GYMRblog Has Moved. Use http://GYMRblog.com

GYMR has been moved to tumblr address http://GYMRblog.com. Please follow the new site. Thanks. -- The GYMR Team

Follow us on twitter!

If you're on twitter, follow us to get our post links sent right to your feed. Thanks for reading!

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

@AWKWORDrap Named @Schmap "Editor's Pick" for #MarsBar Commentary (ft. HD #HipHop #Music Video)

To read (and DIGG!) the original post, with personal commentary, HD music video and photos, click HERE.

To share the link, send this: http://bit.ly/RIP_MarsBar.

Special thanks to the editor(s) at Schmap.com.

UPDATE: RapGodFathers, OnSmash & DAJAZ1 'Raided' by Homeland Security & Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- Sites Closed Down (Behind the Copyright Infringement Controversy)

Since we first caught wind of this story yesterday, a couple things have happened.

First, we were able to confirm, unfortunately, that DAJAZ1.com was also impacted by this (racist?) assault on Hip Hop.




On a positive note, we were informed that RapGodFathers would not be bowing down quietly.



The story skyrocketed to national/mainstream attention — with few to no additional facts provided.



And Hip Hop cultural leaders are weighing in.



Today, we asked Davey D a question that was on our mind, and we got an answer within the half-hour.




Check back HERE for updates.

BREAKING: RapGodFathers, OnSmash 'Raided' by Homeland Security & Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- Sites Closed Down (Behind the Copyright Infringement Controversy)

As written by enigmax for TorrentFreak...

Following raids earlier in the year which took out several sites and domain names connected to the streaming of Hollywood movies, we can now report fresh Department of Homeland Security / Immigration and Customs Enforcement action against a site in the music sector.

Acting on a search warrant issued on 23rd November and signed by United States Magistrate Judge Jeff Kaplan, DHS and ICE agents arrived at a Dallas datacenter Tuesday with orders to take down the 146,500 member RapGodFathers site (RGF), seize its servers and gather evidence on its owners, administrators and moderators.

The same, apparently, has also happened to OnSmash, another major hip hop site.




And — no shock here — the OnSmash team wasn't warned or provided with an explanation.



Interestingly, as pointed out by John Gotty of The Smoking Section, this Federal action occurred less than a week after a Senate panel approved a controversial domain name seizure bill.



enigmax continues:

[RapGodFathers] had been in operation since 2005 and the authorities were authorized to take evidence relating to all activities right back to April 1st of that year.

"We only link to mixtapes, albums in the hiphop/rap genre," a senior staff member told TorrentFreak this morning.

"Lots of those mixtapes help new artists become much bigger for example Drake, Chamillionaire, Wiz Khalifa. It also gives the users to listen to an album before buying it to judge the quality. Almost 99% of the time if people on RGF liked the album and posted positive comments, that given artist had a big success."

The same can certainly be said for OnSmash, as well as all the other sites devoted to preserving Hip Hop, promoting dedicated artists and getting music out to the fans — and we got proof:

• Our GYMR Resident Emcee AWKWORD has expanded his fan base significantly since beginning in late 2009 to submit to — and receive support from — 2DopeBoyz, XXL, Kevin Nottingham, Hip Hop Chronicle and other leading sites.
• Here at GYMR, we don't post as much music as the aforementioned sites, as we focus equally on street culture, art, fashion and politics; however, when we do post music, we do so WITH THE ARTIST'S PERMISSION (as we imagine the other sites do too).

So, Feds, before you start busting down our doors, do your research. And GTFOH!

The #hiphop Daily Awards @AWKWORDrap & @GYMRblog "Daily Top Story" for Nas Coverage

Click the image above to view the full post by The #hiphop Daily. Click here for the original GYMR post by AWKWORD.

Going Viral: 'How a Link Spreads Through the Twitterverse'

[FoxNews: Helen Thomas Retires]

Excerpt:

Using a combination of the Twitter API, the TweetMeme API and the Processing visualization library, I was able to graph the spread of a handful of popular links. In the TweetMaps below the circles represent each user who ReTweeted the link, they're bigger or smaller based on the number of followers they have. People who are following accounts that Tweeted the link before they did have lines drawn to the accounts they're following (and could have "caught" the link from). The graphs show the first wave of Tweets of each link (generally the first few hours). When you see a number of circles extending horizontally across the graph that means that those accounts all Tweeted the link very close together in time.

CLICK THE 'TWEETMAP' ABOVE OR BELOW TO SEE WHAT ALL THIS MEANS, AND/OR TO DOWNLOAD A FREE MARKETING MANUAL FROM THE CREATOR OF THIS STUDY.


[Alternet: 19-Year-Old American Killed in Flotilla Attack]

FIRE: French Montana - "We Run NY" (ft. Fat Joe; prod. Harry Fraud) - FREE AUDIO

"It's that Joe Crack, AG, Diggin Crates /
It's that Bad Boy, 9-6, Biggie Mase..."



Funkmaster Flex broke the record on his Hot 97 show yesterday.



Today, the full version dropped with Fat Joe.



And just like that, before the summer's over, New York's got the NEW "New York Minute", the NEW "Empire State of Mind".



Turns out, some of you prefer the original Fat Joe-less version, so...



We got both here:

1) French Montana - "We Run NY" (prod. Harry Fraud)
2) French Montanan - "We Run NY" (ft. Fat Joe; prod. Harry Fraud)

Oh yeah, and just to make yall jealous, I got to hear this BEFORE Flex did.

DJ AM = More Than The Sum of His Drugs

Adam Goldstein, a.k.a. DJ AM, was more than the combo of crack, OxyContin, Klonopin, Xanax, Ativan, Benadryl, Levamisole and Vicodin that killed him at 'lucky' 36.

His last public contact was via twitter: "New york, new york. Big city of dreams, but new york aint always what it seems."

Click the image (Allen Salkin, "Dancing with Demons", The New York Times, October 16, 2009)...