NY Newsday Update on the Shooting

NY Newday continues to explore new aspects of the story.

The Game's Website Hacked?

At the moment it looks like someone's hacked The Game's official website forum that redirects to a picture of 50 Cent at the domain pen15h34d.com.  The text at that page currently reads:

HAXORED BY 50 CENT HIMSELF DONT SHOOT UP MY N*GGERS! 5 GOLDEN MANBABIES!
pen15h34d@gmail.com
MarsAttacks didn't think that was funny :-(

A Who Is search reveals little except the domain is registered at Tucows and must be taking advantage of a privacy option.  I can't assess the level of difficulty of this hack because I have no expertise in this area.  But you can find out more about the forum at the site's login page if you're so inclined. [Actually that's also getting redirected now.  It wasn't when I first visited the site, however.]

Official website of The Game: The Black Wall Street

Hip Hop Shooting: Follow the Money, Not the Macho

I'm thoroughly disgusted by all these macho, macho men and the fact that when many people think hip hop, that's what comes to mind. But I've made my editorial stance quite clear in the past and I'm going to focus on the business angle of yesterday's shooting outside Hot 97, because that may be a more important element than recognized.

Although some will view the shooting as a publicity stunt, and it's always worth considering, I'm just not buying that scenario in this particular instance. The Game's album has done very well and 50 Cent's album looks like it will also do well, regardless of leaks and early bad reviews. Also, one reporter, who recently interviewed 50 Cent in the prepress buildup for The Massacre, told me he asked 50 how he was going to keep his crew from falling apart since that seemed to be a big part of rap's history. He said that such problems had resulted from people getting ripped off and that he was going to make sure that everybody was treated fairly and got paid.

Now, in all the reports I'm seeing, nothing indicates that money squabbles were the problem between 50 and The Game. However, when 50 Cent talked about his beefs with other rappers in a recent feature at MTV.com by Shaheem Reid (who's building some serious cred right now), he states the following:

"I ain't gonna let up off of them until their homes are in foreclosure ... Till it's really that bad . . . For me, if you begin to destroy, you should destroy completely. They already went too far. Like right now at this particular point, if I let off of Murder Inc., they'll linger for a little bit and people will start to feel like it's OK to start to like them. They get back in position, then guess what? They want to fight again. Now, they're like, 'Oh, peace treaty, wave a white flag, everybody please get up off us. This kid is killing us.' Now that makes sense for them to do it at this point. But you let them get back on their feet and they gonna wanna fight again."

Whether or not 50 can really affect sales in that manner remains to be seen. My observation is that most people decide what they like and then justify it after the fact, except when they're stuck in peer settings that don't give them any personal flex. And, given the fact that so much of the consumer audience for hip hop is composed of young males across racial and ethnic divides, one has to take into account both the intense peer pressure and the constricted thinking regarding difference so present in that demographic.

Nevertheless, 50's making it clear that he's going after his rivals in a way that doesn't just boost everybody with a little controversy. He's going after their money and that's generally when the gloves come off for real whether in the streets or the boardroom. As a short term tactic, it makes sense because if he can pull that off in a visible way, then people will start to back off and younger artists will focus elsewhere if they want to build their rep through diss records, except for those who are so hard and living for the moment that he will become the prime target. So, it may be a good short term tactic, but it's a strategy of self destruction.

This makes me sad because talking to reporters about their interviews with 50 Cent revealed a man much smarter than previously known, who may have been hiding his intelligence for PR purposes by giving the press what they asked for in the past and who seems more willing to accept that he has something to live for. In any case, I will continue with additional posts on this topic with an emphasis on following the money, especially within the G-Unit and Interscope Records.

See also: Part 2

Hip Hop Bloggers at SOHH

You know, normally I'd be excited about discovering that SOHH now has hip hop bloggers and I was, two posts back. But now this whole shooting deal is dragging me down. Let me just add that I reduced the url from Media Chin-Check and found what is apparently a whole crew of bloggers at SOHH. There's no news on their homepage so I guess I'll follow up later, after I get some sleep. If these guys are getting paid, it could be big news for problogging, not just for hip hop but for music journalism in general. If they're volunteers I'm not so impressed because hip hop bloggers are already well established. Nevertheless, I look forward to finding out more and getting back to you about it.

