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I can’t stand the art world.

Even though I have been inundated by art all my life, have been creating art as long as I can remember, even though I can honestly say that art has saved my life and brought me back from insanity on more than one occasion, even though I regularly attend and even participate in, hell, I’ve even organized and curated gallery shows and auctions … I hate the art world.  I particularly hate “openings” (they ain’t open) with guest lists, velvet ropes, and linebacker sized off-duty cops in black suits blocking entry.

Maybe some of this attitude is inherited from my father, who painted all his life (still does) but never could seem to play the game, didn’t seem able to muster the right combination of self-promotion and “net-working” required to become a star. Or perhaps a simpler explanation is that art has always been readily available to me. Forget “easily accessible,“ the stuff was inescapable. I was literally tripping over the shit. Our home in Brooklyn was crammed with paintings and smelled like mineral spirits. We had more books on art than we had socks. Fifty-fifty chance that the pot on the stove contained rabbit-skin glue for prepping canvases instead of chicken noodle soup.

As soon as I was old enough to venture outside, I was confronted by intricate Brooklyn-style calligraphy like “The Tomahawks,” “Jester,” “Swiss” and “Super Strut.” And the subway rides… Whoa! I watched some of the most revolutionary, mind-blowing work of the twentieth century not only roll right up to my face, but actually open up and let me ride like that sweet chariot I kept hearing about.

So maybe I’m spoiled, but every time I run into someone who claims to promote the arts, who makes their living off artists, yet somehow manages to convey to me that I am not cultured enough, or educated enough, or stylishly-attired enough, or wealthy enough, or somehow just not worthy to even gaze upon whatever post-modern, minimalist, conceptualist ca-ca they’re pushing this month, I can’t help but feel bad for them. These guys are akin to the religious leaders who purchase all the artwork they deem profane or sacrilegious and then lock it away in vaults beneath the Vatican so it can’t corrupt the masses. If you don’t believe that art is to be seen, maybe you‘re in the wrong business. Maybe it’s your name that shouldn’t be on the guest list.  But hey, what do I know?

Anyways, when I hear that artists (some of whom get more for a painting than I make in two years) are giving away their work for a cause, I’m all for it, especially this cause. You see, as a little kid, I watched my Mother die slowly of a cancer that probably would have been treatable today. Four years of chemotherapy and radiology (cures that were deadlier than the disease itself), of watching this strong, beautiful woman reduced to a skeletal bald horror show… that was almost too much for my nine-year-old psyche.  My escape was to my favorite art museum: the bench on the uptown #2 and 3 platform at Atlantic Avenue Station. Yeah, the admission was fifty cents, but I knew how to sneak in. LEE and SLAVE, CASE2 and BUTCH2, PART and CHAIN, DEL and MOOSE, all those guys kept me from snapping. They showed me there was room for beauty in this cold world. I didn’t let myself cry at the hospital, but I cried like a bitch when LEE dedicated a whole car to “MOM 101.” And no, graffiti didn’t cure cancer, but it damn sure eased my pain.

So, for Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG Global Cancer Campaign, I gladly braved the velvet ropes, the clipboard-holders, the bodybuilding bouncers, the snooty elitists, the cool kids, and other assorted vampires. Plus, I just tell ’em my name is “Dante Ross,” works every time. Nah, I got jokes.  I was actually granted all-access thanks to my man Allen AKA asking me to write a little something for the worldwide bloggy-sphere. Now, I wouldn’t ever want to be an art critic, and I’m always a little leery of the guys who stick tape recorders in my face, but when Allen asked me to talk with some of the artists involved with this event, I figured, what the hell, I know most of these cats and enjoy picking their brains anyway. I get to talk shop with four artists I admire (all of whom, by the way, have put in work in the streets) and I get to help raise awareness about a cancer foundation at the same time. Plus, there’s always the classic crack-dealer rationale… if I don’t do it somebody else will.

