Dear New York Times: Get Your Rap Right

This post is a bit off topic, but the 50 Cent review in Thursday's New York Times really bothered us. If you're a frequent reader of the Times, you know that their style guide dictates that when they refer to people in articles the first reference uses their full name and future references use a salutation (e.g. Mr, Ms, Mrs) and their last name. For example, in the aforementioned article the Times references Kanye twice in the first paragraph:

... the same day Kanye West released "Graduation," his third, and Mr. West outsold him by more than 250,000 copies.

The Times also apparently has a policy of using stage names or pseudonyms in full throughout the article. For example, they always refer to Fiddy as "50 Cent." Cool.

Here's what really bothers us about the article: they give Tony Yayo and Lloyd Banks the proper name treatment and not the pseudonym treatment. See for example the seventh paragraph:

... 50 Cent is the gravitational center, and Mr. Banks (the clinitian) and Mr. Yayo (the jester)...

The problem of course is that Tony Yayo and Lloyd Banks are as much Marvin Bernard and Christopher Lloyd's real names as 50 Cent is Curtis Jackson's real name. So what gives New York Times? Did you not know that Tony Yayo and Lloyd Banks were pseudonyms? A quick trip to Wikipedia could have cleared that up for you. And if you did know, how do you decide when to treat a pseudonym like a proper name? Sure they sound like proper names, but they're not proper names. Tony Yayo certainly took a real first name, but he combined it with slang for cocaine. Does that qualify as a proper name for the times? If we used the stage name Kanye Cocaine, would the Times refer to us as Mr. Cocaine?

As another example, the Times reviewed super-group Lucy Pearl in May 2000. Lucy Pearl sounds like a name to us. It certainly passes the Tony Yayo criteria of a first name followed by a second proper noun. Yet the Times refers to them fully as "Lucy Peal" throughout the article. Seems to be a contradiction to us. If we didn't just spend so much energy writing our longest blog post ever, we might just write the editor.

[Photo via watz]

Don't Be a Fake Gangsta

Leaders of the New School were hot as hell. The Coming and When Disasters Strikes are arguably classic material. But we've gotta say we're really not feelin the new Busta. We know you've caught a few cases recently and oddly enough your bodyguards keep dieing, but to be honest Busta, "we don't believe you, you need more people." No matter how hard you try, we're just not buying that gangsta image. Sorry Trevor.

[Image via minusbaby]

Do Your Internet Thing

Whatever you think of the whole Ice-T vs Soulja Boy thing, you've gotta admit that Soulja Boy is an outstanding internet marketer. We aren't going to say dude is a great rapper, but you can't hate on the way he used the internet to get paid. Young bucks are gettin it done! Over six million ringtone and single downloads: what rapper wouldn't kill for that? And just when we thought it was over, dude got play in the New York Times (scroll to the bottom). How many rappers does the old gray lady cover? Do your thing Soulja Boy.

[Photo via Johnthan Speed]

Improve Your Google Rank

Had to shout-out our girl Teyana Taylor on this one. You should already know the deal, but we're gonna tell you anyway: you wanna be a star? Up your Google results. Six Mics is number two, so you know we gotta work on that. Don't sleep on your Search Engine Optimization game! And don't hate on our girl because she beat you to the punch, making that Google Me shit when she was 16.

Update: You already know who's got the first seven results for best rapper alive. Who's gonna try to take that belt?

If You Can't Rap, Act

We learned today via our friend Perez that Fitty is apparently starring in a movie with Val Kilmer. We'd be more than happy if Curtis gave up rapping for acting and we never had to hear another 50 Cent album. Of course Curtis is following in a long line of terrible rappers who went on to act including Kid 'n Play, DMX, LL Cool J and Ja Rule.

Don't Marry Foxy Brown

You already know how we feel about Rick Ross, but we've gotta agree with Nah Right on this one. Marrying Foxy Brown is definitely not a strong career move, Ricky. Now we know we already told you to marry an R&B singer, but the same just don't go for a female rapper. And it definitely doesn't apply for someone with such a long rap sheet of crazy shit as the Ill Na Na. Thank God Wayne smartened up before he married Trina. Who knows what kind of damage that could have done to the best rapper alive.

Be The Best Rapper Alive

We feel like we can't really say anything about Wayne that hasn't been said in the past couple of weeks. But we will say this: can there be any doubt that dude is the best rapper alive? A million sold in one week? Amazing. Young rappers: adjust your sites accordingly.

