FMT: Grow Up Before We Blow Up

FMT in Bertolucci's 1900. Furman played by De Niro, Depardieu as Sordid Puppy

Bernardo Bertolucci just dropped a couple sick throwback joints, The Conformist (Le Conformiste) and 1900 (Novecento). Eskay and his not-so-small army of drones over at Nahright.com say Jay-Z's Fade To Black is the best cinematic achievement ever, and that Hova totally ethered all the Bertolucci stans when he invented that fake champagne.

There's been a whole lot of blubber going around since Complez magazine said Lil Wayne said that he was better than Jay-Z and doesn't particularly like the Clipse and Pharrell and Tom Breihan said that he's right and Eskay said he's fucking mental, not to mention gay, and Combat Jack said who the fuck are you, Tom Breihan, to say that Pitbull is better than Nas? Dear Tom, don't even get CJ started on those fatuous claims regarding Scritti Politti. P.S., try to come to the hood and pop that Scritti Politti drivel, and WE'LL SEE what's really crackin. Love, the ghetto.

Yes, birds and bees, the man whose Status Ain't Hood just got his ghetto pass resoundingly revoked by just about everyone who sat down to a 'pooter over the past week. It sucks for the Clipse, because in the midst of all this they dropped a fucking good album and all the hardcore gangstas who spend 4 hours a day posting on Nahright, XXL, and OhWord message boards don't seem to want to talk about it so I assume they're not buying it either. Breihan wrote a bit about how it's too bad Hell Hath No Fury didn't sell more copies, but his status ain't hood totally ain't hood so what the fuck does he know. Plus he's 6'11", so he, like, looks down on everyone. Fucking asshole.

In between bouts of extreme anxiety over my fundamentally conflicted existence as a white Puppy who listens to rap who's not from NYC and who is sort of tall (FUCK!), I've been doing some thinking. It seems like the problem with Nahright -- and I'll spare him the cliche accusations of being under Def Jam's thumb - is that if it's not from New York or sounds like it's from New York, he's not interested in it, period. I see no other reason why Uncle Murder gets mentioned more often than ANY Southern or West Coast artist that's not The Game or that isn't getting made fun of -- no, better yet, "ethered" (can we put this term to rest? Please?). The same appears to be true of Combat Jack and all the other message board-ers who proffer no better retort to Weezy's claims than "That's fucking ridiculous" or "He's a fucking fag" or, more specifically, "Only pretentious rich white people believe him. People in the hood think Jay-Z is the greatest thing since sliced bread, etc., etc." What you mean to say, CJ, is that people in the hood in BROOKLYN are bigger fans of Jay than Wayne, and that said hood is more discerning or more important or whatever than any other hood in the world.

There's a whole lot of classically educated hip-hop fans, writers, critics, etc. (rappers) who are getting all defensive about the fact that Jay-Z and Nas are past their prime and NYC hip-hop in general is in a sorry state. I'm as big a D-Block fan as the next white boy who doesn't know shit about shit, and I like Cam'ron and Saigon and Wu-Tang and bunch of other cats, but none of these people put out albums with any regularity. I guess Ghostface is the most consistent act coming out of New York right now, but he never makes much of it. Ghostdini never comes up in the incessant message board discussions of who's the best out, maybe because he's from Staten Island and SI doesn't have the name recognition attached to Brooklyn, Harlem, or the Bronx. I just bought More Fish, and sure, I wish Theodore Unit wasn't all over the thing, but it's a good album and the Ghostface verses are better than anything I've heard off Kingdom Come or Hip Hop Is Dead by a long shot.

Shouldn't the discursive community be able to agree that Kingdom Come was a pretty hollow project and that for Nas to flip the same exact sample for "Hip Hop Is Dead" that he did for "Thief's Theme" is borderline insulting to the fans (no, "stans" - no, fuck you)? I'm not mad at Eskay for being NY-centric; I think he's from Younkers, and so whatever, if he thinks New York is where rap begins and ends, fair play to him. Breihan's been doing his thing for awhile now, and I don't agree with everything he says, but he definitely does a good job of tapping into regional acts and giving them some shine. As far as FMT, maybe it's cause we're young that we don't dig Jay-Z's adult contemporary (word to Furman motherfucking P.) or Nas's senility, and it's for the same reason that Weezy's brash defiance appeals to us. In any case, if you think that Papoose is what rap is all about and Lil Wayne sucks, then you and I will never agree, but then that's the beauty of the community.