Snoop Dogg - I Wanna Rock

Malice n Wonderland, due in stores December 8th 2009!

Directed by Erick Peyton.

Chip Tha Ripper – Fat Raps (feat. Curren$y & Big Sean) (prod by Chuck Inglish)

Here goes something new from Cleveland’s own Chip Tha Ripper called “Fat Raps″, and it features Curren$y the Hoy Spitta and Big Sean with production by The Cool Kids own Chuck Inglish. You can definitely feel his vibe on the track. This record will be on Chip’s The Cleveland Show, due out December 1st.

Chip Tha Ripper – Fat Raps (feat. Curren$y & Big Sean) (prod by Chuck Inglish) by treylord

Download Chip Tha Ripper – Fat Raps (feat. Curren$y & Big Sean) (prod by Chuck Inglish)

The Best of Susie Greene

The Best of Susie Greene - watch more funny videos

Common ft. John Legend "Strange Fruit" (prod. by Kanye West)

Here is a previously unreleased Common joint. The song is called "Strange Fruit" and features John Legend, with Kanye West on the production. Apparently this song was meant for Com's album, Finding Forever, but Cassidy got to the beat first. I like the soulful feel, mellow rhymes.

Thoughts?

Common - Strange Fruit (Feat. John Legend) by treylord

Download Common ft. John Legend "Strange Fruit" (prod. by Kanye West)

NYtimes: The Road to Copenhagen - Tree Harvester Offers to Save Indonesian Forest

Ok, so I admittedly have been slacking on posting updates from the whole "Road to Copenhagen" process but frankly there is just too much happening to really make sense of it and there are daily BREAKING NEWS that aren't that interesting, such as Obama setting emissions targets, the African delegation walking out of talks, the Chinese fucking around, etc.

Anyway, I'm gonna try to post more interesting snippets and MAJOR things happening in Copenhagen over the next few weeks. Hopefully we'll get a robust internationally binding treating, but it's a long shot. Till then, check out some of the international efforts to help mitigate climate change.

This article should highlight some of the difficulties of the climate negotiations, and accounting for what should be eligible and ineligible for carbon credits.

NYtimes:

TELUK MERANTI, Indonesia — From the air, the Kampar Peninsula in Indonesia stretches for mile after mile in dense scrub and trees. One of the world’s largest peat swamp forests, it is also one of its biggest vaults of carbon dioxide, a source of potentially lucrative currency as world governments struggle to hammer out a global climate treaty. The vault, though, is leaking.

Canals — used legally and illegally — extend from surrounding rivers nearly into the peninsula’s impenetrable core. By slowly draining and drying the peat land, they are releasing carbon dioxide, contributing to making Indonesia the world’s third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and the United States.

The leaks were evident to a family of fishermen from this village, just south of the peninsula, as they paddled up a creek in a dugout canoe.

“I can tell the peat land’s leaking because the water here is getting browner and more acidic,” said Amiruddin, 31, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, as his wife, Delima, 29, scooped up the creek’s coffee-colored water to drink.

Forests like the one on the Kampar Peninsula are at the center of a growing battle over the shape of a new climate treaty and efforts to curb the destruction and degradation of forests. Though countries are expected to reach only a broad agreement at next month’s summit meeting in Copenhagen, governments, scientists, businesses and environmentalists are already arguing over what kinds of forests should qualify as carbon reducers and what kinds of projects should be rewarded financially.

The arguments over the Kampar have become particularly heated, not just because of its ecological importance, but because, so far, the most detailed plan to stop the leaks from the peat land comes from an unlikely source: a giant paper and pulp company that, according to its critics, has been one of the driving forces of deforestation in Indonesia. The company, Asia Pacific Resources International Limited, or April, says it wants to create a ring of industrial tree plantations around the peninsula’s core to preserve it.

What is more, it hopes to receive carbon credits for doing so under a United Nations program to reward nations for conserving forests and reforesting degraded ones. The program, Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD, is expected to be part of a new climate treaty. Unlike the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a new treaty is expected to tackle deforestation, which alone accounts for 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Halting deforestation in tropical forest nations like Indonesia and Brazil, the world’s fourth biggest emitter, is considered crucial to reining in global warming.

Developing nations that preserve forests would be paid with carbon credits that they could sell to industrialized nations seeking to meet emissions reduction targets. Though the program’s specifics will probably take months or years to be worked out, more than a dozen projects of the United Nations program are already under way in Indonesia, backed by such diverse entities as conservation groups, the Australian government and Merrill Lynch, in addition to paper and pulp companies.