First up was the dude I personally know the least, but whose work stood out the most to me: Dzine, out of Chicago. I first got open to this guy’s work while standing in line for a Batman themed roller coaster at an amusement park in Jersey. Dzine had been commissioned to give it that finishing touch of gritty urban Gotham City authenticity: graffiti. Instead of just writing his own name all over the place, he chose to pay homage to some of my heroes, executing perfect renditions of pieces by Dondi, Lee, and all the greats of the Golden Age of New York Subway Painting. Dzine’s piece for this show was a custom bicycle that looked like what might have happened if Ram-Ell-Zee and the illest Chicano Low-Rider in LA collaborated with unlimited funds and a bundle of Bomber-Z. This thing was candy painted, pinstriped, chromed-out, gold-leafed, engraved and encrusted with ornate battle armor. Oh, did I mention the neon? No? How ‘bout the sound system?  Clyde Frasier could have pulled up to the Garden on this bike with his head held high. The only thing missing was the heart-shaped waterbed.  This thing was what we fantasized about while we tried to hook up our bikes as kids, risking life and limb to steal the chrome air valve caps off the tires of the real pimpmobiles in the neighborhood. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, Dzine was kind enough to hook up the iPod for me and, lo and behold, this bad taxi had its own original soundtrack compliments of J-Electronica (if you haven’t listened to J, I’d suggest you do so or you’ll be stranded just like Crusoe). And it’s all 100% donated for the Lance Armstrong Foundation’s cause.

The first thing I needed to know was is it street-legal? Does it function? Can I get a ride, yo? “If I make two minor adjustments, you could ride it down Houston Street right now,” Dzine assured me. “That’s what I like, it’s sculptural, it’s about the craftsmanship, but it’s functional as well. I did a boat-sculpture for the Venice Biennale, completely functional. A ‘77 custom Chris-Craft. I completely gutted it out and suicided the front, candy-paint, pinstriped, it’s got the suede seats, ten TV screens, a DJ Booth …but, it’s about culture identity. What can be a low-rider? What does it mean if you trick-out a luxury boat? Does it make it Latino? Or Black?” I told him that in my neighborhood kids didn’t have a lot, but whatever they did have, be it a pair of sneakers, a bike or a radio, whatever, they took pride in it, they hooked it up, customized it, made it fresh. “ It’s funny you say that, cause the new bike I’m doing for Art Basel in Miami Beach is completely framed out in wood and it’s laced with classic boom-boxes, I got the old Casio with the key board on it…” Here I had to interrupt and ask if he had the JVC.  “I got the JVC, Man! I got the one that was in Wild Style!” Dzine said, getting hyped. “But it’s about that nostalgia.” I had to ask him how he got down with J.Electronica who is the first guy to get me open on the art of M.C.ing in a looong time. (Although, I have to admit I almost didn’t give him a listen because of his name. “Electronica” had me thinking this was some techno-raver type silliness, but please, do not sleep.)  “Thank you, thank you, thank you, for asking that… because I had lost my faith in Hip-Hop a long time ago, I was just really confused about it, and my boy DIZ, he’s actually a House D.J. from Chicago, turned me on to J. He said ‘You gotta hear this’ and I just got goose bumps. Bananas! I reached out to J on MySpace and he said he liked my work, and we just made it happen.” I asked how someone could reach out to Dzine if they wanted to commission a bike, or a speed boat, or a plane, ‘cause I know when I hit the lotto, I’m going to need to get me a Jamaican style mobile sound-system-slash –record-store and ride around slinging 45’s like my man from Rockers. Dzine said, “no problem, just go through Deitch Projects, Jeffery is the man.”

While we were talking my boy Ease rolled up looking dapper, as usual. Nowadays he goes by his birth name, José Parlá, but he’s still Ease to me. I guess old habits die hard. I mean, I still call the Force MDs “The Force MCs” and if I ever met Shaquille O’Neil, I’d probably call him Shaq-Fu. Plus, the name Ease fits him so well, a genuinely good dude, always rocking a smile, he’s just Easy like Sunday Morning.

Now, I’ve painted walls along side José and I can I tell you he has paid his dues, and then some. These days, it seems like any ol’ body can come to New York from West Witchahassee and just start bombing (in fact, sometimes it looks like more out of town writers are up in Manhattan than natives), but when Ease and his Ink Heads came through (after thoroughly wrecking Miami) it wasn’t so wide open. That these guys put in the amount of work they did is evidenced by who gave them respect. They formed allegiances with the KOC crew out of Brooklyn and eventually Ease got put down with the legendary TFP crew by none other than the great Case2. No small feat for an out-of-towner.

