Tag Archives: Controversy

Hip Hop History and What It’s About from Paras

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Hip Hop History and What It’s About from Paras
Note: If I’ve got something wrong or missed our something or you just wanna share your take on it… please feel free to comment.

I’ve been wanting to write this for ages since a lot on uninformed folks confuse hip hop expression or being gangsta in the wrong way and mistake it with being a thug, a vandal etc. Even though it is part of the attitude it’s not all there is… especially being a gangsta and being a G. Most of this info I’ve tried remembering from The History of Hip Hop book I’d read ages back. If there is one thing you must ALWAYS remember is that hip hop is a form of expressing yourself… from your clothes, your moves, your attitude, being a G without getting in a fight kinda thing… its about your flavor, execution and pulling it off well… like myself! So lets get down to it shall we.

A bit of history first…
See there was a mass migration of black folks in like 50s or so. Lots of people moved from South USA to North as job prospects were better… the racism issues were less… you know segregation and all. So black folks got crammed up north and def didn’t wanna go back to the old ways in the south. This is where the Projects came in. The government could not provide all the jobs it promised and stuff. And so these folks had parties at like basketball courts or places which had street lights so as to tap the electric juice from such power supplies to play their radios, turntables and microphones etc. Now I guess they still carried on partying as they did… Swing dancing and stuff right… BUT… it evolved. A new crowd experiencing new situations and all right… which gave birth to hip hops elements.

Hip Hops Main Elements
1 – DJing/Turntableism
2 – Breaking/Breakdancing/B-boying
3 – Graffiti
4 – Rapping/MCing
- Other sub elements include: beatboxing, dressing, lingo, attitude… hell Viv even recommended a vid purely about shoes and how they had to be fly! Customised laces, cleaning, colouring them in, etc… for that Google vid Just For Kicks.

Each of these elements by now has diversified and evolved into lots of sub catagories so I wont get into it too deep. Now the first 3 have recently been hating on the 4th because rapping found so much success and didn’t not bring the other elements along with it. The way I see it… for the first 3 you needed skill and practice so it was harder for everyone to get into while rapping… well you don’t need any tool or exceptional skills. But anyway thats my thought on it.

1 – DJing/Turntableism
If I remember correctly. Folks used to tap into the power supply to hook up their turntables and just play music normally. It went something like… first it was just one deck and then evolved to two to keep the music nonstop and then either someone made a mistake by moving the record while playing or someone felt creative… oh yeah someone was waiting for the next song to play and held the other track in place and then moved it back and forth and the idea bulb struck. After which folks tried out different stuff and evolved it more and more… Viv hooked me up with the ‘Scratch’ documentary about it where for some reason these guys have a fascination for space/alien stuff??? DJ Kool Herc gets a lot of props here as he used to just make a ‘break’ which is basically the part of the song with just beats and loop it. Theres an article on the most recent chopped and screwed style on Universal somwhere.

2 – Breaking/Breakdancing/B-boying
Now while the music was going on folks would bust moves especially during the mentioned ‘breaks’. I’m sure Capoeira comes into this somewhere… but yeah folks would ‘battle’… trying to out do each other. Hell back then even the Gangs used to settle disputes with a battle on the dancefloor… solos or crews etc. Note: Back then Gangs were more like political activists or if it really got down and dirty it used to end up in melees and not gun fire. The flier the combos you did the more props you got and the more your opponent would lose face or have to bust fresher flier moves. There was a big controversy over the ‘breakdancing’ term and apparently that’s the name the media gave to it so it’s not used too much by true hip hoppers. There’s lots of styles… hell too many to mention but the main ones are uprock/toprock which includes upright footwork, glides/slides, boogaloo, popping, locking, krumping and floor moves which are pretty acrobatic. Again popping and locking has issues coz some call it pop locking and what not. Get it right alright!

3 – Graffiti
Gangs come into it as they used to ‘tag’ or claim their turf, or it was used as political activism and most of these artist were big in the rest on the hip hop elements or scene. So while the DJ did his thing and dancers did theirs… these guys were expressing them selves on the walls and trains. Um… think thats about it. Google vid Wild Style to get the idea.

