Does Size Matter?

                  Now this is something most people are familiar with. Hard drive space…what, didn’t see that coming huh? More so does the size of your music collection take away from how much you support musical artists? I’ll admit I have a lot of music. What I call my “crate,” to those hip hop heads, full of promotional music. Yet I do support these artists as well. My question really is does the space on your hard drive used to download those cd’s mixtapes and singles take away from how much work you support these artists? All those zip files add up. All that hard work that it took to put that album out. With one click, it’s now yours. Why is the music industry so vested in this topic? Some may say, “If I download this cd, it won’t matter a million others will buy it. Everything will be okay.” See that flaw in that logic, a) if a thousand people think that way, that’s a lot of money gone for everyone. Some artists will change their music entirely because of this. B) If you’re hard work keeps getting taken why would you keep putting music out.

               The music industry continues to fight back but the Zshares and Utorrents keep winning. My question to you is how do you justify downloading music?

In Retrospect

As any other day on my daily commute to work, I realized that I left my radio faceplate at home. Which is one thing I depend on as I drive; daily traffic reports, music to get me energized and the witty banter of the on air personalities. I haven’t done a quite drive like that in a long time. In reality it was actually something much needed, my mind just wondered thinking of any and everything thing that it could. My health was and is always on my mind as of late. Started reciting old rhymes that were recorded a while ago during the golden age of my hip hop life. Those thoughts lead me to one of the things I’ve never really thought about today. That one day I will no longer be known as “Crispy.” That eventually that will no longer be my nickname. No one will refer to me as that, it will just be Chris. This thought actually got to me. I didn’t know where to go from there. What will my legacy be? All the contributions and hard work…who will remember them or me? I can honestly say that this one of the thoughts that singlehandedly changed my whole mind state for the day.



Thoughts like this actually force you to put your entire life in to a different perspective. A perspective that you probably tried to push out of your head till you were older. Just think, eventually what you do now, will ultimately have others look at your life and conclude what kind of person you are.

Music Labels the new NBA

Music labels are just like NBA teams. They want to comprise a super team to combat their competitors. Some of these new labels are expansion teams like the Toronto Raptors were back in the 90’s. They try to start out fresh with talent to compete with the major labels. Look at the Sony Music Entertainments, Warner Music Group’s or Universal Music Group. They are the big three of music labels. They are figuratively your NBA teams that always make it to the playoffs. The ones you have no doubt will do well. You’re Lakers, Spurs and now your Heat. They try to produce super teams enticing other players (artists) to come along with them to maximize both parties’ profits and make them the most winning label. I treat those big three like your owners. With each owner each team has their set rosters. G.O.O.D. music is like the label to be at the moment. They have comprised a slew (yeah we doing words like that today) of artists who could be your NBA super team. Lets look into the artists on the roster; Kanye West, Big Sean, Common, Pusha T, 2 Chainz, John Legend. This is a record labels dream team, full of players who can contribute on a consistent basis. They fall into the team of Def Jam its just one big chain of command. It all leads to knowing the top three labels are running the music industry. It’s almost as if you have to be apart of a bigger team to try to make something for yourself as a player in this musical game.


Yet the bigger question I pose to you is what that means for the smaller labels (teams). Does that mean that they either have to fold or should they try to make it and let what ever happens happen for their musical career?

Mood Music

We all have a song or album in its entirety that once we hit that play button, the entire mood of your day changes. From a dull pain of the boring work day to the over stressed and over worked business day. All it takes is just one song, one album, one punch line to some that can jump start your mind. I can personally say there are lots of songs that all it takes is that beat drop to get things started. Think about it… remember when “Knuck if you Buck”, came out. Think about how much energy you felt run through your body as soon as the beat came on. No matter what you were doing that song came on and you knew it was going to get crunk. You could be driving your car down the freeway; beat drops it all goes out the window with your previously calm demeanor. You are now shaking your imaginary dreads in the air probably doing about 70 speeding for no reason. Just because you felt that song take you back to 2005 and the moment when you first heard the song. It’s not always about the hard energy songs either. Sometimes a song can take you in the totally opposite direction. Look at Drake, (yes I am about to get some people in their feelings) Marvin’s room is something we all can relate to. That drunken phone call you know you shouldn’t make, yet you are still calling that guy/ girl up just to try to change and convince them that you still have feelings. Nine out of ten times, you are going to not get energy off of this song. Yet, you will sing this song loud in your home thinking about the last time you drunk dialed someone and how you were all in your feelings. Even at the workplace, you can have your Pandora on full blast at your desk and soon as Drake lets that first tear filled note across those speakers you are going to start into your last phone call. We all have done it, singing that course as if your life depended on that last note to hit correctly.

That’s the main thing; music especially hip hop is a gateway into ones emotions. You can feel mind swaying trying to decipher what your next emotion moving song is going to be. You even set yourself up for your feelings. Take a moment and look at your playlist titles. I bet there are few of the playlist based off of an artist and more of the playlist when you are in your feelings. Mood playlists consisting of, “Monday commute” which we all know isn’t always the best time of the day.

This is something I found interesting

There was a segment called “Misty's Matter's of the heart.” Usually it's something basic to the extent of, “ oh I think my husband is cheating how should I approach this?” type deal. This one Monday's question was something straight from left field. The question was posed to women, if your gay male friend wanted to know what it as like to be with a women, would you let him? We all know that is a out there question but something that would take a lot of thought. First of all I though wow, that is a question for sure. I thought “Hey that is kind of proactive and lets see how open these women of Columbus are.” As more people answered it made me realize so many people had thoughts like, “No they have STI's and that's nasty.” (That was a lot of the callers I heard.) Oh and the one that stuck out the most was this one strong women. “No!, they stick it in booty holes, and that's how Aids/HIV gets spread.” My first reaction was wow, she has some strong feelings about the gay's. The main thing that her strong statement made it seem as if all people thought so negatively about the homosexuals. Why are those views acceptable for people to thinking. Even though Black women are more likely to get STI's like HIV than homosexual's. Why is it always seeming as if homo's will always do wrong. This question, weird as it may be. I think it could spark a bigger debate. The debate of, why are there so many negative thoughts and connotations with your homosexual friends.

Why does it seem as if once you come out as a homo, you are automatically given the wrap sheet full of stereotypes, stigmas and characteristics. For example, as a gay male you are perceived as weak, flamboyant (flamer), disease spreader and so forth. For women you are manish, a tomboy, into softball and or basketball and many more. Yet some of those same things are exactly what all other sexualities deal with. Each one deals with stigmas of being “this or that.” As if sexuality transmitted diseases are only with homosexual's while heterosexual's deal with immunity as far as that goes. What makes that logic seem valid in our community?