t have a clue of what they are doing. There are no one eyed men in this kingdom of the blind. 

As a child the carnival magazines by Key publications educated and entertained, not the magazines today, you hear stories, see documentaries describing how George Baileys mas changed the way Afro Trinidadians saw Africa and them themselves, I listened as Minshall use the analogy of the panorama competition to explain the transformation of a mas, I learned of the splendour and opulence of the Titanic and the disaster that befell it on the savannah stage via Wayne Berkley’s Titanic. Such was the ‘dopeness’ in mas, the ability to depict, to define and defy, expressing creatively in a language that all understand in mediums we understood.

We have already seen what most of the big bands have to offer for 2014, more of the feathered sameness no dopeness or to paraphrase Kanye West, the things in mas that are selling the most are the least inspired by the most part and the least genius...

 Take in Mr West.

Trinidad James talks Carnival on Sirius Radio

Taken from overtime tv.
Trinidad James talks about his Trinidad and Tobago carnival experience on Sirius Radio and mentions soca stars like Machel Montano, SuperBlue and Bunji Garlin, also the Trinidad and Tobago people.

Who says the brother don't represent us now?

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I Love it when a Trini goes GLOBAL! ;

 Character Study: Just How Real Is Nicki Minaj?

IF NICKI MINAJ had her way, she’d be at home watching reruns of Judge Judy right now. Instead, she’s a few miles west of her new Los Angeles apartment, at the W hotel in Westwood. It’s a stunning hilltop property, but on the L.A. cool matrix, this W rates pretty low. The other one is on the Strip, and it’s a hot spot. Which means it’s not a good place for Nicki these days.
She’s not sure when exactly it happened, but going out has become a drag. Used to be she’d slip on a pair of jeans, hop in her white BMW and go to house parties to flirt with older guys. Now it’s Lamborghinis, industry dudes and paparazzi. She might buy popcorn for someone at the movies and the next thing you know, people think she’s dating him. Or she might walk out of a nightclub holding hands with Diddy and have people think she’s dating him.



“People don’t get when you’re off, or you’re having a bad day,” she says, obliquely referring to the photograph that bounced around the blogs of her hand-in-hand with Diddy, looking especially miserable. The speculation was inevitable: Had she been crying? Was she just tired? Are they doing it?

None of the above, it turns out. Nicki just doesn’t like going out anymore. Today we’ll try, though. “It’s good for the story,” her publicist tells her. “Is it good for the story?” she asks me with a wry smile.

This part of being a rapper— the part where you’re on the brink of superstardom, where everyone wants to know what you ate for breakfast, where requests for verses come in daily from the world’s biggest pop icons and where journalists want to do novel things with you to create good scenes for their articles— is new to Nicki.

Until last year, she was a not-so-regular girl from Queens, New York working the mixtape circuit. Lil Wayne had already decided he wanted to sign her, and they’d worked together on her third mixtape, Beam Me Up Scotty, but outside of in-the-know rap circles, it’s not like her phone was ringing off the hook. Last August, Nicki signed to Universal Motown Records through Wayne’s Young Money imprint and within a few months she had recorded and shot videos for “Lil Freak,” “Shakin’ It 4 Daddy” and “My Chick Bad” with Usher, Robin Thicke and Ludacris respectively. She even recorded “Up Out My Face” and she shot a video, a white-and-red explosion of a thing, with Mariah Carey.

In just 10 months, she has been catapulted from the culty fringes to the majors, nailing a provocative public persona as popular with rap’s tough guys as it is with teenage girls— all before her first album is even close to completion. She’s also garnered the support of the three biggest names in rap: Kanye West told her he was blown away by her style; Jay-Z is the reason Thicke chose her for “Shakin’ It 4 Daddy”; and Lil Wayne is her “sensei,” as she likes to say. As if that wasn’t enough, she is no longer with her longtime manager Debra Antney and, if the rumors are true, has acquired a considerable upgrade, at least in a marquee-name kind of way. According to reports in April, Nicki started working with Diddy and former Violator Management heayweight James Cruz, who helped market 50 Cent, Missy Elliott and Busta Rhymes to mainstream America

FOR THE REST SEE VIBE

Double H ...Something New for the next Decade.

I hope you all had a great Christmas and fantastic new year  with all the major big bands launched and costumes revealed all is left now are the road march hits and the massive almost religious return of Carnival lovers to the Mother country of Carnival.

