Anika & The Frog

Wassup, Y'all!

A couple months back Ol Ty dropped some knowledge about the upcoming Disney animated feature 'The Frog Princess', which was scheduled to feature their first southside princess. At that time names like Alicia Keys and Jennifer Hudson were vying to become the little animated shorty's voice but surprisingly Hudson's lesser known 'Dream' Anika Noni Rose managed to beat those buffys back and land the role her damn self. Two snaps up for Anika and a half hearted snap to Disney for finally bowing to the pressure - no doubt started here in the Malone Zone - to rework that JACKED UP title...

In the wake of beaucoup complaints about 'racial and ethnic insensitivities' related to 1) the title, 2) the main character's name (Maddy which sounded similar to the common slave name 'Mammy'), and 3) her vocation as a chambermaid working for a rich, spoiled northside debutante, Disney said 'Well we never said we had any southsiders actually contribute to the script but if all you're going to do is complain I guess we can change a couple things'. So now we have 'The Princess and The Frog' starring Tiana. Hmmmm, now if we could just get Disney to rename that 'Pirates of the Caribbean' ride to 'Boyz 'N The Hood' we'd finally be getting somewhere.

Peace@Least,

Tyrone

Ephinany Coming to Hip-Hop?

Wassup, Y'all!

Since the Imus dust up, there's been building pressure on the Hip-Hop community to likewise clean up their acts with respect to the N-word, the B-word, the H-word, the MF-word, blah, blah, blah. It's not the first time such pressure has been exerted by member of the southside community, but now that Russell Simmons has weighed in on the side of buffin' hip-hop's image with a brillo pad and some Mister Clean, strangely there FINALLY seems to be some movement to where I've been tryin' to get that crew to move for the longest...

Recently there have been a couple positive developments on this front. The first came from rapper Chamillionaire whose summer album, Ultimate Victory, has been announced to be curse, n-word and misogyny free.

Following closely on the heels of this announcement as a similar but larger reaching one by rap impresario Master P, who announced that he's creating a new rap record label that will focus on '100% clean lyrics'. I'm liking the sound of that and it's been long in comin'. It would be nice to think that this ephinany came from a desire to do the right thing but I'm more so thinking this shift as has more to do with green than common good. Sales for rap music have been on the decline - down 21% from 2005 to 2006 and no rap/hip-hop albums graced the Top 10 last year - and with Jesse and Al doin' all that yappin' about Imus, there's no way they can get away with not putting the focus on rap lyrics as well.

So given that, a brother would think that most rappers would consider gettin' on the bandwagon. Most rappers...then there's our boy Curtis Jackson. When asked by EURweb.com's Lee Bailey about his thoughts on the Imus backlash, Fiddy was quoted as saying, 'Man, fu#k that bull$hit, if I want to call a bit$h a ho, I'll tell her straight up and her bit$h ass ni%%er too! Or something like that. *Sigh*... well, nobody said that Rome was built in a day, but ol Ty is likin' the direction things are headin'.

Peace@Least,

Tyrone

Smooth Barack, Secret Service & Magic Negros

Wassup, Y'all!

The wires have been buzzin' lately about a request from Smooth Barack's campaign for Secret Service protection. Naturally various factions are weighin' in with just why they feel that that level of protection is needed, especially this early in the campaign season. Well, despite the ill thought out contention by many in the southside nation that Smooth Barack just isn't 'black enough', ol Ty seems to think that this type of request proves just the opposite and likely a little bit more courtesy of Rush Limbaugh...

Now we all know that race relations in the US have progressed to the point where there's a paper thin veneer of good will covering nearly four hundred years of ill will that routinely bubbles to the surface like pressurized lava. No need to delve into that madness as a reason for Smooth's protection request. Instead let's talk about the political hatred stirred up by the Grand Pooba of conservative commentators, Rush Limbaugh. Spend any amount of time suffering through his radio talk show and you'll quickly discover two things - 1) Limbaugh runs fast and easy with things like facts and accuracy and 2) his audience is huge, fanatically loyal and eager to eat up every morsel of separatist rhetoric that Limbaugh spoons out. He's a modern day snake oil salesman and his sales are very, very good. In my opinion, the effect of his political rabble rousing is no different than the racial rabble rousing put out by folks like David Duke or the Klan - it encourages unstable followers to commit unstable acts.

