Showing posts with label hip-hop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hip-hop. Show all posts

Monday, April 10, 2017

Dude tried to make Jesus a fool. Just made hip-hop uncool.


There are worse things than the Dinner Theater for Jesus ditties of Marty Haugen. You have to go to THIS extreme to get there, but get there you can.

The only thing I can say for this is "Rayvon" didn't call himself a "Jesus Wigga." But with this level of stereotypical idiocy, I'm not sure it would have been any more offensive if he had.

Not heard in the video: God, Jesus, Resurrection, Crucifixion, Sacrifice, Grace, Passover, Redemption, Christ, Christian, Sin, Forgiveness, Heaven, Hell, Life, Death or Love.

He can't even bring himself to utter the word "church." That's just as well.

 
His bling, however, runneth over.

This could be the only church (or at least the only one in Bel Air, Maryland) where you walk in as Homer Simpson and walk out as Beavis or Butthead (maybe both) -- followers, no doubt, of a feckless deity seemingly more ridiculous than yourself.


THE GREAT Southern (and Catholic) writer Flannery O'Connor once said that a God you understand is less than oneself. I fear that any God -- or, more accurately, god -- that "Rayvon" proclaims as his Primo Playa logically would be forced to damn himself to hell.

What a thing to achieve in the name of relevance but not necessarily righteousness -- a "gathering" of goddamn fools in the "swagtacula" name of a damn-fool god.

I think the term for insipidness such as this is "abomination of desolation." That's in the Bible . . . another thing, come of think of it, carefully avoided in da Gozpulshizzle uh Rayvon.

Which has managed to turn Jesus Christ -- He of "seeker-friendly" implicizzle but not revelizzle -- into something seemingly even tackier than Donald Trump.

Let the congregation say "Oy veh!" Or "Anathema sit." Whichever.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Culture vs. anticulture



It reflects what it means to be human, what it means to love.
It calls us to be fully ourselves -- or at least our best selves.
It touches the heart as it engages the mind.
For a moment, it's as if we can see the face of God . . .
and we are shattered, for who can withstand the divine?

This is who we are. Or should be.



This is anticulture.

It reflects the deviant and devolved of our society.
It is ugly. It is banal. It celebrates urges detached
from both love and reason. It is less than human . . .
and barely more than animal -- if that.

What this tells us about humanity, we don't want to hear.
Looking at Miley Cyrus throughout this silly dispatch
from Dante's Inferno, the word "estrus" comes to mind.
This child who (I presume) was born human . . . 
well, she's presenting like an orangutan.

This is who we are. But shouldn't be.
This will not end well, though end it will.

Kyrie eleison. (But not on Robin Thicke.)

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Nerve, defined


The headline on NPR's Planet Money blog sums it up so well, it leaves one with little else to say:
Robin Thicke's Song Sounds Like Marvin Gaye. So He's Suing Gaye's Family.
WELL, that about covers it. All I have to add is Robin Thicke's actions here pretty much define "nerve."

In this new age of the barbarian, the future belongs to the plunderer.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

I know what the caged bird sings


When you can put "rapper" and "Denham Springs, La." in the same sentence, you know things just aren't going to end well.

And when the rapper in question is a fella named "O G Smoov" . . . one of whose "hits" is "Dat's My Ho" . . . released on Pure Dope Records . . . which has a music video shot with a cell phone . . . you have just arrived at the intersection of hip-hop and irony.

Not to mention just damn funny.


I know
Channel 9 in Baton Rouge had some fun with the story:

Not a 'Smoov' move by local rapper; arrested, faces prison time

A rapper from the Denham Springs area has been arrested after police executed a search warrant and found 454 grams of Marijuana, three doses of Alprazalom and a .25 caliber hand gun.

The search warrant was executed after the rapper, Keith Johnson, AKA 'O G Smoov' recently released a rap recording entitled "Still Smoov Till I Lose Life." The photo on the CD cover shows O G Smoov holding a handgun while kneeling over the bloodied body of another man.

