monique’s Neighborhood

Hello all my Vox people!!!!

Just wanted to check in, let you all know that I'm alive & kicking.

• thehaitianqueen has become a tumblr blog, & I love it!
• I talk about all my carnival exploits at live from brooklyn.
• Last but not least, you can find me talking my behind off at twitter.

Hope all is well, & happy holidays!

The worst thing a former drug addict could hear is that they were better when they were high. Unfortunately, I have to say that to Eminem. The problem is now I know why I wasn’t a big fan of any of his full cd’s after The Marshall Matthers LP. He’d spiraled into some serious drug use making most of the songs on his cd’s lame. Although, each of the cd’s had a couple of tasty singles for the most part the albums themselves were disjointed. I get it. But that makes me sadder.  Will the real Slim Shady please stand up? He phoned in his performance at the VMA’s and I watched that clip of him with Jay Z at the DJ Hero launch party---want the game; hated the performance.

I can imagine this is hard for Em. I mean if all of the time you’ve been performing you’ve been doing it from behind a blunted, liquored, pilled up haze then actually having to perform sober is probably almost trippier than doing ‘shrooms all day.

Yet, I can’t give him that slack.

Yes, his rhyme skills are still sick. As much as I hate to even hear the verses for 3AM I find myself looping the chorus in my head. And quiet as kept, its one of the best beats on the cd (although clearly Dre can’t find his way out of his own formula if you showed him the exit). I could (and so could the world) have absolutely done without “We Made You”; it was “My Name is…” at its worst. Em you are a star you don’t need the gimmicks.

Actually…maybe he does.

I’ve always thought of Em as the white dude in a group of black guys that would do anything. He was the dude they’d point to and say, “Marshall is a crazy muthafucka!” as he’s stuffing corn chips up his nose while licking the cocaine plate dry. But despite that, he earned my respect as an Emcee by being a lyrical monster. There was a point where he was killing most of the MC’s out there and I put him in the same category with Jay, Nas, Rakim, Biggie, and Tupac.

But you know what?

I know that your life is hard. Yet, when my life is harder I have a very difficult time feeling empathy for a multimillionaire. The “poor me” shtick died for me on The Marshall Mathers LP. He was the first celebrity that I had compassion for when he dropped the bomb that is, “The Way I Am.” I got it. Anyone who listened got it. Here was a trailer park kid whose life suddenly was like winning the lottery---damn near broke one minute; got enough money to pay rent the next. It was a jolt. Everything about that cd resonated with me because it was truly ambitious but real and simply one of the best cd’s of all time. If I put together a top five hip hop cd’s that to this day I can pretty much bump all the way through…it’s in there.  The only song on there I can’t listen to is “Kim.” It’s way too much. On the new cd, the song that even touches close to my heartstrings has got to be “Beautiful” the song he admits to writing after coming out of his brief stay at rehab during one of his moments over these past four years where he was sober before he really got into sobriety years later. But still, I don’t feel sad for a multimillionaire and their oh, so problem filled lives.

I know Biggie said more money more problems but you know what? I think I’d rather have the more money and deal with the more problems.

I’ll quote Jay-Z right here when he said recently on the Angie Martinez show, “...[money] gives you more freedom than anything.” So Em I’m sorry I’m done with the “woe is me; I’m rich.” Boo-hoo’ing. Keep it to yourself. You got enough money and clout to surround yourself with the people that you want to be around and work with the people you want to work with. I don’t have that luxury. Most people don’t.

My other question is, if you’re sober, why all the songs with the drug references? Since I know that you’re sober, “Crack a Bottle” just isn’t as realistic or fun. Addiction is some crazy shit and it’s nothing to poke fun at. So I can’t even laugh with Em anymore. What I see is a man trying to hold onto some semblance of the character that he created; that is in part him. But why do that? If you can’t be you; sober you, then stop recording. And if you can’t do that, you might want to keep sobriety to yourself cause who really believes you now?

But there’s a small price to pay for that. Think about Mary J Blige. We all love that Mary is happy and sober and living life in a positive way. But shit everybody in some ways misses depressed addicted Mary. The music was better. It’s a fans stupid selfishness. If you are gonna be sober and have fan buy in you gotta give us the things that we loved about you. Mary is slowly doing that. Em, you got a long way to go.

It’s not that the game didn’t miss Em. While he was gone Soulja Boy and idiots like him threatened to take over the hip hop empire. While Em was gone the internet became the place to “discover” music. While he was gone we lost him.

I don’t wish addiction onto anyone. It’s the monkey that can kill you. It’s the monkey that will torture you. It’s the monkey that weighs you down even as you’re watching all of your world crumble. But Em, you’re gonna have to get yourself together. I believe that the only reason why Relapse sold so much in it’s first week is because people are starving for your music. Asher thought he could have that spot but his cd turned out to be lame frat boy hip hop. He should’ve stuck to the underground. Today’s true lyrical beasts tend to turn out more music online than they could even push on SoundScan, which is where Asher should have stayed.

But like most Em fans I was fiending for his next cd, only to be let down…big time. I’m gonna keep it on my list for awhile, maybe it’ll grow on me. But honestly, right now I’m looking to Jay to revitalize hip hop. Sorry Em, go back to the lab…or rather I’ll see you in 6 months when Relapse 2 comes out. Oh and tell Dre he can keep Detox. 

Yesterday and early this morning, while talking about our impending move to a new apartment a few blocks away in a much bigger building (and no longer on the ground floor), Alaina and I talked about how being in a larger complex essentially acts as a fairly effective form of security through obscurity. Unfortunately, as always seems to be the case, the conversation was prescient.

OMG!!! This is probably the best news of reboots evar!!!

Why is this going to be the shit?!! I remember the first time I saw the tv movie; my mom, my brother and I had to share a mattress in our new home and we bedded down to watch this series. It was simply one of the best movies I'd ever seen up to that point. Yeah it was campy and the acting left a bit to be desired. But I loved it!!!

Here's an original episode from the series itself.

If you were too young to watch this originally then you definitely should try and either get it from Netflix or rent it. Its great!

clips courtesy of abc.com and pinkisthenewblog.com

What we're hearing from the right is this...waterboarding is not torture. Waterboarding is intensive interrogation. Ann Coulter even likened it to a "fraternity prank."

So, that means that if waterboarding is not torture then American citizens who are in the custody of other countries can now feel free to waterboard their detainee's, because according to Bush holdovers this is not torture.

How very interesting.

HowStuffWorks has a really great video and some really cool links describing, "What is waterboarding." The video shows what would be considered "minimal" waterboarding. It is the dripping of water on the forhead or the streaming water on the forehead both with restraints and without. This is not even the most extreme version where a bag is put over the detainee's head and water is poured directly through the bag until the individual's psychological and physical reaction to the belief that they are being drowned kicks in.

Call me crazy. Call me a crazy liberal. But...even the most mild forms of waterboarding seem like a psychological mind fuck and therefore seem like torture.

I think its interesting that pundits like to talk about individuals that torture as terrorists, animals, evil etc. But if we are using the same techniques then aren't we evil, terrorist animals too?

Just a thought.

Maxwell's "Pretty Wings". I've been waiting 8 years for him to put out a new record, and two years since I first heard a snippet of this track. Worth the wait.

*lol*