I guess the real reason is because…they suck.  They suck really bad.  I always see people arguing about The Source and XXL – which one is better.  Well that would be like a playoff series between the Leafs and Blue Jays – who cares who would win, there is no reason to even watch.

One saving grace for XXL is their Freshman 10 they do each year.  It is basically a cover and issue dedicated to the new up and coming rappers.  Although I have never agreed with their whole top ten list (and who would, different styles for different people) but this year is a particularly strong cover IMO.

Click Picture To Enlarge

I will break down the people I believe belong on this list while I will ignore the people that I don’t know about and/or think they blow.  So don’t get offended if your favourite doesn’t make my list…it probably means I just don’t know about him. (except in the case of OJ Da Juiceman – he fucking sucks and you know it!)

I will go in order of the magazine list (not in order of my faves):

J.Cole

J.Cole – born in North Carolina and moved to NY to pursue rap as well as higher education.  He is the first artists signed to Jay-Z’s new label – let’s hope his album actually gets released.  he has dropped a couple sick mixtapes already.  The Come Up and The Warm Up are must listens IMO.  The Warm Up was probably my favourite album period from last year (besides Drakes – So Far Gone).

Dude is nice – simple as that.  He also does a great job as coming off as a real person, with real conflicts in his life.  He balances being a socially conscious rapper, with being a normal dude who goes to the clubs to pick up women.

This track is absolutely sick and I have featured it on the blog before, this is a nice unplugged version:

Pill

This is another guy who dropped a great mixtape last year: The Refill.  I don’t know a ton about him except that he can rip a track.  He is an MC based out of Atlanta who has been cosigned by Atlanta’s greatest MC (and top 5 dead or alive) Andre 3000.

“To have his stamp of approval, me being from the A and idolizing them — him and Big [Boi] — for him to hit you and quote your lines on the tape, I was like, ‘Oh!’ ” Pill said. “I was like, ‘For real? That’s what’s up! I appreciate it.’ He’s top-five to me. … I was like, ‘I might know how to rap a little bit.’ ” Pill is a former protégé of onetime Outkast affiliate Killer Mike but has since ventured out on his own. While handing out copies of his mixtape earlier this year, he bumped into Three Stacks and gave him a tape. Andre called the next day with compliments.

“I didn’t think he’d ever listen to it or ever say nothing about it,” Pill said. “That gave me some more fuel to keep going. I was like, ‘OK, yeah, maybe I need to actually keep on going.’ “

Wiz Khalifa

I am pretty sure this dude is from Pittsburgh but I know very little about him.  I have downloaded a couple tapes of his and while I don’t like him as much as the other guys on this list, I still think he is worth a mention.  He had a song last year that was on steady rotation for me – I am surprised it wasn’t a huge hit in fact. (editor note: I was gonna put Say Yeah here, but then I remembered although it didn’t get the exposure This Plane is much better):

Freddie Gibbs

Gangsta Gibbs!  Maybe my favourite “freshman” on the list.  Gibbs is from the tranquil and scenic…Gary, Indiana.  So you know he is rapping about flowers, suburbs and SUVs.  Obviously I am being facetious, he is rapping about Gary fucking Indiana…do a Google image search on it. Looking at the pictures will let you know exactly how he raps.  Although this could be considered “gangsta rap”, Gibbs does an amazing job at telling stories AND painting a picture of real life struggle.  I don’t know if Gibbs blows up – but he should and rap would be in a better place if he did.

You want a view of Gary Indiana?  Check out his video “What It B Like”

Fashawn

I may be wrong but Fashawn might be the least recognizable person on the list.  He shouldn’t be slept on though because he put out a great mixtape last year.  It was produced by Exile (who also provided the backdrop for former Freshman 10 stand out Blu).  Fashawn is a west coast underground rapper – and his mixtape Boy Meets World is a must listen.

Here is a sample:

Conclusion:

This Freshman list is easily the best in ages, and if people take the time to check out the artists I mentioned they will be much more happy with the state of rap.

One weird note – no New York MC on my list   The bithplace of Hip-Hop was shut out…although J Cole is a New York transplant and raps much more “east coast” than “southern”.

Check these dudes out!

Horriffic news though – Guru from Gangstarr suffered a heart attack and is now in a coma. He is apparently clinging to life and the doctors are operating on him right now in order to save him.

This is a huge part of my youth here, Gangstarr was a group that helped define my love of music. When I got into music heavily, they were on of the first groups to really hit a chord with me.

This is absolutely and ridiculously sad. I am not a religious man, but my thoughts definitely go out to Guru and his family. I hope he makes it.

I firmly believe that social media is “changing the game”. For example, if I am looking for late breaking news, I don’t bother with google anymore – I do a twitter search.  Right now there are people who “hate facebook” or “don’t get twitter”.  Well in my humble opinion…good luck with that because social media is becoming the latest medium for change…and big time change.

