Before Wake Up!, I wasn’t quite sure where I stood with John Legend. His debut found him miscast as a unique type of badboy, gospel-drenched vocals jumping from one girl to the next in an attempt to blur the lines between the then-sputtering neo soul movement and the direction of more mainstream R&B artists like Usher. It left an awfully confused taste in my mouth, as does the arc of his career. Evolver, his most recent album, was another cluster of half-baked attempts at crossover and experimentation. While it sounded remarkably different from Get Lifted, over four years it seemed little had changed with Legend as an artist.
But then I heard the sample of “Again”—appearing on Legend’s Once Again LP that I’d skipped over—on the Roots’ offering earlier this year (How I Got Over) and after listening to that album, I was thrown for a loop. Here, Legend’s voice had risen far beyond merely good to occasionally fantastic, and all but one or two tracks were not just tolerable, they were superb. This discovery occurred just a few weeks ago, around the same time I got my first glimpse at what Legend and the Roots have been collaborating on since Evolver limped into the masses: Wake Up!.
Originally intended as a one off charity benefit type project, the combination quickly grew into an LP that, besides a few minor hiccups, makes a strong case for the collaboration continuing into the future. While all but two tracks here are covers, ?uestlove and James Poyser has done such an excellent job of arranging both the tracklist and the songs themselves that only the most well-versed poli-soul listeners will pick out the originals. The opening one-two punch of “Hard Times” and “Compared to What?” are particularly incendiary, and that hard Stax kind of funk appears once again on “Our Generation”.
The common thread throughout the entire project is revolution and political activism, something the extensive liner notes make blatantly clear. But the song selection is superb enough that the LP works perfectly fine as a straight up funk and soul record. In less capable hands things could get a bit awry, but not only does this band play tight as hell, they each find their moments to showcase individual talents. Legend goes from channeling Eugene McDaniel’s raging, deep soul on “Compared to What?” to harnessing a heretofore seldom heard higher register for the aforementioned reggae jam. Captain Kirk delivers a righteously funky guitar riff for “Hard Times” that adds an extra hundred degrees to the song, and each time Black Thought appears will stir familiar feelings from the Roots’ last few LPs that there is simply not enough of him here.
Owen Biddle, ?uestlove and James Poyser play more complimentary roles on the album, though all three are the spine around which the longer jams—12-minute protest song “I Can’t Write Left Handed” and seven-minute self-empowerment jam “Hang on in There”—unwaveringly cling. The way the band flits between these different motifs and feature players is entertaining, but it’s honestly John Legend that takes the most away from this release. He not only delivers his most focused effort yet, but his most diverse. The way he sings on “Hang on in There” and “Humanity” is just a joy to listen to. The band closes the album with “Shine”, the one Legend-penned original song on the album (Malik Yusef also provides an original spoken word intro to Little Ghetto Boy), and passes their final test by cranking out a song much less mundane than Legend’s previous attempt at world-unifying, “If You’re Out There”.
While it’s simplicity is greatly noticeable alongside these masterworks of soul, “Shine” also feels as fitting a finale to Wake Up! as anything else could be. Again, this is a testament not only to the quality of the musicians or the songs they play, but the way they’ve strung them together like something of a live, in studio performance. This spirit is, above all else, what makes Wake Up! such a success. There is no pretense that this band will equal the songs they’re reviving, though through seemingly unlimited talent they often come as close as possible. Wake Up! is an album explicitly from the heart, worn on its sleeve in a way few artists with such mainstream attention seem willing to match. What could have come off as a mediocre-to-good novelty project has, instead reaches the public coming just short of being a genuine contender for album of the year.
John Legend ft. The Roots - Wake Up Everybody
John Legend ft. The Roots - Wake Up Everybody
By Outspoken Poet
Kanye West’s “Power” is a short, almost stationary video that manages to tell a profound story in symbolic language. By decoding the occult meaning of the symbols present in this moving tableau, the viewer discovers who really holds the “power” in the world and understands the story of Kanye West’s initiation. We will look at the meaning of those symbols as they appear in the video.
Rapper and producer Kanye West has always found a way to stand out from the crowd. His video Power is no exception. It differs from the MTV norm in many regards, whether you look at the content or the form. The duration of the video, the filming style and the subject matter are quite distinct from today’s typical rap videos as it is short (1:43), filmed in a single shot (compared to the one-shot-per-second standard of music videos) and is very rich in archetypal symbolism.