José was always nice with the hand style, a seemingly dying art, and has incorporated that easily into his fine art. Layering ruddy-browns and crusty concrete grays with a web of intricate calligraphy, his pieces look like the few walls left in the city that have somehow avoided gentrification and urban renewal. You know, that spot that has been so ugly for so long, it has become gorgeous.  José explained that for this piece, his inspirations were his two Grandparents who died of cancer, his Aunt, Uncle, and his good friend Dr. Alan Berkman who are living with the disease:

I had to ask José about his choice to work under his birth name.  I struggle with this myself.  Is it still appropriate for a forty-two year old to introduce himself as “Kid Fresh” in a business meeting? Is an alias or tag even necessary after one has retired from any illegal activity? I have been known by various names at different stages in my life, some chosen, some bestowed upon me. Some I choose to keep, others that I can’t seem to shake no matter how embarrassing. I believe it was a Native American who said that the most important name is the one a man gives himself.  José’s answer surprised me, and made me hope that I can remember to call him José Parlá from now on: “The year that my father passed away I decided that I wanted to pay homage to the family name. His name was the same as mine: José Parlá.” Gotta respect that. “Around the same time, I was beginning to get more acclaim as an artist, using the name Ease; it just seemed to me that too many people were trying to milk that graffiti cow. Everybody was getting the most they could out of that culture and just wanted to stand out from the pile. Plus, everyone knows I’m a writer. If you look at my paintings, whether my name is Ease, José Parlá, or something else, look at the surface… You know that person making that work is a writer.  I never forget the roots of where I came from and you can see that in my work. The hand styles were influenced by guys like Case2, and Phase, I used to look up to writers like Strider and then I had the Miami influence as well. Writers like Seam from VO5, Dash FC TC5, and my own crew. I wanted to pay homage to writers… the calligraphic aspect of it.” 

I asked José to tell me a little about working with Case2, who was like a Lance Armstrong for my generation, beating all odds and coming back to take the crown. Case lost his right arm and trained himself to paint with his left, not only earning the title “King of Style” for his amazing burners, but also pulling off incredible feats of athleticism. He could climb a fence faster than writers with all their limbs, rack paint better, and would knock you out cold if you tested him. “Case is an incredible human being, he’s not only missing his arm, but a lot of people don’t know that he also has a prosthetic leg as well. He is really a powerful being. He didn’t let that hold him back. Inspirational… a huge influence on me, a great friend and one of the most incredible artists I’ve ever met.”  Agreed. Whenever I run into José, we always laugh and joke (and I ALWAYS call him Ease) but this interview gave me a new perspective. Even though he’s still doin’ it with ease, I think from now on I’ll have to call him Mister José Parlá.

Now, my man Futura probably doesn’t need much of an introduction from me. Whether you’re into Fine Art, Design, Graphics, Old School NYC Graffiti, Music, Fashion, Foot wear, Photography, whatever… The name Futura rings bells. I’ve been a fan (though I’d personally prefer he keep it up as a visual artist than to ever try rapping again) ever since I got to look at one of his pieces up close… It was on a school in the L.E.S. back in the 80’s, and to see the fine lines this dude was able to coax out of a spray can was incredible.  Now, a lot of writers in the mid 80’s tried to emulate Futura’s move away from letterforms into “abstraction” without an understanding of the science behind what he was trying to do. Doc TC5 told me (and I suspect he heard it from Dondi) that these weren’t abstractions at all, but rather representations of aerial views Futura had studied from planes during his time in the military. Here was my chance to get it on record from the man himself…

Here I interrupted him, saying I heard he used to lay his canvases on the floor and work overhead.  “I still do,” Futura replied. “It also turned out that to effectualize my techniques the can had to be upside down anyway.”  Kids nowadays are using similar techniques: emptying the pressure from spray cans and working them upside down to get pencil thin lines, but Futura had already mastered this back in the 80’s before the advent of the special spray caps used today:

When I asked Futura if that was the way his work should be properly displayed (maybe inlaid into the floor with clear plexi over the top?) he just laughed.

Our Man Futura was the first to do an Art Bike for Armstrong back in 2005 for the Tour de France and has had a long relationship with Lance. I wondered why he had been absent for the Stages show in Paris back in July and here’s what he told me:  “I didn’t participate in the first Stages event in Paris because I know Lance personally and had already done a bike for him and released a shoe with him and I really wasn’t interested in doing another bike. But when I got the call that they were doing it New York, you know, it’s the kinda call you really don’t mind getting and I was like of course… whatever you need, I’m on board. And it’s for charity, which I’m totally down with. They did the whole thing top-shelf.”

