My Global Hustle

There have been and probably will be numerous articles on the January 16, 2007 RIAA raid of the Aphilliates Music Group studio and arrest of my brother Tyree “DJ Drama” Simmons and DJ Don Cannon. There have been and will be numerous articles on what the implications of this raid will not only have on the Aphilliates Music Group but on the entire mixtape business/game.

In the midst of those ongoing discussions, let’s not forget the reality that racism and sexism are alive and well in Ameri-KKK-a.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007 marked the first day of my supporting a three day fast that Black Women in Durham, North Carolina organized to expel and heal from the ongoing collective trauma that many of us who are victim/survivors of rape and other forms of sexual assault have been experiencing ever since members of the predominantly White Duke LaCrosse team were publicly accused of raping a Black woman in Spring of 2006. Little did I know, that while I supported my Spirit Sister-Survivors in Durham, North Carolina, that another assault against a member of my Blood family was about to happen.

No one will ever be able to explain to me why the hell a SWAT Team of at least 30 strong went charging into the Aphilliates Music Group studio as if they were doing a major drug or an illegal arms bust? Why did they need to put my brother Tyree (DJ Drama) and his cohorts face down on the ground with guns to their heads? Did the agents need to ransack the studio, confiscate cd’s featuring artist sanctioned original music not bootlegs, disc drives, computers, cars, ultimately stripping the studio of everything with the exception of furniture

Based on the January 16, 2007 Fox Atlanta News edition, when one of the agents said “Usually, we find other crimes during these types of busts.” Clearly the agents expected ( possibly wanted) to find drugs and/or illegal arms. K-9 dogs whose noses are trained to sniff and find drugs, were ultimately board with nothing to do.

So the question for me and the rest of the Portnoy-Simmons-Thwaites family is was a SWAT team needed? Was this solely about mixtapes? Would this have happened if this wasn’t a Black run company? One of the claims is that Tyree (DJ Drama) was racketeering. Well, this alleged racketeer is a legitimate businessman who played and continues to play a pivotal role in the careers of numerous known and unknown hiphop artists, which by direct extension helps the recording industry immensely. Tyree ( DJ Drama) is also a partner, a father, a brother, and a son.

When I think about all of the scandals in corporate Ameri-KKK-a (Enron and WorldCom to name a minute few)…I don’t ever recall hearing about any SWAT enforced raids. I don’t recall any images of Ken Lay or other top executives of corporations being forced to lay face down on the ground surrounded by SWAT agents with guns to their heads and K-9 dogs sniffing them. For a detailed expose on the evils that corporations all around the world do and get away with legally and illegally, check out the powerfully gripping documentaries “Enron: The Smartest Guys In the Room,” and “The Corporation.”

As Tyree’s (DJ Drama’s) sister and as a radical Black feminist lesbian social activist, I am beyond outraged at how the RIAA handled/orchestrated the raid. If he or anyone in the Aphilliates camp didn’t follow the directions of the agents, asked the ‘wrong’ questions,’or made the ‘wrong’ move during the raid, he and/or his cohorts could’ve been murdered in a twinkling of an eye. And for what? Selling mixtapes, which feature artist sanctioned original music?

The RIAA should be held accountable for their actions. They need to know that their violent response to addressing their accusations of racketeering was unacceptable.

There was (and is) no covert operation going on with the business of the Aphilliates; and yet the Aphilliates were treated as if they were public enemy number one.

I am explicitly clear that the music entertainment power structure has a very serious problem with people of Color making profits, on their terms, off a multi-billon dollar international industry that they created. Hip-Hop.

I am also clear that since the founding of Ameri-KKK-a, this type of state sanctioned racist and sexist treatment towards men and women of Color happens every single minute of every single day. Unfounded police raids are nothing new to countless communities of Color across this country.

So while we debate and discuss the legalities of mixtapes and the long term impact of what the January 16, 2007 raid of the Aphiliates studio will mean, we must not ever forget that innocent people were terrorized and incarcerated in the name of protecting the Recording Industry Association of America.

Aishah Shahidah Simmons is a Black feminist lesbian documentary filmmaker and social activist who recently completed the award-winning documentary NO!, which unveils the reality of rape, other forms of sexual violence, and healing in African-American communities.

www.NOtheRapeDocumentary.org
www.myspace.com/afrolez

Filed under: Guest Bloggers, La Música by !YG
No Comments »

My homey Denise Gomes read my blog about “Donating to Charity” and (in true Denise fashion) decided to add her 2 cents. Denise provided some very informative feedback and hopefully you will find this information useful too. Miss Gomes is truly a force within the philanthropic world. I’m lucky to have her as my buddy… 🙂

Check out her feedback…..

~ YG

Here is some additional advice to assist you in your charitable endevors…..

