Dear Kendrick Lamar (re: 'good kid, m.A.A.d city')

40s next to the baby bottle. It's no question where you are.

I've said it time and time again, but dey don't hurr me doe: The best hip-hop albums are portraits of the time, place, and mindset of the artist behind them. They draw from experiences seen and told to the artists, incorporate the sonic memory of what that artist is experiencing, and draw the listener into a world viewed through the artists' eyes.

Nature versus nurture; it's the oldest conflict in the book of human development and interaction. Is one a product of their environment, or do the sum of those products make the environment? After listening to your debut, Kendrick Lamar, I'm convinced there needs to be an urban studies symposium or class or certificate program regarding it. Holding true to its name 

good kid, m.A.A.d city

, is a portrait of the battle between nature and nurture: a black child whose inborn 'goodness' is chipped away at by his gritty urban surroundings.

The good kid you portray is clearly a smart one, as evidenced by his constant introspection. One of the first things I noticed in the story is the push and pull relationship that comes with groupthink. You muse, "Rush a nigga quick and then we laugh about it / That's ironic 'cause I never been violent, until I'm with the homies." Throughout GKMC, you grapple with your own decision-making because though you're capable of making informed decisions, frequently decisions are made for you. Whether out of circumstance, laziness, or influence of drugs or alcohol, you more often than not seemed to be carried away with a wave of bad intentions. Even in trying to develop a mature relationship with a young lady it is obvious your appetite for sex will ultimately trump your desire for emotional comfort and security:

A fatal attraction is common, and what we have common is pain / I mean you need to hear this / Love is not just a verb and I can see power steering / Sex drive when you swerve, I want that interference / It's coherent, I can hear it... mmhmm, that's your heartbeat / It either caught me or it called me, mmhmm

Kendrick, listening to GKMC is like watching Spider-Man fall victim to the Venom symbiote. You know that the anger that fuels the symbiote will make Spider-Man stronger, but that same symbiote will kill all pure ambitions within him. It's a tough album to critique with a moral compass because the listener can interpret your descent into that m.A.A.d city ambiguously.

Speaking of ambiguity, there's another prevalent theme in this album. While you grapple with acquiescing to your nature or nurture, the ever-reaching grey area between right and wrong rears its confusing head in almost every song on GKMC. You debate whether it is better to be predator or prey in such a vicious jungle, saying "Everybody gon' respect the shooter, but the one in front of the gun lives forever." Neither is an enviable position to be in, dying a hero or living as a villain. You recant on your past trespasses, too, wondering if your present good deeds and intelligence can erase that past on 'M.A.A.D. City':

If I told you I killed a nigga at 16, would you believe me? / Or see me to be innocent Kendrick that you seen in the street / With a basketball and some Now & Laters to eat / If I'm mentioned all of my skeletons, would you jump in the seat? / Would you say my intelligence now is great relief? And it's safe to say that our next generation maybe can sleep / With dreams of being a lawyer or doctor / Instead of boy with a chopper that hold the cul de sac hostage

That imagery is ridiculous, especially in light of the rash of violence in Chicago or the Trayvon Martin killing. No matter the littered past of a teenager, who is to say that the same teen couldn't end up curing the world of epilepsy or become President? Aspirations, regardless of how attainable, seem to all be misguided in your world though, Kendrick.

The title tracks of the album, expertly placed in the middle, give way to the vices in the second half of the album. 'Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst' that shows the true ill of your story: thirst. Thirst for love, thirst for fulfillment, thirst for money, and thirst for direction lead you and your compatriots astray so many times, that the prayers of an old woman couldn't possibly sway you. You can't help but quench it in 'Swimming Pools', because the holy water the woman speaks of isn't feasible in the way you would want it to be. As a good kid in that environment, the visuals of drugs, sex, violence, and crime are much more influential than that of a God whose presence you can't see. The city pulls your gaze in so many directions that it's impossible to tell what deserves attention and what is real. 'Real' details that conflict, making light of the choir of voices begging for your ear:

But what love got to do with it when I don't love myself / To the point I should hate everything I do love / Should I hate living my life inside the club / Should I hate her for watching me for that reason / Should I hate him for telling me that I'm season / Should I hate them for telling me ball out / Should I hate street credibility I'm talkin' about / Hatin' all money, power, respect in my will / I'm hatin' the fact that none of that shit make me real

Fame is a bitter medicine by your tastes, Kendrick. As a good kid from a m.A.A.d city, you're happy to have gotten yourself away from the chaos of that city, yet clubs, credibility, influence and fame aren't necessarily the antithesis to your rough upbringing. They seem more like a different part of the city, rather than an entirely different city. Maybe that's the answer to the nature versus nurture question. You can take the good kid out of that m.A.A.d city, but it's impossible to take the memory of that m.A.A.d city out of the good kid.