My Christmas was great, the usual elements of food, family, drink, sleep, and happiness, made the Christmas /New Year experience for me one to remember, this year I also met a new friend, a major talent in my opinion, not in Mas, but Music.

Hip Hop to be exact...anyway I was blown away by her very personal  and refreshing style and felt that I would share with you all what was shared with me.

So without anymore ole talk here is DOUBLE H.

Double H Biography

Double H lives for the music. Hip hop, funk, soul, reggae; everything with love, passion, and a contagious drive. She comes from Tilburg and her roots are in Morocco. Together they are an excellent mixture for the unique sound of Double H.

As a teenager, Double H (Hind Hakki, born in 1982) was limitlessly enthusiastic by the “good old” Motown music and American hip hop and soul from the 90’s. She grew up as a Moroccan girl in a multicultural neighborhood in North Tilburg(NL), where, since very young, she came in contact with music. As a youngster, she participated in cultural and musical exchanges in Brazil, Bosnia en Slovenia. 

These experiences had a great impact on her and partly formed her as a person and as an artist: a strong self-confident personality  and a warm human being.

She started with rap when she was fifteen years old with the Tilburg(NL) hip hop crew The Hill. When this group did not exist anymore, she decided that this was her mission: to translate her inspiration into music. Podium performance, writing songs, and inspiring people is her goal.

In 2005, she and a group of youngsters formed the dancehall/hip hop formation called Exchange. She was the striking front woman/rapper of the catchy funked up, urban reggae vibes-band 2nfro. She had successful performances with this group in a variety of big pop halls. She was also in the finals of Emergenza, and won the final at the Diesel U-Music Awards in London.

She presented in an inimitable way the TV program for youngsters called “Wat nou tv” in Brabant 10. Frequently she is asked to be the hostess of various stages, i.e., Festival Mundial, the Liberation Festival and the Hype event in Pop Centrum 013. She is very involved with young people, giving them workshops and coaching; she is also asked for similar projects by other cultural and commercial organizations.

Double H is the first female MC of the Fontys Rock Academy in Tilburg (NL). There she polishes on her talent, develops her skills and works steady and surely on her solo carrier.

She radiates her passion in everything she does. She is social, spontaneous and goal centered but, at the same time, sensible and sensitive. These characteristics are recognizable in her lyrics and in the way she expresses them. She is not afraid to show who she is.

Her new flashing show is full of energy. It is an ensemble of rap and songs which carries you into a swirl of music and emotions. Her source of inspiration is inextinguishable, her musical passion endless. The stage is her comfort zone, the music hall is her home and the public, her family. Prepare yourself for a swinging, gripping, sultry cocktail with a willful receipt!

http://www.double-h.nl/

http://www.myspace.com/DoubleH013

http://www.youtube.com/user/DoubleH013

ABOLITION AND THE DEATH OF CARNIVAL

Verse 3] Everybody sound the same, commercialize the game Reminiscin' when it wasn't all business If it got where it started So we all gather here for the dearly departed Hip hopper since a toddler One homeboy became a man then a mobster If the guys let me get my last swig of Vodka R.I.P., we'll donate your lungs to a rasta Went from turntables to mp3s From "Beat Street" to commercials on Mickey D's From gold cables to Jacobs From plain facials to Botox and face lifts I'm lookin' over my shoulder It's about eighty niggaz from my hood that showed up And they came to show love Sold out concert and the doors are closed shutLyrics: Nas - Hip Hop Is Dead [Artist Lyrics]Album: hip hop is dead.#

AS wrote these lines because he believes that the original roots of hip hop is dead, while the art form dominates the music industry the pureness of it has been erased by corporate vampires pimping hip hop for all its worth , I believe the very same thing can be said for Trinidad’s Carnival , not just MAS but the whole festival.

Hip hop like calypso and other elements of carnival was borne out of the ghettoes of a once plantation society, a black society from whose bowels all popular culture comes, and like Hip Hop, Carnival has too fallen prey to culture vultures pimpin out “we thing” like a crack head on the streets of P.O.S till she dead.

Why and how I could say this ?
How could I come to such conclusion ?

BECAUSE ON THE 25TH OF MARCH 1807."the Abolition of the Slave Trade bill was passed in the House of Lords by 41 votes to 20. In the House of Commons it was carried by 114 to 15 and it become law."