To research your selected nonprofit, go to http://charitynavigator.org/ and search for your organization. The site offers detailed reports on the financial health and organizational efficiency of your chosen cause.

Another useful site is Give.org. However, Charity Navigator is more user friendly and allows you to do organizational comparisons.

You may also want to donate on a family member or friend’s behalf (i.e., make a tribute gift). I recently donated a sheep to a poor farmer in Africa on behalf of my best friend. She loved it! Check out the following sites to make tribute gifts.

https://www.oxfamamericaunwrapped.com
http://www.globalgiving.com/gifts/index.html

 

One more thing, I disagree with “if you have never heard of the charity, DON’T donate to it.” I recommend researching the organization first.There are a lot of well known nonprofit brands that spend a great deal on marketing and branding. However, they are not necessarily the best at fulfilling their mission.

At the same time, there are a number of nonprofits that are well-respected within the nonprofit community for their program effectiveness, financial management and innovative program models that are relatively unknown to the general public.

I recommend checking out the following lesser-known but highly respected organization:

Scojo Foundation: http://www.scojofoundation.org/

Scojo is one of my favorite orgs because it’s has a very innovative model for tackling Global Poverty. Check out how Scojo empowers people and makes them social entrepreneurs.

Happy Donating,

Denise

Filed under: Guest Bloggers, Philanthropy by !YG
No Comments »

What did James Brown do?

Even now, half a century after the release of his first single, “Please Please Please,” and days after his death of congestive heart failure, at 73, early on Christmas morning, that’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer.

He was a singer, of course, though he was perhaps better known for his grunts and his patter. “I wanna get up and do my thing. (Yeah!) Can I get into it? (Yeah!) Like a … (What?) Like a … (What?)” With an introduction like that, who cares if the song never starts?

He was a dancer, too, though that seemed less like the cause of his appeal and more like an effect of it. He moved as if he simply couldn’t help himself, and he toured that way too. His scheduled New Year’s Eve concert in New York was to be just one more date on his latest tour; tonight, for example, he had been scheduled for a concert in Waterbury, Conn. (Now that’s dedication.)

Most of all, he was an old-fashioned, hard-driving bandleader — which is to say, an anomaly. In an era of rock stars he often seemed like the second coming of Cab Calloway; the old big band had gotten smaller, but the man in front had only grown.

And while his rock ’n’ roll counterparts chafed at the idea of being mere entertainers, Mr. Brown never stopped bragging about being “the hardest-working man in show business.”

He was black and proud, he was a sex machine, but he was also a brilliant conductor, known for coaxing great performances out of the singers and musicians behind him. That, most of all, is what Mr. Brown did.

So celebrating the James Brown sound also means celebrating the musicians who created it. When he delayed the fourth and final beat of a measure, the drummer Clyde Stubblefield warped time in a way that helped inspire a whole constellation of rhythm-obsessed genres. Bobby Byrd (he of the famous “Yeah!” and “What?”), Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley, Bootsy Collins, Lyn Collins, Vicki Anderson: to love James Brown is to love them too. And not enough has been written about Jimmy Nolen, the visionary guitarist whose spidery licks helped inspire two generations of post-punk bands. (When people talk about “angular” guitars, they often mean “Jimmy-Nolen-ish.”)

In this sense the bandleader was also a brand leader: in the 1970s, especially, “James Brown” was not just a star, but an executive, a producer, a franchise. His name (sometimes his face too) on the record label meant you were getting a James-Brown-approved product. And if you went to see the J.B.’s, the backing band that morphed into a terrific stand-alone group, you were also seeing a reflection of Mr. Brown, even if he was nowhere near the building.

Bandleaders have always (of necessity) been businessmen too, but Mr. Brown was wise enough to be unembarrassed by the echo. There was a hint of corporate precision in the way he led those musicians onstage: each wiggle of the hip or flicker of the hand was an urgent memo from top management; each post-show conversation was a performance evaluation. Even his political program reflected this obsession; his vision of black power was in large part a vision of black spending power, and he saw no reason why a black nationalist shouldn’t also be an eager (and successful) black capitalist.

The musician as executive: this is the not-quite-new notion that defines the current musical era. Pop stars flaunt their corporate ties; rappers brag about their business acumen (real or, more often, imaginary); rock bands cheerfully acknowledge that they are brands on the run. And while some listeners may be nostalgic for a time when pop music was untainted by corporate chic, Mr. Brown’s career is a reminder that the old-fashioned bandleader and new-fangled pop-star C.E.O. really aren’t so far apart. When he called himself “the hardest-working man in show business,” the emphasis was on “working” and “business.”

If James Brown, the musician, has also been influential and enduring, it’s not just because of his evergreen hits, which still sound vigorous, even though they have been reissued and covered and sampled ad nauseam. And it’s not just because of all the styles he helped inspire, from Nigerian Afro-beat to Brazilian funk-rap.

