This Christmas

J.MOORE'S Super Soulful Christmas.

Even my Jewish friends like this mix of classic soul Christmas songs. This compilation is I-Pod ready or you can burn it to CD. If you are tired of rocking around the Christmas tree, you need this in your life.

Heavy D 1967-2011

Dwight Errington Myers a.k.a Heavy D passed away earlier today at age 44. I remember being sad when I heard about Pac, Biggie, and Jam Master J dying, but there is something about hearing about Heavy D passing away that is like a punch to the stomach. Maybe it was all of the positive things he said on twitter, or maybe it was that I have never heard one bad thing about him from anybody in the industry. For all the shit I feel like BET gets wrong, it made me so happy that he got the people off of their feet like it was the early 90's again during their last Hip-Hop awards show. Below is a re post of a blog I wrote last September, I tried to give him his roses while he could smell them.

VH-1 does a Hip-Hop Honors show which gets worse and worse each year. I remember telling someone a couple of years ago, if they ever get around to honoring Master P they should just shut the show down, and what did they do this year? They honored Master P!

One person who should have got his due way before Master P was Heavy D. In a 10 year span (87 to 97) he released 6 albums 3 gold, and 3 platinum. He collaborated with Michael and Janet Jackson. He had a hand in putting on Pete Rock & CL Smooth & The Notorious BIG. As a performer he danced at a time when other rappers were too hardcore to dance and have a good time and he did it without ever being corny. Considering he was a big man, his breath control on the mic was incredible. He never had to rap over a backing track like so many of today's rappers who barely move when they are on stage. Heavy D also made the transition from artist to label head more than a decade before Jay-Z, taking over Uptown Records after Andre Harell left in 1996. During this time he put out hit records by Soul For Real & Monifa.

The thing is everything I mentioned just pertained to music, Heavy also did his thing on the big screen, small screen and on the stage as an actor. Unlike Master P, Heavy D never did never did anything desperate to remain relevant, his music is still good today, and most importantly he never did anything to embarrass his people. The ill thing is they will probably wind up honoring the guy who invented spinning rims or Lil' Bow Wow before anyone give Heavy D his due.

This Is Not Shôtarô Kaneda!

When I heard that Hollywood would be making a live action movie of the classic manga & anime Akira, I thought "wow, how are they going to fuck this up?" Well, I got my answer. In typical Hollywood fashion they are casting a film based on a story surrounding a group of Japanese teenagers with a bunch of white people in their late 20's and 30's. The fact that Justin Timberlake was even being considered for the role is weird and disheartening. He was probably going to cost too much money, so the role is apparently going to the guy who played Sam Flynn in Tron Legacy. I was going to use his picture but I don't really care to look up his name again and a picture of Justin Timberlake is probably much better for web traffic. Anyway, they should just make the movie and call it something else because calling it Akira with no Asian lead actors is insulting to the fans of the source material and to people's intelligence.