[photo via Georgetown Voice]

Don't Buy 30 Yachts

Rumor has it consistently ridiculously dressed super-producer Scott Storch is broke. Maybe you didn't need all those yachts after all Scotty. And really you can only drive one Bentely at a time anyway. As hard as we're sure this has been on Scotty; its been effecting us at Six Mics too. Apparently his financial situation has been effecting Storch's production. When we heard Scott Storch was teaming up with the Clipse for their latest single, we were understandably excited. Somehow though Fast Life is kind of a bomb. Sure its an average song, but we just expected better. Get your paper right Scotty: we need more jams.

Get High, Rule The World

As you may know, the Bilderberg conference is taking place RIGHT NOW in Chantilly, Virginia. We've all made a trip or two down to VA in our day, but trust this one is different. For those of you not familiar, this is the super secret annual meeting of all those billionaires who make the world turn. What goes on at the meeting? No one really knows, but trust the conspiracy theorists are all over this one. What we want to know is: can a hip hop mogul get an invite? Jay's worth about a billion; Russel was one of People's 25 most influential and Diddy aint exactly a slouch either (dude can at least make a band). So where's the love?

Don't Shelve Your Best Jam

We were over at Brisco's MySpace today when we were pleasantly surprised to find the above video for Rick Ross' stellar "Street Money". Apparently this shit's been around for a while, but we just found it so we're posting it now.

"Street Money" was supposed to be the second single from Trilla, but it ended up not even making the album. What gives Ricky? "Street Money" was fire. You already know we're feelin "The Boss" (which ended up being second single), but "Street Money" couldn't even make the album? It couldn't have been harder to clear than that Madonna sample JR had to cut from the original version of "The Boss". J-Rock: If you've got any spare beats laying around, get at us.

Kill A Wayne Beat

We would not advise most rappers to play in Wayne's world. Frankly, its a place we don't understand and are kind of afraid of. But here Lil Mama takes the much leaked beat from "A Milli" and murders it. We have to admit that we kind of hated "A Milli" the first million or so times we heard it, but Lil Mama is changing our minds pretty quickly. We gotta start paying more attention to this girl. [via Pitchfork]

Get a Nickname From Perez

If you're on the web as much as we are, you're bound to read Perez now and again (Don't look at us like that; Ye reads that shit too). And if you read Perez, even occasionally, you know he posts about Rihanna (aka RiRi) kind of a lot. And what does she get for this? He posts her singles. Even when those singles are off a re-released album. Now we're the first to admit that "Umbrella" was a jam, but really? You're re-releasing the entire album? Good Girl Gone Bad aint exactly Thriller, so unless that entire album was rewritten by The Dream consider us not buying.

Get Famous...

by painting that shit gold.

Mediocre (at best) group Atmosphere has come up with a pretty ingenious way to promote their sure to be mediocre new album When Life Gives You Lemons, Paint That Shit Gold. Head on over to smartly titled PaintThatShitGold.com and you can tag any webpage you'd like with some gold paint. Like we did here with our post on Two Five and Consequence tryin to get famous. Not bad. [via Hypebeast]

Get Recorded

We were over at Hypebeast today making sure our kicks are still the freshest (they are!), when we came across the above video of Kanye's performance at the G-Shock 25th Anniversary party (again, we didn't get that invite). After we noticed that it was a pretty inspiring performance, we couldn't help but notice just about every idiot there was trying to tape it on their Palm Pilot. While we would never be the one taping a show on our phone (we use ours to make calls), we would encourage you to get your performance taped. Maybe you'll end up here...

Get Really Good At Connect Four

If you don't read Kanye's blog on the regular, you're seriously missing out. In fact, we'll wait here while you go and read it.

Dude is kind of crazy, but in the most unbelievably awesome way ever, right? Today Kanye posted his approximately one millionth entry about connect four. (Our personal fave? The video of him playing with Jonah Hill of course.) What can we learn from this? Get really really good at connect four. Maybe, just maybe you'll earn some of Kanye's respect. And that aint no joke.

Don't Sleep With Underage Girls

And if you really can't resist, please don't video tape it.