It’s also because, decades before the rise of computer music, he proved that some virtuosos do their best work with no instruments at all. In that sense his true heirs today are producers like Timbaland: knob-twiddling masterminds who program sounds instead of conducting them, beat-obsessed visionaries who keep reinventing Mr. Brown’s propulsive templates, serial collaborators who understand the business of pop music.

No one could ever do all the things Mr. Brown did. But here is what’s more impressive: musicians are still finding new ways to do some of them.

Filed under: Guest Bloggers, La Música by !YG
1 Comment »

Bruce Peru is a non-sectarian organization working with the poor children of Peru who are not in school. There are many needs here and what Bruce Peru addresses is education. We work with a mix of foreign and Peruvian volunteers to teach preparatory classes to children who are not going to school – whether they had to quit for some reason or have never studied.

Generally children are not in school because they have dysfunctional family structures, are working or their parent(s) lacks the money to pay the ongoing fees of enrollment plus books plus uniforms, etc. Our program provides a very necessary support for the child by way of education, building self-esteem and instilling discipline in the classroom. We also support the families through our social workers and help pay some of the school fees to ensure that the child does not drop out (again). We have centers in Trujillo, Cajamarca, Huaraz and Cusco.

You can learn more at our website: www.bruceperu.org and then select any site for more detail.

To donate, please visit our fundraising page: http://www.firstgiving.com/Strengthandrefuge

Happy Holidays!

Cess Oliva

Director of Bruce Peru

Strength & Refuge

—————————————————————————————–

Thx for the Guest Blog Cess…  You are the best!. ~ YG

Filed under: Guest Bloggers by !YG
No Comments »

Here is an interesting article that I came across the other day. I decided to re-post it for ya’ll to read. I hope that U enjoy it….~YG ———————————————————————————– By John Lederer Managing Director of Blanc Brasseries and consultant to BBC series The Restaurant

Opening a successful restaurant is like a marathon race.

It’s not just about the heat in the kitchen

You need to prepare for as long you can. Getting to the starting line is hard enough but finishing is everything.

The restaurant business is a strange creature; the very word business is seen as sacrilegious by many insiders and scoffed at by many outsiders.

As if opening a successful restaurant was not hard enough, one has to contend with colleagues who believe one has to suffer for their “art” and advisors who believe their personal tastes and preference are the norm.

This maelstrom of pressure has a nasty habit of ignoring your proposed business’s greatest asset; the customer.

No guarantees

The customers, punters, guests, clients should be there at the very start of your new venture and ever present as you build it towards a reality.

Celebrity chefs are role models for would-be restaurateurs

They should be ever present as a reality check to the artist and ego in us, ensuring that we are building a business, and not some kind of shrine.

The complexity of the restaurant business is what appeals to me; not only are we in the rare environment where our product is consumed before payment, but we need to master finance, human resources, marketing, law, production, training and human nature.

At all levels of the trade we strive for a consistent product.

This is wishful thinking on our part as our guests bring an ingredient that we have no control over.

If I sent you to the best restaurant in the world, a restaurant that could grant your every wish, with your worst enemy, the resulting product would exceed your wildest dreams but the experience would be awful.

Avoiding the pitfalls

The above not withstanding, and some 60 new opening later, I still relish the battle that is opening a successful restaurant.

There are ways to at least even out the odds:

1. A good business plan

Many believe they’ve got what it takes to run a restaurant

This is imperative but amazingly rare in the industry.

It should include a return on investment, a proposed gross spend per head, numbers of covers anticipated, the possible necessity of filling tables more than once on busy days, a budget, a good cash flow.

A good business plan would have ensured that many restaurants never saw the light of day.

At its most basic level it will confront your idea with reality of the customers wish to hand over his hard earned cash in enough quantity to make a profit.

2. A good team

This is a service industry; your team is the product and the method of delivering it.

Restaurants need a schizophrenic mixture of accountants and showmen, a combustible mixture at the best of times.

Whatever inclination the team have, it is imperative that they understand and truly share your goals and aspirations.

It is best to take them through every step, every decision and every temptation you have been through.

3. Training

Train yourself and your team to deliver your product.

Fancy running your own restaurant?

If you have any doubt that you are not ready, start again.

You simply cannot practice on the guests.

Always remember that the reality of a meal session is filled with tension and the unexpected, so once your team have mastered individual tasks, practice then practice some more.

These things will give you a fighting chance for your idea to bear fruit.

I already sense a mounting tide of anger, as many reading this bemoan the complete omission of any reference to food.

The sad fact, for some, is that food is just one part of a successful restaurant.

So once you have run the marathon and even perhaps won it, remember you can’t be like Pheidippides, the original marathon runner who collapsed and died after his exertion.

We restaurateurs start all over again in the morning

Filed under: Guest Bloggers, Hospitality is my Business by !YG
No Comments »