jb’s 2 cents
T
o go to war, or not to go to war? That is the question I’ve been asking myself lately. And it seems that I am not the only one. We’ve got Lil Wayne going at Jay-Z, Young Jeezy going at Nas, UGK’s inspirational Southern anthem “Quit Hatin’ The South,” and countless other signs of the beginning of the Rap Civil War. When this discussion arose yesterday at MTV, the point was correctly made that we at OZONE have a large responsibility to either propel this North vs. South war - as other magazines were accused of doing with the East vs. West, which ended with Tupac and Biggie’s deaths - or to stop it.
10 Things I’m Hatin’ On By Roland “Lil Duval” Powell
Disclaimer: Some of these are not meant to be funny, but they’re all real (I’m going through some shit).
New Yorkers are haters. This is pretty much a well-known documented fact. New York rappers admit this; the biggest reason they can’t seem to make hits right now is that they all hate each other. They hated on the West, they hate on the South, they hate on themselves.
1. VH1’s The Fabulous Life Of… If you ever want to know that your life ain’t shit, watch this show. 2. Shout Outs If you’re mad at someone because they didn’t give you a shout out, you’re lame as hell. A nigga has so much on his mind most of the time, it’s not intentional. Plus, just because a nigga shouts you out, that shit is not gonna change your life.
Me & Unk in Atlanta
3. BET’s Hip-Hop Awards Is it just me, or when you finished watching the awards did you say, “I can’t believe I missed Deal Or No Deal? for this”? 4. Snitches I play a lot, but on the real, snitching is fucking up the streets where I’m from. I don’t care how close you think that nigga is to you; he will snitch. And to all the snitches: Once you work for them crackers, you never stop working. 5. Disloyal Niggas I’ve learned the hard way to only fuck with niggas that are doing something, cause everyone else is just there to eat the fruits of your labor and doesn’t respect what it took for you to get there.
Davey D, me, and TJ in Oakland
Our favorite pose
6. Ignorant Niggas A nigga gon’ tell me that I don’t rep where I’m from – now if that ain’t the most ignorant shit I’ve ever heard. Nobody outside of Florida would know what Duval was if it wasn’t for me. That’s why I call myself Lil Duval. Whenever I can’t rep, I still rep it whenever they say my name, dummies. 7. MTV’s Sweet 16 Show Man, ain’t nobody spending that much money on they kid’s birthday. 8. Some Niggas Who Are Locked Up My nigga Plies said niggas forget about you when your bid long, which is true, but every nigga that’s locked up ain’t real. Some of them are supposed to be there. Some niggas take the people around them for granted and when they get locked up, that’s when they want you to be there. 9. Wanting To Blow Up If you have a time limit on when you’re gonna “make it,” you might as well quit cause it’s not gonna happen. You should be in the game because you love it. It might look like people blow up overnight, but most of those people have been in the game for at least ten years. 10. Kramer from Seinfeld Fuck this cracker and everybody that’s like him. I did a diss record on him – go to myspace.com/rolandpowell to listen to it.
OZONE & BET are friends again!
But I do think that much of the New York attitude towards the rest of the country comes from ignorance and apathy and is misinterpreted as “hate.” Much of the energy in our music comes from our surroundings. You can’t fully appreciate bass music until you’ve sweated your ass off in a Florida night club or picked up a Miami underground station, static and all, while cruising down 95 South. You won’t fully appreciate T.I. and the P$C’s “Bankhead” until you see them perform it live, at their club, in Bankhead. You won’t totally understand why Screw music is considered an art form until you’ve spent enough time in Houston to feel how the music grew from the city. You won’t give a fuck about hyphy until you’ve listened to it riding over the Bay Bridge at night or fought through the crowd at the BARS Awards. I’ve done all of the above, so I would know. And, I suppose, we can’t quite relate to that “real hip-hop” because we don’t have to listen to music on headphones while riding the subway every day, nor do we in the South (generally speaking) use spray-paint as a form of expression. The point is, everyone needs to get out more, especially New Yorkers. God put green grass, blue skies, lakes, and all that shit here on earth to calm us down. I’d probably be a hater too if I lived in an apartment the size of a refrigerator box, and every day I had to ride the subway with dozens of total strangers, wear multiple layers of clothing, and smell piles of garbage bags everywhere I went. So do yourselves a favor and get out of your borough. Come down South, or go to the Midwest, or the West, fuck it, wherever, just get out of New York and wipe that smirk of superiority off your face and treat us with respect and I guarantee you’ll get the same courtesy back. As much as I love a good battle, we have to remind ourselves that war always comes with a cost - not just for the loser, but the winner as well. The hidden costs of war are hard to measure. And at the end of the day, even if the South is controlling the airwaves and the music we hear at the clubs, the checks are still signed in New York and L.A.. By attacking the East coast, we’d only give them motivation to push back harder at us. We’d probably help unify them by giving them a common cause, a vendetta, a goal to rally behind. And the real secret to winning is success. We’re already achieving success in our own markets, so why waste our energy? All we have to do is keep doing what we’ve been doing. Besides, we all have a greater purpose, and it’s bigger than North vs. South. The powers that be love to see us wasting our time on stupid shit and not paying attention to what’s really going on in the world. So even though I am declaring myself anti-Civil War, this editorial wouldn’t be complete without quoting Pimp C: Y’all should have listened to Andre, bitch. We got something to say.
Me & Money Waters in Dallas
- Julia Beverly, jb@ozonemag.com
Young Jeezy “Let’s Just Say” Lil Boosie “Goin’ Through Some Things” Beyonce “Irreplaceable” Mr. Marcelo f/ Z-Ro “Swang & Swerve” UGK f/ Jazze Pha “Stop & Go” Young Buck f/ Jazze Pha “I Know You Want Me” David Banner “Man Up” Jay-Z f/ Chrisette Michele “Lost One”
jb’splaylist Akon “Don’t Matter” Lil Boosie “Movies” B.O.B. “Ur Love” Mistah FAB “Ghostride It” 19