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]