4 – Rapping/MCing (Also called spitting)
We get to the most controversial element. This one has the deepest history as it’s a form of storytelling, giving out props, bigging up folks or showing off. I think again Kool Herc started it off. While the DJ did his thing and the dancers were busting moves… the MC would big up folks with fly moves, announce next events kinda thing and find ways to make it rhyme or flow or just scat it. Some say the roots are in Jamaica as there they MC as a way to boast and toast while others say Africa where folks would storytell to music and yet others say jazz. Some say it’s an acronym for Rhythm and Poetry or shlack others say it came from a much used english word. I say whatever man coz lots of things in history you can’t really tell for sure. Anyway there’s so many styles now… flow, freestyle… I don’t know proper names or if they do have names but there’s dissing, earlier mentioned story telling, bigging up or boasting, gangsta rap, speed rap, philosophical, etc etc. It has a lot to do with the latest slang or slang itself. It can be judged on speed, flow, metaphors, etc etc. I personally owe a lot to rap especially gangsta rap coz it gave me an avenue to get out my aggression, helped me LOADS with english (trust me!) coz it got me writing down the lyrics and reading. My folks used to say they need to get school subjects in rap form to get me to read or know it coz I knew my stuff word for word. I see why so many get into it but after a while I got bored of the same content especially the mainstream stuff coz its bitches, guns, drugs, thugs, money and self praise. Thank god Viv hooks me up with some diverse refreshing stuff. I’ll leave it here coz I could go for pages.

So there you have it… a quick tour around Hip Hop. If you aint hip hop and find these guys attitude aggressive… it’s just their ‘front’. You should check out a B-boy/DJing event to see that in the end it’s all about love and giving/getting respect. If course you could dress to get respect or do you and respect yourself no matter what others say coz even if you look the flyest you’ll still get a diss now and then and its part of the game baby. Just don’t be a hater if you’re not into the scene. It’s helped keep a lot of people involved in creative and constructive stuff you know.

Note: As much as I was dying to use some lingo I’ve kept it pretty user friendly. If you ever do want to know a word used please check out http://www.rapdict.org/Main_Page and type the word in the search bit. I started out with that ages back but now use more of http://www.urbandictionary.com since it has Naruto’s lingo, lots more definitions, origins and examples too ;o)

Example: Since I just got back from the gym and Genie is on my case to go for a drink I’ll say something like… Fall back yo, I was getting deezed at the gym, so now… I’mma lay in the cut and bust a nut.

Ok I covered the bits I wanted to… like I said if you got more to add… you’re more than welcome to edumacate peeps.

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Dianetics: Modern Science of Mental Health Audiobook by L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology)

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Whoa baby. Ok first of lets get down to the conspiracy before getting to the book. So many folks are against it, hell there’s even a movie I watched called The Bridge that shows how all these scientologists do the opposite of what is taught in Dianetics and all that. I mean the controversy is so juicy. Others say L. Ron was a great illusionist and how he’s perfect the art of lying and persuasion through practices like magic and Satanism etc. There’s also some story of L. Ron claiming Xenu the alien god is the main man kinda thing. Not bothered with that. So you gotta keep an open mind.

As for the book it makes sense to a point. It’s all about how you rank on the ‘survival’ chart. The more you do to help your survival rating the better and closer you are… even to immortality??!! Lots of charts, grading, etc. Like they’re right about Engrams (Impressions in Art of Living) and how some engrams in the past can affect someone in the future kinda thing. The terms they use are special to Scientology. Stuff like aberration, clears, pre-clears, occlusion?, auditor, etc. Now the basics are that a ‘pre-clear’ goes to an ‘auditor’ to release the ‘engrams’ (meditation in Art of Living ;o)) Its extremely scientific and technical and from what I’m told, you HAVE TO know all the terms and if you don’t the auditor will as you to go and read certain chapters again. These guys are totally against hypnosis, psychotherapy, psychiatry and the like. Mostly because the ‘self’ can still hear stuff even when they’re knocked out, say like under anesthetic. In fact it’s pretty opposite as in you are told to go to your past, you’re not induced as in hypnotherapy and past life regression. So you go to your past and start of just remembering stuff till you come to a problem point where you’re asked mostly to repeat the story/engram till it releases. YAY! They also claim that you can remember prenatal times too.

