Who am I? I'm Sha, aspiring writer living in Toronto but will go wherever life takes me. Twitter wouldn't give me a raise from 140 characters so here I am on Tumblr. From anime to sex, From random to deep I cover it all. Still trying to be a jack of most (not all F dat) trades and a master of all. Wanna know more? Drop me a msg, otherwise enjoy the chaos that is this tumblr :).
By now I know most of ya’ll have seen the XXL 2012 Freshman Class for Hip-Hop, if you haven’t please go here: http://www.xxlmag.com/xxl-freshman-2012/.
So like many people I had a real problem with this year’s ‘enrollment list’. I sounded off on it on air on a radio show I co-host (CHRY 105.5: no more shameless plugs I promise cause I’m not in charge of promo :P) where I also listed the people who should’ve been on the freshman list.
Now before I get into my list, here’s the criteria I went by (the same criteria XXL used for their list.
1. Age
2. No major label debut
3. Mixtape Prowess/Social Networking (how many mixtapes they put out and the amount of support they have on sites like twitter, fb, or this one, tumblr)
4. Touring (basically exposure)
5. Quality of Music
** (my own added criteria in the event of a tie) 6. Potential to blow
I was pretty strict and stuck to the criteria as to avoid ties and other shit. Here it is, tell me what you think, good or bad just don’t get of hand I just want feedback ppls lool.
(My) Freshman Class 2012
-Kid Ink “Chris Brown as a (decent) rapper” (from the original class but he was an understandable choice)
- Los: “Punchline rapper”
- Corey Gunz “Ridiculous Flow”
- Iggy Azalea “Funky fresh off the boat” (another original selection, unlike the other white girl rappers out there, the chick can rap)
- French Montana “Cocaina Rap” (also from the original list, I wanted to kick him off cause I’m not feelin french but I can’t argue with him being there too hard, his buzz is surprisingly loud)
- SchoolBoy Q “The Ignorant Intellectual”
- Shawn Chrystopher “Psychedelic Fresh”
- Sir Michael Rocks “Old school soul with a new school style”
- Danny Brown “Real Ass Nigga” (from the original list too, some ppl had an issue with him bein around for a good while and what not but that wasn’t good enough for me to cut him)
- Chevy Woods “Taylor Gang Alumni”
Honorable Mentions (ppl I had to mention)
- Chip the Ripper: he reportedly turned down XXL, view his tweet about it here: http://bit.ly/zL8iSx *el arrgg*
- Don Trip: he was on the original list I believe, I’m not even sure while I type this, exactly why I didn’t put him on the list
- Neako: another Taylor Gang alumni, he’s branched off and started his own thing called ‘Zebra Gang’, I had a tie btw him and Chevy but Chevy got more of a buzz going on than him (the nigga verified on twitter, seriously) so reluctantly I had to put mr. Neako here
-A$ap Rocky: Also annoyed I couldn’t put him cause of his refusal. I wanted to put him anyway but I couldn’t ignore it. *el arrg*
SO Gimme feedback plz. On here, on twitter, plz and ty :) If there’s anyone I forgot or anyone I put on my list who in fact TURNED DOWN XXL lemme knooo.
Can I jus say somethin to the ppl who watched a snippet or lo and behold the whole of that 30 minute video about Joseph Kony going around? Kony 2012? I’d like ya’ll to do me and yourselves a favor. GET FULLY EDUCATED BOUT AN ISSUE B4 U BLINDY FEED INTO IT. I started to rant about this on facebook but realized midway no one would read the shit, so I’m using this space to do it.
I watched it and felt myself tearing up when the Ugandan boy, Jacob was talking about his brother. That shit hurt when he began to cry. HOWEVER, please don’t tell me you watched that video and you weren’t left with questions. Not about Kony 2012 but about the filmmaker, how they’re funding all of this as a not-for-profit organization, the actual movements of Joseph Kony as of late, and why in the hell he felt the need to tell his son about the whole thing in such detail? Obviously using his son to make his point. He’s a little damn boy! Yes I know you can’t shield your kids from everything but part of being a kid is not having to think about evil like this, don’t take that from them. Say what you want but that shit did not sit right with me.
Ya’ll need to realize something, I know your intentions are good but you cannot play ‘captain save em’ without looking at the full picture. A lot of ya’ll realize this real soon after getting gung ho about a movement and become apathetic about it real quick. It’s just too damn much for a lot of ya’ll I get it. I’m not saying you can’t make a difference you definitely can but you need to realize, a continent like Africa? Don’t get so high off the hype that you fail to realize that Africa NEEDS TO SAVE ITSELF. Yes you can offer help to help them help themselves, but that’s about it. That continent has too many problems and ya’ll cannot intervene every time.
Africa’s history is so convoluted and so connected to their present day problems it’s gonna take more than you throwing a couple dollars at them to help. Besides, at the end of the day it becomes very CLEAR with videos like Kony 2012 floating around that African countries are still seen as helpless children that can’t help themselves. That they just can’t do anything right and always get themselves into messes, which leads to a subtle feeling of superiority over them.
Did anyone catch onto the uncomfortable ‘white man’s burden’ theme in that video by the way? That’s a very complicated theory, long story short it’s related to ‘white guilt’. You know white people feeling guilty about what they did to roughly everyone in the world and greatly overcompensating to make up for it? Kinda problematic, not gonna go into it just google ‘white man’s burden’ or ‘white guilt’ if you give a fuck.
Most importantly, the whole time I was watching that video I kept asking ‘where they getting the money to fund all this? It’s a not-for-profit organization’. I’ve been involved in a good bit of charity organizations and events myself and 1st hand I know when ppl are operating on a shoe-string budget. A lot of these organizations usually are and most of their ‘employees’ don’t really get paid. So I decided to do some research instead of being a fish and reposting the video yelling ‘OMG I’M SO INSPIRED LET’S DO SUMFIN BOUT DIS!’. Take a look at this ppls:
“Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal for an issue which arguably needs action and aid, not awareness, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they lack an external audit committee. But it goes way deeper than that.”
- http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/post/18890947431/we-got-troublE (if you want to read more)
Has that brain turned on yet? Look that questionable evidence aside, that video is grossly misinforming. Like for instance, they didn’t give you a clear picture of what’s going on politically in Uganda or to a larger extent, Central Africa did they? I know that sounds like it doesn’t matter but it does, especially if the political figures are corrupt (and lots of African leaders over the years have been corrupt, long story) or have their own ties with Joseph Kony for all we fuckin know. The video says Kony has zero support but how do you know it ain’t support you just don’t know about? You really gotta understand from all sides what you can and are doing when you try to ‘do your part’ with places that need help like some African countries.
At the end of the day all I’m saying is this, before you turn this into a fad and forget about it tomorrow, get educated on Invisible Children, Joseph Kony, and all the info that’s out there about both of them. Just cause you never heard of it till last nite don’t mean the shit don’t exist. ANOTHER THING, don’t say you apart of this movement if you not gonna do anything more than make a few tweets, an fb status, and a reblog of the Kony 2012 and not bother to go deeper mmk? Do we have a deal? Alright then. I’mma leave you with this, you care about this Joseph Kony thing, well pick up where you may or may not have left with once visible causes which are now completely invisible: Haiti, Japan, etc to name a few.
That’s it I’m done lol.