I could go on about the long term social and political ramifications of social media (ask my friends how long I can go on about that) but lets look at something a little less serious…

As a fan of rap music I have some issues with sample clearance.  I think that artists that refuse sample clearances are hard ons.  I’m sorry, I know this will piss people off, but I do.  If someone can create a brand new completely different amazing song, out of a tiny snippet of your original, while at the samtime introducing your music to an entirely new generation – then why would you say no?

Sample clearance usually means lots of back and forth between lawyers etc… It is a tedious and costly procedure.

Erykah Badu (the current QUEEN of RnB..and it isn’t close) decided to skip the suits…she took her sample clearance to TWITTER.  She wanted a sample cleared from no less than SIR Paul McCartney himself…here is the article below:

We recently looked at an example of Twitter collaboration in the music world, but this may be the first case wherein the micro-blogging network was used for mainstream sample clearance.

Pitchfork reports on an exchange initiated by Erykah Badu on Twitter (Twitter), seeking last-minute clearance for a sample from the Wings song “Arrow Through Me.” Looking to connect with Paul McCartney, she appealed to anyone who might help connect her to him or a closer contact in the chain.

Following the stream of tweets, it looks like Badu got a hookup to Lenny Kravitz, who knows McCartney’s daughter Stella, who then connected her to Paul. He approved the sample clearance and she thanked her “Twitter fam” for making the clearance come together.

As Tears for Fears’ Curt Smith talked about in our recent interview, usually this process involves lots of lawyers and in-betweens and can often be drawn out for weeks if not months of back and forth. In another excellent example of how social media can be used to disintermediate the music industry status quo, Twitter made sample clearance a collaborative and rapid process by putting two artists into direct contact.

OK maybe not a life or world changing use of Twitter – but it is yet another example of the power of social media and how it can help link up people worlds apart.

It is the future and the future is here.

Now this may offend some people – I shouldn’t be demeaning these athletes by talking about their physical appearance. Fair enough, that is why I made sure to showcase not just the most beautiful female curlers, but some of the best curlers (male OR female) in the entire world.

I made my own rules up – I would choose my five favourite ladies of curling at these Olympic games. I wanted each of my choices to come from different teams (Most of the Japan and Russian team could have made an appearance on here) and I wanted to make sure these ladies were legitimate world class talents.

So without further ado, I present my Top 5 Ladies of Curling (Vancouver 2010 Edition):

5. Ludmilla Privivkova – Russia

Why I Chose Her: Russia is really looking towards the 2014 Olympics on home soil. They have not had great results in this years Olympics since they have sent such a young team. Ludmilla is no exception, although she probably won’t medal it is very impressive that as a 19 year old she is skipping her national team in the Olympics. Although not expected to be on the podium I think it is very impressive and a good sign for Russia that their 19 year old skip was able to beat such curling heavyweights as the Chinese and the Swedes, especially considering the veteran world class skips on both of those teams.

4. Melanie Robillard & Stella Heiss – Germany

Why I Chose Them: Well I was only going to choose one member from a team, but once i found this picture of Melanie, it was hard to leave Stella out.  I am not going to lie, I noticed both of these ladies when they played Canada.  They are not medal hopefuls but they are still world class atheletes, and everyone of their losses was very close.  If this team sticks together Germany could grow into a future World Championship/Olympic contender.

3. Madeleine Dupont – Denmark

Why I Chose Her: Here is another young and up and coming skip (seems these Olympics are full of them).  Although they were just shy of playing in the medal rounds – they were very impressive throughout the tournament.  Considering that Madeleine is only 22, look for Denmark to continue to improve and possibly medal in the future.  This was the only non-curling shot I used…I wanted to use all curling shots but could not find a good quality pic of her curling, so I settled for the glamour shot.

2. Cheryl Bernard – Canada

Why I Chose Her: CANADA!  I had to rep Canada on here.  In fact Cheryl is probably a gold medal favourite (her or the Chinese team).  What sets Cheryl apart from the other people on this list?  Well she is a medal favourite for one, but also – she is 43!  Cheryl Bernard surprised everyone by qualifying for the Olympics (over Jones) but she has been great so far, and has looked wonderful doing it.  There was no way I was leaving Cheryl off this list. She has kind of a Sarah Palin like thing going for her…and I don’t mean she is a babbling moron…she just has it going on for a 43 year old.

1. Eve Muirhead – Great Britain

Why I Chose Her: Well like all of my list she is easy on the eyes.  But if you want to talk about accomplishments then Eve Muirhead needs to be the top of everyone’s list.  Great Britain will not medal this year in the Olympics but the future is looking pretty bright with Eve Muirhead skipping them.  She is only 19, so she will only get better.  What is most impressive is her meteoric rise in the curling world.  She has won the World Junior Curling Championship 3 times (07/08/09), she was skip on two of those, and will probably be skip (and win) in the 2010 Junior Championship.  Even more mind blowing..she skipped her team to the Junior Scottish Championship game…WHEN SHE WAS 13!  A 21 and under national tournament and she got to the finals as a 13 year old skip, unbelievable!