Director Marco Brambilla sought to depict the concept of power in the form of a “video tableau”, a moving painting that slowly reveals itself to the viewer with a continuous camera movement. The director seem to have perfected this technique in his previous creation, Civilization, a video mural created for the new Standard Hotel in New-York city. The symbolism present there is simply overwhelming. Here it is:
For Power, Brambilla went for a neo-classic aesthetic, but still created a piece full of symbolic and cultural references. As it was the case for paintings of the neo-classic era, each object, each symbol and each detail in the video conveys an important meaning, a meaning that is needed to understand the entire story. As we will see later, many symbols in the video have a deep occult meaning and many of them point to Freemasonry and Mystery schools. By doing so, the director clearly states what type of power is being presented in the video. We will therefore look at the meaning of the symbols displayed in the video as they appear in the shot. If you haven’t seen it, here it is:
Symbols Of The Video
The video starts off with a close-up of Kanye West with glow-in-the-dark eyes, as if he was “illuminated” from within or to hint at a demonic element. He stands between an infinite row of Ionic columns, which represent “wisdom” in Masonic symbolism.
As regular readers of this series already know, the occult meaning of the twin pillars is ancient, profound and presented in the symbolism of almost all mystery schools of History. There are many layers of interpretation attributed to the two columns, but one constant is always present: The pillars represent the entrance – the gateway – to the world of the initiate. Behind the columns can be found the key to the Mysteries and, consequently, the source of true power. This concept has been used for in many cultures and schools of thought.
- The two columns called the “Pillars of Hercules” in Ancient Greece stood at the gateway to the sphere of the enlightened
“The city of the philosophic elect rises from the highest mountain peak of the earth, and here the gods of the wise dwell together in everlasting felicity. In the foreground are the symbolic pillars of Hercules which appear on the title page of Bacon’s Novum Organum, and between them runs the path which leads upward from the uncertainties of earth to that perfect order which is established in the sphere of the enlightened. “
- Manly P. Hall
- Pillars of Hercules in Francis Bacon’s “New Atlantis” as a gateway to the New World
- Two pillars leading to Jacob’s Ladder in this Masonic tracing board
- Masonic initiate standing between the twin pillars as the third pillar, in the same fashion as Kanye West in the video.
In Power, Kanye is standing at the mouth of the gateway to the “sphere of the enlightened,” right at the border of the corrupt and decadent material world. So, right from the start of the video, the director reveals his take on the true nature of power in this world: It is not your democratically elected officials, but those who consider themselves to be behind those pillars. One of the most significant lines of the song is
“In this white man’s world, we the ones chosen”
Does Kanye’s “white man’s world” refer to the hidden rulers, the Illuminati, who are hidden behind those pillars or to the ongoing oppression and prejudice against colored people?
Horus
- Horus pendant on Kanye’s chain
The next thing that catches the viewer’s eye is most probably that gigantic chain with Horus’ head as a pendant. Horus is an ancient Egyptian deity that has an extreme importance in occult mysteries. Considered to be the Sky god, he is more often represented with the symbol of a single eye. The Eye of Horus is an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection and royal power from deities, in this case from Horus or Ra.
“Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, was called “Horus who rules with two eyes.” His right eye was white representing the sun while his left eye was black representing the moon. According to Egyptian legend Horus lost his left eye during a fight with his murderous uncle, Seth, to revenged his father’s death. Seth tore out his nephew’s eye but lost the fight because the assembly of the gods declared Horus the victor. The eye was reassembled by the magic of Thoth. Then Horus gave the eye to Osiris who experienced rebirth in the underworld.”
- Jordan Michael, Encyclopedia of Gods
- Horus, god of the sky
- The Eye of Horus as depicted by the Golden Dawn Mystery School
The symbolism of Horus is especially of great importance in Freemasonry, as the path of an initiate through the Masonic degrees is described as the process by which the Eye of Horus is opened.So Kanye stands at the gateway between the corrupt world of the profane and the exclusive world of the illuminated, wearing a Horus pendant, an unmistakable symbol. One might say: “Well maybe Kanye just likes Egyptian things.” Maybe so, but in the context of this video, where all details are important and extremely meaningful, Horus becomes another piece of this symbolic puzzle.
Horned Girls
The entrance of the gateway of pillars is guarded by two horned albino girls holding a staff. Their features are very reminiscent of depictions of Isis and Hathor, goddesses of ancient Egypt. Another allusion to Egyptian magic.
- Kanye standing between two horned female figures
- Isis and Hathor crowning Queen Nefertari. Both goddesses were depicted with bovine horns on their heads.
Isis was the mother of Horus (discussed above) and was the goddess of motherhood, nature and magic. Hathor was also considered as a maternal deity while also being the goddess of music, dance and fertility. Both Isis and Hathor were known to welcome and protect the dead during their journey to the afterlife, a concept that is particularly interesting in the context of the video.
- Hathor holding a sceptre with Pharaoh Ramses II
“The goddess (Hathor) [...] manifests two aspects of her divine power: first of all, she participates in the afterlife rite of passage, by means of which the deceased attains eternal life, and, second, she demonstrates her special connection to the Egyptian king. Hathor is rightly called a royal goddess, and in this role she is linked in various ways to the life of the pharaoh. Often the pharaoh would call himself the oldest son of Hathor.”
- Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism
Kanye, perhaps symbolizing the Pharaoh, is standing at the gateway to eternal wisdom, about to be executed/assassinated/sacrificed under the watchful eyes of Hathor, the “royal goddess.” Are the goddesses welcoming Kanye “behind the veil,” protecting him in this rite of passage to immortality? In occult circles, new candidates must symbolically die and be reborn to complete their initiation process. Is Kanye being killed an allegory for his initiation?
Sword of Damocles
- Sword hanging above Kanye West’s head
While doing some preliminary research on this video, I came across an article on MTV.com titled Kanye West’s ‘Power’ Video: A Cultural Cheat Sheet. Here’s what it says about the sword hanging above his head:
“Dragonlance: An image of a sword descending into a crown hovers over Kanye’s head, bringing to mind Volume Two of Douglas Niles’ series “The Crown and the Sword: The Rise of Solamnia,” in which Sir Jaymes Markham commands the orders of the Rose, Sword and Crown.”
- Kanye West’s ‘Power’ Video: A Cultural Cheat Sheet, MTV.com
Really? The director of this neo-classical themed video, was inspired by an obscure fantasy novel released in, like, 2006? Seriously? Good job, MTV, in keeping our youth clueless. The descending sword is more probably a reference to the Sword of Damocles, a pretty widely known legend, though one might argue it to be any other legendary or ordinary sword.
- Wenceslas Hollar’s depiction of the Sword of Damocles
“The Damocles of the anecdote was an obsequious courtier in the court of Dionysius II of Syracuse, a fourth century BC tyrant of Syracuse. Damocles exclaimed that, as a great man of power and authority, Dionysius was truly fortunate. Dionysius offered to switch places with him for a day, so he could taste first hand that fortune. In the evening a banquet was held where Damocles very much enjoyed being waited upon like a king. Only at the end of the meal did he look up and notice a sharpened sword hanging directly above his head by a single horse-hair. Immediately, he lost all taste for the fine foods and beautiful girls and asked leave of the tyrant, saying he no longer wanted to be so fortunate.
Dionysius had successfully conveyed a sense of the constant fear in which the great man lives. Cicero uses this story as the last in a series of contrasting examples for reaching the conclusion he had been moving towards in this fifth Disputation, in which the theme is that virtue is sufficient for living a happy life. Cicero asks “Does not Dionysius seem to have made it sufficiently clear that there can be nothing happy for the person over whom some fear always looms?”
- Source
The tale of the Sword epitomizes the constant danger faced by those in positions of power. Kanye stands there, in a state of impending doom, knowing he can be executed at any time. Right after we see the sword of Damocles, a figure appears holding a dagger and attempting to stab him. The assassination will not happen by dagger, however, as two other figures leap out of nowhere holding swords to accomplish the “Killing of the King.”
Killing of The King - The Initiation
Ritual initiation represented in a display of geometry and symmetry
Ritual initiation represented in a display of geometry and symmetryAt the ending of the video, the decadent women and the dagger-holding assassins all disappear as two swords are about to hit him. Are we sacrificing the King?
The concept of regicide is reflected in the single’s cover art. It depicts Kanye’s severed, crowned head with a sword firmly jammed into it. Apparently Kanye was king and he got killed. Is this a symbol for a Masonic ritual? Note the stone on which Kanye’s head is placed. Is it the “perfect ashlar” of the Masons that represents the state of a perfected initiate?
- Covert art of Power portraying the killing of Kanye West as a king.
- A perfect ashlar in a Masonic lodge. In Masonic symbolism, the candidates start their journeys as allegorical “rough ashlars” and, through knowledge and wisdom, smooth out their edges in order to become a perfect ashlar.
Some occult researchers have stated that the “Killing of the King” is the name of a Masonic rite of passage to obtain the 33rd degree (see “King Kill 33″ by James Shelby Downard & Michael A. Hoffman II). Semi-interesting sidenote: King Kill 33 is also the name of a Marilyn Mason song, with rather interesting lyrics. Another sidenote: Researchers have reported that Killing of the King rites often happens in public, as more witnesses give more power to the ritual, hence … JFK. A completely crazy theory?… DYR (Do your research).
Back to Kanye and his standing … the two swords flying towards him never actually touch him but instead form a triangular shape above his head, possibly hinting to a “symbolic” killing and not an actual one. Notice the position of the crown above Kanye’s head. The combination of those elements form an interesting image.