Environmental groups say the paper and pulp companies, after years of despoiling Indonesia, should not be rewarded under the program.

“They are the ones that did the damage,” said Michael Stuewe, an expert on Indonesia at the World Wildlife Fund. “Now they’re saying: ‘We were bad boys. Now we’re good. So give us the money.’ ”

The companies argue that the United Nations program could provide them with the financial incentives to preserve forests even as they expand their operations, a goal supported by the Indonesian government, which sees the paper and pulp industry as a mainstay of the country’s economic development.

“We could perhaps reduce the annual Indonesian emissions by 5 percent with this one project,” said Jouko Virta, April’s president of global fiber supply, referring to the company’s plan to ring the peninsula’s core. “It’s so significant. One project.”

Everyone agrees, at least, on the importance of saving the Kampar Peninsula, a nearly one-million-acre peat bog on the equator inhabited by Sumatran tigers, bears, monkeys, crocodiles and other wildlife.

Most of the peninsula remains free of humans, though small fishing camps can be found up its creeks. More significantly, illegal loggers can be seen operating in bases set up along some canals and creeks. And east of here, near a village called Pulau Muda, more than a dozen houses flank a long canal jutting into the peninsula, in what appears to be the biggest human settlement on the Kampar.

Made up of decomposed trees and plants, sometimes as deep as 50 feet, the waterlogged land stores billions of tons of carbon dioxide. But once drained or cleared, the peat land releases many times more carbon dioxide than the deforestation of rain forests. Most experts believe that, as with rain forests, the protection of peat swamp forests will be eligible for carbon credits under the United Nations program.

The Kampar Peninsula is one of the last tracts of green left in central Sumatra, where forests have been cleared to make way for palm oil plantations and industrial tree plantations, especially those belonging to April and its chief rival, Asia Pulp and Paper, both owned by Indonesian conglomerates. According to the World Wildlife Fund, here in Riau, the province where the two companies have their main mills and plantations, two-thirds of the area’s forests have disappeared in the past quarter century.

Illegal loggers have also clear-cut vast chunks of forest. Migrants often slash and burn land for farming, sometimes inside national parks; like people elsewhere in Indonesia, they are often encouraged by local governments seeking to populate areas for economic or political reasons, in defiance of officials from the understaffed Forestry Ministry.

April, which, with its partners, has government-issued concessions across a third of Kampar, says its ring of acacia plantations around the core will block off any such encroachment, though it says it needs to acquire more land to complete the circle. On plantations already in operation, the company uses a sophisticated network of canals and dams that minimizes leakage from the peat land, environmental groups acknowledge.

If April acquired control over the core, it could be paid for protecting it. The company says it believes that it can be, at the very least, rewarded for the ring, about half of which would be turned into acacia plantations and half left as natural forests or what it calls “conservation areas.”

“The carbon we are storing in the conservation areas could be financed through REDD,” Mr. Virta said in an interview at April’s 4,300-acre mill, about two hours west of here by car.

Agus Purnomo, who leads the government’s National Council on Climate Change, said it would take months or years of negotiations after next month’s climate conference to determine whether April’s ring would be entitled to carbon credits.

Much will depend on whether an agreement includes stipulations against the conversion of natural forests into industrial tree plantations. Indonesia, like other countries with paper and pulp industries, counts industrial tree plantations as forests.

Environmental groups caution against any project of the United Nations program involving the conversion of natural forests into industrial tree plantations. Bill Barclay, policy director at the Rainforest Action Network, said the priority in Indonesia should be to “halt further conversion of natural forests” and “further draining of peat lands.”

But that kind of argument finds little traction in a nation with an economy that is still developing.

Mr. Purnomo, of the country’s climate change council, said government officials were worried that Indonesia’s ranking as the world’s third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases would increase pressure to reduce emissions.

“Are we going to remain underdeveloped because of that?” he asked.

Since starting operations on a new concession near here in September, April has brought jobs to Teluk Meranti. As part of its community outreach, it has brought a new generator to increase the supply of electricity and construction material to renovate two mosques. Still, Teluk Meranti had yet to buy April’s vision of the future. Villagers remained overwhelmingly opposed to the company’s presence here, opponents and supporters of the company said.