No matter how far you get away from that city, Kendrick, its ills, its vices, and its pitfalls all served to make you the man you are today. You're not ashamed of your city. Kendrick Lamar is a product of Compton. It was so fitting to end the album with a track titled after your hometown, featuring Dr. Dre nonetheless. Just Blaze-produced, it was a horn-laced yet hard-bodied anthem showing the bravado of a bastion of West Coast hip-hop. Though you deride the bad, you know your city is full of good kids like yourself. You would rather show off your city for what it is, 'responsible for taking Compton International', than continue to languish in hatred for the madness that it engenders. It's like I said: your album is a portrait of Compton and your experiences in that city during your formative years. You rose above that m.A.A.d city to show that you can be a product

from

your environment without being a product

of

your environment.

Hip-Hop Highway?

I know I'm not the only one out there who's fantasized about having an extravagant rap video, where you do some outlandish act like... blocking a highway with a truck and performing a concert. Yesterday, someone made that daydream come true. In Los Angeles, underground hip-hop group Imperial Stars did just that, stopping L.A.'s Highway 101 in the middle of rush hour, ironically on a pretty good day of traffic. The group hired a driver to stop the truck in the middle of the 4-lane highway, and then drive away in another car. The result was over an hour of heavy delays and a memorable hip-hop moment. Check out some video of what happens when hip-hop videos try to be too real...

Dear Meg Whitman

The Kanye Shrug doesn't work all the time, Meg. We know what you did...

via ABCNews:

California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman today found herself battling allegations that she knowingly employed an undocumented immigrant housekeeper, failed to pay a portion of her wages and then fired her in an act of political damage control. The charges come a little over a month before the November election.

At a news conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday organized by celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, Whitman's former housekeeper and nanny, Nicky Diaz, tearfully recounted how in June 2009 she was suddenly terminated by Whitman and her husband, Griffith Harsh, after she said she asked the couple for legal help to obtain U.S. citizenship. Allred also alleged that Whitman became aware of Diaz's undocumented status years earlier, but took no action. Whitman said the "charges are without merit."

Diaz told reporters that just a few months before Whitman announced she was running for governor as a Republican, the former eBay CEO fired her after nine years spent cleaning the couple's 3,700-square-foot home in an upscale Northern California suburb and shuttling their children to and from school and appointments.

"From now on you don't know me and I don't know you," Diaz said Whitman told her in the summer of 2009. "I was shocked and hurt that Ms. Whitman would treat me this way after nine years. I realized at that moment that she didn't appreciate my work. I felt like she was throwing me away like a piece of garbage."

At the current juncture of politics in the United States, the word politician and hypocrite are damn near synonymous. Especially with the emergence of the Tea Party and the so-called 'bipartisan' nature that the government is trying to engender, it's obvious that not everyone can be on the right side at all times. When it comes to election time, there ends up being a mad rush to clean up whatever muck can be raked up against a particular politician, most of it going on behind closed door meetings at the expense of lobbyists and donated dollars. That said, what happens when the political damage control just so happens to coincide with an issue at the forefront of that particular candidate's jurisdiction? Such is your case, Meg Whitman. As you prepare for election day in California, it's obvious your stake in the illegal immigration issue was much deeper than you wanted it to be.

Meg, I won't mince words: Illegal immigrants are everywhere. You know it. I know it. The American people know it. Yet, the major contention against allowing these people amnesty and asylum is that their place in American is more deeply rooted than most would like to admit. Meg, you knowingly hired an illegal immigrant in Nicky Diaz and had her in your employ for well over 9 years. By most employment standards, that's grounds for the job security AND respect that such a tenure warrants. Think about it Meg. If you had been working at a law office for 9 years and they tried to cut YOU off and disavow all knowledge of your existence for superficial political purposes, how would you feel? My guess is you'd probably file suit, go to the media and make a huge deal about it, much like your former housekeeper is doing now.

See the thing is, Meg, as a Republican candidate, you're walking a thin line here. Do you continue the status quo of using your power to manipulate other lives as you see fit, or do you stand by your party's platform of 'kicking all of the wetbacks illegal immigrants out'? They say no slave can serve two masters. Well, no political candidate can stand by two contradictory doctrines, especially on such a polarizing issue. Why try and hide the obvious, Meg? The role of illegal immigrants is as cemented in this country as is apple pie and fried chicken. You've got 9 years of faithful service to prove that, and I'm sure half of your party and cabinet have just as much if not more. I shudder to think how long it would've taken for this to get out in the open had Ms. Diaz not opened her flap.

SIDENOTE: Since TMZ is the one who reported Ms. Diaz's gripes, albeit in a professional manner, can we finally admit that, while cutthroat in their research, blogs are a legitimate source of breaking news?

