Raspire music president, Richie, and their #1 artist straight out of Jamaica to the Bay, Calico aka “Scaddy”, stopped the MMAP HQ / Esface offices Monday to discuss the next line of Raspire Logo wear that they will be offering to the public during their Summer bay area Tour beginning this Saturday. Before the meeting even started, I got the unique opportunity to be the first customer to cop the new Inna Di Dance album that just dropped hot off the press….been slappin the album for about 3 days now and let me tell you…the album has HEAT. Waste no time to purchase your copy either physical or digital from www.raspiremusic.com.

Esface stands behind the Raspire movement as they align with the positive culture we promote through the art form of hot music- a fusion of hip hop, dancehall and reggae. One luv

by Ajani Husbands
(Esface Black)

It’s about setting a higher standard.  There was a time when Black musicians were activists, almost by default.  This is what we’re missing from the Lena Horne generation and the creativie genius of Guru.  We have lost voices who put social consciousness ahead of personal gain.  No, that’s not quite accurate.  For these two, there could be no personal gain without a social conscious.

Lena Horne famously refused to play in segregated venues, attended NAACP rallies (back when the NAACP was synonymous with social conscious), and worked to create anti-lynching laws.  And though Guru wasn’t in the spotlight of activism, the entire persona of his music embodied a social consciousness, the understanding of which was necessary to truly know the conditions of the underclass.

And, now, fast forward to today.

Chris Brown’s music is fantastic.  R. Kelly’s music is mesmerizing.  Nevertheless talent doesn’t excuse criminal behavior.  And yes, we are speaking of criminal behavior rather than socially bizarre antics or even behavior against the grain of widely accepted moral norms.  You can’t beat up a woman and you can’t urinate on a minor without consequences… unless you’re a Black entertainer apparently.

They are not to blame though.  No.  After all, as a community we have constantly let slide ridiculously embarassing behavior from our top entertainers for the past decade.  There was DMX who had no idea a Black man was running for President: “ain’t no ni&&a named ‘Ba-rack’ runnin for president.”  There was Soulja Boy who infamously thanked the slave masters (for slavery of course) so that he could be born in America and “get all this ice.”  And most recently there’s the reports of Lil Boosie hiring hit men to kill five different people.  While Boosie and DMX are on no one’s top five list of rappers, Soulja Boy is, for the moment, a millionaire. And thus we have a Black millionaire in the limelight who loves slave masters… but we’d be more concerned if his next single didn’t bump quite right.

Perhaps entertainers today are at a bit of a disadvantage, given the speed of information today and the media’s inevitable negative slant.  After all, we know more details Michael Jackson allegedly sleeping with children than we do about his charitable donations.  Snoop Dogg is more known for gangster lyrics than coaching a 72 team youth football league in south LA.  All the same, would this not be all the more reason for celebrities to tread with caution?

This isn’t about forgiveness, it’s about standards.  The biggest issue right now is not whether or not one “forgives” Chris Brown (a ridiculoud concept, since that’s between him, Rihanna, and his God), but instead the blind excuses given to defend his actions.  Comments on blogs and news articles alike are swamped with Black men and WOMEN who come up with every excuse in the book to defend his assault on Rihanna:

“she had it coming.”

“she was probably talking too much anyway”

“I’m pretty sure she hit him.”

“What’s the big deal? Women get hit all the time.  Nothing special.”

“I think she lied in that police report.”

The list goes on and only gets more disturbing.  The defense was similar for R. Kelly, with many people blaming the underaged girl as being the culprit, not the adult male who should have known better.

And this is what I mean by a higher standard.  Yes we all make mistakes, but we as a community are going out of our way to excuse these mistakes and sweep them under the rug.

Fame and fortune is a privelege, not a right.  Those of Lena Horne’s generation had to fight against daily obstacles to attain success and had to keep a clean nose to retain it.  Holding our artists today to a higher standard doesn’t mean a “crabs in a barrel” mentality (which I’ve already been accused of).  It means letting them know if they beat up a woman, urinate on a minor, or anyother behavior that would land a normal person on Hard Copy, we will not make excuses for them.  We will call it what it is: criminal behavior.  And we will search for quality elsewhere.  After all, Chris Brown doesn’t sing and dance good ENOUGH to warrant my support at a criminal hearing.

The highly anticipated Iphone 4 was finally unveiled by Steve Jobs this morning…be the first to watch his introduction to the “unbelievable” newly designed Apple iphone with over 100 new features, this video covers the top EIGHT.

I’m still an avid blackberry user and evangelist however I’m a bigger fan of Apple product design/superiority so it was only a matter of time before I converted my phone game…this could do it. If could have both I would but that’s a bit frivolous. Nuff said, check it out…

more specs from the apple website, click here.