“We don’t know what we’ll get,” said Firdaus, a 39-year-old man operating a makeshift convenience store. “What rights do we have?”

He was unaware of April’s ring project. But, yes, he had heard of the importance of peat from environmental groups. “We were told,” he said, “to protect the peat for the climate.”

Okayplayer Kevin Casey mixtape: LIVE FROM New York: 1994-2001

HOTNESS:


New from OKAYPLAYER! A dope NYC compilation for your enjoyment...


46 tracks featuring Deep Cover 98, Flamboyant, Eye For An Eye, John Blaze, Banned From T.V., 10 Crack Commandments, T.O.N.Y. and many more.

DOWNLOAD: Live From New York: 1994-2001 (Mixtape)

Lupe Fiasco “Enemy Of The State: A Love Story” Mixtape

As promised, here is the Thanksgiving mixtape from Lupe Fiasco.

Download it HERE.

1. Intro
2. The National Anthem
3. All The Way Turnt Up
4. Fireman
5. Interlude
6. Angels
7. So Ghetto
8. Say Something
9. Thank You
10. The One
11. Popular Demand
12. Summit On The Summit (HP TV Commercial)

Real World DC Trailer

Real World XXIII: Washington DC - MTV Shows

So glad these fuckers are gone.

Mick Boogie & Terry Urban Presents Le Da Soul (20 Years of De La Soul)

It’s finally time to unleash the latest mixtape from Mick Boogie & Terry Urban. Dedicated to my favorite hip hop trio of all time. Featuring the likes of Homeboy Sandman, Asheru, Tanya Morgan, Camp Lo, CurT@!n$, Big Pooh, Talib Kweli, ESSO and many more. With production from 6th Sense, The Kickdrums, Apple Juice Kid, Remot, Christian Rich, J. Rawls, etc.



DOWNLOAD: Le Da Soul (20 Years of De La Soul)

Ski "Taxi" feat. Mos Def and the launch of CreativeControl.tv

Ski feat. Mos Def-Taxi from Creative Control on Vimeo.

Creative Control just unleashed some more in the form of this video that shows us a snippet of a song called "Taxi" by Ski Beatz featuring Mos Def. The song will appear on an upcoming full-length project by Ski. All of these vids are build up for the November 27th launch of CreativeControl.tv, the network founded by Chike Ozah, Coodie Simmons and Damon Dash.

R Kelly - Real Talk

R Kelly - Real Talk,
Uploaded by LilQ. - Explore more music videos.

R Kelly is one special kind of guy.

Thanks to Preetha for the heads up.

And next up, a hip hopera staring R. Kelly called "Trapped in the Closet"

Lupe's Mixtape due out Thanksgiving

As I've posted in the past, Lupe was inspired by the snub on the MTV's hottest MCs in the game list, and now is out to prove he's better than everybody. "If it takes three more albums to do it, then so be it. That's what I got left with Atlantic. Three more after Lasers. I'm already done with two. The mixtape is coming Thanksgiving" says Lupe from the red carpet of Diddy's b-day party. A highly motivated Lupe continues: "I'm finnin' to house every single mode and arena I can get into," Fiasco promised. "If y'all had somewhere where it's live performances, I'm finnin to have the best live performances. If it's mixtapes, I'm finnin' to have the best mixtapes. If it's albums again, it's gonna be the best verse. If it's the best dressed, I'm going hard as well." Lupe also mentions that this Thanksgiving day mixtape is untitled as of now and will feature him going in over other MCs' beats.

Timbaland – Morning After Dark f. SoShy

First single of Timbo's next album Shock Value 2. It's a pretty classic Timbaland hit, solid beats, and will likely be a club hit. Not familiar with SoShy, but I'm starting to like her.

Wale, Drake, and Kid Cudi in GQ's Man of the Year issue

AdrianHopkins: My First Grad School Mixtape, Because Sharing is Caring

My boy Adrian Hopkins' first mixtape. I can vouche that he's in a league of his own on music, design, literature, etc. You may remember him from a post a while back with him rapping about his quarter-life crisis. I'll repost that vid after the jump. Check out his website though.

I've listened to the mixtape, and it's a ride.

From AdrianHopkins.com:

Earlier this week, I chronicled a bit of the musical selections that provided the soundtrack to my paper-writing adventure. Since sharing is caring, I decided to put those songs into a mix just for you!