Speaking of prenatal they say that’s when we get the most engrams coz we’re in mommy’s tummy and hearing all the bull and taking it in. And for some reason through out the book dude kept talking about the same situations where it’s either mom/dad does not want the baby and the other partner will kill the person if they get rid of it kinda thing. The other repeating story is when they have sex while mother is expecting or when mother is cheating and the part-time lover gives baby the engram. And one more for the road, another repeating story is where patient is under anesthetic and say like the nurse does some ‘dodgy’ things or says some things to or around the patient, which in turn puts an engram in him. So those bits I found pretty BS. They also say it’s best to be silent when someone you know is hurt or has an accident so as not to give them the pity kinda engram etc. I’m a fan of silence so.. go silence! After all the analysis, case studies, procedures, do’s and don’ts they get to the history and how far they’ve come etc etc. Lots of repetition.

Contents:
- 1 Dedication
- 2-3 Synopsis
- 4 How to Read this Book

Book One: The Goal of Man
- Ch.1 The Scope of Dianetics
- Ch.2 The Clear
- Ch.3 The Goal of Man
- Ch.4 The Four Dynamics
- Ch.5 Summary

Book Two: The Single Source of All Inorganic Mental and Organic Psychosomatic Ills
- Ch.1 The Analytical Mind and the Standard Memory Banks
- Ch.2 The Reactive Mind
- Ch.3 The Cell and the Organism
- Ch.4 The “Demons”
- Ch.5 Psychosomatic Illness
- Ch.6 Emotion and the Dynamics
- Ch.7 Prenatal Experience and Birth
- Ch.8 Contagion of Aberration
- Ch.9 Keying-in the Engram
- Ch.10 Preventive Dianetics

Book Three: Therapy
- Ch.1 The Mind’s Protection
- Ch.2 Release or Clear
- Ch.3 The Auditor’s Role
- Ch.4 Diagnosis
- Ch.5 Returning, The File Clerk and the Time Track
- Ch.6 The Laws of Returning
- Ch.7 Emotion and the Life Force
- Ch.8 Some Types of Engrams
- Ch.9 Pt.1 Mechanisms and Aspects of Therapy
- Ch.9 Pt.2 Mechanisms and Aspects of Therapy
- Ch.10 Dianetics – Past and Future

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Battle of the Year UK 2009 at O2 Academy

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Battle of the Year UK 2009 at O2 Academy
First of all finding the place was a mission coz usually you just follow the b-boy looking crowd right. Even in the building we took some time figuring it out. Once we did… folks were all funky-fied. Reppin’ hip-hop the true way. Once we got in folks were getting used to the place… then… battles broke out in the crowd. Hope you can see the pics http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=6645600&id=223605290 Different folks flaunting what they know best and killing time till the event begins. Viv tells me there should have been 8 crews but there was just 4. I myself thought this was the final battle of the year so I was telling everyone I was seeing the cream of the crop face-off for the prize but it was just the UK crew and the winners would go to Germany for it. The MC was sooo funny… talking funny, sound effects… you could even see big blobs of spit while we talked. Lol at one point while the judges were busy to kill time he got some of the crowd to perform and at one point he was meant to perform right… instead he loosed his shoe and kicked it at a girl in the crowd LMAO! Anyway back to the event. First crew was wack! I mean you could see it in their faces they were trying to keep up with the routine and combos. No expression, nothing! Second was aiii. The last 2 were really good. Sorry I can’t keep track of the crew names. So yeah crews alone. Break (while crowds start their own battles). Then battles. Break (while crowd battles). Then the final. I was really hoping for the crew with the kid to end up in the final. I mean in their battle the last few moves the kid pulled out his sleeve… off the hook for shizzle! So Battle of the Year was ok. What made it great was the vide everyone brought with them… it’s all about hip-hop. I guess it would have been better if there were poppers, lockers, etc in the battle but this was pure breakin’/B-Boying/breakdancing (lot of controversy in the names so choose wisely). DJ Renegade mixed some great beats. One of the Crews chose some next music… you’d never have thought to use it for a showcase but it worked out well. Excuse: Sorry for the lame review but still got another play and the lake district trip to type.