Johnson, who was convicted of shooting a woman in 1991 and convicted of numerous counts of illegal drug possession charges over the last 20 years, cannot legally possess a firearm.

Keith Johnson, 39, has been charged with one count of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, one count of possession of Alprazolam, one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and one count of possession of a firearm with a controlled dangerous substance.
I'M SURE Mr. Smoov is explaining to his attorney that it's a bad rap.

With that, the world wholeheartedly agrees.

Wait . . . he means the criminal charges? Oh. Well, no, chances are he's screwed on that account.

In any event, I'll bet I know the last thing this caged bird wants to hear his cellmate singing:


Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Bustin' a cap in the motherf****** culture

This is about a rap concert. Of course it's NSFW.


The review of rapper Tyga's Omaha show came in before it was even over -- a "hater" threw a garbage can on the stage.

As you can see above, Tyga be hatin' on some motherf****** bad press from "niggas" in the motherf****** front row. And he was going to take it outside after doing one more motherf****** song for his fans at the Sokol Auditorium in south Omaha.

Nobody ever accused rappers of being smart -- certainly nobody reading today's
Omaha World-Herald:
National touring rapper Tyga said “haters” started a fight during his Omaha concert Monday night that ended in street gunfire and two of his people shot.

He could be right.

According to people at the show, an Omaha rapper's grudge over being barred from the Sokol Hall stage might have fueled a fight between members of the audience and Tyga.

What began with threats erupted into an all-out fight toward the end of Tyga's performance. Water bottles, then trash cans were thrown on stage.

Tyga returned the challenge with racial slurs and an invitation to meet him outside after the show.

Someone did - armed with a gun, according to Omaha police.

A black sedan followed the Young Money performers' tour van and shot and injured two of the ten occupants, Omaha police said.

Sochitta Sal, 19, better known by her rap name Honey Cocaine, was shot in the arm. Derrick Lowe, 20, of New York, was grazed on his hip.

The van's occupants called 911 about 11:30 p.m. to report that they had been shot at and were being chased. They drove to the fire station at 16th and Jackson Streets for help. Police later found bullet casings near 16th Street and Deer Park Boulevard, a little less than a mile from the Sokol at 13th and Martha Streets.
ANOTHER NIGHT in what passes for the life of the hip-hop anticulture. You know, the one rotting away what now passes for American culture like metastasizing cancer cells.

If you look at these cancer cells under the microscope, you see that they look just like fools weighted down with ridiculous jewelry and with their butts hanging out of their saggy-ass pants. According to leading research oncologists, they derive nourishment from the vulgar and the inane -- and preferably a combination of the two, such as Tyga's rap "Orgasm":
she gon have a f***** orgasm
she gon have a f***** orgasm

uhh, beat, beat it like the melody
she gon bend it over, hands on her knees
she gon have a f***** orgasm
she gon have a f***** orgasm
put it deep where she tellin me
rock her like a baby she gon fall asleep
after she had a f***** orgasm
she had a f***** orgasm
uhh
NO, THAT'S all you're getting of that. The above excerpt was either the high point or the low point of "Orgasm." Take your pick.

Uhh.


I'd like to think Tyga's "haters" shot up his van due to some psychotic break brought on by grievously offended artistic and cultural sensibilities.


Probably not, though.

Uhh.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Hip-hop all the way to hell


Culture precedes politics . . . and everything else.

Music both produces and is produced by a culture.

A culture centered on titty bars -- music deemed stripper friendly before it can burrow into your children's brains -- is no culture at all. It is an anticulture.

NPR was on the anticulture beat Thursday. I'm not so sure the reporter would have been this bemused had she known what she was dealing with. Then again, maybe the NPR report is part of the anticulture just as much as titty-bar-tested hip-hop singles -- I don't know.


