So I’m up late at night, Twittering like any other college student, and I see Joe Budden is responding to fans. Now, me being a Budden fan, I decide to hit him up and ask about new music.
And this is where keeping it real goes wrong.
Me: @mousebudden When’s the next album dropping? It’s been a hot min
Him: @itsdarryldsmith its been a month… (when frontin like i’m a fan goes wrong)
Apparently, Budden didn’t know I knew Padded Room dropped in February, but I heard through the grapevines he had two albums dropping this year. So in my random way, I omitted the fact I heard that. Of course, trying to clean up against Budden is like Bush trying to say WMDs are in Iraq.
Me: @mousebudden LOL! Naw man…I saw you were dropping two albums in 09…I’m trying to see what’s up with the other one
Him: @itsdarryldsmith then why’d u say its been awhile ? (CAUGHT’CHA)… i’ll let it slide tho, lol
Me: @mousebudden Man that’s a common saying I use…you know how the fans be fiending for new music!
Him: @itsdarryldsmith alright, i said i’ll let it slide, we cool
That’s the Joe Budden we all know and love. Gotta give him props though. He did respond to a fan’s Tweet, even though it was highly misconstrued. LOL!
In case you think I’m joking, check the pictures below:
Normally, I don’t post blogs in the middle of the week, but I found this funny, yet sad.
The sad news is that famed rapper Coolio has been arrested for crack cocaine. This dummy decided to roll through LAX (which is an airport by the way) with the drugs on him. That was stupid of him. Sorry Coolio, but you deserve jailtime for being that stupid.
But here’s the funny and sad news.
Last month, Coolio performed at Staffordshire University in Stoke-on-Trent, England. The rapper attempted to stage dive on the crowd and landed on one woman.
When he tumbled to the floor, the crowd proceeded to rob him of his belongings, including his shoes, bandanna and glasses.
Security was able to stop the robbery as it progressed and also recovered the artist’s shoes.
Plane rides can be cool, or they can be downright scary. My homie John was riding the plane for the second time (the first had been a few days earlier), and you can see that he was excited. It’s different looking down on the land you walk on.
This photo was taken with more focus on the outside lighting than the inside lighting. It gave this photo a nice silhouette.
And so it came. The news we all knew was coming, but didn’t want to hear. The Denver Rocky Mountain News was shutting down…for good.
It was something that truly hurt the newspaper industry. Who would’ve ever thought that an award-winning newspaper, a paper that won 4 Pulitzers since 2000, would be closing? The paper that brought the unbelievable photos of Columbine to life? The paper that had one of the best sports pages in the nation? No, this must be a dream.
But it’s not. And it’s not the beginning of the end.
On Dec. 4, [Rich] Boehne stood in the Rocky’s newsroom and announced that the paper was for sale and that, if no buyer emerged, the company would consider all options. Among them was the unthinkable: shutting down the Rocky.
The announcement came in the midst of a devastating time for America’s newspapers.
As Boehne made his announcement, Gannett Co. Inc., the country’s largest newspaper publisher, was in the midst of layoffs that slashed more than 2,000 people from its newsrooms. In the ensuing weeks, the bad news accelerated.
The company that owns the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun declared bankruptcy, as did the owners of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. They were followed into bankruptcy court by the company that owns the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. The owners of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Tucson Citizen put them up for sale, and each could close in the coming months if buyers aren’t found. And the recently hired publisher of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution told staff members that the paper was losing $1 million a week.
Just this week, the owners of the San Francisco Chronicle announced that they needed drastic cuts within weeks or they would be forced to sell - or shutter - a paper born in 1865.
- Denver Rocky Mountain News
Let’s not even remember that nearly all of the Detroit newspapers have stopped home delivery. Let’s not remember the fact that most small-town newspapers are on the verge of closing. Let’s not remember that the newspaper industry is faced with 50,000 new graduates every semester. This does not bode well.
As I, myself, am graduating in May, my nerves are wracked. I’m looking into several options, but the forecast can be quite grim. I don’t want to get my hopes up too high, but it just seems like, in the end, only a few papers will be left standing, holding the ashes of the other papers.
But, I am reminded to the words of Reginald Stuart of the McClatchy Company as he spoke about newspapers at the HBCU Newspaper Conference: “We’re not dying; we’re changing.”
Hopefully, that change comes sooner than we can imagine.