I played each of these songs on repeat at least 15 times (Francis & The Lights' cover of Kanye's "Can't Tell Me Nothing" was the undisiputed champion with 164 plays) as I wrote about the influence of Edward Bernays' 1928 book, Propaganda, on the last 80+ years of American mass manipulation and media scholars' discussion thereof.

The tracklisting is below. Click here or on the album cover to download. Enjoy!

1. In My Dreams (Cudder Anthem) - KiD CuDi - 2009
2. The Bells (feat. Patti Labelle & The Bluebelles) - Laura Nyro - 1973
3. Can't Tell Me Nothing - Francis & The Lights - 2008
4. Everybody Touch - J*Davey - 2006
5. Eclipse - Ahmad Jamal - 1974
6. RobertaFlack - Flying Lotus - 2008
7. Paper Chase - Do Or Die - 1996
8. The Rotten Apple - Prodigy (of Mobb Deep) - 2007
9. I Wanna Know - The Foreign Exchange - 2008
10. Baby (You Know I'm Gonna Miss You) - The Montclairs - 1972
11. (Love) Lock Down - Rashid Hadee - 2009

Lil Wayne Carter Documentary

Friedman in NYtimes: What They Really Believe

Friedman in NYtimes:

If you follow the debate around the energy/climate bills working through Congress you will notice that the drill-baby-drill opponents of this legislation are now making two claims. One is that the globe has been cooling lately, not warming, and the other is that America simply can’t afford any kind of cap-and-trade/carbon tax.

But here is what they also surely believe, but are not saying: They believe the world is going to face a mass plague, like the Black Death, that will wipe out 2.5 billion people sometime between now and 2050. They believe it is much better for America that the world be dependent on oil for energy — a commodity largely controlled by countries that hate us and can only go up in price as demand increases — rather than on clean power technologies that are controlled by us and only go down in price as demand increases. And, finally, they believe that people in the developing world are very happy being poor — just give them a little running water and electricity and they’ll be fine. They’ll never want to live like us.

Yes, the opponents of any tax on carbon to stimulate alternatives to oil must believe all these things because that is the only way their arguments make any sense. Let me explain why by first explaining how I look at this issue.

I am a clean-energy hawk. Green for me is not just about recycling garbage but about renewing America. That is why I have been saying “green is the new red, white and blue.”

My argument is simple: I think climate change is real. You don’t? That’s your business. But there are two other huge trends barreling down on us with energy implications that you simply can’t deny. And the way to renew America is for us to take the lead and invent the technologies to address these problems.

The first is that the world is getting crowded. According to the 2006 U.N. population report, “The world population will likely increase by 2.5 billion ... passing from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050. This increase is equivalent to the total size of the world population in 1950, and it will be absorbed mostly by the less developed regions, whose population is projected to rise from 5.4 billion in 2007 to 7.9 billion in 2050.”

The energy, climate, water and pollution implications of adding another 2.5 billion mouths to feed, clothe, house and transport will be staggering. And this is coming, unless, as the deniers apparently believe, a global pandemic or a mass outbreak of abstinence will freeze world population — forever.

Now, add one more thing. The world keeps getting flatter — more and more people can now see how we live, aspire to our lifestyle and even take our jobs so they can live how we live. So not only are we adding 2.5 billion people by 2050, but many more will live like “Americans” — with American-size homes, American-size cars, eating American-size Big Macs.

“What happens when developing nations with soaring vehicle populations get tens of millions of petroleum-powered cars at the same time as the global economy recovers and there’s no large global oil supply overhang?” asks Felix Kramer, the electric car expert who advocates electrifying the U.S. auto fleet and increasingly powering it with renewable energy sources. What happens, of course, is that the price of oil goes through the roof — unless we develop alternatives. The petro-dictators in Iran, Venezuela and Russia hope we don’t. They would only get richer.

So either the opponents of a serious energy/climate bill with a price on carbon don’t care about our being addicted to oil and dependent on petro-dictators forever or they really believe that we will not be adding 2.5 billion more people who want to live like us, so the price of oil won’t go up very far and, therefore, we shouldn’t raise taxes to stimulate clean, renewable alternatives and energy efficiency.

Green hawks believe otherwise. We believe that in a world getting warmer and more crowded with more “Americans,” the next great global industry is going to be E.T., or energy technology based on clean power and energy efficiency. It has to be. And we believe that the country that invents and deploys the most E.T. will enjoy the most economic security, energy security, national security, innovative companies and global respect. And we believe that country must be America. If not, our children will never enjoy the standard of living we did. And we believe the best way to launch E.T. is to set a fixed, long-term price on carbon — combine it with the Obama team’s impressive stimulus for green-tech — and then let the free market and innovation do the rest.

