DMX in Madison

I was walking back on State Street from a job interview, when a stretch white Hummer limo pulled up in front of the Overture Center. About five young guys got out of the car including one guy I thought looked like the rapper DMX. I was tempted to get closer to see this guy, but there were swarms of homeless people trying to talk to him, and I was dressed up. So I would have looked ridiculous. But then I thought it probably wasn't DMX anyway because his appearance isn't very distinctive, I hadn't heard any of his music since middle school, thought maybe he was in jail for animal abuse, didn't know why he would be in Madison when we barely have a hip-hop radio station, didn't think he would have enough money to be riding around in a limo with a posse, and I hadn't heard any advertisements for any performance. But I was wrong. I forgot about the incident until one of my friends was listening to DMX, and I told him that I thought I waw him. We looked on the internet and saw that indeed he performed at the Orpheum last week. About 400 people showed up, and the event might have lost money. The event wasn't really advertised except on facebook. The article I read said that hip-hop is stuggling in Madison because everyone is too afraid that something violent is going to happen at these performances.
I met someone at the serf who met him and he said he was "really nice."
This is my first and probably last post of a celebrity sighting.

Collaborative View of Rap Music

I was listening to "100 Million Dollars" by Birdman, Young Jeezy, and Lil Wayne, and I was going to do a celebrity news type post about Lil Wayne because I think he's cool and my friend claims to know him personally. So I was reading about some of the songs he came out and read about one of his songs "We Takin' Over," that he made with a bunch of other artists like Fat Joe and Akon. The article said that the video for this song is a rip off of " Hypnotize" which came out over a decade ago.
Rappers have always built upon each others songs. Often, it's not even subtle. For instance, this song they say "cash rules everything around me" which are the exact lyrics of Akons other songs. Some people think that rap music is unoriginal for this reason, but personally, I think rap music is more interesting when artist's develop a style and take it as far as it can go. It is easier for their style to be popularized when the same lyrics show up in different songs.
As for the videos, the similarities are pretty obvious. I think "We Takin' Over" is a cool video, but it has nothing on "Hypnotize." I don't know if Cash Money Records has a fued with Bad Boy Records, but maybe this video is a statement that they own the rap game now.

Hypnotize

We Takin' Over

McCain/Montag 08

I was doing some research for this class. Consuming a nice peice of media call E!'s Daily 10 (or something like that). They had this silly little story about Heidi Montag from the Hills giving her support to John McCain. McCain responded by saying he is happy to have her support and that he enjoys watching the show. This raised many questions for me:
-Who cares who Heidi is voting for?
-Is the real Heidi or the I'm a tv character Heidi voting for McCain?
-Is the real Heidi and the tv character Heidi the same person?
-Who is Spencer voting for?
-Why would McCain admit to watching The Hills? Maybe he is trying to prove that he has a high pop culture awareness, but I'm not sure I need a politician with a high pop culture awareness.

So many questions left unanswered.

Look Out! It's Getting Political Here!