JUDGE for yourself:
Hip-hop producers have been breaking records in Atlanta strip clubs for a long time now — at least as far back as 2003, when Lil Jon was doing it with songs like, "Get Low." He's been quoted as saying "the butts don't lie," meaning if the strippers can dance to it, the song has potential. In Tamara Palmer's book, Country Fried Soul: Adventures in Dirty South Hip Hop, Lil Jon says "Get Low" had a slow start: the dancers "didn't feel it at first." But eventually it grew on them and several dancers at different strip clubs asked the DJs to play it during their stage sets. "Get Low" took off — in mainstream clubs and on radio and TV across the country.

What attracted us to this story was that the strippers seemed to have a lot of power in the hip-hop hit-making process. Obviously they are the focal point when a new song is being played. As DJ Scream told me, "There's nothing like seeing a woman dance to a record. There's records that I hate and when I see a woman dancing I think, 'It's not that bad.'"

Another reason strip clubs are the perfect place to test out a song is the clientele. In Atlanta, I'm told nobody thinks twice about going to strip clubs for a bite to eat or just a night out. They're so popular that some of the dancers are treated like local celebrities.

On any given night you might find record label execs and radio programmers, other professionals, college students and couples watching the booty shake.

The dancers have an incentive to make a song exciting: They get paid when the patrons 'make it rain,' or throw money on the stage while they're dancing. I asked Sweet Pea, one of the main dancers in the Snack Pack at Magic City, if she'd ever refused to dance to a song she didn't like. She made it sound as though that just doesn't happen. "If it's got a good beat, you can dance to it," she said. In other words, even if she doesn't think a song has potential, she'll give it a try because she knows the folks from the record label will make it rain extra hard when she's dancing to their song.

As for the strip club DJs, they get paid when the dancers tip them at the end of the night. So it's in their best interest to keep the dancers happy and play whatever songs they request. Record label executives usually spend a lot of money on those nights they're trying to break a record, not just on the dancers but on drinks and food. When the song is working, and the dancers are happy, it might rub off on the patrons who — it's hoped — will spend even more money. So the strip club owners fully embrace the process. Sweet Pea says, "It's like a little promotional circle." One DJ told me, "We're all just hustling each other."
ANTICULTURES CANNOT long endure. They're either going to collapse utterly of their own societal, dysfunctional weight, or they're going to fold like a cheap tent before some opportunistic onslaught. See Visigoths, The.

Decline and fall -- one way or the other.

Laugh if you like. The ancient Romans did.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Baby Diddy


Only Nixon could go to China, and only Baba Wawa could ask The Artist Formerly Known as Puff Daddy why he can be a baby Diddy five times over, but never a real, live, married-to-his-baby-mama -- any of the three -- father.

That's a question P. Diddy still is trying not to answer a day and a half later.

The hemming and hawing went something like this, as reported by the
Daily Mail in London:
"Why I'm not married yet, I don't have the exact reason. Some things in life you don't have the exact reason.

"My father was killed when I was three years old... I never got a chance to see the way a family lives, but I'm not making an excuse."

Not satisfied with his answer, Walters further inquired, "Six children by three women, how much time do you need?"

Diddy cut her off saying: "I get to spend a lot of time with my children. Everybody has a different life. Mine and your life is totally different.

"That's the way it is. My life works for me, it works for my family."

He added: "They have no cavities... and they pray every night."

Diddy is the biological father of five and he is the informal stepfather of another child.


GOOD THING she didn't ask him about that $360,000 first car he gave his 16-year-old:
In July, Diddy called British journalist Martin Bashir a racist, after Bashir grilled the rapper during an interview on Nightline about the star's lavish lifestyle and gifting his son Justin with a $360,000 Maybach car for his 16 birthday.

"There were times in the interview when I had to give him a ultimatum, the questions weren’t being handled the right way,' Diddy explained afterwards.

"In hindsight when I saw him I shouldn’t had done the interview because I know the style of interview that he does. The whole thing about giving a Maybach to my son, that’s really like a racist question.

"You don’t ask white people what they buy their kids and they buy ‘em Porsches and convertible Bentleys and it’s no question.

