Fresh Feature

Good Morning

    Usually I wouldn't take two consecutive blog postings to talk about the same thing or the same person.  That having been said I will contradict myself. Yesterday, I took a few sentences to discuss Sir Kanye. I feel like it's okay for me to mention 'ye two days in a row, because I'm kind of obsessed with him, not like I wanna fuck him or anything but genuinely captivated by his work,his spirit and his temper. He's just great.

    Yesterday, I received a few e-mails from a few haters and I was really taking out the time to think about their comments and their negative energy, when what I really needed to be doing was just focusing in on my crafts even more than I do.  I always say that whenever I hear about Kanye throwing a tantrum because someone didn't give him an award, or five. I always think to myself 'wow this guys on top of the world, why does he take the time to look down to see what other people are doing or better yet what they think?' The thought process that he is in now is what made him who he is. Why get upset because there's no moon man to commemorate that?  Fuck a moon man. There are millions of people who are spreading love.

That having been said, I encourage the haters to keep sending me messages, it only makes me work harder.

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Does anyone remember Katrina?

    Yesterday was a big day. The Soundscan face off between Kanye and Fitty or um, I'm sorry Curtis. Who will win David or Goliath? Only a week will tell. Yesterday also marked the six year anniversary of the tragedies at the world trade center, the pentagon and flight 93. I consider them both to be events of significance.  Graduation vs. Curtis will set the tone for music over the next couple of years, or at least the next couple of months.  Curtis is a Fitty album in true form filled with tales of gun play and hot girls. Graduation is a great work, but not nearly as good as Mr. West's previous offerings.  Quick, everyone try to remember what it was like the first time you heard All Falls Down or the first time you heard Drive Slow. There will be none of those feelings here.  He will have no argument when he gets 4.5 mics instead of 5, but my money is still on Kanye.

    I am using today as an opportunity to bring up another recent tragedy in our Nation's history, one that Kanye is connected with. Remember Kanye, in reference to the Kartina disaster saying, "President Bush doesn't care about black people"? I do, and I would like to amend that statement to "President Bush doesn't care about poor people." Race is a lesser issue where he's concerned. I know what everyone's thinking, it's a little late for a Katrina discussion. WRONG. This is the perfect time because this time two years ago was when the real tragedy was taking shape. The residents of the Crescent City, are used to a little bad weather, and by bad weather, I do mean that to include catastrophic, seemingly apocalyptic,category five storms.  It seems only natural, them living in a bowl shaped city below sea level, on a hurricane path and all.

    Unfortunately, something else that the resident's of New Orleans are used to is a a failure by their Government to adequately protect them from harm. It just seems a little absurd that in a country where we've placed a man on the moon, people have figured out how to get the Terminator and President Bush to become elected officials and Magic Johnson has been living with HIV for over a decade we could not get a drop of water or a sandwich dropped into a major city in under five days. It's appalling. Katrina herself is not the eye of the tragedy the federal Government is.

    While we grieve for the victim's of 9/11 we should also have a heavy heart for those who are still referred to as a refugees in their own country because landlords, and insurance companies are not being forced to keep up their end of the bargain, and these folks have been forced to relocate. When we think about the terrorist attacks of 9/11 let us also think of the men, women, and children who drowned to death,who died of starvation, who were raped, who were without medicine while they waited for their government to respond.

Fresh.

P.S.  I don't think most people necessarily relate consciousness and fashion.  Please stay aware and remember that there's a war going on.

Dear Hater

        Recently I was reading a very popular street culture blog and skimming through their archives when I came across an interview with an OG artist in the Street Culture game. I read through the article days before my first shipment of merchandise and the site's launch, hoping to find inspiration as a young frightened entrepreneur, but much to my surprise I was inundated with negative comment after negative comment about newcomers in the Street Culture game. Instead of a pioneer with roots and a wealth of knowledge from personal experience to share, he came off as a bitter old man who didn't wish to see many succeed.

         Please, someone shoot me if Freshfeature.com becomes wildly popular and I have nothing positive to say about my competitors and/or peers. The purpose of our mission is to uplift and inform. I take great pleasure in the hard work that goes into my site, and I hope that all can make a career or lifestyle choice which gives them as much pleasure, and when I have great knowledge and experience to share with people coming up in the game after me, someone grab a tape recorder or an ipod mic.

Fresh.