We've been holding off on commenting on the R Kelly trial because damn-it we love dude's music, but today's piece in Slate is way too much to handle. Apparently they showed the entire 27-minute sex tape to the courtroom, and you get a sense for where Slate is taking this one pretty early on when they express their hope that the courtroom sketch artist "remembered to pack a urine-colored pencil." And that was just the first paragraph. Among the other highlights (if you can call them that) of the Slate piece are the star of the video's "prolonged urination on the girl's face and breasts, which stops and starts, and stops and starts, for what seems like minutes on end" and insistence that the female lead refer to him as "daddy". We're not saying we don't like to get a little freaky now and then, and we're not even saying that we're above video taping it, but please, please tell us this isn't the man who brought us "Ignition". We just don't know if we can take it.

Put JR Rotem On The Track

With summer about to pop off, consider the world on notice: If you're putting out a jam this summer, it needs to start with that 'Ja-Ja-Ja-JR". Whether its Rick Ross' "The Boss", Plies' "Bust it Baby Pt 2" or even "Take it to the Top" (hottest track on Free At Last!), JR is hot right now. We don't know if they're coming from Auburn (we're waitin on that single girl), more from Sean Kingston, from someone else JR's got on Beluga Heights or any number of other artists JR's got in the booth right now, but trust dude's got some fire he's saving up for summer.

Have a Famous Cousin

In the rap game, its all about family. We already told you to marry an R&B singer, but while you're at that next family reunion talk to your long lost cousins and see if they're famous rappers. Trust us, it won't hurt your career. Our boy Cons-to-the-quence is definitely not afraid to remind us that he's Tip's cousin. Check him out in this pic showing off a poster of him stuntin over the Midnight Marauders cover art. Maybe Cons thought the graphic was a little too subtle, so when dude used it for the cover of a mixtape he went ahead and called that tape A Tribe Called Quence. Damn.

Need another example? We got you. Not content to leave references to his famous cousins to his album titles, 50 Cent's (alleged?) cousin started calling himself Two Five. And he kind of sounds like 50. And he takes every opportunity he gets to talk about 50. Too bad 50 completely refuses to recognize dude. Don't stop riding that fame.

Love Your Body

We've told you before that we're feelin Rick Ross. And we're really feelin dude's style on the cover of the new XXL. We know we shouldn't talk about dudes like this, but Ross has got to have the sickest body ever. If you haven't seen it, make sure you head over to The Fader to check out their video of Ricky explaining all of his tats. Consider us heading out right now to find our own personal tattoo artist. No way we can go back to Miami until we at least start to catch up with Ross.

Know How to Pose

First, big-up to our people over at Complex for their coverage of the ladies at Kanye's after party for the NYC stop of his 'Glow in the Dark' tour (no, we did not get an invite). As we were looking through the shots of the numerous fine ladies at the party, one thing stood out: Selita Ebanks knows how to work the camera. Ladies, let this be a lesson to you: know how to pose and do what it takes to show off your assets. Oh and Selita, if you're reading this, we're totally willing to overlook your lapse in judgment when you got engaged to Nick Cannon, so go ahead and give us a shout girl. We'll treat you right.

Don't Get Called Out by The Smoking Gun

The Smoking Gun recently released a pretty lengthy expose on Akon, pictured here with 14 year-old girl. Basically, the article lists numerous claims/ boasts Akon has made in interviews and then presents facts that disprove those claims. The most damaging evidence is probably that despite basing pretty much his entire persona around his years spent in the pen in Georgia, Akon has only one felony on his record (he was convicted in Jersey and got probation) and his longest jail term was about 3 months locked up in DeKalb County Georgia before prosecutors dropped all charges. I highly recommend reading the entire article, and definitely watching the video they've spliced together of Akon repeating his blatant lies. We've never really been a fan of Akon, so we'll be the first to admit we're hating pretty hard here. [via Nah Right]

Rock The Vote

Voting videos are hot as hell on YouTube right now. Almost a million people have watched that terrible will.i.am video, but luckily ti$a shows us that you can make a video about voting that doesn't suck. So choose a candidate (as long as that candidate is Obama) and make yourself a video.