So, as I said, you don’t believe in global warming? You’re wrong, but I’ll let you enjoy it until your beach house gets washed away. But if you also don’t believe the world is getting more crowded with more aspiring Americans — and that ignoring that will play to the strength of our worst enemies, while responding to it with clean energy will play to the strength of our best technologies — then you’re willfully blind, and you’re hurting America’s future to boot.

k-os "I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman" featuring Saukrates

Tomorrow is the U.S. release date for k-os's new album, Yes!. Here's his latest video, "I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman," featuring Saukrates. The two Northeners team up to make this dope Western style vid.

Not entirely sure where the Natalie Portman reference comes from, but it's finally made use of that song from the ill fated OC.

B.o.B aka Bobby Ray - No Mans Land

This cut is off of his B.o.B vs Bobby Ray mixtape, done by the Motion Family.

Love this joint. Dude is not only a rapper, but a talented guitarist.

B.o.B Presents The Features (Mixtape)

My dude B.o.B (a.k.a. Bobby Ray) is back at it again with the help of the cats at 2dopeboyz. B.o.B's label, Atlantic, has a full out campaign set for The Adventures of Bobby Ray (which is scheduled for an April release). I’ve said it countless times and will continue to do so, this man is one of the most talented artists doing it right now. And I’m glad to inform ya’ll that there is a huge record on the horizon and a single dropping sometime this month.

This mixtape is a compilation of his best tunes so far, made by 2dopeboyz.

Download: B.o.B Presents the Features

WP: Supreme Court refuses to hear Redskins' naming case

Big win for the team, but big loss of my respect. They need to take it on themselves to change the name.

WP:

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to revive a lawsuit on behalf of Native American activists who claimed that the Washington Redskins' team name is so offensive that it does not deserve trademark protection.

The court without comment refused to get involved in the long-running dispute. The decision essentially lets stand a lower court ruling that the activists waited too long to bring the challenge.

The team has been known as the Redskins since 1933, when the name was changed from the Boston Braves. It became the Washington Redskins in 1937, when the team moved south.

The lawsuit was filed in 1992, when seven activists challenged a Redskins trademark issued in 1967. They won seven years later in a decision by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, which said the name could be interpreted as offensive to Native Americans. The case is Harjo v. Pro-Football, Inc.

Trademark law prohibits registration of a name that "may disparage . . . persons, living or dead, . . . or bring them into contempt, or disrepute."

The team appealed to federal court.

Judges at the district and circuit levels said the activists' trademark cancellation claim was barred by the doctrine of laches, which serves as a defense against claims that should have been made long ago.

The activists argued that disparaging trademarks can be challenged at any time, citing a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. The decision was written by then-judgeSamuel A. Alito Jr., who now sits on the Supreme Court.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that was merely a "suggestion" of how to interpret the law.

The federal district judge who heard the lawsuit also said the activists had not proven that the name was disparaging.

The Supreme Court considered only the question of whether the suit was barred because of the passage of too much time.

Clipse feat Pharrell - I'm Good

Clipse feat Pharrell - I'm Good from Malice of the Clipse on Vimeo.

More from the Clipse. This isn't new, but I don't think I put it up yet.

Clipse – Doorman

Clipse - Doorman Music Video - Til The Casket Drops Dec 8 from Malice of the Clipse on Vimeo.

The flaunting gets old and the video is pedestrian, but can't beat the beats. New Clipse, produced by Pharrell.

F. Stokes & Dirty Disco Kidz Present: FILM

“I got a west-coast accent, with a no-coast style, using Midwest slang, don’t get it mixed up now…”

When you first hear of this mixtape (prolly right now) - you're like who are these dudez??? Madison Wisconsin??? Well, just give it a listen, try 'em out... For those of you who don’t know, this midwest shit is ill, shit is illlllll.

After hearing the intro, which is a combination of audio samples from the lead voice, MC F. Stokes, as well as some real tight scratches by Mr. Vinnie Toma, you'll want to hear more. They build the momentum up, pushing you into a hip-hop funk that you will dig.

