We all have them. That one album that many may consider a flop, the point when a band sold out or lost their sound, a musical experiment gone bad, or simply something so popular its now considered uncool to enjoy but we believe to be a masterpiece of some kind. 50 cent....wait, where are you going? I'm being honest here. A blog post about our own personal classic albums contains the words "50" and "cent" placed side by side. I know what you're thinking, he's the guy made one terrible game, one game that many consider fun for reasons other than being good, and popularized the phrase "G-g-g-g-g-g-g-Unit!!!" amongst suburban youth. But before his failings and played out habits would come to light, 50 Cent rose from the underground rapping scene most notably famous for his track "How To Rob" to a world that embraced him the moment he dropped down from the ceiling in a fictional training room and announced it was in fact, all of our birthdays.



I had not yet gone through my "mainstream music sucks" phase that I am now ashamed to acknowledge these days, so it wasn't hard for me to latch onto such a catchy beat. It didn't hurt that Eminem and Dr. Dre played a vital role in the video as well, linking themselves to the soon to be mega star 50 cent. If two arguable rap legends put their own stamp of approval on someone, the hip-hop community listens. Well, at least back then they did. Afterward, you couldn't tune into a radio station that wasn't blasting out this newcomers single. It didn't have an important message or uplifting words for the listener. It was simple and pure in its one true goal, give the listener something to listen to on a dull drive to school/work or a night out at the club. Of course, so many artists these days successfully release a track only to disappear into the hungry, gaping jaws of the music industry a record later. 50 possessed something however that would separate him from the most. Something that was important back then for many self proclaimed "thug rappers." He had been shot. Not once, but nine times if stories were to be believed. Now I'd like to say I was able to look past something so juvenile to brag about, but it only raised my curiosity further. Not only did he survive 9 shootings but its affect on his voice gave him a delivery and cadence weren't used to. Many naysayers mocked it but it held my interest.



He would go on to release three more singles, but with the amount of leaking and hype around the release of his first album "Get Rich or Die Trying" and his NY roots, I couldn't walk the streets of Brooklyn without hearing more than three-quarters of his LP blasting through various car speakers and home stereos. Whether he was lamenting over death wishes with "Many Men" or seducing the female audience with "21 Questions," each track kept you hooked with a hard hitting beat from Dre, 50 Cent's soon to be overplayed mic presence, and simple lyrics that were easy to sing along to. He didn't have Common's message of hope or Jay-Z's classy gangsta approach, he just wanted to entertain and evidently, "Get Rich or Die Trying." That's right, if you haven't guessed it by now or left out of disgust or rage, Get Rich or Die Trying is my personal classic album. Back then, that wouldn't seem so hard to believe, but today in a world where 50 Cent could never realistically outsell Kanye West and whose sound and brand feel dated and tired, claiming that his first album was a classic is heresy to many. Yes, I'll admit that The Massacre fell flat in its attempt to recreate the magic of Get Rich and Carter was simply a mess of sound and bland beats but this is the man or rather the album that decimated Ja Rule's career. An album that contained shots at both Nas and Jay-Z and had the artist come out relatively unscathed...at least for the moment. To this day, I recall the words to most, if not, all of the tracks on this album. I may not like the artist 50 cent is today, but I still hold Get Rich or Die Trying highly amongst my all time favorites.



So let's have it. Don't be ashamed. What's your own unique, personal classic album?

"He can't retire. Watch that dude come back like Jordan a few years later."
"Hopefully, not as bad."

That was the basic gist of every conversation me, my friends, and classmates had as the news of Jay-Z's The Black Album being his last began to spread. I had been a Jay-Z fan ever since I heard Hard Knocks Life (I hadn't heard any of Reasonable Doubt till my late high school years), and the idea of one of my favorite artists no longer making any music seemed foreign to me. In my world of music, you didn't stop until you died. Hell, not even imprisonment stopped the rapper Shine for the first few years and Kanye rapped "Through The Wire." But it was "official," Jay-Z was moving on to bigger and better prospects in his quest to become the next generation's Diddy in terms of money, fame, and business. I'm not ashamed ot admit it, "Encore" got me a little choked up when I first heard it. I could remember drives home from school with Jay-Z playing through the van's speakers while everyone else who took the vans home sung along to whatever his next single was. "Girls, Girls, Girls," "Song Cry," and "Renegade" just to name a few.

But one video that sticks in my mind to this day during all the hoopla was Jay-Z's "99 Problems." I hadn't heard the song until this video had premiered and I had caught it simply by chance but it's depiction of Brooklyn, the city I grew up in and was currently residing in caught my attention from the moment the camera panned up those subway steps. The black and white tone, the gritty beat, and Jay-Z's signature "freestyle" sounding flow would be the image I thereafter attributed to Jay-Z whenever he came to mind. No one can forget the infamous scene of Jay-Z being gunned down, representing the death of Jay-Z as we knew it and the rebirth not as a business man but a business. Of course, he would come back a few years later, but we didn't know that at the time. So far as we knew, this was it and we had to get it while the getting was good. Sold out seats and concerts, friends bragging about seeing him play for the "last" time, and the plastic that just took way too long to unwrap from the album: these are memories that I won't forget and this video brings back this time in my life quicker than anything else.