This year marked 200 years since the Abolition of the slave trade an event that the English government and press if not the people have signified and celebrated on television and radio with documentaries, movies, reenactments , public debates , but no apologies.

Never the less they have recognized that slave trade happened, and England profited greatly from it, and after 300 years of dominating the trade, one day they decided that it was wrong and they (as a nation) lead by the “great humanitarian” William Wilberforce, brought the trans Atlantic Slave Trade to an end.

Now.

The story of abolition of the slave trade is a most significant event for the Caribbean, as a region, to Afro Caribbean’s as descendants of slaves, and Trinidadians because this event precedes Emancipation , and the birth of Trinidad Carnival. Now this year I did not go to Trinidad for carnival, but I kept my eyes on it , and as far as I could see, not one, especially the highly esteemed “large bands” paid any kind of tribute or any kind of recognition to this important historical event.


It seems that Trinidadians have some how conveniently forgotten the very African history from which their most celebrated carnival, the so called “greatest show on earth”, stepped forth from. Instead the designers and band leaders, guardians of the culture and the tradition that is MAS, have traded the very soul of our culture for the materialistic emptiness of the west, they have forgotten the rich value of a heritage that was handed to them through great struggle and sold the cultural soul for the very evil that enslaved the ancestors in the first place, COMMERCALISM.

Imagine just two hundred years ago England stopped transporting slaves to the Caribbean , 30 odd years later came Emancipation and less than 200 years after that a nation that’s Carnival is a direct result of these events does not recognize that such an event happened.

How is it that an entire national institution could forget its own conception?



“CAN YOU ACTUALLY IMAGINE OVERLOOKING THE END OF THE SLAVE TRADE THAT WAS ONLY 200 YEARS AGO TO STUDY THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. DO THESE BACKSIDES KNOW ABOUT THE REVOLUTIONS IN HAITI, JAMAICA,AND GUYANA THAT HAD THAT ALSO CONTRIBUTED TO THE END OF THE SLAVE TRADE?”


When I say Carnival is dead, I hope you can see why.


Many of you have a belief that “carnival is freedom" and this is why we jump up for carnival, because ‘we free’, but how many of you know or even understand that Carnival is also resistance, resistance from slavery, through religious, and cultural retention, that survived the slave trade and slavery, the Canboulay riots, was resistance, the drum a symbol of resistance, that was banned by he colonial government.

The Tamboo bamboo that was born when the Drum was banned, and when the Tamboo bamboo was banned…..the Steelpan was born, RESISTANCE.


Resistance, this is the true Sprit of Carnival, FREEDOM IS AN END PROUDUCT. Carnival is then a celebration of freedom through resistance and rebellion, but it seems that now this generation’s middle class has taken over the Carnival, the culture of resistance has turned on itself or at least the middle class that has inherited it has turned on the lower class that created it.

Like Cancer exclusivity is eating the Carnival alive fete tickets sky rocket with VIP paying crazy money too the point that they cant see the stage fus dey cant mix with the masses, mas is so expensive the poor man and woman cant play in the big popular bands, and the band leaders have to import their costumes to make sure the lower classes cant get a cut out of the production process a process their people started.
(BUT CARNIVAL IS FREEDOM?)

The Trinidadian Diaspora and that of the wider Caribbean all know about conflict diamonds but don’t seem to understand or care that these bands and fetes are a conflict to a society in itself. Like George Orwell’s Animal Farm the Middle classes have risen up to become a new Plantocracy like the old masters excluding themselves and almost every aspect of the carnival at large, down to Jouvay bands have become a paradox as the original tradition of the masses hitting the streets as ONE covered in mud and oil, now have bands that are leaving from secret locations or staying away from the masses with their own planed routes covered in chocolate, I can only guess its because their members are like the pigs on animal farm “more equal than others” that this trend has begun.

And while this 21st Century neo-plantocracy divide the Carnival by race, class, body type, internet access, etc, etc, and bamboozle the ignorant masses with empty themes, nonsensical designs and humorous promises of protection from the other set of masses (like if all hell was to truly break out their guards could actually protect people) and more alcohol than they could possibly drink, but do pay for, the Carnival dies a slow death, without a continual creative contribution from the grass roots, that muddy pond from which “10,000 flowers bloom” with out a “Bolo” to stand up to the oppressors or a “Fish eye” to beat a pan, then a man, carnival would become as it is quickly becoming a creative Sahara, big and barren …………. CULTURALLY DEAD.

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