It’s really a racist question and put things back in perspective with money and the way that people still look at you. And I’m not saying that consciously he’s a racist.

"But he probably don’t even realize that he would not ask Steve Jobs that. He would be like Steve Jobs has that money and that’s the gift his kid is supposed to get."
OH . . . Diddy didn't give a straight answer to the baby-daddy question when Bashir asked it, either.

This after Bashir reminded Diddy of having said he wanted to be "someone that kids want to emulate."

Yeah, there was a racist lurking in that interview, and it wasn't Martin Bashir.

Some African-American (and other) thinkers have argued that most blacks cannot be racist because racism presupposes the power to act upon one's racial prejudices. All right, then, who has the power here?

Martin Bashir, salaried TV journalist? Or Sean "Puff Daddy-P. Diddy" Combs, hip-hop media and marketing mogul?

If Bashir went on national television and screamed the N-word for three days straight, the only life he would be destroying would be his own. He'd be fired. He'd be ridiculed. He'd be shamed. He'd be shunned.

He. Would. Never. Work. Again. (Or at least for a long while.)

BUT WHEN DIDDY -- he who seeks to be emulated -- goes around siring children by multiple women, without marrying any of them, he sets a standard that has been proven socioeconomically toxic to the very people he'd most like to "emulate" him.

When Diddy plays hip-hop mogul, peddling a violent, misogynistic and ubermaterialistic subculture to young people who least need any more violence, misogyny or materialism shoved into their minds, he blows more toxic cultural gas toward the canaries in the American coal mine.

And when Diddy proclaims he's an adequate father to the fruit of all his "baby mamas'" wombs because he shoves some serious cash -- or a Maybach automobile -- at them every now and again, he gives yet another oversexed lout in some American inner city yet another excuse for not acting like a man.

Or acting like a father.

Without the means -- or the tools to acquire the means -- to bandage over the psychic wounds of little children with Benjamins. Or Maybachs.


DAVID DUKE couldn't have hoped to "accomplish" as much in a million white-supremacist years. That's why the ol' neo-Nazi needed a little Diddy magic.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Avant le déluge. . . .


Avant le déluge, our popular culture regularly turned out beautiful songs about bittersweet affairs of the heart.

Exhibit A would be this "standard," recorded by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Lou Rawls . . . and on and on. The beautiful version above was by the late Phyllis Hyman:


Here's That Rainy Day (1953)
Music: Jimmy Van Heusen
Lyrics: Johnny Burke

Maybe I should have saved
those left-over dreams
funny, but here's that rainy day!

Here's that rainy day
they told me about
and I laughed at the thought
that it might turn out this way!

Where is that worn-out wish
that I threw aside,
after it brought my lover near?

Funny how love becomes
a cold rainy day
funny, that rainy day is here!

Funny how love becomes
a cold rainy day
funny . . . that rainy day is here!
APRÉS LE DÉLUGE, a marginalized few turn out work as beautiful as Jimmy Van Heusen's and Johnny Burke's, but in today's popular anti-culture, the vulgar rutting of barbarians has proven much more popular.

I say this as someone who was an early adopter of the Sex Pistols back in the day. Alas, Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious were George and Ira Gershwin, compared with vulgarian cretins such as Yo Gotti, who's moving up the hip-hop charts with pop-culture diarrhea such as this:

5-Star Bitch (2009)
Vile misogynistic illiteracy: Yo Gotti

If ya credit score high
And ya nails stay fly
If ya juice box wet
And ya head sumin fly
Dats a 5 star bitch
I wanna 5 star bitch
I need a 5 star bitch
I wanna 5 star bitch

I am top notch nigga
I do grade A s***
I'm a keep it 100
I wanna 5 star bitch
Talkin mouth game serious and can ride dat d***
Shawty walk like she talk like she kno dat she da s***
You dnt live witcha momma plus u moved up out da hood
Couple years on ya own and ya still doin good
You ain't fightin in da club u ain't on dat stupid s***
You ain't worried he got money you ain't on dat groupie s***
But still money make ya c**
Gotcha swagg game together
Gucci dis louie dat u gotcha bag game together
Gotta mean pump game and a sick shoe fetish
Say you left ya last nigga cause his ass was too petty

