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GYMR: HipHop Culture x Music x Art x Politics x News x Style

NEW FREE DOWNLOAD: Bambu - Something (In Honor of Women's History Month)

A MUST-LISTEN for EVERY Hip Hop fan... In honor of Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Grandmothers, Girlfriends, Wives and ALL STRONG WOMEN... For Women's History Month, produced by DJ Phatrick, sampling Adele's "Someone Like You", from Los Angeles's Bambu. As of today, consider us fans.



Click below to stream or download free via soundcloud.

Bambu - Something by GYMRblog

NEW VIDEO & FREE DOWNLOAD: Thurzday (U-N-I) - Rodney King

THIS IS WHAT HIP HOP IS ALL ABOUT...





Thurzday (of U-N-I) - Rodney King by GYMRblog

GYMR-Approved: Wade Waters - A Post-Racial America

THIS IS WHY WE DO THIS HERE. NUFF SAID.



Wade Waters - A Post-Racial America (Parts 1 & 2) by GYMRblog

Want more from Wade Waters, go to WadeWaters.com.

GYMR RE-FEATURE: HipHopDX: "Get Your Mind Right: Why So Serious?"

Written by Professor Brian Sims, as seen on HipHopDX.com.

The GYMR Blog MOVING SOON to http://GYMRblog.com (Stay Tuned for Full Re-Design!)

XXL Featured Banger: AWKWORD - "The People's Champ" [Video]

Monday Nov 1 7:15 AM CDT posted by xxl staff -- AWK goes for the title!



To watch the video via XXL, click the image above. Or, just watch it here:

FAIL: Lou Dobbs - All-American Hypocrite

This lunatic is known for his anti-immigration rants. He may be running for a government position. And The Nation clearly shows in this article that he's a lying hypocrite. Ultimate FAIL.

Click here for coverage from The Huffington Post.

And if you're on twitter, join me in sending FUCK-YOUs to Dobbs's account.

The Last Stop for The Last Stop for Hip Hop: R.I.P. Fat Beats

At about 1 PM today I heard the news that Fat Beats was closing. Bloggers and other people cooler than me apparently received this:

After 16 years, Fat Beats has announced the closing of the legendary label’s two remaining retail locations in New York and Los Angeles. Fat Beats will celebrate the legacies of the stores, which are scheduled to close in early September (New York: September 4th, Los Angeles: September 18th) by throwing a series of blow-out sales and tribute parties open to the public during their last weeks. Fans can check www.FatBeats.com for updates.

For the remainder of the release, click here.

The rest of the afternoon, my twitter feed was filled with people's memories of the legendary hip hop shop. Some of the biggest hip hop sites (e.g., HipHopDX and XXL) solicited fans' reactions with hashtags such as #FatBeatsMemories, #FatBeatsForever and #FatBeatsRIP.

The Brown Bag AllStars followed in the footsteps of Non Phixion and the Arsonists in making the original store on 6th Avenue in Manhattan their stomping grounds.



And they weren't alone among artists simultaneously lamenting and celebrating. At about 1:30, Fat Beats's DJ Eclipse tweeted: "Fat Beats NY & Fat Beats LA are closing in September. Fat Beats Records, Distribution & Dotcom will continue." Then, before his Halftime Show kicked off, he added: "Gonna talk a little about Fat Beats tonight on The Halftime Show, but next week's show is 100% dedicated to it. Many guests. 89.1FM WNYU".

All I can say is that I'd be honored to be a part of next week's show, especially having witnessed past Halftime Show Anniversaries.



They Reminisce Over You

• ILL BILL -- "during the mid-90s & early 2000s @FatBeatsNY was a record store by day & Non Phixion's rehearsal studio by night #ThanksJoe \m/".
• Talib Kweli -- "Wow my career started at #FATBEATS for real."
• Dante Ross -- "RIP Fat Beats I did a lot of lurking In The NY store over the years.... I also bought a lot of records there Much Respect @Djeclipse".
• Dujeous -- "R.I.P. to the legendary Fat Beats...thanks for all the love and support you've given us through the years."

As of 10:53 this evening, the Fat Beats Records myspace page read:



While the Fat Beats team has been slow to update at least one of its social networking sites (read: we still have a myspage page???), the news IS final -- and, for many, terminal in more ways than one. Some aint afraid to point fingers.

