Yesterday, there were two stories going around about the health of Michael Jackson. On one hand, he was nearly blind in one eye and was suffering from a lung condition that was diminishing his life. And on the flip side, Mike was planning a world tour and was talking with television networks for possible specials.
What’s the story Mike?
E!Online posted a story with quotes from biographer Ian Halperin which stated that Jackson is suffering from a possibly fatal genetic condition called alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency.
The story quoted an In Touch magazine article.
Jackson’s condition has worsened over the years to the point where “his quality of life is severely diminished,” Halperin tells In Touch magazine, so much so that he’s “barely able to speak” and has lost 95 percent of the vision in his left eye. “He’s had [the deficiency] for years, but it’s gotten worse,” Halperin told the magazine. “He needs a lung transplant but may be too weak to go through with it…[But] it’s the [gastrointestinal] bleeding that is the most problematic part. It could kill him.”
Then, later in the day, E!Online was back with quotes from MJ representative Dr. Tohme Tohme.
“Mr. Jackson is in fine health, and finalizing negotiations with a major entertainment company and television network for both a world tour and a series of specials and appearances.”
MJ is either sick or he’s ready to moonwalk again. What’s the real story?
Some of you know David Middleton as the author of our Forty-Five Revolutions per Minute series. Each week, David picks out a (usually reasonably obscure) 45RPM record from his collection and talks about it. What some of you might not know is that David is a musician himself, and spent a chunk of the late Eighties and early Nineties fronting the band Waxing Poetics. The Virginia based-group got some face time on MTV, toured the country, and their first album, 1987’s Hermitage, was co-produced by R.E.M.’s Mike Mills.
I’m proud to inform you guys that the Waxing Poetics’ complete three-album discography is now available on iTunes and Amazon mp3! These albums have been unavailable for some time, so those of you who were fans back in the day -or want to check the band out for the first time- can do so!
At the risk of embarrassing one of my best friends (sorry, buddy), here’s some live footage of the Poetics from 1990. Thanks, YouTube! The sound quality isn’t fantastic, but you get the idea of how rockin’ these guys were. Ah, I just realized embedding has been disabled, so I’ve included the link here.
You know, in a sense, it is quite a surprise Soulja Boy is still around, a year after he scored one of the biggest digital singles of all time: the triple-platinum juggernaut, “Crank Dat (Soulja Boy).” At a time when every other ringtone rapper who emerged in 2007—the same year as he—has gone the way of the Beta tape, Soulja Boy lingers on like a turd in a latrine that has just been flushed. When was the last time you heard from Rich Boy, MIMS, the Shop Boyz, Huey and Baby Boy? What, you’re still thinking about it?
Blame it all on the 700,000-plus people who purchased Soulja Boy’s full-length debut (which I believe was one of the worst rap albums of 2007); the fact that he scored two follow-up Billboard Hot 100 singles in “Soulja Girl” (#32) and “Yahhh!” (#48); and the dubious assistance he provided V.I.C. in being a ringtone hit-maker like himself (He appears as a co-producer and in the video for “Get Silly”). Soulja Boy just wasn’t going away.
But by the end of this year, however, it has become apparent that Soulja Boy has become more famous (or more accurately, infamous), for his exploits outside the studio than in it. With no inane, simplistic singles to pester the public with, the wiry teenager has become hip-hop’s favorite punching bag for everything that fans perceive is wrong with the genre these days. (Only Lil’ Wayne rivals him in this regard. And is 50 Cent still alive?) If Ice-T is not telling him that he needs to feast on a certain delicate part of the male anatomy, he is proving why he should consider upgrading his intellectual faculties by thanking slavemasters—if for nothing else apart from donning metaphorical, glimmering equivalents of the devices that bound his ancestors in captivity.
And don’t get me started on the e-thugs who litter the comment boards of hip-hop sites everywhere, verbally pummeling him with some of the coarsest words known to Man.
I don’t see that changing with the release of Soulja Boy’s sophomore album, iSouljaBoyTellEm. There’s the album title: What’s with the self-obsession? Remove the “i” and add the “dot com” to it, and it is the exact titular replica of his debut. Is this guy so bereft of imagination that he cannot even come up a remarkably different title? Yeah, you’re Soulja Boy! We got it, like, a gazillion times already!
Maybe that is indicative of what to expect from the album, which I fear—and I shudder greatly when I think of this—is even worse than the one that preceded it. And maybe, just maybe, the high level of derision for Soulja Boy will be commensurate with his work’s commercial reception from this point onward. It’s already happening. How many people know that Soulja Boy has dropped four singles already for his latest project? Heck, it only took a browsing of BET—which, in my humble estimation, is one of the most abominable TV channels currently in existence—for me to realize that “Bird Walk” was out. And was I surprised that it attempts to be a pathetic copy of “Crank Dat” (down to the “Youuuuuuu” refrain and dance-oriented vibe), let alone stalled at #40 and #19 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hop Rap Tracks charts respectively?
If you bet 20 bucks that I was, better hand over the dough to your buddy right now.
Word of advice to Soulja Boy: You might want to hold on to your money a little more preciously. At least you have an idea of the fact that lightning will not strike twice.
