LIVE FROM BROOKLYN ZOO!!

All links subject to change

Yeah, for those of us Stateside we get Monday off, and all roads lead to Brooklyn in the Rotten Apple as far as I'm concerned. Labor Day is the time to kiss the Summer malaters, although it's like the summer left two weeks ago out here. The Big Caribbean parade in Eastern Parkway is on. Mob parties all over the city, lots of Caribbean artists and bands in town, reggae, soca, calypso, zouk, kompa...overload! Kabisa... black people will be outside!

Brooklyn is the one place I go to and feel like you in cribs again. Wall to wall blackdom in some parts. Check out the disheveled urban landscape you see while you're on Fulton Street or Norstrand Ave during the day and you may be forgiven for thinking you're on Tom Mboya street, except you see no matts and the traffic lights work. The preachers and the beggars are there. You even have to watch out for the stick-up kids, just like home.

Acolyte and a few others decided to desecrate an institution last week, well I guess she did it to herself. I'm talking about those over-bustious flicks of Aretha. Well I'm here to hit you with something different. I don't jua why she spends so much time flaunting her 40 year old frame in hopes of selling records, instead of showing off her 40 year old talent. I miss the old danceaholic, singing some cool ballads no-nip-&-tuck-jobs-having, movie-making with Tupac, non-cleavage flaunting artist. But she's flossing them assets, so you might as well drool.

And she reportedly has an 18 0r 19 year old child too? Airbrushing is a mutha.


Meanwhile another institution, Ron Isley of the Isley Brothers fame, is going to jail for 37 months for tax evasion charges. The Feds don't play. I wish we played the same way with the perps of Goldenberg/Anglo-Leasing/Insert Kenyan corruption scandal here. And he got a mercy bid too. He was initially facing over 25 years.

Speaking of chests, ladies would you rock with this device? It perks them thangs up (***Link is not work safe!!!***). Shall your deceipt know no end?

And Venezuela is going for the throne, the petroleum throne.

Mrembo was talking about racism in Denmark and then I ran across the story of a school bus driver who made all the black kids sit in the back, away from the white kids in Shreveport, Louisiana ( I'm saying though, si it's back-bench that's the cool place to ride in? Americans have it backwards, but I digress). Nine kids piled onto 2 seats. This kicked up a fuss with the parents of the black kids and some civil rights people. The Feds are also doing the obligatory sniff-around.

Bus rides are heavily symbolic of race issues, a la Rosa Parks, to start with, without someone pulling a stunt like this. But my point is, no matter where you are, if you aren't on the right side of the mother continent or off it, you will catch some hate. Stay strong.


Rappers or poets in the house? Pay attention. Elzhi from Slum village is teaching.....


Onward to Brooklyn Zoo for another Labor Day of good music, food and black folks united under the riddims.



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