Masonic Square and Compass-
- In Conclusion
Masonic Square and CompassTo sum up the the video, Kanye stands at the border between Masonic knowledge and the decadence of the mundane life, represented by lustful and gluttonous women, lounging around eating grapes. Kanye says “goodbye cruel world / I see you in the morning“, as he has been “chosen” to take part in an initiation process that is often metaphorically described as a “long night,” followed by a glorious awakening as a new being. In order to accomplish this, Kanye needs to kill his old self and be ritualistically reborn. Once this is done, true power is within his grasp.This “moving painting” is definitely a multi-layered artwork, with many levels of interpretation: the first level is a commentary on power by using timeless symbols taken from ancient art; the second level describes a Masonic initiation with a ritual murder and an imminent rebirth.
This video lasts a mere minute and forty-three seconds but it manages to give the viewers plenty to ponder on and many symbols to decode. Looking at its meaning from a pop culture point of view, it is interesting to note that this short-film, intended to be viewed by the general public (especially young people), describes the concept of power with overt Masonic symbolism and occult references. This causes the uninformed viewers to unconsciously associate those symbols with the concept of Power, while “those in the know” get the “insider’s wink” sent by this video. Power ultimately becomes another piece in the on-going process called the “Revelation of the Method,” where the true source of power gradually and subliminally reveals itself to the world and occult rituals take place right in front of the public’s eyes, accepted by pre-implanted psychological facilitators.
I'm not saying that this is what it is represented to be here.Kanye might just have read a few books on masonry and then decided to make it fashionable ;)
“The clock’s tickin’ / I just count the hours”
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
One morning in June, Google's list of the top global searches began to fill up with random words: "fried chicken," "comic book stores," "gyms." Before anyone could stop it, a racial slur jumped to the No. 1 spot.
Many observers concluded that Google must have been hacked. It wasn't.
It was the victim of a prank that redirected armies of people to search for the same things at the same time.
Corporations spend millions of dollars trying to understand and control traffic on the Internet, and more often than not they don't succeed. 4chan has mastered the feat for free.
Created seven years ago by a 15-year-old, 4chan is a vast web of anonymous, uncensored message boards. No one's in charge, but the site's users have managed to pull off some of the highest-profile collective actions in the history of the Internet.
The 4chan "hive mind" has been credited with -- or blamed for, depending on your perspective -- urging tween idol Justin Bieber to head for North Korea as part of his upcoming world tour (as part of an online poll allowing fans to select which country he should visit), spreading a story that Steve Jobs had a heart attack (which caused Apple's stock to fall precipitously) and starting a rumor that there was a bomb at New York's JFK airport (triggering an evacuation).
The June 17 takeover of Google Trends, the powerful tool that companies use to track what's hot on the Internet, wasn't the first time 4chan succeeded in outwitting Google. The site's users have also managed to get a swastika, symbols depicting planes crashing into the World Trade Center and the words "[expletive] you google" on the trends list.
One user of the site was investigated for hacking Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account during the 2008 campaign. Trying to game Google to make a search popular is not illegal, but some of the other pranks have brought inquiries by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. The site's antics have also garnered positive attention: 4chan's founder, Christopher Poole, recently raised $625,000 in funding to create a new online community. Among his investors are some of the most revered Internet inventors and businessmen, including Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, former AOL executive Kenneth Lerer and former Googler Joshua Schachter. The startup is still in stealth mode, so Poole declined to give details.
Digital intuition
How 4chan -- a site built for fun by a teenager that barely ekes out a profit from online ads -- manages over and over again to outwit the systems that multibillion-dollar corporations use to make money on the Internet is one of the great mysteries of the capricious online world.
"The community self-organizes, decides on goals and achieves them in an ad hoc, undirected manner," said Schachter, who invented the social bookmarking tool called Delicious. "I see it like the financial markets -- sort of chaotic. It's hard to understand, but incredibly vital to understanding out how people operate together on very, very large scales."
When 4chan was created in the fall of 2003, it was a narrowly focused "image board" where people interested in Japanese anime could trade comments and photos. Poole told nearly 20 people about it, and the site has grown by word of mouth ever since. It now has 11 million unique visitors (similar to The Washington Post's numbers in May) and 730 million page views a month (similar to the New York Times). There are 1 million new posts per day. Its demographic is largely males ages 18 to 25 -- "guys with nerdier interests," according to Poole.
'Antithesis of Facebook'
At a time when more and more of the Internet seems walled off into communities such as Facebook or MySpace, which operate with pages of rules and proper protocol, 4chan is the exception.You don't need to register to post on the site and you can delete your posts at any time with no record. You can curse and insult all you want. While there are some thoughtful, wonky conversations, many of the posts range from juvenile to risque to just plain gross.
Its critics describe 4chan -- and especially Anonymous, a loosely affiliated group that is credited for some of the pranks -- as the dark side of the Internet. "Hackers on steroids," "domestic terrorists" and "Internet hate machine" are among the insults that have been hurled at it online. It has been blocked, albeit temporarily, by both AT&T and Verizon.
