I had two posts in my head this morning. One about the sick feeling I had while listening to Hot 97 on Friday night and the other was about the closing of Studio Distribution. I'll rock one today and the other tomorrow.

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So I was coming back from Alma's birthday party Friday night. Later than I should have being that I had to be up at 6a.m. I had switched from Johnnie Walker to water early enough so I wasn't too bent. But I am sure the after effects of a few drinks and a quick puff had my ears a little sensitive.

After some damn crackhead broke into the car a month back, the in-ride entertainment hasn't been right.
No iPod, no XM. Just the radio. Usually I'm on WNYC but since it was Friday night I figured I should be a bit less cerebral.
Hence the readout of 97.1 on the way home.

Then that new Biggie song came on, 'Nasty' or whatever. Horrible.
Rather than attacking BIG I am gonna chalk up his sorry performance to Puff's piecing together outtakes from 10 years ago. We all know Biggie has/had skills, although I never agreed with his #1 ranking. But what the money hungry Hip-Hop vultures did that song made me sick. It was either that or the Rum, red wine, whisky mix.

That song takes one of the illest MC's and 'baby food's him.
'Baby-fooding' is taken something fundamentally good and grinding it down to its simplest form to ensure mass consumption.
The song was stripped of virtually all of its artistic merit and reduced to a watery slop.
And in that moment I realized the full reality.
The full reality that the values that I was raised have vanished from the current major landscape.

We all know this, but on Friday I knew it.

The clever and insightful rhymes of De La – ‘no vacancy’
The rich sounds of Pete Rock and CL Smooth – ‘we’re good’
The need to make a point a la Chuck D – ‘UPS is hiring’

It is all about baby food Hip-Hop.
-A product so simple that all ages can digest it.
-So cheap all economic classes can buy it
-And so simple anyone can make it so there is an endless stream of content providers.

And for the 1st time I saw what music snobs meant when they said Hip-Hop is not real music. If all you listened was that mess you would have to say that. What made me feel like an old fart even more is that after ‘throwing up in mouth a little bit’ (joke) I switched to the good WNYC which as all my eggheads know is Classical all night. And that quick juxtaposition of musicianship 1) embarrassed me as a Hip-Hop fan and 2) boosted my appreciation for Classical music.

The mind numbing name dropping of Puff was replaced by a musical composition far beyond my even imagined abilities.

We’ve got work to do people. We must restore the respect in our culture. Support those who are trying to make it better. We cannot let the interlopers and vultures write the history books.