First Post!

Intro
Man, it's been about 2 years since I last kept a blog. How long ago was that? That was back when they were still called "weblogs". Crazy.

So why did I decide to start up a blog?

• It's the new thing man. Everybody who's anybody keeps a blog. Right.
• It's an easy way for all of you to keep tabs on me. Keep in mind this doesn't give you an excuse to not talk to me. Friendships and relationships are a two-way thing.
• David Locke (http://www.lockedonsports.blogspot.com/) has been going on and on about how great the blog community is, and given my respect for his opinions the value of keeping a blog has been built up to the point such that I had to start one (again).
• My aim profile isn't nearly big enough to hold all of my random comments. And sub-profiles are worthless.
• I just have a bunch of random thoughts and this seems to be the best forum for them.

I plan on updating this maybe once a week or so, sometimes more often, sometimes less often. So, lets get this started.

New Music
I've been on a rap kick recently. Maybe a month ago or so I put on The Marshal Mathers LP and enjoyed it so much that I decided to expand my rap collection (which, at the time, consisted of the first three Eminem albums and The Chronic 2001). I'll take a moment to plug Amazon's Marketplace, my favorite place to buy books and music. It's wonderful; I get to use Amazon's standard search and browse utilities and then I buy the product for a quarter to a half of the listed Amazon price. Anyway, I picked up some new music, so here's a summary of the highlights.

• D12 - Devil's Night: Funny album. Pretty much standard Eminem with his crew. Nothing about this album was particularly ground breaking. The niche it fits for those that want more of the same of Eminem's past records. Highly entertaining. (7.5/10)
• Ludacris - Chicken 'n' Beer: Love the beats. The production on this album is enough to make this album great. Yeah, I grew up on g-funk and I still love it and all, but it is refreshing to hear something different... and different this album is. What I love about this album is how different each song is from each other, and how different the album as a whole is from anything else I've heard. To contrast, I got G-Unit's Beg For Mercy on the same day as Chicken 'n' Beer, and I listened to it twice and haven't put it on since. The songs on Beg For Mercy aren't necessarily bad, just that words like "formulaic" and "cookie-cutter" come to mind when describing the album's tracks. Now back on Chicken 'n' Beer, take Splash Waterfalls - it's fresh, unique, not revolutionary but still unlike anything else I've heard. Sure, Chicken 'n' Beer has the standard radio singles (Stand Up), but even those stand out because (1) Ludacris is hilarious; (2) Ludacris's flow is ridiculous; and (3) the tracks are great. Highly Recommended. (8.5/10)
• Kanye West - The College Dropout: I made the statement that this album was the best rap album I've heard since The Fugees' The Score. I'll explain that here. For those who haven't heard it, The Score is one of the best (if relatively uncelebrated) rap albums of all time. Given Wyclef Jean and Lauren Hill were members, it's not all that surprising that they put out great material. The lyrics are intelligent and insightful (see Zealots for an example), and that's something that's left to be desired from rap albums today. I mean, I love Snoop, but "But it ain’t no stoppin, I’m still poppin/Dre got some bitches from the city of Compton/To serve me, not with a cherry on top/Cause when I bust my nut, I’m raisin up off the cot" is at best sophomoric and is inherently limited when compared to "Problem with no man/Before black, I'm first human/Appetite to write like Frederick Douglass with a slave hand".
  The College Dropout is the first album I've heard that actually has something to say since The Score. Some artists produce a few songs that make a point (White America, for example), but when the rest of your album is about "homosexuals and vicotin" that message gets tainted. The College Dropout is solid throughout. Kanye West isn't the most amazing rapper; by the standards of today's top rappers, he's probably average at best. But the beats, the production, and the messages are more than enough to carry this album into the elite category. (9.5/10)