But fans say 4chan is a haven for free speech.
"The Internet needs some of these unstructured spaces. . . . This may be a reaction against other places that have developed that say, 'This is what you use Facebook for, this is what you use LinkedIn for,' " said Wendy Seltzer, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.Poole, who goes by the online name "moot," is now 22 and based in New York. He describes 4chan as the "antithesis of Facebook."
"Facebook is about real-life identity and having all these connections," he said. "4chan is anonymous and ephemeral."
While part of 4chan's ability to manipulate search rankings comes from the use of clever technical tools, a large percentage must still come from sheer manpower because of safeguards Google has throw out searches that seem to be automated.Poole, who says he neither instigated nor participated in any of the pranks, explains how 4chan users manage to get on Google Trends. They say, " 'Let's seize this idea.' " They then spread word through the discussion boards, e-mails, chat services and so on, asking everyone to search for a specific word or words at a certain time.
Next, Poole said, outsiders fan the flames. "Bloggers start to see this trending and think there must be a story, and all start to post stories. Higher up the totem pole, the bigger media outlets see rumors, and they'll comment, 'Hey look what everyone else is looking at,' " he said.
Gaming the trends
Search engine expert Barry Schwartz said the Google Trends list is generated by ranking searches and the number of news blog articles coming out about the Web on a new or unique topic. It's impossible to put a number on how many people must be involved to get a topic at the top, he said, but it's "a ton."
Why people would decide to spend their time following suggestions by 4chan is what's unclear in this chain of events.
"There's a lot of energy in the system from people who have nothing to do, no outlet for their goofing off," Schachter surmised. Seltzer theorized that "when people see it as a game to beat Google or stack a vote, they may be willing to do things that they wouldn't have been willing to do for pay."
In March, Poole was invited to speak at Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. He was asked to talk to a group of engineers about 4chan vs. Facebook -- ways they are similar ("there aren't many," Poole says) and how they differ. He started out his talk by asking people to raise their hands if they had a negative impression of 4chan. Most everyone did. "Apparently," he recalled, "I was a controversial speaker."
I've never been a big fan of diet drinks (I prefer good old water), and now I'm glad. A study conducted by the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio followed over six hundred people ranging from twenty-five to sixty-four years old for up to eight years and found that those drinking diet soda — even as little as one can or bottle a day — did not lose weight and were significantly more likely to become overweight than those who drank regular soft drinks or none at all. How can this be? No one knows for sure, but scientists think that artificial sweeteners, perhaps even the caramel coloring, may muddle brain chemistry. The brain in a sense gets a reward, and the desire for more sweets is intensified. The more of these fake sweet products you eat or drink, the more sweets you want.
Album Review: Loki & Scatabrainz – “Summer Knows... A Darker Shade of Grey"
0 comments Posted by in.SIGHT at 11:01
From the streets of Glasgow, Loki and Scatabrainz have teamed up to present to you "Summer Knows... A Darker Shade of Grey”. A very deep and somewhat autobiographical album, where DJ and MC are side by side, equal creators, just as it was meant to be in Hip-Hop. In the album Loki paints pictures of struggle, disgrace and upsurge, aggression and melancholy - emotions perfectly synchronized with sound by Scatabrainz.
Just as the album’s title suggests, this is not a party album, nor a feel-good mainstream production that sells a better life on the other side of the glass. Oh contraire! The perspective of the album is from inside the sphere of working class struggle and broken dreams. There are two main characters in this peace of work-Loki himself and the city of Glasgow, and the connection between them both is evident through-out. At times it sounds like a love/hate relationship but I think it’s more of a tough love story. The album represents a well tested concept - an artist telling his own story and struggles in his debut. A concept, very hard to pull off-something that Loki has managed to do, for no other reason than the honesty and intimacy of the lyrics and the tales told. However, some tracks feel out of place on the grey scenery of Loki's canvas. The sound and vibe of "Militant Disco" and "Tinitus" simply don't fit within the general idea of the album. That aside, this is a very strong debut. The album represents and ocean of emotions and feelings in which one is deluged right from the start. A grey, though realistic, 16 track depiction of a world, very real to some.
The sound of the album starts of with "A Man of Simple Tastes" -a lively, summery tune with great funk samples. After that the mood follows a slow transition to deeper and harder lyrics, laid over soft instrumentals such as "Unconditional" or dropped on even darker sounds that facilitate the listeners affiliation with the authors pain and anger for the wrongs of today and tomorrow. After the aggression of "Summer Knows" and "Dear Green Waste"(a dissolute sons ode to Glasgow),the hard vibe gives way to a melancholic sound. A great deal of praise must go to the work done on "Moonlight Flitting" - an autobiographical tale about Loki's childhood and teen years and the hardships experienced. In a sense its a story of his own life compared to the transformation of Glasgow. The track to follow, „Social Capital", only elevates the mood and tells yet another story from the grey side. In those two tracks Loki and Scatabrainz have managed to achieve harmony and resonance between the mood of the beat and the mood of the lyrics and are, without any doubt, the strongest pieces from the album.