The last artist I got to speak with was Kaws, who I originally met through my partner West One FC. This was back before Kaws got into altering ads in bus shelters and phone booths. Back when he was still doing damage along the highways between NJ and NY and smashing freights. We belong to the same organization: The FC TC5 Conglomerate. Kaws has come into his own in a major way since those days and his signature double-X dead eyes can be found on anything from t-shirts and toothbrushes to museum walls and billboards in Times Square. The first thing that strikes me when talking to Kaws is that for a guy who is a self-marketing genius on the level of a Salvador Dali, he’s very soft- spoken and reserved… almost shy.  “I grew up in Jersey City and got into graff, helped me explore my geography through graff, got into painting over advertisements, got into design and painting, brought me to here, where I am now, umm …yeah.”
Okay, Sports Fans, there you have it.  My question for Kaws was with having worked on so many toys, products, apparel, as well as paintings like the one in this exhibit AND of course all the graff and light-box ads… Did he approach these projects differently from each other? Was there a separation in his mind between design, commercial work and fine art?

I wanted to talk a little about his many collaborations with Hip-Hop musicians and how all that came about. Here’s the long and short of it: “I was doing a lot of work in Japan with Nigo, and at some point he hooked up with Pharell and those guys. I think after they went to Japan and saw all the work I was doing out there they became interested. I think it’s kinda ironic a guy in America goes to Japan to find my work, and then comes back and does stuff with me here. Then other people in America find out about my stuff. It wasn’t a straight route, but that’s how it went.”

That’s how it usually goes.  Rock n’ roll, selvedge denim, we don’t know what we’ve got until someone across the ocean sells it back to us. I doubt Kaws would have reached the level of fame he has had he stayed on a highway overpass by the Lincoln Tunnel. At least it might’ve taken a little longer.

What immediately strikes me when viewing Kaws’s work on a canvas, as opposed to seeing a t-shirt or magazine cover, is just how clean and steady his lines are. This ain’t no silk-screen or node-edited vector graphic. He truly is that nice with a brush.
Of course, he had to give equal time to product as well. “We also did bikes for this event that will go on sale at Sotheby’s on Sunday which will go towards the Armstrong foundation. Lance has been really supportive, it’s a good thing.”

A good thing, indeed…  Lance Armstrong is a real live Super Hero. Not because he won the Tour de France, plenty of folks have done that throughout the years (Okay, so no one else has done it a record breaking seven times consecutively) and not just because he did it after beating stage three cancer from which doctors only gave him a 40% chance of survival. Not simply because he is a champion swimmer, tri-athlete, runs the marathon, drives a pace car in the frickin’ INDY500. Not because he fathered a child after doctors said he could no longer conceive due to testicular cancer treatment. Not because he always took the high road and showed true strength of character during the anti-doping witch hunts that threatened to tear professional cycling apart.  Nah, those are mere mortal feats.  I say Lance is a Super Hero because he stands up to the United States Congress on behalf of cancer patients and their families. He pressures world leaders to take action; causing both 2008 presidential candidates to release their cancer plans for the first time in history. He fights daily for the survivors and their loved ones, for the underserved, for the youth, for the families and the caregivers.

He wasn’t satisfied just to head the foundation that bears his name, so in 2007 he joined with Andre Agassi, Muhammad Ali, Warrick Dunn, Jeff Gordon, Mia Hamm, Tony Hawk, Andrea Jaeger, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Mario Lemieux, Alonzo Mourning and Cal Ripken, Jr. to found Athletes for Hope, an organization which helps other professional athletes get involved in charitable causes. (I’ve always been of the opinion that the New York Yankees and the New York City Public School Teachers should have to trade salaries every other year.)

Oh, in his spare time, he’s also a TRUE supporter of the arts.  Not just collecting and promoting, but actually giving artists a platform from which to change people’s lives. Not only the fabulous people’s lives, but that dirty little kid hanging out on the subway bench all day because he’s scared to go home and watch his mother dying.

So give him his yellow jersey, but understand he ain’t yellow.

Dzine for Livestrong Stages.

José Parlá for Livestrong Stages.

Futura for Livestrong Stages.

Kaws for Livestrong Stages.

Empire Roller Disco Brooklyn 1987
EASE!!!

My real writing career began at Ft. Hamilton lay-up, Church Ave., spots like that. It’s only fitting that I bring it back full circle thirty years later. Graffiti Never Dies…

BAD FRIDAY…
See, Friday is traditionally the day a man recieves his pay. He comes home with a little extra pep in his step, singin’ some fly Johnny Kemp tune. You can’t tell him shit; he’s got the groceries. Maybe he grabs a little knick-knack or bric-a-brac for the kids, just a little cheap plastic Chinese something or other, but it makes the shorties scream in delight and tear up the house like they had too much Cookie Crisp Vanilla Wafer Flavor. Maybe he got some flowers from the Korean grocer for his girl, but the way she looks at him says; no flowers necessary, he’s good tonight.

