Welcome back to Turning the Screw, Rocks Off's weekly rap post. It probably won't rhyme, at least most of the time. E-mail tips to [email protected]. Thanks, homies.
Single of the Week
"A Blues For Trust," D. Rose
Wire to Wire
Turns out more than a few organizations weren't necessarily heartbroken about BET's Rap City being taken off the air. We're still broken up about it. We mean, whose going to fill in the void of "marketing harmful, graphic and offensive images to children" slot? Flavor of Love is still on the air, right?
Beastie Boys begin their "Get Out and Vote" tour October 28. "This election is too important to stay home," said the Beastie Boys via an email blast. "Besides, we haven't made a good song in about 14 years, we figured this would be an easy way to drum up a check or two," they added. (They didn't really add that, we did. But that doesn't make it any less true.)
Ne-Yo is going to be working with Marilyn Manson on an upcoming song. Surely this will turn out wonderfully.
DJ Quik claims Dr. Dre has more than 400 songs ready for his upcoming album, Detox. We're not mathematicians or anything, but that seems like a lot.
Paris, a somewhat famous Bay area rapper, is including "golden tickets" inside three copies of his upcoming album, Acid Reflex, worth $10,000 in college scholarship money. This seems mildly ironic to us.
A judge in Ohio roundaboutly sentenced a man to listen to classical music for playing his rap music too loud. This seems overtly ignorant to us.
Travis Barker spoke about his recent near-death experience, saying "My biggest fear ever is to be involved in a plane crash, so when that happened, well, I'm just thankful to be alive." That's a weird thing to say, right? We mean, if being in a plane crash is his biggest fear ever, shouldn't he, oh, we don't know, just not get on planes?
Lil' Kim is being sued for $2.5 million. We thought for a good minute or two about how to turn that into a joke about that time Diana Ross jiggled her boob but we couldn't. Sorry. Enjoy the picture, though.
We forgot Ice Cube could make music like this. Please, Ice, enough with the Are We There Yet? bullshit.
We reported several weeks back that Vibe was having a "Best Rapper Alive" tournament. The somewhat surprising winner: Eminem. We assume he beat a flummoxed Papa Doc in the finals.
Rick Ross finally admitted to being a correctional officer, saying "I never tried to hide my past." Really, Rick Ross? Because Google says otherwise.
We thought Lil' Jon's 15 minutes of fame were up already. We look forward to his upcoming album being 15 wildly creative tracks imploring us to rep our set if we ain't scared.
Cam'ron's new album has been pushed back to next year. That's cool. We can't wait to not buy it.
Three Pointers
C-Rayz Walz, Freestyles vs. Written
Nadirah Shakoor, Nod To The Storyteller
Blue Sky Black Death, Slow Burning Lights - Shea Serrano