If ya baby daddy left ya
Raised ya kids on ya own
And you need a real nigga put my numba in ya phone
If you never left da city
Neva been up outta MEMPHIS
I can be dat thug genie
Give ya three lil wishes
She a stone cold freak
She can get a nigga right
She can cook she can clean
Know how to treat a nigga right
Dats a 5 star bitch
Red bone so thick
Long hair don't care
Dereon outfit
Go to church every sunday
She a teacher at da school
Ya did it big last night
I had her drunker than a fool
Say she had to call in she could'nt even go to work
Told her come and let me put a couple hundreds in her purse

You went to school to be a nurse
She's a AKA
Shawty fresh up out da hood but went to TENNESSEE STATE
And friend jus as fine swere to god I ain't lyin
She a DELTA she be throwin dat dynasty sign I
Pay for both of they tuition
Pay for both of they beautician
Coogi dis
Bb dat
And she luv tru religion
Dats a 5 star chick cause her future so bright
She gotta a cool sense of humor
And her attitude right
She go to real estate school
She do hair on da side
Went to school to practice law
I need her on my side
Dats a 5 star chick you a fool not to keep her
I'm a show u what to do if I eva get to meet her

BE STILL, my heart. Forgive me if I don't have the stomach to show you the video.

Somewhere in Chicago -- where the 'hood is descending
into real anarchy, mayhem and murder -- some hip-hop radio station likely is promoting efforts to "stop the violence," taking shout-outs to the dearly (and violently) departed and running public-service announcements about HIV testing.

They're "keepin' it real." And then it's back to the jamz, and a little (bleepified) Yo Gotti action.

Just another day on the mean streets, where the first ass to get capped was Irony's.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

An inelegant crime-prevention tool

A 9 millimeter handgun will lose a pissing match with an SKS assault rifle every time.

And thus, Omaha finds itself with two fewer common hoodlums on the mean streets -- a duo who picked a fight with a better-armed shopkeeper and ended up dead.

Why? All because they were upset about some gold teefuses they'd ordered from a grillz-and-bling joint.

YOU WANT TO KNOW why newspaper reporters drink? Because they have to -- day in and day out -- write about mind-boggling deviance and stupidity, and they have to do it with the print version of a straight face.

Consider
this Omaha World-Herald story today:
The store owner who shot and killed two men Tuesday night won't face charges because he was defending himself after being shot at by one of them, Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said Friday.

Kleine said Marcel Davis, 16, and Willie Wakefield, 29, were upset about some jewelry that had been ordered from Andre McKesson, owner of Midwest Grillz & Jewelry at 6209 Ames Ave.

Brandon Boyce, a friend of Davis and Wakefield, said he, the two men and a fourth man drove to the store about 10 p.m. Tuesday to pick up a decorative mouthpiece known as a grill.

Boyce said that Davis and Wakefield went inside the store and that McKesson locked the door behind them. Boyce waited outside.

Boyce, 22, said Thursday that he could hear the men inside, arguing.

He recalled hearing, "Why you playing games with us, man? Where's our teeth? Can you give a refund? Then give me my teeth!"

During the argument, Kleine said, Wakefield pulled a 9 mm handgun and fired at least two shots at McKesson.

One of those bullets lodged in the wall above where McKesson had been standing. Two 9 mm cartridge casings were found in the store, Kleine said.

McKesson grabbed an SKS semiautomatic rifle he kept at the counter and fired 10 to 15 rounds at Wakefield and Davis, killing them, Kleine said.
IF YOU ASK ME, this sad story illustrates the rank tragedy of a minority underclass managing to do to itself what the Klan never could have accomplished at its pointy-hooded, malevolent zenith. How do you get to a point of such sociological deviance that you're willing to kill or be killed over ugly-ass gold dental adornments?