But when you wake up early on a Friday to the sound of your girl on the cell beefing with Optimum cause your Triple-Play is done off like the Philadelphia Phillies and your cable box wont even give you the time of day…
When your banging on the bottom of the Bustelo can, but aint nothing else coming out…
Then when it dawns on you you can’t even shoot someone an e-mail to politely inquire about the status of your invoice, because Optimum got ALL your systems lockdown …
Na Good Friday.

Today call me William Money, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition.

So if you know me and you owe me, you better find one hundred ways like James Ingram.

Ramona Falls “I Say Fever” from Barsuk Records on Vimeo.

Free Tragedy

Children On Dust

Images from http://www.tagsareknown.com

“Who goes there!?! Briggy!”

Snickers ad in the UK.

“We tear shit down…”

If you are bored try it sometime, pick ANY major musician of the 20th century, google their name and Laswells in the same search window.  I doubt it will take six degrees to link ’em. 
(Mick Jagger? The Ramones? Miles Davis? Horace Andy ? Hendrix?  Waaaaaaaaay too easy. You gotta go into like NONA Hendrix or Fuckin’ Tommy Chong to find even one degree of separation.)

GrandMixer D.St (before the X)

Peep my man WEN TC-5 in the background

What whiteboy would dare attempt a Gregory Issacs cover? Only Red Man…and then only w/ the Taxi crew behind him.

Moon Shots! Plam! Plam!

“Imagine a Mickey [Mouse] wearing Air Jordans, leaning on a Moët bottle crowned with a dukey rope chain around his neck, dripping in gold and saying your favorite songs hook.” - PHADE TNT TC-5 TFP
Understand the roots of “Street-Wear”; when there were no brands by kids in the culture for kids in the culture, when the most you could hope to do was rock what everybody else rocked with a little more attitude, tilt your Kangol at an extreme angle, sew a permanent crease in your burgundy Lee’s, maybe iron on letters on your cardigan sweaters, graffiti writers started painting custom denim suits, hats, sneakers, whatever.
My man PHADE TNT and his partners NIKE TNT (who helped bring a young kid from his projects called Jay-Z into the game) and KASHEME (R.I.P.) took it to the next level, branding themselves the “SHIRT KINGS” and setting up for business.
In June of 1986, The Shirt Kings opened shop on Jamaica Ave at the Coliseum in Queens. In an excerpt from this interview with Citzen L.A., Phade recalls the initial nervousness;

“The first couple of days, we were twiddling our thumbs, and I just said, ‘Trust me! It’s gonna happen. It’s gonna take one person to see this and its gonna explode!’”
It did.
“Jam Master Jay wore his shirt to the first Def Jam office at 27 Elizabeth St. and Run was like, ‘I need one of those!’

“We created a street buzz and everyone just came down [to the store].”

And they took it all the way to the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, The Arsenio Hall show, The Cosby Show, and EVERY hip-hop video or album cover of the golden era. If you got a little record deal in 86, the first things you copped were your custom Dapper-Dan suit and your Shirt Kings crew neck sweat.

If you have EVER seen a T-shirt design that flipped a line from a hip-hop song, or took a pop culture icon or famous cartoon character and gave him a pistol ,or a gold tooth, or a 40oz, understand that the Shirt Kings gave birth to that. I suspect that if Kasheme hadn’t passed, and Phade didn’t have to do a looong stretch in the Justice, these dudes would be sitting atop an empire that would make Marc Echo envious.

Now it’s 2009 and PHADE is back like a spine. I highly recommend you check his show at Da Bakery in the Bx all month.