Lately, Limbaugh's been getting a lot of mileage out of cribbing Los Angeles Times columnist David Ehrenstein (a southsider - see the glossy on the left) reference to Smooth Barack as The Magic Negro. Homey Clarence Page does a good job of summing up that ruckus, while the national media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) does a good job of exposing Limbaugh's sloppy track record with the truth in their classic Limbaugh's Reign of Error report. Limbaugh's rebuttal to that report is pretty funny too until you realize the vast majority of his listeners seem to be soaking up that stuff without challenge or debate. His audience seems to revel in stocking up any ammunition they can get, real or imagined, to justify their extreme position on the far, faaaaar, right (even moderate Republicans don't get a pass from this crew). It doesn't take a 24 writer to come up with a scenario that would have someone from that crew trying to 'get with' Smooth Barack if it looked like he was going to win the Democratic nomination or, more dangerously for them, the White House. Now I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

That said, Limbaugh followers would do well to use a little thoughtful deliberation when listening to his show. A few of you biddy-bop readers may not remember another back-in-the-day snake oil salesman named Jim Jones. The major ruckus at his Jonestown compound gave rise to the popular phrase 'Drinkin' Kool-Aid', which is used to describe someone who ignores known facts while arguing his position ('Dude - how can you think the Clippers are going to win the NBA title? Stop drinkin' that kool-aid, homey'). Jones' followers had similar blind loyalty to the man and his message and, if I'm not mistaken, things didn't turn out too well for that crew...

Peace@Least,

Tyrone

Michael Jackson - The Transformation

Wassup, Y'all!

I should be out from under it shortly, y'all. Hang tight. In the meantime, I've been wasting a lot of time perusing the blogosphere looking for timely issues. Somehow I hit on that funky ruckus between Eddie Murphy and Mel 'Scary Spice' B. (who is truly scary these days). Mel's so hot to get Eddie's DNA to prove he's the father of her baby that the rumor is she plans to cause a ruckus on the red carpet during the Shrek 3 premier. That would be some tacky, bogosity that could look a little something like this...

I'm sure all this has y'all askin' - 'Ty, what the hell does all this have to do with Michael Jackson'? You know how the web is - Eddie Murphy leads to the Michael Jackson video 'Remember The Time', the 'Remember The Time' video leads you to the Michael and Janet 'Scream' video and suddenly I'm posting about how damn much Michael Jackson's appearance has changed from then to now. Remember this Michael? Okay, I'll admit that somewhere between 'little' Michal Jackson and 'Big' Michael Jackson cute got left behind, but was it that bad?

When the morphing started, it wasn't actually pretty good. This shot is kinda close to that 'Thriller' look he had going on. An admitted improvement over Big Michael and it would have been a good place to call it a day. But we all know how it is when you think just one more little tweak will make a good thing great. In MJ's case, it was the top of a slippery slope that ol boy still seems to be sliding down. Clearly this Mike was still a little too brown, so he eased into what I'll kindly call 'the bleaching years'.

Here, ol boy is lighter, yet still not too bad. Yes, he's a little strange looking but not quite ready for a vacant slot in the Ripley's Believe it or Not tent. I had actually started getting used to this look and was ready to give ol boy the benefit of the doubt and say - okay, you're a little eccentric but you've still got talent pumping out of every pore.

Ol Ty was actually hopeful that this was the last stop for the transformation train, but it was not to be. Instead the train kept right on going, ran over Michael more than a few times and when it finally cleared the tracks, it left ol boy looking like this. As my boy Martin used to say: 'Awwww damn, damn, DAMN'! There's really no rational explanation for a look like this and I did ol boy a favor by not dropping that scary ass looking mug shot that got snapped leading up to his trial.

Which brings me sadly back to the 'Scream' video. Man, watching his videos shows you just how creative this brother is. He and Janet put together some tight azz dance concept videos back in the day and Scream is still a pleasure since they're both in it doing their thing. Compare their old stuff to the videos in rotation these days. No imagination, no innovation, scant creativity. It's all about excess, bling, hoochies, cars, G4s, yachts, blowing money makin' it rain, blah, blah, blah. Say what you want about Michael's azz, at least the brother wasn't unoriginal. Weird? Check. Insanely eccentric? Check. Sexually inoppropriate? Can't say. But that's one original brother. Check those videos out and tell me I'm lying.

In the meantime, I'm going back to work and tell Boss man Mr. Cholly to 'Stop Pressurin' Me' because it makes me wanna scream :-)

Peace@Least,

Tyrone