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Hip Hop Colony (Kenyan Documentary)

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Hip Hop Colony: Went for the screening for this ‘movie’ about how hip hop jumped in the Kenyan scene, difficulties artists have, controversy, how producers and stars try to keep it alive and what their next steps are. One things for sure the artists have SKILLS. I was so inspired I started thinking up lyrics again. Unfortunately my UK lyrical miracle book seems kinda… dry. Whatever you do… please don’t get bootleg/pirate copies coz the artist focus their vocals for us so the least we could do is help em stay in and step up the game. I’s well impressed with Bamboo… he’s like the Wananchi Jay-Z. Best/Bad Bit: After watching stuff like this I feel that pull of music… don’t know if it’s a good thing or bad thing coz I start feeling that itch. One sweet day… one sweet day. Note: Added my lyrics at the bottom for copyright reasons.

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Natural Phenomena from Kumar

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Watch the rare wonders of nature…….
The classical natural wonders are huge and hard to miss – vast canyons, giant mountains and the like. Many of the most fantastic natural phenomena, however, are also least easy to spot. Some are incredibly rare while others are located in hard-to-reach parts of the planet. From moving rocks to mammatus clouds and red tides to fire rainbows, here are seven of the most spectacular phenomenal wonders of the natural world.

1) Sailing Stones

The mysterious moving stones of the packed-mud desert of Death Valley have been a center of scientific controversy for decades. Rocks weighing up to hundreds of pounds have been known to move up to hundreds of yards at a time. Some scientists have proposed that a combination of strong winds and surface ice account for these movements. However, this theory does not explain evidence of different rocks starting side by side and moving at different rates and in disparate directions. Moreover, the physics calculations do not fully support this theory as wind speeds of hundreds of miles per hour would be needed to move some of the stones.

2) Columnar Basalt

When a thick lava flow cools it contracts vertically but cracks perpendicular to its directional flow with remarkable geometric regularity – in most cases forming a regular grid of remarkable hexagonal extrusions that almost appear to be made by man. One of the most famous such examples is the Giant’s Causeway on the coast of Ireland (shown above) though the largest and most widely recognized would be Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. Basalt also forms different but equally fascinating ways when eruptions are exposed to air or water.

3) Blue Holes

Blue holes are giant and sudden drops in underwater elevation that get their name from the dark and foreboding blue tone they exhibit when viewed from above in relationship to surrounding waters. They can be hundreds of feet deep and while divers are able to explore some of them they are largely devoid of oxygen that would support sea life due to poor water circulation – leaving them eerily empty. Some blue holes, however, contain ancient fossil remains that have been discovered, preserved in their depths.

4) Red Tides

Red tides are also known as algal blooms – sudden influxes of massive amounts of colored single-cell algae that can convert entire areas of an ocean or beach into a blood red color. While some of these can be relatively harmless, others can be harbingers of deadly toxins that cause the deaths of fish, birds and marine mammals. In some cases, even humans have been harmed by red tides though no human exposure are known to have been fatal. While they can be fatal, the constituent phytoplankton in ride tides are not harmful in small numbers.

5) Ice Circles

While many see these apparently perfect ice circles as worthy of conspiracy theorizing, scientists generally accept that they are formed by eddies in the water that spin a sizable piece of ice in a circular motion. As a result of this rotation, other pieces of ice and flotsam wear relatively evenly at the edges of the ice until it slowly forms into an essentially ideal circle. Ice circles have been seen with diameters of over 500 feet and can also at times be found in clusters and groups at different sizes as shown above.