So I just received a word from esface affiliate/friend Vaman about a new website that, to me, will fill the void left by known music website Imeem.com that was obliterated from the internet after being swallowed by Myspace.com. Without further ado, welcome grooveshark.com to the online music scene.

From what I’ve gathered with my limited recent experience, Grooveshark allows you to search a database of millions of tracks to stream music with customized playlists and share them with friends on various platforms. That’s the long and short, there are plenty more features I’ve yet to play with.

Let me stop here and let you set up an account and start enjoying your musical cyber experience.
grooveshark.com
Stay Esface. -D Sobo

Team Esface Athletics Movement (”TEAM ESFACE”) is an athletic-based youth training and development organization aimed at providing the best athletics coaching to boys and girls in order to achieve positive returns on and off the training arena. Founded in 2005 as a natural offshoot of Esface, Inc, TEAM ESFACE started as an individual training program and has since developed into sponsoring and hosting camps, clinics and high school/NJB/AAU teams along the peninsula of the SF Bay Area.

This Spring Team Esface proudly announces their first AAU team, a 6th grade group under the leadership and direction of Dele Sobomehin (Esface Founder/CEO). These diverse set of boys come from as far as San Francisco but mainly hail from the peninsula cities like Foster City, San Carlos, and Palo Alto areas.  Taking home their first Championship in their first tournament in April, they have already became a formidable opponent to the many elite programs in the area.  Last weekend, they won their second Gold at the Team Hoop tournament that included competitive teams from the same area and as far as Santa Cruz.   Below is a highlight from their first tournament and a picture of the most recent championship.

written by Esfac’e Black

Aaron McGruder returns with HOT FIRE.  The Boondocks Season 3 kicked off with one of the most pertinent issues in the Black community: Barack Obama and YOU. I won’t spoil the episode if you didn’t see it, but the moral of the story is simple: Barack Obama is the President, and he’s Black.  He’s not the Black President.  Get it?  Because if you haven’t gotten by now, you lose….. (outdated Kanye West reference).

The episode begins with a German filmmaker producing a documentary on Huey Freeman.  The filmmaker can’t figure out why Huey isn’t excited about Obama becoming president.  At the same time, he interviews every other outlandish character in the Boondocks universe and you get the full gamut of true-to-life reactions.

Riley- “The cops gonna be like Riley’s a real ni&&a.  The president’s a real ni&&a.  We can’t do NOTHIN.”

Sarah/Tom Dubois- “He’s just so great!”

Granddad- “This is what me and my generation, but mostly me, struggled for.”

Uncle Ruckus-…. you know what, just watch the episode.  His reaction is much funnier in context

Thugnificent- “There’s a ni&&a running for president named Barack?!?!”  (this is based on a real XXL Magazine interview with DMX)
All these reactions are pretty much what you encountered during the campaign.  McGruder summed it up with his faux Will-I-Am track “D*** Riding Obama,” which is basically an ode to all the celebrities who jumped on the Obama bandwagon.

But I digress.  McGruder emphasized something that is hard to remember.  Obama is PRESIDENT.  Not THE BLACK PRESIDENT. And Black people who tried to emphasize this during the campaign were vilified.

“Skeptics are treated like blasphemers.  Difference becomes equal to hate.” - The Boondocks

Just because Huey Freeman (or fill-in-the-blank-random-person) isn’t skeptical of Obama, doesn’t make them an Uncle Tom, a racist, a Clarence Thomas, a sellout, etc etc.  It just means they are skeptical/critical of the Obama presidency.  I’ll take it a step further: We should all be skeptical, just like we’ve been skeptical of presidents in the past.  Complacency breeds mediocrity.  And if we were all of a sudden to just be okay with whatever the president did, just because of the color of the president’s skin, then we’d be a mediocre country.

Besides, if we never critiqued/analyzed our elected leaders, then is it really a democracy?

The Essence of Freaknik
by Ajani Husbands

You can’t be offended when the same rappers we promote and approve of start creating ignorance on another level. That’s my end thesis at the beginning of the article (for those just skimming). And now to the real article:

Have you seen Freaknik? And by Freaknik, I mean the animated 1-hour special on Cartoon Network, recently aired last week Sunday. Freaknik The Musical, is “the story of a party that turned into a ghost,” according to Cartoon Network. T-Pain featured as the voice of Freaknik. The movie also featured a dozen or so other notable rappers, including Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross, Kelis, Lil Jon, and many more. Overall, the cartoon undeniably featured an undesirable element in Black America, which provided ample fodder for Essence Magazine to produce a “10 Most Offensive Things” list. And perhaps contrary to Black intellectuals across the country, I enjoyed the cartoon. But I think I liked it for a far different reason than Essence Magazine hated it.