And just when you begin to feel depressed Loki hits you with "Scatty" and "Militant Disco" which sound lively and definitely more aggressive. Now, whether you like this interruption or not is up to you. If you ask me, they should have been left off, for the sake of sound integrity. And then, somewhere along the middle, Scatabrainz takes charge with "Blue Skies"-a very ear-pleasing fusion of hip-hop, blues and dnb. By track 11("Winter Voices"),one should be familiar with the sound to come, which just gets darker trough stories of abuse, regret, fairy tails of an intoxicated mind transcending into cries of a sober aftermath. A rich palette of honest confessions for things that each one of us once chose to forget. My art teacher used to say that grey is the colour most rich in shades-a fact proven by the wrap up of "Summer knows" by another disruption of the motion that goes from an aggressive expression of discord("Tinitus") to a melancholic ode to the downs of life in "Snowflake" - the apex of Scatabrainz’s great work and a noteworthy appearance by Butterscotch. At the end, "The Sun Turns Grey" serves as a sentencing signature to a portrait of the world's ills through the eyes of a sinner.
Listening to the album more than once only enforced my positive impression of “Summer Knows”. Even if it isn’t fit for the masses, it definitely grew on me and will be in my playlist for a while. What I like most is that the album contributes to the survival of one of the most important traditions of hip-hop - that the rapper and DJ be side by side and equally important. It does this in a great way. And if praise must be given to Loki for his honest, hard hitting lyrics, the same goes to Scatabrainz for his great instrumentals that manage to catch the artist’s mood. When Loki is to have a second album, I would like to see him work with Scatabrainz again. This time around, after telling his story, maybe we can hear his solutions. Peace.
By Radoslav Penchev
Published in The Times Magazine.
A Picture That Changed the Face of AIDS
In November, 1990, LIFE magazine published a photograph of a young man, David Kirby -- his body wasted by AIDS, his gaze locked on something beyond this world -- surrounded by anguished family members as he took his last breaths. The haunting image of Kirby's passing (above), taken by a journalism grad student named Therese Frare, became the one photograph most identified with the HIV/AIDS epidemic that, by then, had seen as many as 12 million people infected. Now, 20 years after her photograph helped transform public perception of the disease, LIFE spoke with Frare about that picture; the international controversy it sparked when United Colors of Benetton used it in a 1992 ad; and the never-before-published photographs she took before and after David Kirby's death -- photos that reveal the untold story behind one of the 20th century's most heart-breaking, indelible images.
I would like to share with you this great article,I recently read about certain random resemblances to 9-11 found in the media and Holywood productions,before 9-11.I do not stand behind this as some weird prophecy,I just recomend it as interesting reading material.
An exert from John Potash's book 'The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders"Note:The book follows mainly 2pac but also the black panters as his mother and surrogate father were high-ranking members.Evidence has now proven the intervention of the FBI in their pursuit and incarciration.
Fame and Politics
By the end of the Reagan/Bush era, Shakur's auspicious musical debut, including lyrics discussing his Black Panther family, coupled with leading movie roles, threatened to bring the Panthers back into vogue.
Thus it is no coincidence that Shakur attracted police attention in direct proportion to his fame and success. In line with Shakur's quote, "I never had a record until I made a record," shortly after his successful solo debut, Oakland police ticketed him for jaywalking, then arrested and beat him in custody.Shakur's first record, 2Pacalypse Now, railed against the FBI, the CIA, and President Bush. In 1992, a year after that album's release, Vice President Dan Quayle, and later Senator Bob Dole, singled him out as responsible for police deaths.
With the FBI watching Shakur since he was a teen, and his leadership in the New Afrikan Panthers, a group dedicated to replicating the Black Panthers,police involvement in his life deserves more scrutiny.
While Shakur's lyrics often dramatized inner-city life, including what some might view as negative images, glorifying gang life and denigrating women, they also included many positive political messages: ideas about Malcolm X and various Black Panthers.As a youth, Shakur performed benefits for Black Panther prisoners. By nineteen, he sang with the Grammy-nominated band Digital Underground. Besides his stint as a Panther Chairman and his Underground Railroad/Thug Life Movement, Shakur participated in a Stop the Violence program, helped with a home for at-risk youth, sponsored a "Celebrity Youth League," joined Central American solidarity benefits, and regularly spoke at rallies for voter registration and progressive activist groups.
The nature of the beneficiaries of Shakur's ever-increasing success must have set off alarms in the intelligence world. Some of Shakur's enormous wealth (the estimated worth of his 200 unreleased recordings alone was over $100 million) was donated to programs and causes his Panther family supported, including Afeni Shakur's research efforts, with her imprisoned partner Mutulu, which eventually contributed to the release of Pratt in 1997.
