What a gorgeously fucked-up film.

Hip-hop gets blame for everything from violence to misogyny to homophobia. Even when a white guy spilled out a racial slur on public radio, “nappy-headed ho,” hip-hop takes the flame for it. Many, including the older generation of black people, look down on hip-hop with their bigotry instead of listening to what young black artists have to say with an open mind. In his new book, Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip-hop, Michael Eric Dyson sets the record straight from an academic point of view. Whether his argument is on the authenticity in hip-hop (“They see and they say”), the rhetoric and language usage (Lauryn Hill rhymes: “Even after all my logic and my theory / I add a motherfucker so you ignorant niggas hear me”), or the women contradictions (“praising their mamas, slamming their babymamas”), Dyson shows his intellectual criticism and his broad of knowledge on hip-hop culture. In the intro, Jay-Z praises Dyson as someone who “started out translating between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and now he’s helping put together a world where there is only ‘us.’” In the outro, Nas sees Dyson as someone “who can give CPR to hip hop” and he’s glad that Dyson is on their side.

I like the following one-sentence review of R. Kelly’s Double Up from Blender:

The 40-year-old anti-virgin is back, as reborn as—parental advisory alert!—”the Sexasaurus.”

Nowadays singers in Viet Nam cut records to keep their name in the game more than to invest in the music. Duc Tuan is the exception. By hiring Duc Tri, one of today’s hottest and priciest producers, Tuan delivered what he promised: a Pham Duy songbook with first-class orchestration. Even though Tri has been known for his laziness, Tuan managed to pull some of the most creative works out of him. “Tinh Cam,” “Tinh Hoai Huong” and “Tinh Ca” find the perfect blend between Tuan’s soulful falsetto and Tri’s illustrious arrangements, but more impressive is the consistency of the album as a whole.

Did Uncle Murder rap “lick the rapper” or wrapper? I thought rapper, but after listening the pornographic lyrics, wrapper makes more sense.

Saelee Oh and Amy Sol are both fantastic illustrators.

Cherry Coke, the first decent-looking MySpace, and the amusing Relearn How to Drive designed by Juxt Interactive.

Have a good fucking day!

It looks like all that painful injections are paying off. My keloids are deflating.

That’s the beauty of hip-hop. You can talk shit and make it addictive. T.I.’s “I’m Talkin’ to You” got stuck in my head again. The beat is banging. The flow is ingenious. The Southern accent is exotic. The lyric is just facetious: “I’m the best you ever heard about, fresher than you heard about / I’m strapped now pussy nigga this ain’t just word of mouth / for niggaz wit dirty mouths, I got a lotta clean pistols to wash ’em out.”

If I ever run a web design shop, I would hire my boss to be my consultant if I could afford to pay her. Her strength is that she could sell my design (not just mine, but other designers as well) way better than I could. I often say that design speaks for itself, yet my projects wouldn’t fly if I just let them up to the clients to figure out on their own. Not sure if it is because I have been working with her all these years or she is just so good at it that she could pick up my intention and explain it like she had been involved in my design thinking. I guess that’s why she’s my boss.