DJ Scratch tweeted: "Fat Beats is closing because of you sucka ass downloading MP3, AIFF ass no having any vinyl ass DJ's."

Detroit DJ HouseShoes took it to the inevitable (re: fans): "Hey guys? Wanna know why @fatbeatsla is closing? Cause y'all aint buy shit. From artists, to dj's to "fans". Thats why. #thanks4thesupport".


[Fresh Daily x Homeboy Sandman (2009)]

It's OK to be AWKWORD

Well... as far as I'm concerned, we're all to blame. Artists, fans, BIG CORPORATIONS... The ART of DJing is hanging on by a turntable needle, all because it's so damn easy to cut out the mechanics and just punch buttons in front of a screen. But Fat Beats the physical stores are closing not because of the DJs, who happened to keep them afloat for the last few years. The stores are closing because the fans stopped buying. And the fans stopped buying because most record labels -- mega and mini alike -- chose to fight "pirating" instead of embracing -- and leveraging -- the inevitable.

I believe in copyrighting, as I am an artist who understands how painful/pleasurable creation can be, and how clearly one's own that creation always is. But I do not believe in bleeding the people dry. The middle ground -- teasing with freebies while strategically dropping joints at cost -- is the answer. See: B.o.B.: I had like five of his mixtapes before his solo debut went #1 on the charts!



Anyway, here's what I said on twitter (times are approximate):

• 1:30, in response to news from XXL -- "So sad. This the place I 1st met @ItsDJEclipse @ILLBILL1972 10+ years ago."
• 3:30, in response to solicitation from HipHopDX.com -- "More than a decade ago, before I ever recorded 1 of my rhymes, I met elder Jewish NY MC @ILLBILL1972 at #FatBeats".
• 3:30 -- "we always kinda measured our success by how well we were received by patrons, workers & other artists at #FatBeats".
• 3:30 -- "Back when graf was about hand control & the right cans & caps, I copped from #FatBeats... It's all wheatpaste & stickers now."
• 3:30 -- "Before DVDs/mp3s, I got VHS freestyle battles from #FatBeats, 406 6th Avenue. And I copped my 1st fake ID across the street."
• 3:30 -- "1st realized what "underground" meant at #FatBeats -- when I walked in wearing a punk rock T & got more love than ever before".

As "female MC, producer, painter, photographer, filmmaker and all round good chick" H2L Browntown declared: "we are THE LAST RECORD STORE GENERATION".

And that's something any hip hop head or punk rocker could shed a tear over.


Written by AWKWORD.

VIDEO: Howard Dean Calls Fox News 'Absolutely Racist' For Its Handling Of Shirley Sherrod Controversy

I guess it's easy to tell the truth when you're not running for some ivory throne somewhere, but whatever, THANK YOU HOWARD DEAN!



Oh yeah, and Senior VP of Fox News Michael Clemente responded with this gem:

"As we said this past week, some people such as the failed candidate Dean reflexively blame Fox for almost anything."

MUST READ: Israel: To Boycott Or Not To Boycott

The issue of Israel/Palestine is complicated, and popular opinion is pretty anti-Israel these days. For that reason, for perspective, for a broader understanding, this is a MUST READ:

• Jasob Weisberg, "Don't Boycott Israel", Newsweek, July 24, 2010

Excerpt

Because Israel is a refuge for Jews persecuted everywhere else, this kind of existential challenge is hard to disassociate from anti-Semitism... When people are trying to murder you because of your religion, it is difficult to credit the bona fides of those who merely want to shun you because of your government.





WTF!?

For more on this topic, click HERE.

'The Great Divide: Who's getting paid (and how much) in the music industry'

If you thought the life of most musicians was comparable to the blissful and blinged-out existences of Kanye and Rihanna, you've clearly not heard much about our ever-desiccating music industry...

(Excerpted from "The Music Industry's Funny Money", July 6, 2010, the Root.)

Crooked Cops: Village Voice Exposes New York City Police Misconduct

Excerpted from The Village Voice, June 15, 2010.

"Last Halloween, three weeks after he made allegations of misconduct in Brooklyn's 81st Precinct, Adrian Schoolcraft's career in the New York City Police Department ended in rather spectacular fashion.