By the end of the Reagan/Bush era, Shakur's auspicious musical debut, including lyrics discussing his Black Panther family, coupled with leading movie roles, threatened to bring the Panthers back into vogue.
Thus it is no coincidence that Shakur attracted police attention in direct proportion to his fame and success. In line with Shakur's quote, "I never had a record until I made a record," shortly after his successful solo debut, Oakland police ticketed him for jaywalking, then arrested and beat him in custody.Shakur's first record, 2Pacalypse Now, railed against the FBI, the CIA, and President Bush. In 1992, a year after that album's release, Vice President Dan Quayle, and later Senator Bob Dole, singled him out as responsible for police deaths.
With the FBI watching Shakur since he was a teen, and his leadership in the New Afrikan Panthers, a group dedicated to replicating the Black Panthers,police involvement in his life deserves more scrutiny.
While Shakur's lyrics often dramatized inner-city life, including what some might view as negative images, glorifying gang life and denigrating women, they also included many positive political messages: ideas about Malcolm X and various Black Panthers.As a youth, Shakur performed benefits for Black Panther prisoners. By nineteen, he sang with the Grammy-nominated band Digital Underground. Besides his stint as a Panther Chairman and his Underground Railroad/Thug Life Movement, Shakur participated in a Stop the Violence program, helped with a home for at-risk youth, sponsored a "Celebrity Youth League," joined Central American solidarity benefits, and regularly spoke at rallies for voter registration and progressive activist groups.
The nature of the beneficiaries of Shakur's ever-increasing success must have set off alarms in the intelligence world. Some of Shakur's enormous wealth (the estimated worth of his 200 unreleased recordings alone was over $100 million) was donated to programs and causes his Panther family supported, including Afeni Shakur's research efforts, with her imprisoned partner Mutulu, which eventually contributed to the release of Pratt in 1997.
Shakur was also achieving a new-found maturity in his mid-twenties. His engagement to Kidada Jones, daughter of music mogul and Vibe magazine owner, jazz composer Quincy Jones must have worried police and intelligence officials, because of the vast wealth and influence of the elder Jones, and concern that Shakur's activist projects, such as his "Thug Life Movement" to turn drug dealers into lawful singers,and his last interview statements of going back to his family's ways, would mark a return to his earlier radical activism.
The Setup
The finding of continued COINTELPRO-type activities adds weight to evidence that Shakur's associate Jacques Agnant (a/k/a Ricardo Brown, a/k/a Nigel) was an undercover agent who infiltrated his life and contributed to his legal problems. In 1993, after befriending Shakur, Agnant introduced Shakur to Ayanna Jackson the night she had consensual sex with the singer, first on a dance floor and then in his hotel room.In a second visit to Shakur's hotel room several days later, set up again by Agnant, Jackson charged Shakur, Agnant, and two others with sexual assault.
Events around the trial point to Agnant's government connections. Agnant's trial lawyer, Paul Brenner, had represented the Policemen's Benevolent Association for many years.In addition, Agnant's case was severed from that of the other defendants without protest from the prosecutors. And, after Shakur's trial, Agnant's felony indictment was dismissed, and he simply pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors.
Shakur was convicted of three of the nine charges, relating only to non-consensual touching of Jackson's buttocks (typically reported only as "sexual abuse"), and sentenced to one-and-a-half to four-and-a-half years, an extremely harsh sentence.(In 1994, New York City police admitted "accidentally erasing" a tape Shakur and companions had of Jackson that supported Shakur's defense. His lawyer, Michael Warren, successfully argued that the police also planted guns in the hotel suite where the supposed assault occurred.
Jacques Agnant was also connected to Shakur's near-fatal mugging in late November 1994. Toward the end of Shakur's sexual assault trial, Agnant was seen several times secretly following Shakur. Several days later, "Booker," a man Agnant had introduced to Shakur, paged the singer and asked him come to a studio in Times Square to record with a new rapper. Booker called Shakur insistently that night, lied to him about who would be there, and offered $7,000 cash from his pocket to get Shakur to the building. When Shakur arrived with three companions, two men held him at gunpoint in the lobby and stripped him of his gold jewelry, although they left his diamond-encrusted Rolex, which Agnant had bought for him. Then they shot him in the groin and twice in the head, while he was face-down on the floor.
Los Angeles
Some suspicious aspects of the event were noted by editors of the Amsterdam News.Shakur and a companion both said they saw a police car outside the lobby doors on Broadway, immediately after the assailants fled, guns in hand. The New York Police reported this as a random mugging, yet the assailants picked an extremely well-lit Times Square area for a robbery.