Look, Meg, it sucks that you were caught with your hand in the cookie jar that your party's been trying to put on the high shelf for years now. Don't try to deny it, now that your candidacy is at stake, and certainly don't do it as a last ditch effort to cover your party's ass. That, in and of itself, would be just as hypocritical...

Dear Gay Marriage

My how times HAVEN'T changed...

via The New York Times:

A federal judge in San Francisco struck down California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage on Wednesday, handing a temporary victory to gay rights advocates in a legal battle that seems all but certain to be settled by the Supreme Court. Wednesday’s decision is just the latest chapter of what is expected to be a long legal battle over the ban — Proposition 8, which was passed in 2008 with 52 percent of the vote -- and proponents were already promising to appeal, confidently predicting that higher courts would be less accommodating to the other side than Vaughn R. Walker, the judge who issued the ruling.

Still, the very existence of federal-level ruling recognizing same-sex marriage in California, the nation’s most populous state, set off cheers from crowds assembled in front of the courthouse in San Francisco Wednesday afternoon. Evening rallies and celebrations were planned in dozens of cities across California and several across the nation.

In San Francisco, the plaintiffs’ case was argued by David Boies and Theodore Olson, ideological opposites who once famously sparred in the 2000 Supreme Court battle beween George W. Bush and Al Gore over the Florida recount and the presidency. The lawyers brought the case — Perry v. Schwarzenegger — in May 2009 on behalf of two gay couples who said that Proposition 8 impinged on their Constitutional rights to equal protection and due process. For gay rights advocates, same-sex marriage has increasingly become a central issue in their battle for equality, seen as both an emotional indicator of legitimacy and as a practical way to lessen discrimination.

I've got a confession to make. You know those annoying 18-24 year olds you see in train stations and on street corners in trendy neighborhoods trying to get you to give them money for (insert cause here)? Well, I was one of those people. Albeit, it was only for two months as I raised some much needed funding, but I learned a great deal about patience and the importance of lobbying. That's neither here nor there. It's just to say that the movement to legalize you, gay marriage has been bubbling over for years now. Gay marriage, I'm not going to sit ehre and say that I'm completely for you. I believe that homosexuality is wrong religiously. Yet, as I so eloquently placed in my pitches to passers-by, there's no reason that the government should be able to tell people who they can't marry. None.

Gay marriage, you are this generation's civil rights movement (along with health care reform and marijuana (for some), which is quite refreshing to say, honestly. You are this generation's (hopeful) victory that we will be able to look back on in 20 years and say that we supported rather than downplayed. While the ruling in California only overturned Proposition 8 in that state, and is likely to be appealed by those stick-up-the-ass conservatives, you're still something to fight for. You give a silent group a voice by allowing them the same unalienable rights that every other potential marriage should have. The United States is full of kooky double standards that no one wants to fess up to. Your banning is one of those double standards. How can we call ourselves the land of the free when some of our citizens can't marry freely, or the home of the brave when a good portion of our citizens are scared of you becoming legal? America talks a good talk, but until you have your fair day in court and come out a free institution, our country is failing on its promises and its Constitution. I guess this is kind of a preachy letter. At the same time, the opposition are still preaching, using religion and fear to influence political views against you. If they can stand in their (proverbial) pulpits, I can use my keyboard. I may not agree with you're concept spiritually, but politically you should be as legal as anything, gay marriage. Relish this victory, because the road won't get easier from here on out. I suppose the fight is half the beauty of victory, though. Keep fighting...

Dear LA Gang Tours

Shouts to AverageBro for the video...

'And on the right, you'll see a drive-by at a corner store... And if you look to your left, check out the weed spot being heavily surveyed by the police!" What the hell? That doesn't sound like your a typical tour, until now. LA Gang Tours, you might be the most controversial business idea I've ever heard. Your premise is taking people from Bumblef*ck, Idaho to what they think is 'da hood', squeezing $65 out of them and then showing them the Cholos, Locs, Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings and whatever other Californian hood phenomenon that can fit in 3 hours. Something about that sounds wrong. You guys are more or less commercializing the sight of black and Hispanic people in a 'controlled environment'. So what if you guys are 'giving back' or donating whatever minuscule percentage of your profits to providing former gang members jobs? The fact of the matter is that you guys are making South Central into a zoo tour. And if you want to really help people by exposing their quality of life, why not go to Haiti, or Detroit, or Africa and do a documentary? Why be so conspicuously elitist and place it under the guise of charity? I mean damn, nobody does a tour of Bumblef*ck, Idaho and takes pictures of its white more affluent inhabitants, as if they were a lion in a cage. Why should South Central be any different???