Pop Culture Blog: Music, Movie and Humor

Leveraging low-hanging synergies outside the vertical fruit box since 1999.

Wednesday Wadio: Edo G’s ‘I Got To Have It’.


in Wednesday Wadio

“I’m from Roxbury the ‘Bury but not the fruit y’all – Don’t make me act like where I come from cause it’s bru-tal.” – Ed OG.

In honor of this senseless scene of local studio slaughter, I was inspired to feature a legendary Boston rap artist on Radio Pye today. As an aside, how many rappers have been shot or otherwise died in their recording studios at this point? 2Pac, Jam Master Jay, ODB… You hit the studio with the intention of laying down a few bizzangin’ tracks – and just end up laying down. Update: Here is an MP3 by the now permanently defunct, murdered Boston rap group, Graveside.

Ed OG and da Bulldogs’ seminal 1991 release “The Life of a Kid in the Ghetto” is beloved by any hip hop fan who attended high school in the Boston area that year. There’s your “Bugaboo”, your “I’m Different”, but the track everyone remembers, and which made it onto Yo! MTV Raps for a couple of weeks in March of that year, is the classic “I Got to Have it“.

Edo’s work was a great combination of social commentary, sexual adventure and bootie-shakin ‘ party jams. There isn’t a weak song on “Ghetto”, and the rough beats and heavy sampling are a time capsule of early 90s rap – or ‘the golden age’ as I like to call it. “There were no drug raids and driveby’s on “Life of a Kid in the Ghetto,” just episodes in the life of a young man who knew his calling.”

Edo is still kickin’, having recently and quietly released a great album with Pete Rock, and I recently read in a Boston music magazine that he’s hard at work recording with another Boston crew. He plays regularly at the Middle East and is even thinking about getting into politics in the future. Perhaps as a member of the Skinny Dip party. Time will tell – but this is a great song that I remember fondly and wanted to reintroduce to my small world.

“These days you have to look long and hard for such a charismatic and original freshman. In 1991, “Life of a Kid in the Ghetto” proved that between NY and LA, there were many places who had their own story to tell. In that regard, Ed repped the ‘Bury and Boston to the fullest.”

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Happy Birthday, You Filthy Pornography-Ridden Cesspool.


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HTTP Protocol was introduced in 1990, making the internet as we know it officially 15 years old. A recent article on CNN lists their personal top ten internet moments – including WiFi, Google, Live8, Skype, Napster and others. There are some glaring omissions, however. Namely, the black sheep of the internet. That of which major media will not speak the name. You know, the good stuff. Like Catster.

In the interests of not making my subversive surfing habits public record, I invite you, the reader, to share some of your more disturbing WWW discoveries in the comments below. I just think that if we’re going to mark such an important anniversary, some light should be shone on where the real money is made, and where the real traffic ebbs and flows. Sure, NeoPets is a lot of fun, and has become an enormous success, but it does me absolutely no good when I’m drinking by myself on a Saturday night with a greasy container of coconut oil.

I’ll get the ball rolling with a few of my guilty favorites:

– Ogrish.com: People who work in law enforcement in China, Pakistan, Iraq and Brazil send in ridiculous crime scene photographs. Not for the faint of heart.

– RatherGood.com: I hope someone eventually gets this guy the mental help that he so desperately needs. But his Flash movies are absolutely hilarious.

– YouAintNoPicasso.com: Courtesy of Nate, this site is an amazing resource for getting obscure MP3s of ‘alternative’ bands. The webmaster will be locked away in a dank prison cell at any moment, so enjoy this copyright treachery while you can.

I will add some more later. Have to get going. Please contribute your own, and happy thwapping.

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Not Only Do I Hate Mondays, I’m Having Them Killed.


in

Not even the Park Street Jesus freaks could cheer me up this morning. After a weekend full of horrible movies, a Saturday afternoon at the office, a Christmas Party at which I got intimately acquainted with Mrs. Claus and a bout of insomnia that would have made Rip Van Winkle perky – it was Monday yet again. And I felt like I’d been drinking absinthe and snorting No-Doz for 72 hours. And you know full well you can’t get absinthe in this country. Dance with the green fairy, indeed.

I have to break this vicious cycle. It stems from staying up too late and then sleeping in the next day. My homeostasis gets thrown out of whack to the point where I’m as effictive and original on Monday morning as Jayson Blair on sodium pentathol. I’m not sure where I’m going with this. Maybe I do. Bed. For 12 hours.

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Friday’s Quizzlet: Tales From The Boiler Room.


in Monday's Quotelet

Appetizer: Name something you’ll miss about 2005.
I’ll really miss the way the number 5 looks like a little testicle at the end of the two zeros. I look forward to 2007, when I’ll get emails and letters sent to me with dates at the top and I’ll wonder – is this really a bill from Keyspan, or is James Bond sending me a secret code? Is my gas about to be shut off, or has Blofeld escaped from the underground MI6 volcano prison. It will be exciting to try and figure that out every day.

Salad: What is one thought that went through your mind today?
Sweet Charity am I ever late for work! I got all the way to the Haymarket T stop and had waited for the train a good 10 minutes before I realized I left my laptop in my living room. I had to go all the way back to get it and bounded into the office 10 minutes before a conference call. So I was wicked prepared, covered in snow and still nailed it.

Soup: On a scale of 1-10 how compassionate would you say you are?
If I can quote Duran Duran for a second – City living, heavy trouble. City living rough. We are given angry hearts, but angers’ not enough. I think what Simon leBon is saying here is along the lines of living in the city for an extended period of time can make you apathetic, please get me another young cock.

Main Course: If you could invent something, what would it be?
I’m not telling you, you sneaky patent-collecting quizzlet. My supersonic peanut machine gun vibrator will be ready when it’s ready. And I’ve already invented whatever the lifeform is that inhabits the boilers in my building and keeps blowing out the pilots. Not to be confused with criteria for joining the Mile-High Club.

Dessert: Do you prefer salty snacks or sweet treats?
Salty snacks I’d have to say. My friend Mike once pointed out the error in calling someone a saltoholic. And alcoholic is called that because they are addicted to alcohol. So by the same logic, someone addicted to salt should be called a saltlic. So you’ll frequently find me hanging out in meadows being tongued by dairy cows. You haven’t lived…

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