"On October 7, Schoolcraft had sat for three hours with an inspector, a lieutenant, and three sergeants with the Quality Assistance Division—the NYPD unit that monitors the accuracy of police reports—as they questioned him about his allegations that precinct bosses had refused to take criminal complaints and had downgraded crimes. They told him they would launch a substantial investigation.

"After the meeting, Schoolcraft went about his normal work as a member of the 81st Precinct. Then, on the afternoon of October 31, he felt sick and went home about an hour early. Precinct supervisors appeared at his door hours later, claiming he had violated policy and demanding that he return to work.

"One of his visitors was a deputy chief, who upbraided him while sitting on the edge of his bed. On orders from that deputy chief, Schoolcraft was then thrown to the floor, handcuffed, dragged from his Queens apartment, and taken against his will to a psychiatric ward at Jamaica Hospital. His forced hospitalization lasted six days. Police officers also removed papers from his home that documented his concerns about NYPD operations. Jamaica Hospital officials charged him $7,000 for his stay—and another $86 to obtain his own medical records."



"Schoolcraft has been introduced to Voice readers as the Bed-Stuy cop who secretly taped 117 roll calls at the precinct, as well as many other conversations with his fellow cops. In our series, "The NYPD Tapes," the Voice has been making these recordings public, and they show a pattern of police downgrading crimes, intimidating crime victims, and enforcing quotas for writing tickets and performing "stop-and-frisks."

"Schoolcraft also had his digital recorder rolling as his superior officers threw him to the ground and hauled him off to the mental ward. Those recordings reveal that he was rational throughout the encounter, and refused medical assistance that was then forced on him.

"In addition, hospital records show that the medical staff was misled by an NYPD sergeant about the events of that day, causing doctors to treat him as a psychiatric patient.

"Like the previous recordings the Voice has made public, these tapes suggest that Adrian Schoolcraft is an ordinary cop who got caught on the wrong side of department politics, tried to report corruption, and paid for it with his career.

"Despite repeatedly reporting what he saw as misconduct to a duty captain, a district surgeon, an NYPD psychologist, three Internal Affairs officers, and five department crime statistics auditors, nothing has come of these efforts..."

To read the rest of this article, click here.

Joell Ortiz v. Gentrification

SLAUGHTERHOUSE!



Joell Ortiz saw gentrification engulf Greenpoint from the vantage of the Cooper Park housing projects. As the new millennium began, the 31-year-old rapper noticed the first changes sprouting up with "a little condominium here, a loft setup there." Before the influx of high-income housing, his section of Brooklyn suffered from a domino-effect blight: "My area was really drug-infested 'cause across from us was a shelter with a lot of drug addicts—the drugs bring the money, and the money leads to violence." But not these days. "Now, it's ridiculous. They brought in the hipsters, brought in the yuppies, and built up the big condos that no one in my 'hood can afford."

To read the rest of this important HIP HOP story, click above or here.

A Woman's Side: Aubrey O'Day, D. Woods Respond To Slim Thug

So... maybe this is an excuse to post a bunch of pics of Aubrey O'Day; or, maybe Aubrey O'Day (perhaps despite the pics) has a point...









Please. Drop the delusions of grandeur, gents. We see right through you! This paper-thin layer of unjustifiable ‘swagger’ and pseudo-confidence is simply masquerading the vulnerability and self-doubt of the modern day man. The subtext is clear… spineless men of all creeds are waving the proverbial white flag of defeat. Unable to cope with the demands of a new class of empowered, strong-willed and fiercely independent women, they’ve resorted to projecting their insecurities on those that, god forbid, expect them to live up to their potential....

Do Protests Matter? Howard Zinn & Others Weigh In

[painting by Jamelah of photo by Dave Gray (Voice1)]

Excerpted from The New York Times, August 20, 2009 (about one month prior to Howard Zinn's death).

Iran’s citizens take to the streets en masse after a disputed election. Gay men in Salt Lake City hold a kissing protest. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church voice their anti-just-about-everything views to military funerals and elsewhere.

Beyond the media attention they inevitably garner, what do protests actually accomplish?

We rounded up a few people who have thought a lot about this topic — Chester Crocker, Bernardine Dohrn, Donna Lieberman, Juan E. Méndez, David S. Meyer, and Howard Zinn — and asked them how much protest matters in this day and age, and why.



Here are their answers.