In what the Washington Post described as "one of the many strange twists in the case,"three of the same cops who first appeared a year earlier at Tupac's hotel in the sexual assault arrest were the first to arrive at this near-fatal "mugging."And at least one has been identified as a member of New York's now infamous Street Crime Unit.
A History of Provocations
There are many examples of police and intelligence provocations against Panthers, including infiltrators, fake letters, fabricated rivalries, etc.
After Shakur's imprisonment for the sexual abuse conviction, jailmate "informants" and anonymous letters he received led the singer to believe that his fellow rapper friend Biggie Smalls (a/k/a Christopher Wallace) had set up the shooting, even though Smalls lacked a motive for doing so.
Biggie Smalls was killed in Los Angeles in 1997, seven months after Shakur's murder. The L.A. Times reported that New York police officers were near the murder scene when it occurred, supposedly taking part in a federal investigation into Smalls's record label.His death helped "substantiate" the East/West rap war that the authorities were trying to foster, and directed suspicions toward Brooklyn-based Smalls for California-based Shakur's death.
Political writer Christian Parenti suggests that the East/West rap music feud, as well as Shakur's sexual assault charge, may have been a latter-day COINTELPRO against rap artists.
A Desperate Agreement
After rejecting two previous offers from Death Row Records owner/producer Marion "Suge" Knight, an imprisoned Tupac Shakur was finally forced to sign a contract that included his bail money. But people close to Shakur knew he wanted to leave Death Row and start his own label. Ten days before his murder, Shakur fired Death Row lawyer Dave Kenner, who had been assigned to him by Knight. Friends of Shakur reported that this move was very dangerous because of Kenner's power in Death Row Records and Knight's violent business practices.
LAPD intelligence operations suggest Knight's connection to a government program.Los Angeles was the site of the largest western FBI/police intelligence collaboration against Black activists in the 1960s and 1970s, as described above in the targeting of Geronimo Pratt. L.A. was also the site of the CIA-Contra connection to crack cocaine in the 1980s, and there is evidence that Knight was involved in drug dealing at that time.Crack cocaine infiltrated into South Central L.A., created millionaires, some of whom worked with the authorities, particularly the notorious government collaborator "Freeway" Ricky Ross.
One of L.A.'s two top cocaine dealers who came on the scene at the same time as Ross and reportedly "ended up buying from him... and... learning from him," was Michael Harris.Harris, who ended up in jail, was represented by David Kenner, who convinced him to put up the first million dollars to start Death Row Records. Kenner made himself president of Death Row Records and later completely cut Harris out of the company. Harris is currently suing Kenner.
Suge's Role
It was Suge Knight who was driving the car in Las Vegas the night of Tupac's murder. Kidada Jones, Tupac's fiancée, reported that Tupac wanted to drive his own car that night, but Knight convinced the rapper to ride with him in an open-windowed BMW. According to an ex-bodyguard of Knight's, the murder scene was "aberrant" because there were no armed bodyguards in Knight's car nor in the accompanying car behind them. Although Knight had lived in Las Vegas for several years, and knew the area well, he made a curious U-turn away from a nearby hospital as Shakur lay dying next to him. Weeks later, Knight stated that he wouldn't give anyone information about the killers because "it's not my job." Knight was arrested and jailed for violating his probation a few days after Shakur's death. He has continued to run Death Row Records from his jail cell. (In early April, Knight was named as a suspect in Biggie Smalls's murder, which the authorities claim he masterminded from jail.)
After Tupac's death, Afeni Shakur was told that her son owed Death Row money, even though his albums for the company had grossed over $150 million in sales (70 percent of rap albums are bought by white youth) . While Afeni won the legal right to obtain all of her son's unreleased recordings, she only received a portion of them from Death Row. And their more than $100 million estimated dollar value would soon decrease. With very little financial motive for the only suspect, Death Row, government pressure probably led Knight to let 13 illegal bootleg discs hit the streets and massively devalue Afeni Shakur's inherited estate.
Tupac's Legacy
In his last interviews, Shakur espoused radical political ideas and plans. He spoke of religion as social control, of returning to his family's ways but "with a more militant philosophy," of plans to start an interracial "lost-tribe" political party, and to devote future album proceeds to start community centers. He also explained that his trademark "W" hand sign, which had indicated the West Coast, would now mean "War." He said, "West Coast and East Coast together [to gain] power" for "Black America."
Shakur's incredible fan devotion and societal influence were likely thorns in the side of the intelligence community. After his death, Shakur received tributes by leading intellectuals and was memorialized in mass assemblies at Black colleges. His legacy sparked courses devoted to his work at prestigious universities, including the University of California at Berkeley.
While unsubstantiated versions of the story behind Tupac Shakur's death are frequently asserted, there has been no real independent investigation of government involvement. Shakur's political-activist life and radical heritage call for such an inquiry.
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