Update: Now that I've gotten a chance to take a closer look at SOHH Blogs, I realize that I've basically discovered a beta version of what I assume will eventually go live. However, I don't feel that I acted prematurely because tech reporters are a big inspiration to me and this is exactly what they do when they discover something that is accessible online before it officially launches. That said, I don't want to critique it until they go public. The big news is that SOHH has four bloggers and I'm happy to be the first to report that, at least from what I can tell. It's a smart move on their part and, judging from first impressions, they're not just using blogging technology to post news items, they actually have real people writing real blogs. Beyond that, I'm looking forward to the launch and I wish them the best.

Update: Please check out my followup on SOHH Blogs based on an interview with SOHH cofounder Felicia Palmer.

Hip Hop Bloggers on the Hot 97 Shooting

Well, I just checked out commentary from Oliver Wang and Jay Smooth and it's hitting me how bad this is going to be for hip hop.  Hopefully it'll make the wanksters think twice about playing gangsta on the Internet, but it will probably just heat things up in all sectors.  Already, I'm seeing people in Jay Smooth's comments section trying to redirect folks to the "real" issues.

You know, every time a person shows they care about something there's always somebody around to tell them that their concerns aren't worth their time.  This whole thing is disgusting and using George Bush as a foil to stop hip hop from dealing with internal problems is just not an acceptable response.  Besides, it's becoming a cliche that doesn't really accomplish anything.

Breaking News: Hip Hop Shooting and an SOHH Blogger?

I'm not sure which news bit interests me more at the moment. Somebody in 50 Cent's entourage got shot* in the leg when leaving NY's Hot 97 radio station and the hip hop blogosphere* is all abuzz (thanks to funkdigi for the discovery). Apparently 50 Cent was announcing that he's kicking The Game out of G-Unit for "disloyalty", whatever that means, while his crew was leaving the radio station and somebody in a group of "fans" shot somebody in the crew.

Now, that's big news in one sense, except for the fact that it's totally inevitable. Go to 50 Cent's website and you'll see an animation in which a vehicle gets shot up. Until a couple of days ago, you'd see a picture of 50 Cent pointing a gun at you. Read the latest feature on The Game and he's riding around wearing a tshirt with the outline of a gun visible underneath. Sure, some people are just playing gangster and get in over their heads. But it's not all entertainment and 50 seems to be beefing with everybody, so there's a long list of possible suspects with huge entourages since hip hop is all about community!

But some guy getting shot in the leg isn't really business news, so I'm happy to report that my blogger detective hat is on and I discovered a trackback from funkdigi to what appears to be Hashim Warren with yet another blog. If you keep up with Hashim, you know he'd be happiest if he could start a new blog every month, but this one's called Media Chin-Check and it's hosted at SOHH which has never had bloggers as far as I know.

Apparently Hashim's been holding out on his old friends cause I haven't seen any announcements at Hip Hop Blogs, his home base, which I monitor closely since every now and then he has something relevant to say. I am kind of wondering why Hashim has a Mar. 1st post that was supposedly posted at 8:25 am, which is still a few hours from now. Have I gone back to the future or have I entered a dream state? I'll have to admit, I did just see the director's cut of Donnie Darko and it did temporarily alter my sense of reality.

But don't worry my friends, I'm going to get to the bottom of this, even though I was actually hoping to get to bed early. Oh, if you're wondering about the shooting, everybody will be covering it. If I have anything to add, I'll let you know. The cynic in me thinks that it will be good for business, but who's exactly?

By the way, since I'm finding that my humor isn't always obvious and I do think it's a bad thing that this unidentified fellow got shot, please don't take my offhand remarks too seriously. Everybody's been expecting something and this is probably just the beginning. Personally I'm sick to death of all the macho theatrics in hip hop so I will probably hold my tongue for a bit cause it's feeling rather sharp.

[*dead link removed]