The opening track, "Sparse Parts Remix", hits you like a ton of bricks, I started bobbing my head instantaneously as the first bar dropped. That ol' Run DMC Peter Piper bell riff plus some ill strings, this beat bangs hard. The body of the album is very solid, with tracks that vary in beats, rhymes and in character. It’s hard for me to pick favorites – so I’ll break into a double – for beat I have to pick “Sparse Parts Remix” and for lyrics I have to go with the “Blessings Remix”.

My boy Mr. Physix, and the Dirty Disco Kids, produced the album. The most interesting aspects of the project are that the sounds are so original and the beats and lyrics really show how versatile their whole crew is. This is a very tight underground mixtape album, I suggest you download it now. You will be sure to find some tracks that you will put on your Friday afternoon cruisin’ playlist.

Big ups to Madison, big ups to Legendary Jackson, big ups to the Dirty Disco Kids. Big ups to the Midwest, more coming soon, stay tuned… FILM!

DOWNLOAD it here - Mediafire

more about F. Stokes

The Cool Kids "Knocked Down"

The Cool Kids - New Music - More Music Videos

Here's The Cool Kids with "Knocked Down" off of their mixtape with Don Cannon, Gone Fishing.

WP: Wale opens a panderer's box

Wale Ovechkin is still new to some people. Here is the Post's review of his new album, Attention Deficit. I'm thinking that I need to write a review, but I've been playing these songs for months now, so listening to a concise group of them is difficult.

WP:

Hip-hop isn't dead -- it's just going through a monumental identity crisis.

Jay-Z clings to his credibility while Miley Cyrus gives him a shout-out on her latest single. Kanye West follows an awards show outburst with a blog apology that feels both petulant and contrite. Lil Wayne tells Katie Couric he's a gangster, then takes her bowling.

If hip-hop -- once our most radical, rebellious popform -- is finally congealing into the snoozy status quo, how can today's rappers feel anything but conflicted?

The genre's latest ball of contradictions comes bouncing out of Washington, D.C. His name is Wale, and after a two-year slog through the record industry's broken-down hype machine, his major-label debut "Attention Deficit," finally arrives Tuesday. It's a stellar offering from a wildly gifted rapper, but almost predictably, Wale's feelings are mixed.

"I won't rest till I'm given my respect," he proclaims on "Triumph," as if fame is something he deserves.

"Am I doing this for them or me?" he second-guesses on "Contemplate," as if fame is something he dreads.

And back and forth it goes, with the rapper's sticky, dexterous flow holding the proceedings together like so much rubber cement.

For proof of Wale's lyrical acrobatics, look no further than "Pretty Girls," where the rapper's best pickup line involves two bottles of champagne, a football joke and a healthy credit rating: "What you sippin' on? It's no problem/Black and gold bottles like I'm pro-New Orleans/But shorty, I'm far from a Saint/But I got two AmExes that look the same way."

This is some masterful wordplay -- with an emphasis on play -- and it makes for the album's most dazzling cut. The song's thundering, go-go-inflected track helps, too. Production duo Best Kept Secret built it around a sample from local stalwarts Backyard Band and it sounds like a house party crumbling in an earthquake. How it will fare on national radio is anyone's guess, but for locals fluent in go-go, "Pretty Girls" is a thriller.

Wale has a fantastic ear for beats, though you wouldn't know it after hearing "Attention Deficit" in its entirety. There's some real dreck from producers Mark Ronson ("90210") and the Neptunes ("Let It Loose"). Wale is either adopting the please-all-audiences model West popularized, or his label's invisible hand is fussing with the dials. (In a delicious stroke of irony, Interscope reportedly zapped a song from the track list titled "Artistic Integrity.")

Sometimes pandering to the masses isn't such a bad idea. The album's lead single "Chillin," is a club-friendly romper with a chorus co-hosted by ascendant weirdo Lady Gaga. Purists balked at the collaboration when it hit the blogosphere last spring, dismissing it as too left field. Had M.I.A. or Rihanna belted that same exact hook, this tune would still be taking hourly victory laps across the airwaves. And there's a precedent here, too. Does anyone remember back in 1985, when local go-go icons E.U. crossed paths with pop-eccentric-turned-gay-culture-icon Grace Jones?

By the end of his 14-track, big-league debut, Wale sounds nothing less than harried, hustling to please the gods of Billboard, radio, MTV, the blogosphere and his home town. But with "Mirrors" he tries to brush those extraneous pressures off his shoulders with his most poignant line: "What the fans can't see, that mirror gonna notice."