Ticket in the Hood

I live in BedStuy Brooklyn. On a daily basis I am reminded of the rich political and cultural history that is embedded in the neighborhood in which I live. There are murals of Biggie,Malcolm X and ODB amongst restaurants, and shops that pay homage to the Caribbean ancestry of most of my neighbors. BedStuy is also filled with Bodegas, in fact with no scientific data to back this up, I would go so far as to say one on every other corner, crack heads, and garbage. There is also an abundance of police officers who never appear to be hip to or harassing the young men and women who push all types of illegal narcotics through our community. So, imagine my disbelief when I saw four police officers cornering one man for, of all things riding his bike on the sidewalk. It has become a common practice of mine to make sure that when I see cops  in my neighborhood that they are acting appropriately, I have seen cops take down the names and ID numbers of old men hanging out with their old men friends for hanging out in one spot for too long, I have seen cops poke at homeless people with their night sticks, and now I have seen four cops give one man a ticket for riding his bike on the street, it's great to know that we are eradicating crime, one hardened criminal after another. I have used the word cop several times over in this piece to convey a point. I have no problem with the civil servants who wear blue, and fight to keep my neighborhood safe and clean for children to do as they are supposed to;run and play. I have a problem with the men and women who harass the good people of my neighborhood for no apparent rhyme or reason. Fight the Power.
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This Damn Election

Last night I was traveling with some of my friends in New York City from East Harlem to the Lower East Side which gave the three of us, who were completely sober to wax political about the upcoming presidential primaries, and presidential elections. There we were on the Six train debating about whether or not Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama had what it would take to beat Rudy Giuliani, who I think will sweep Mr. Romney and Mr. McCain, and then I thought to myself, what exactly would it mean if they were to win, if they became the next president of the United States. Hey, I'm just as week as the next women or man for Barak's charisma, optimism, and the fact that he's a Black man with a real shot at becoming the next president of the United States, but I believe that he is simply too young, not seasoned enough to be the next president of the United  States. I know, I know, it's all that time spent in state and national government that usually turns politicians into jaded, greedy, monsters who make promises in exchange for votes on the campaign trail , and break them behind closed doors in exchange for money, and special favors.

Then,  there's Hillary Clinton, who I have been supporting, since I think that she will easily beat Mr. Obama in a primary election. Perhaps, I have been okay with this since I, like many Americans remember the Clinton years in the White House the way that I'm sure my parents look at the Kennedy years, extremely fondly. He lead the country during the prosperous nineties, and gave us hope for what now seems like an apocalyptic situation in the Middle East, a small aside the war in Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan, yes there's still a war going on in Afghanistan have distracted us from the fact that the Palestinians and the Israelis still aren't getting along. But Mr. Clinton, gave us the hope that there was a resolution to this policy. Yesterday, while speaking with my friends I thought to myself I know what Bill Clinton's about, but do I know what Hillary Clinton is about? The answer is no, in my mind this last name bonding them, gave them similar political identities, and then I thought about how differently my significant other and I would run these United States. My better half and I bicker about when to do the laundry, I hardly believe that we would share the same opinion about what would constitute a good Iraqi exit strategy.

So, I have decided to take a look in the mirror, and a look at the candidate websites, and I have chosen the underdog as my choice for President, Sen. Joe Biden. Sen. Biden because he has an Iraqi exit strategy, has been a member of the foreign affairs committee for two plus decades, and has a history of advocacy for women and the middle class.

Fresh.

The Beginning

As I sit here reading through submissions from persperctive bloggers and listening to the music of perspective featured artists, I realize that today is the beginning of my life. Never mind the fact that I've been living for the last twenty some odd years. I am just starting today. I went to a small school in a small yet major city, where they taught me the real story of slavery. Where they taught me about people all over the world with all different skin colors who were forced to work for others for little or no wages.

Yesterday, I got fired from my day job. I was sitting in my office or rather grey, non-descript and sterile cubicle thinking about getting up and telling my boss to kiss my ass. I thought about telling him to kiss my ass because I realized that I was his slave. I was his worker who was not getting a piece of the collective pie, but rather a crumb or a morcel, enough to eat and be healthy, but not enough to enjoy life. Just enough to get wasted on Friday and Saturday, so I did not have to think about going to work on Monday. So I didn't have to face my life as an Account Executive -whatever the fuck that means- for a very large company working fifty hours a week.

I didn't start FreshFeature in attempt to get rich and not have to work. I started FreshFeature so that I could get on with the business of enjoying my life. No offense to those amongst us who can wear their suit and tie or suit and blouse to the 9-5 everyday. In fact I tip my hat to those who can. I cannot.
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