So what's your video?

To get this out of the way, this is another Hip-Hop focused blog from me so anyone wondering about the title and hip-hop isn't your cup of tea, you have been warned.

Now The Roots have been one of my all time favorite musical artists since I first heard "Don't Say Nuthin'" and the news that they would be performing as the House Band for Jimmy Fallon on late night was a proud moment on my part as a fan and though the show has not turned out as great as I had hoped, it does have its silly moments. What keeps me coming back is seeing The Roots in action, mostly because I had been under the false assumption that their gig on Late Night meant they would no longer be recording any official albums. This was all debunked last night when this performance ended Late Night.


Saying I'm excited would be an understatement. I shared in Questlove's sentiment that while I loved their latest two albums, they were extremely dark and brooding with very little uplifting songs peppered through the albums. This latest entry How I Got Over seems to be the very opposite of Rising Down and  Game Theory and I'm excited to see where this album is going. If this song is any indication, it'll be one lively drive back home from my local music store once this album drops.

After watching this interview with Mos Def (no doubt part of a promotion for his new album The Ecstatic), a proposal at the end of the video had me thinking of my own feelings towards a dream team in terms of freestyling. Now this isn't in terms of making an actual record, granted you can post your own wishes below. What I had in mind however was a freestyle dream team. Something televised, recorded, or just broadcast over the internet would no doubt be epic in terms of the hip-hop community and would definitely inject some life into the music industry as a whole.

So what I had in question were a couple of things.

1. Who would make up your hip-hop (or just plain band/music) dream team?
2. Does the music industry need something like this to take place?

As far as my own dream team is concerned, Mos Def pretty much took my picks out of my mouth with one exception. Replace Electronica with Eyedeas for just a flat out outlandish duo of Doom and himself. How about you? And keep in mind, it doesn't have to be limited to Hip-Hop seeing as I am apparently in a minority when it comes to my love for the music in these forums.

With college finals finally over and the warm embrace of a two week summer break I decided to watch the tentative series finale of a show I had not watched for some time, Scrubs. I had given up on this show quite some time ago, particularly for its strange mix of comedy and "serious business." I never really latched onto the way I would be treated to a comedic scene of Turk and JD's bromance one minute and a suicide the next. Of course, this is a TV hospital and as such it is in the Universal Television Show Guide that hospitals must always have its own self reflective moments on life and death but I preferred a focus on either one or the other. However, I would never say the show was bad, it was a welcome and different style of show that isn't seen very often these days and so I decided to give it its proper send off by DVR'ing the finale and watching it almost a week later like a true American. It displayed a typical summary of characters met and experiences shared that while did not hit me so hard I imagine brought those who stuck with the show from beginning to end to some tears, or maybe just a caught throat.


Watching the series finale did bring me back to two finales in particular that had me searching for a Kleenex and a friend to hug. The first was, of course, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, a show that needs no introductions, summaries, or explanations. Any man who owns a TV has seen this program and what I consider a sitcom masterpiece along with the likes of Seinfeld and Arrested Development. While this show also had its share of "serious business" moments, I suppose it was the fact that I had so much interest in these characters that I was able to not only deal with these moments but actually appreciate them. The father/son episode dealing with Will's dad especially comes to mind. So it was with watery eyes that I watched the once full and noisy mansion slowly empty out as the kids moved on with their lives and the parents moved on to retirement. To this day, I have no problem watching an episode of this show for the tenth time and still laugh just as hard at the jokes presented.

My final show is in fact an anime that I was brought onto by a friend back in New York. I remember him asking me if I was into anime at all and like the majority of guys my age might've answered, I told him Dragon Ball Z was perhaps the best (and only) anime I had ever seen. He smiled, invited me over to his house, and proceded to show me a variety of animes including Naruto, Death Note, and Full Metal Alchemist. One anime in particular stood out to me though. Maybe it was the hip-hop intro complete with vinyl displaying the anime's name and the amazing soundtrack that is engraved in my mind to this day. Maybe it was the break dance fighting style one of the characters used in the show. Maybe it was just as simple as the record scratch used to change scenes. Whatever it was, Samurai Champloo caught my attention and for the next week I watched every episode. Now I lied earlier when I said DBZ was the only show I had ever watched. I had in fact dabbled in other animes but was usally always turned off by either the characters or the premise. Samurai Champloo, however, had characters that I was able to latch onto from the start. A cold hearted samurai, a bandit samurai, and a 15 year old waitress made up the major cast of this show and while many animes would focus on over the top fight scenes and hammy love plots, Champloo concerned itself with developing characters that felt real and believable. Watching as Mugen struggled to read or Jin's falling in love with a geisha were episodes I will never forget. Therefore,  I was more than shocked and sad to find out I had reached the shows series finale at a mere 26 episodes. I remember saying no out loud to my screen as they each reached their crossroads and a new and final track played over the credits, signifying the end to their journey.

But that's enough of me and my sad connection to fake chracters. What about you? What series finales stick out in your mind today? What makes a great series finale to you?