6) Mammatus Clouds

True to their ominous appearance, mammatus clouds are often harbingers of a coming storm or other extreme weather system. Typically composed primarily of ice, they can extend for hundreds of miles in each direction and individual formations can remain visibly static for ten to fifteen minutes at a time. While they may appear foreboding they are merely the messengers – appearing around, before or even after severe weather.

7) Fire Rainbows

A circumhorizontal fire rainbow arc occurs at a rare confluence of right time and right place for the sun and certain clouds. Crystals within the clouds refract light into the various visible waves of the spectrum but only if they are arrayed correctly relative to the ground below. Due to the rarity with which all of these events happen in conjunction with one another, there are relatively few remarkable photos of this phenomena.

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MADONNA SPECIAL

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MADONNA SPECIAL
Madonna (Discography/Videograpy/Bibliography). Genre:
Dance/Pop/Rock/Club/Adult Contemporary/Disco/R&B/Funk/Soul/Jazz/Electronica
- (1983) Madonna: It’s ok. Sounds the same. She dedicated this album to her pops.

- (1984) Like A Virgin: Improves a little. Little more variations. Includes hits Material Girl, Live A Virgin, Love Dont Live Here Anymore, Into The Groove. Albums dedicated to ‘all the virgins of the world’.

- (1986) True Blue: Improves way more. More instruments, more variations. Most are hit quality. Personal favs… Papa Don’t Preach, Open Your Heart, Live To Tell, La Isla Bonita. She wrote and co-wrote everysong and also co-produced them. Album dedicated to her then husband Sean Penn the coolest guy in the universe. Hmmm.

- (1987) Who’s That Girl (Soundtrack): Actually a various artist album for the movie Who’s That Girl. Movie didn’t do all that well but the album did especially the track called… guess… you got it… Who’s That Girl. LOL. Note: Watched this with big bro dont know how many times.

- (1987) You Can Dance: No song is less than 6 minutes and its started sounding the same again. Not good. Has quite a few remix songs… Which inspired Bobby Brown, Milli Vanilli and Paula Abdul to release remix albums too. Meant to be the best selling remix album of all time with 7 million copies sold worldwide.

- (1989) Like A Prayer: This album was considered her most accomplishted artistic statement at that time. So song Like A Prayer itself caused enough controversy… she witnesses a murder, dances in a field with burning crosses, displayed stigmata after cutting her palms on a knife, kisses a black saint. It was so bad that Pepsi cancelled their ad campaign where the song would be part of their commercial and Madonna would be spokesperson. Coke rules anyway. The first time she talks about her mothers death in Promise To Try. Addresses end of marriage with Sean Penn in Till Death Do Us Part. Yo check this out, LPs, CDs and cassettes were scented with patchouli oil (her fav scent) and the first pop artist to include an AIDS factsheet in her album. Right on sista! Prince co-wrote, sang or played guitar in a few tracks. Background music in Act of Contrition has Like A Pray back masked. I just like Like A Prayer, Promise To Try and Oh Father.

- (1990) I’m Breathless (Music from & inspired by the film Dick Tracy): Coz the Vogue single was released before the album it boosted album sales. Then as it was doing good on charts it was overtaken by Immaculate Collection. Very Jazzy… Katie Melua sounds so much like this. Hanky Panky sounds great. I’m Going Banana’s sounds more like Mexican Rumba.

- (1990) The Immaculate Collection. Greatest Hits vol. 1: Whoa… Declared by Guiness Book to be the biggest selling ‘greatest hits’ album by female artist. It was put in several ‘albums of the mellinnium’ lists. Ranked 278 on Rolling Stone mags list of 500 greatest albums of all time. British Phonographic Industry confirmed in July 2006 that it was the biggest selling album by a femal artist in British histor. The 5th biggest selling album of all time in UK by any artist AND to be the biggest selling compilation album by any artist in Britain. And they say some fans were not pleased coz lots of other hits were not included. At least they reduced the running time of the songs. Warning: Some tracks sound different to the original.