Essence decried Freaknik as an embarrassment to Black culture. For me, Freaknik was simply a culmination of the same rap and materialistic culture we’ve promoted over the last decade. That’s not to say it wasn’t offensive. But were the scenes of thong-clad strippers any more offensive than, say, Lil Wayne’s “Every Girl?” Did Freaknik The Musical glorify materialism anymore than, perhaps…. well, any song with the word(s) Pop, Bottles, Champagne, and/or Models? And the “10 Ghetto Commandments” all originated from classic rap songs: Though Shalt Only Pop Bottles On Models (see? What did I tell you about the proclivity of pop/bottles?)

What am I really saying here? I suppose it’s that you can’t have it both ways. You can’t be suddenly offended by something like Freaknik, and then go to your favorite club that weekend to get down on the latest songs which are all undoubtedly simply non-animated depictions of what you complained about earlier. The musical artists that lent their voices to the cartoon are the same ones we promote as a society. A good friend of mine pointed out that Black people aren’t necessarily the ones making them millionaires. No, we aren’t. At the same time, though, Black people legitimize the brand of entertainment and the entertainers therein. T-Pain is rich and famous because we made him popular. Lil Wayne is the same way. The music industry took these cues and ran with them. And now they’ve come out with a cartoon that pretty much just animates the type of things they rap/sing about it. And all of a sudden they are out of control?

Listen, I’m not telling you to NOT listen to this music. But it sure is hypocritical to like the music and criticize the cartoon.

I stopped watching the news a long time ago; it’s terrible.  I mean… there’s no other way to put it.  If I’m not being fed partisan politics, I’m being given filler stories (i.e. “the world’s largest or most popular dog”) or scare stories (i.e. “tune in at 6 to find out what foods at the grocery store can, and WILL, kill you”).  It’s just aweful.

And then I stumble onto this blog article about Stephen Stafford.  And that’s just the thing, it’s not on the news.  I mean, this kid’s story is just about NOWHERE on the national news.  Seriously, where is his 15 minutes?  30 minutes?  Even his 10 minutes on Oprah (equivalent to about 5 hours of television exposure elsewhere… do the math).

The fact alone that he’s a motivational speaker at age 13 is newsworthy enough.  But you add to that him going to college at 13, triple majoring, and getting ready to go to med school, and he’s phenomenal.  Most REGULAR college students can’t do that.

So where is his story?  Well, as much to blame as is the news, I’m going to blame you, the reader.  Us, the community.  If we’re not demanding more stories like Stephen Stafford be shown, then what really do we want?

KRS-One once said “the people really have the government they want.  If they were dissatisfied, they’d be out rebelling right now.”  Let’s substitute “government” for “news.”

Let’s face it.  The only consistently positive coverage we’ve seen of Black people on the news as of late is people getting rescued from rubble in Haiti.  And even that momentum has changed with the news coverage of the missionaries arrested for attempted trafficking.

So what can we do? No one ever writes to their news station.  I’m going to write to my television stations in Washington, D.C. and demand for more coverage of stories like Stephen Stafford.  Stay tuned for a draft letter that YOU can send to your TV stations.

Being that I recently attended my first Bar Mitzvah, when I came across this article it was especially intriguing.  Very interesting topic with some valuable historical information, relevant as we just exited our Black history month which always seems to fly by in a flash.

Article from the Huffington Post

“There is no question about the well-documented history where the Black and Jews have stood together in their fight for civil rights, equality and political power. But not so much is said about the creative alliances in business where Blacks and Jews are and have been forging new businesses and ideas that have helped enable Blacks and Jews to enter the mainstream in American business. These are the partnerships that have and will create goodwill and change the future.

There are many examples of how Blacks and Jews have come together to fight against hatred and bigotry. In fact, as my friend Rabbi Marc Schneier at The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, often states (and he even wrote a book about it called Shared Dreams), Dr. King was an ardent supporter of Israel and the Jewish people, including taking part in efforts to ease discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union and the safety and security of the State of Israel. Dr. King also spoke out strongly against anti-Semitism in the United States. We all know that no segment of the American population provided as much and as consistent support to Dr. King and to African Americans as did the Jewish community.
Read more..

by Ajani Husbands

Let’s say you’re an artist. I need you to paint 1,000 paintings for me in one year. That’s about three paintings a day with thirty free days scattered in between. Can you do it?  Is it possible? Your answer to this might determine whether painting for you is a hobby of something you happen to be good at, or if you have the drive to be a definitive reference point in the art world.

Right now I’m in the middle of reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers and the question persists: what does it take to be an outlier? Passion and drive? Perhaps it is one’s circumstances and upbringing? Pure luck? No matter the case, one thing has already one thing has been made clear: Outliers aren’t just talented. They WANT to be outliers.
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