On my corner there is a crew of younger kids, Skateboarders and Inline Skaters, always out in front of the Parkside station grinding. Some people view them as another obstacle to avoid on your way to the subway, but they always give me a feeling of hope.
See, this is a corner (like too many around here) that has been a little wild, a “hot-spot”, with older kids claiming Crip and Blood. Police are constantly posted up around here and yet there are still little beefs popping off and we still hear occasional gunshots.  So to see the next generation of shortys reject all that gangbang bullshit in favor of skating takes me right back to MY youth. Yeah, the gangs then were called the “Crazy Homicides” and the “Tomahawks” instead of the “Crips” and “Bloods” (Yes kids, N.Y. actually made up our OWN shit instead of biting off L.A.) but the desire to be down; to belong to something… well, that doesn’t change. I gravitated toward skateboarding, graffiti, and music as an escape from gang violence and found a creative culture that, at it’s best moments, managed to seem bigger than neighborhood beef. Bigger than racial, class, or economic differences. It was like the city opened up to me and blocks I couldn’t otherwise walk down gave me a pass.
So to see these kids out there doing their thing everyday, right across the street from the gangsters posted up in front of my Laundromat on Ocean Ave., it made me smile. I know a couple of these kids, they are protégés of my dudes Chauncy and Stanzo (O.G. Brooklyn Skaters). I’ll say what up and keep it moving. They just know me as that old-ass dude who does graphics for some of the skate companies they ride.
Now, the other night some idiot shot up Parkside Donut, where me and my girl used to order dinner damn near every night before we got our new kitchen set up. We’ll still go there on the late night when we don’t feel like cooking. The dudes that run the joint know us , they know my regular order (Turkey Burger Deluxe w/ hot sauce and mayo , sweet potato pie.). We could have easily been in there Monday night at 8:20 p.m. when all this went down. So, even though I don’t usually watch the local news , this one seemed a little too close to home.
Turns out three local kids were hit. Brian Scott, an 18 year old kid called COSMIK 42 (who by all accounts was NOT the intended target) was killed. Cosmik was an up and coming skater who recently won the Triple A Insurance 200. He was an A student at Satellite High. He had just had a feature in ONE, the online roller-blading magazine. He had big things in store for him. Now he has a memorial on the sidewalk, wilting flowers and dirty teddy bears.

Me,  I’d rather have to step around a thousand kids skating than to have to step over one more of these.

R.I.P.  COSMIK

http://ny1.com/7-brooklyn-news-content/top_stories/107234/coffee-shop-gunman-caught-on-tape

When I went online to find a video of Cosmik skating, I noticed the most recent video he favorited on his you-tube account: COSMIK42 . I love this tune.

Bill muthafuckin ground hog day ghost bustin’ ass Murray

Why oh why did I eat cappuchino?

This aint no Seattle Gringo.

Stare at the walls

Trini style

Your Daddy he’s an outlaw…

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1623220/20091006/shyne.jhtml

Now this puts me in mind of my man Ricky Dee, who I went to High School with. He was a relaxed, laid back type of dude. Never a hard-rock or a thug, more of a ladies man. Smooth is the word that comes to mind. Now, bear in mind he came to this country as a likkle youth, not a hardened criminal. He was a product of New York City’s public school system. IF he became capable of violence (even if ONLY to protect his family) America made him that way.
Now as I understand it, these laws were created in attempt to keep criminals from other nations from emigrating to the U.S. and setting up shop. Not to harass entertainers who have lived their entire lives here and already completed their bids, satisfied the courts and “The People of the Great State of New York”.
Perhaps, in his final days in office Gov. Patterson could grant Shyne a pardon as well. Maybe we could trade them Puffy, Jeezy, Gucci Mane , Arnold Schwarzenegger , David H. Patraeus, Lady GaGa,  Dick Cheney, and The ShamWow guy for Shyne Po and Ronald Isley? Arms for hostages? Arms for cocaine?
Didn’t Bush pardon JOHN FORTEfor trying to stroll thru Newark Airport with a truckload of cocaine? I guess you gotta look out for your employees in a family run business like cocaine import/arms export in this rough economy.
What’s that you say, Rick?

“...LICK THE BAAAAALLS!”

NEW YORK (CBS) New York Rapper Shyne was released from prison today after serving more than eight years for his role in a 1999 New York night club shooting involving mentor Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and actress Jennifer Lopez.

A Clinton Correctional Facility staffer confirmed his release.

Shyne, whose real name is Jamal Barrow, was charged in March 2001, with attempted murder, assault and reckless endangerment.

According to MTV, “The rapper admitted to firing a gun at Club New York, but maintained that he was acting in self-defense and that another gunman’s bullets injured the two victims. He faced up to 25 years in prison.”

He was sentenced to only 10, which he began on June 1, 2001.

“It’s a blessing that he’s coming home,” Combs said in a recent radio interview on Hot 97 in New York. “I spoke to him like a couple of weeks ago and he sounded like he was in good spirits.”

While serving time, the rapper released two albums and reportedly converted to Judiasm. He legally changed his name Moses Michael Leviy.

Big Chune…

Pucker up and whistle my melody…

If you play this one backwards, it says “Soundbwoy is dead, turn me on, deadman

Bob Dylan style

A lil early 90’s Heavy D R&B type of flow feat. Intro

Laid back over Far East riddim

Daddy, can I have one more?

Beauty Queen with an M16