- (1992) Erotica: It’s got a more Jazz/Hip Hop feel to it. Its a concept album about sexuality. Now check this out back in the day every rap album was given the Parental Advisory label. Now just coz there’s one rap song in the album, it became her first album to get a Parental Advisory label. Worst bit is its not even that vulgar and the level of horniness aint all that extreme. This is the time she’s been most explicit coz then her book Sex was published where she poses half naked with lots of BDSM going on, then her movie Body of Evidence came out where she’s totally nude (the movies ok, she’s hot but Julian Moores in the movie too and I’ve always liked her more). The movie didnt make it all that well. While a lot of people thought she’d crossed the line, the album later was appreciated for what he was trying to say. Still it was the first time none of the songs went to be No. 1 hits. Album and book banned in Malaysia. Book includes a remix of Erotica called Erotic (its alright) where she reads lines from the book (got a bad quality book so cant read the text but the pics are… SIZZLING HOT, provocative content, daring content. I’m surprised the media have not made the most of her story about being with a young boy.) My fav album… I love Deeper and Deeper, the arrangement, lyrics, video, guitar break, etc. Oh man this album takes me back to… home times. Note: Personally I feel this is where she found her voice, she matured… you know… reached God-mode.

- (1994) Bedtime Stories: Madonna thought she’d show her softer side especially after the previous album funked her public image. Human Nature sounds like a scathing at the media for her treatment during the whole Erotica album and Sex book drama.

- (1995) Something to Remember: Compilation of her ballad hits. Lets just call it best of Soundtracks/B-Sides/Singles. Note: Dont wanna review her anymore :o( The video for You’ll See is meant to be the sequel to Take A Bow.

- (1997) Evita (Soundtrack): Music from the motion picture. Movies not bad, just sometimes the dub aint too convincing and I’d have liked to know what happened to Argentina after her death.

- (1998) Frozen: Mostly old songs and Frozen.

- (1998) Ray Of Light: After the vocal lessons from Evita her voice found more stength, depth and clarity. She gets a lot of props for this album coz of her turn towards motherhood and spirituallity and shlack. Little Star is dedicated to her daughter. She did a lot of tracks with Babyface but thought they sounded too Take A Bow-ish so scrapped those and decided to join forces with electronica dude William Orbit. The songs got that ambient trance feel. Thing is lyrics are wicked and most songs are really good but either she sounds the same on most tracks or Orbits arrangments sound the same. Orbit prefers using samples, synth sounds and Pro Tools instead of live musicians but there was problems. One time his fingers started bleeding playing the guitar for so long. On the other hand Madonna’s bit was over in one take… well most of them.

- (2000) The Next Best Thing (Soundtrack): She was the Executive Producer for the album. Chose all the songs, sang two in the album. Got a bit of World music in it. Thats about it. As for the movie, apart from the clever Title and lovely ‘American Dream-ish’ scenes… it was big hairy wrinkly saggy BOLLOCKS!

- (2000) Music: Her step towards Eurodance. Teams up with French Electronica dude Mirwais. Lol they had difficulty coz dude didnt speak english and she didnt know much french. But one of the songs she does in french! Anyway its really good. Love the beats in Impressive Instant… disco/groove-ish bass. Uses the vocoder… quite a bit! Bonus track Cyberraga is produced by Madonna and Talvin Singh (amazing tabla player… did a gig with AOL). Anyway so the song was only available in Japanese and Aussie versions but later released as a B-Side and includes a vedic mantra from Mahabharata. Note: Really got a problem with folks not pronouncing words right!

- (2001) GHV2 (Greatest Hits 2): Only bit you need to know is American Pie was not put in there because she didnt want to put it in the Music album coz it didnt belong but a certain record company executive twisted her arm and so its being ‘punished’.

- (2003) American Life: Oh man, Madonna never does this but this time she had to… SHE GAVE IN because the media made it seem like her album was Anti-American coz of the American Life video with war scenes and shlack (ending dude looks like Bush). So the album had the lowest sales of all her albums but at the same time was the only album in history to provide 7 top-ten hits on the Hot Dance Music/Club Party chart. Sales were better in countries that did not support the was in Iraq. Recording the album was put on hold a few times coz of fliming Swept Away, appearance in the Up For Grabs play and cameo in Die Another Day. The album cover looks very much like the images you see of Che Guevara with a mix of the news photo of kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. To create difficulty for downloaders people associated with her distributed false copies. One of them had Madonna saying ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ followed by minutes of slience. I really like most tracks.