I am a guy who was never really into curling but the sport has a lot of strategy that makes it appealing.  It sure doesn’t hurt that the women of curling are so hot either, but it is their skill and use of strategy that really makes the ladies on my list stand out from the pack.

GO CANADA!

1.  Japanese Snowboarder Kazuhiro Kokubo was excluded from the opening ceremony of the Vancouver Winter Olympics for wearing this:

Now I would not want to disparage our Japanese friends, but this is really news worthy in their country?  Not JUST newsworthy, but front page news  full of indignant anger?  Dude looks very much like your average youth, I don’t find anything crazy or offensive about his appearance.  He looks like any number of guys you would regularly see on the ski hill.

Is the issue the loose tie?  The Untucked shirt?  The dreads?

I dunno call me crazy but the fact anyone can get mad because their snowboard athlete looks like a snowboarder is ridiculous.  Poor form Japan.  I haven’t been this disappointed in Japan since Astro Boy went off the air.

2. American Snowboarder Scotty Lago’s Olympic trip ends a bit early because of this:

I have heard rumours that Lago left the Olympic voluntarily after these pics surfaced, and I have also heard he was kicked out.  I think it is fairly safe to assume that if he hadn’t been kicked out he was given a strong suggestion to leave from the American Olympic Committee.

If that is the case I think that again it was a touch harsh.  On one hand these pics aren’t great to have popping up when the whole world is watching, but on the other hand – big deal.  An athlete who accomplished a great feat is blowing off some steam. Yeah it might be a little bit PG rated and a little demeaning to the girl in the pic, but I am not sure it is deserving of such anger and shock.

Young snowboarder acts a bit non conventional…whoa breaking news there.

3. Canadian Skeletonist (is THAT the word??) John Montgomery chugs a pitcher of beer on his way to CTV interview

Hmmmm so what has the overwhelming response to this been?  WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!   CANADA BITCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   WHAT!!!!!

Maybe it is coming but I have seen no backlash for this – and that’s how it should be!  Great moment and something I will probably remember forever.  Dude was chugging a pitcher of beer on his walk to a CTV interview.  He wasn’t fooling around either, he had the pitcher more than half done by the time he got to the CTV set.

Hilarious way to cap off a great gold medal victory.

Seems like Canada is a bit more relaxed than our Southern and Far Eastern neighbours.  They get overly emotional about a loose tie, and bronze medal kiss when their athletes decide to act like themselves and shelve the cliche ridden robot athlete role.

We embraced it.

I have been doing a lot of album reviews and commenting on hot topics on this blog, but that isn’t really motivating to me.  Getting thousands of people to my site to look at a picture of Roy Halladay’s thank you letter is always nice but I also wanted to share my thoughts on more serious issues.

*Cue the violins from the start of Wu-Tang – Reunited*

On a serious note, I have been watching a lot of Olympics..like probably too much.  I have seen every Canadian medal live now.  There are a lot of great lessons at the Olympics…you can learn life lessons about a lot of things:

• Fair play
• Persistence
• Overcoming the odds
• Racial/national harmony
• Hard work
• Reaching your potential
• Blah Blah Blah…

Whenever there is  a single event that brings together thousands of top achievers in their field – there will be an amazing amount of life lessons.  You have an event full of people who have become the best in their world at their passion – life lessons ABOUND.

It was watching the Snowboard Cross and Moguls, that something caught my attention.  I think there is really a great lesson to be learned watching these guys/gals.

In these events (and many others) the winners are the people that really go for it..duh, obvious I know.  What I mean though, is they really go for it – to the point that they are on the very edge of being out of control.

I mean this completely literally too, in order to be the best in the world at these events you have to push yourself so hard you are essentially out of control.  Ski’s barely touching the moguls and snowboards ready to slip out from under you as you push these tools to their limits.

So what does that have to do with life?

Does this mean we should all do our best Amy Winehouse impressions, grab some pill bottles and head to the nearest all-night club?

No, obviously not. What we learn is this:  If you want to achieve something truly special, you have to give it your all, even if that means you risk utter and spectacular failure.

Sometimes in life you just have to risk losing control.

Maelle Ricker (gold medal snowboarder) shoots down the hill, her snowboard always right at the point where it could slip out, at any time she can hit a rut or collide with another competitor and her dreams come crashing down.  How will she ever recover?

Simple she climbs the fucking hill, and starts again.

Life is a lot like that – you can take it easy and carve out a beautiful and fulfilling life by sticking to the bunny hills, but if you want to be on the top of the podium – you have to be fearless, aggressive and take a chance or two.

When will you start living on the edge?

Can anyone else tell me what is wrong with that picture?  I didn’t end up even voting because I had no idea who to vote for.  Thankfully, DeMar won – hopefully he takes it to the next level at the real dunk in.