Don't Put Nelly On

Crazy video of a tiger attack at Rick Ross' video shoot for "Here I am"! The dude in the video has all kinds of reasons why the tiger attacked, but we've got the real story at Six Mics. Turns out the tiger's trying to get his rap career off the ground and he knows that Nelly is career suicide. Why doesn't Rick Ross know this? [via SOHH]

Don't Let Fitty Rap on Your Shit

Ryan Leslie talked to SOHH about Fitty rhyming over his lead single "Diamond Girl" on a G-Unit mixtape. Leslie was playing the politically correct game and said "that was actually a blessing and a curse." We keep it real at Six Mics, so we'll say it: do not let Curtis rhyme on your track.

Sing Off Key

We're going on record now as officially feelin anything Rick Ross does. When we first heard "Change Hoes", we were not mad. He took a Jigga beat, killed a verse and then switched up the hook. Rick was really feelin himself on the hook and he decided he just wasn't going to stop signing. By about a minute and a half into the song dude is completely tripping. He took Jay's "both in the club/ singin off key" and took that shit to a whole new level. We see you Ricky!

Look Like Biggie

Our hood has been taken over by the crew of Notorious in the past few weeks. The video above opens with a verse by Gravy, the dude they picked to play Biggie, and we have to admit dude does look like Francis. Gravy's been around for a minute, and some of you may even remember him from his previous career highlight of getting shot in the ass outside of Hot 97. As you can tell from the clip dude is a pretty terrible rapper, so playing Biggie will by far be the highlight of his rap career. The real question is how long will he wait to release his sure to be terrible mixtape of Notorious BIG remixes. So you don't think we're completely hating, we will give Gravy props for the use of Clue, one of the originators of DJ's yelling at us.

Don't Stop Getting Crunk

Yo Usher: What happened dog? Confessions was hot. Everybody was feelin "Yeah". So what's up with the slow jams? "Love in This Club" kind of stinks. Sure Polow da Don did "Get Buck", but that's about it. Everybody knows Lil Jon is keeping all his best shit for himself these days, but you're Usher; you could have gotten him to give you some jams. Let's pretend this album never happened.

Make a List of Things You Own

Make a list of things you own (or things you "got", perhaps) and then make a jam listing those things. What types of things should you include in your list? Per Static Major (R.I.P), just about anything is fair game: clothing (tailor-made suit), automobile accessories (rims on shine), travel plans (first class tickets) and the list goes on.

Don't got stuff (well, unless you're at the library you've at least got a computer)? Go get stuff. What's that tax rebate for?

Have a Famous Cousin

In the rap game, its all about family. We already told you to marry an R&B singer, but while you're at that next family reunion talk to your long lost cousins and see if they're famous rappers. Trust us, it won't hurt your career. Our boy Cons-to-the-quence is definitely not afraid to remind us that he's Tip's cousin. Check him out in this pic showing off a poster of him stuntin over the Midnight Marauders cover art. Maybe Cons thought the graphic was a little too subtle, so when dude used it for the cover of a mixtape he went ahead and called that tape A Tribe Called Quence. Damn.

Need another example? We got you. Not content to leave references to his famous cousins to his album titles, 50 Cent's (alleged?) cousin started calling himself Two Five. And he kind of sounds like 50. And he takes every opportunity he gets to talk about 50. Too bad 50 completely refuses to recognize dude. Don't stop riding that fame.

Write Your Name on a Plane

All the better if that plane belongs to the president.

Get Kells on the Remix

On his remix to Mariah's "Touch my Body", R Kelly repeatedly refers to himself as the remix killer. If Mr. Kelly thinks something is important enough that he needs to tell you 20 times in one song, you better listen. Remember "Ignition"? Dude completely redefined what a remix could (should?) be. Blueprint below.

Get the Neptunes to Produce Your Jam, But Do Not Let Pharrell Rap

Seriously. Do not give Skateboard P the mic. Just don't do it.

Get a DJ, Have Have Him Yell at Us

When's the last time you heard a hit that wasn't preceded by a DJ yelling at you? Exactly, never. So find a DJ and have him yell at us before your song starts. If that DJ happens to be Khaled (We the best!), all the better. Enjoy an example below courtesy of Yo Gotti and Freeway Ricky.

Marry an R&B Singer

I'm sure you've heard by now that Mariah married Nick Cannon. Marrying a famous R&B singer will definitely help you make a hit record. Will it help Nick Cannon? Well, no. He's still Nick Cannon. Let's look instead at Rocko. Dude is a mediocre rapper, but marrying Monica did not hurt dude's ability to get slammin production. So who's willing to marry Fergie for their career?