- (2003) Remixed & Revisited: Word was a set was gonna be released to commemorate her 20th anniversary in the biz. Instead this 7 track thing was released. Madonna admits she wanted her American Life tracks to get more attention and even though they’ve included the tracks I loved from the album, they have remixed it… trust me the originals are way better. Includes a live Like A Virgin/Hollywood medley featuring Christina, Britney and Missy. Oh and a track done during Bedtime Stories.

- (2005) Confessions On A Dancefloor: In Madonna’s words… “I wanted a record with no ballads. I wanted there to be no breaks, with one song segueing into the next – just like in a disco…. Whenever I make records, I often like the remixes better than the original versions. So I thought, screw that. I’m going to start from that perspective. I want to hear all these songs in a club. I approached the album from more of a DJ’s point of view, but Stuart [Price] is a DJ. That really influenced the vibe – the dance aspect – of the record. We listened to a lot of other people’s records when we were making this – obviously ABBA and Giorgio Moroder – so to me it’s more of an homage to other people’s records than mine. If there are references to earlier records it’s probably done unknowingly, part of our molecular structure, it comes out again and again, hopefully not too boringly and repetitive”. So it was released in multiple formats… one specially for iTunes, etc. Even though it sounds like other artist, it still takes me to a happy place coz its dance music. Madonna set up a hotline which had people confessing sh1t and was podcast on iTunes before album release. Get Together, Forbidden Love, Isaac (wicked track… has Mosque-ish chants), Push and Like It Or Not are my fav. Note: When’s this review gonna end???!!!

- (2005) Confessions Remixed: Some album songs remixed.

- (2006) I’m Going To Tell You A Secret: Her first ever live album. The DVD has the usual behind the scenes footage. An into with her starting with some deep conversation. She says the political punches in her performances are not to piss peeps off its to raise them up. The American Life vid performance is extra controversial. Lookalikes – Sadam smoking a cigar next to Bush, Bush rests his head on Sadams shoulder lol. Thanx Michael Moore (Farenheit 911 dude). Was hoping to find out who the beatboxer was but heck. Reshma (one of her performers) does a lil Indian prayer thing before they hit the stage. Love the Hollywood performance best coz of the Indian Classical dance, Tap dance, mime, skateboard and b-boy spin. Ok 3rd time the Kabbalah is mentioned and then one song with some writings. Whats going on? Whoa, one of the places she performed it rained, folks still stayed for the whole 6 hours plus. Apparently a full moon ‘sailed’ right abover her stage when she came on. Moving. Ahha, so the writing meants Zohar which is considered the most important work of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. This is how she explains it… as a kind of decoding of the Torah or the Old Testament. If you wanna read things literally then you read the Old Testament, and if you wanna understand the hidden meanings of the Torah you read the Zohar. Great more research for me!!! I love the song where it starts with bagpipes and then slowly the song comes in. She reads a poem she wrote for her assistant Angie. After saying goodbyes with dancers and all… she suddenly decides to go to Israel. She’s given a thank you letter from the big peeps for her visiting during the Jewish holidays… she’s exclaims ‘thats not why I’m here’. But she has gone there for some kinda… inspiration. During her speech she emphasises she’s not there to particular religion but she does explain her support of the Kabbalah. Talks about the future of the children. One question ‘What are you waiting for?’. Footage of babies sufferring, kids with weapons… usual war footage. The End… which gets cancelled out and the beginning is written… then she says ‘now do you understand my secret’. Instead of credits rolling up, they roll down. KHALAS!

The Juice: After all this I dont care much about the juice. You all know is she’s been upto a lot in life. I’d just like to dedicate this to my bro coz he loves her. And a big up for exposing me to quality music.


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