What a concept: a rapper who answers to an audience of one.

Wale x The Roots "Pretty Girls" Live on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon

To bring in the release of his new album, Attention Deficit, Wale was a guest on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon yesterday. Wale performs his song "Pretty Girls" with The Roots backing him up, and Black Thought handling the second verse. Attention Deficit is in stores now.

Veterans Day

Plants need more CO2, not less

People like this prove that we need a Hobbesian plague. Seriously, there is no hope for humanity if people like this are allowed to remain part of our society.

Please feel free to go and post your replies HERE.

Here is an editorial in The Hill by PlantsneedC02.org Chairman H. Leighton Steward:

Congress and federal regulators are poised to make a misguided and reckless decision that will stifle our economy recovery and spur long-term damage to plant and animal life on earth.

In the coming months, the Environmental Protection Agency will hold hearings to justify the movement to brand carbon dioxide (CO2) as a pollutant. Congress will also consider cap-and-trade legislation that, if enacted, could also regulate CO2 as pollution. Why is it such a catastrophic decision? Because there is not a single piece of evidence that CO2 is a pollutant. In fact, lower levels of carbon dioxide actually inhibit plant growth and food production. What we see happening in Washington right now is the replacement of politics for science in conversations about CO2.

For plants, CO2 is the greatest, naturally occurring air-borne fertilizer that exists. Even schoolchildren learn in elementary science class that plants need carbon dioxide to grow. During photosynthesis, plants use this CO2 fertilizer as their food and they “breathe out” oxygen into the air so humans can inhale it, and in turn exhale CO2. This mutually beneficial and reinforcing cycle is one of the most basic elements of life on earth.

An article appeared recently in the Environment and Energy Daily that claimed a “modeled” nitrogen deficiency will occur as CO2 rises. Well, CO2 has already risen over 37%, 105 parts per million, and where is the real world nitrogen deficiency? Why are Earth’s forests lush if the added growth that has already occurred, due to big bursts of CO2, has depleted the nitrogen supply? The nitrogen supply of pristine ecosystems has been resupplied through natural processes for eons. Computer models, manipulated to produce desired results, can generate catastrophic, front page, forecasts. We encourage our government’s scientists to step back from their models and observe what is and what has happened in the real world as well as in actual plant experiments. Doesn’t anyone recognize the good news that is staring them in the face?

It simply defies imagination, let alone science, that the United Nations has now backed an arbitrary limit on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The chairman of the politically charged Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said he supports efforts to reduce carbon dioxide to 10% below current levels. In the context of today’s political conversations, this recommendation may sound like an acceptable position to save the environment. But the scientific reality of such a step is quite the opposite. Lowering carbon dioxide in our atmosphere will have catastrophic affects on our food supply. Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide support plant life and helps plants thrive. If our food supply is reduced, the hunger crisis in many parts of the world will worsen. Not only would lowering CO2 levels be wrong, one can make the argument that even higher levels would be desirable. Greenhouse operators routinely increase CO2 to about three times the current level in earth’s atmosphere in order to encourage plant growth.

We know CO2 is vital for plants, but what about the argument that it is a dominant contributor to the greenhouse effect? Again, science does not support this argument either. CO2 is not even close to being the most important of the greenhouse gases. Most of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor, which is more than 30 times as abundant in the atmosphere as CO2.

As further evidence, we find that as the post war industry boom began to put significant volumes of CO2 into the atmosphere, global temperatures did not rise. Since 1945, there have been about 40 years of cooling trend and only 20 plus years of warming. While the warming is significant, it followed an unusually high period of solar activity.

Temperature did rise steeply in the 1920’s and in the 1930’s in the USA, and 1934 was the warmest year of the 20th century. The rate of warming then was also higher than in the 1980’s and 1990’s, even though CO2 levels were lower.

Many in the scientific community reject reducing atmospheric CO2 to 350 parts per million, as Dr. Pachauri of the U.N. wishes. Thousands of peer-reviewed experiments have demonstrated CO2’ s ability to “green” the earth dramatically. Nonetheless, Dr. Pachauri and those who prefer to debate science with politics are sticking to their old story and clinging to their inadequate climate models and their headline-grabbing catastrophic forces.

Do Americans want to see their government spend trillions of dollars removing CO2 that will not lower the Earth’s temperature but absolutely will risk harming ecologies, economies and mankind itself?

UCB "Pat Your Weave" feat. Wale

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