What level of familial and societal dysfunction produces such an animal -- one for whom the next logical step after "Where's our teeth? Can you give a refund" is to pull a 9 millimeter and start busting caps?

Thank God for thugs with about as much pistol skillz as brains. And for shopkeepers with better weaponry . . . and better aim.

(Not that honkies like me ought to feel superior for being, on average, marginally less violent . . . at least when it comes to disputes over gold teefuses. Every day, in every way, we're getting there. We're getting there. Hell . . . oftentimes, we ARE there.)

IT SHOULDN'T come to this.

William Wakefield and Marcel Davis Jr. ought to have had better upbringing, better opportunities and a fair shot at life. (No pun intended.) They ought to have been born into a world of order and nurture.

They ought to have lived in a milieu where the classroom held more appeal than the streets.

They ought to have been born into a country where "No child left behind" was more than a slogan. And where, failing that, the criminal-justice system was more than a crook-recycling program.

But they weren't . . . and didn't.

Damned sad, that.

WHAT HAPPENED on Tuesday night was a messy, bloody, horrendous and tragic solution to the problem of a pair of common thugs incapable of working and playing well with others.

Being that it was the only solution at hand -- and given the abject failure of all the others -- I suppose we should be happy with what we can get. That would be two dead crooks instead of one dead shopkeeper.

Happy. . . .

Zippity freakin' doo dah.

Lord have mercy on the dead . . . and on we the living.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Baby got dead. We're so shocked.


Baby will be wearing his grillz to his own funeral.

His mama says Marcel Davis Jr., 16, was picking up a set of dental bling when he got gunned down at a north Omaha grillz and jewelry emporium. He was planning to wear them to the funeral of an incompetent armed robber.

What some say -- and what the cops aren't saying -- suggests there's a lot more to the story.

But what is incontrovertible is that if Baby had had a crappy lawyer a year and change ago, he'd be alive right now. In November 2007, Davis had been charged as an adult after allegedly pointing a stolen handgun at an Omaha police officer he was fleeing.

The cop shot him in the leg. Tuesday night, somebody had better aim.

Between assault and using a firearm to commit a felony,
the teen could have been in jail a long, long time. Instead, ace defense attorney Bill Gallup got the case assigned to juvenile court, and young Davis recently emerged from the Douglas County Juvenile Detention Center.

AND NOW he and a 29-year-old are dead after going to fetch some grillz, it says in today's Omaha World-Herald:

Marcel Davis, a Northwest High School sophomore, planned to wear his new grill at a funeral today, a great aunt said.

Instead, the family is mourning his death after police met with his mother outside the shooting scene this morning and confirmed what relatives already knew — Davis was shot to death at the Midwest Grillz & Jewelry store just before 10:30 p.m.

William J. “Willie” Wakefield, 29, also was killed at the store, police said. Davis’s great aunt said her nephew had gone to Midwest Grillz with an older friend. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Wakefield was that friend.

A third person was being treated at Creighton University Medical Center for a gunshot wound suffered at the scene, 6209 Ames Ave. Brandon Boyce, 22, of Omaha, walked into the hospital about a half hour after the shooting.

Police would not say what connection any of the three have to the shooting. Police also would not give details about what happened inside the store.

Preliminary police dispatch reports centered on a robbery attempt. Police today said they were seeking no suspects and had made no arrests.

(snip)

Her nephew planned to wear it to the funeral today of a man killed while committing a robbery a couple weeks back, his aunt said.

Kyles said her nephew would not have been part of a robbery. He had been in trouble, she said, but he didn’t rob.

NO, HE JUST rode around in stolen cars and pulled stolen guns on Omaha cops. But noooo. . . .

"'Yeah, he got into some trouble, all kids do that, but as far as anything, he’s a good boy,'” Baby's mama, Alethea Goynes,
told WOWT television today. “'He don’t want for nothing, he don’t steal from nobody or nothing.'"

It's
never the little darling's fault, is it? No matter how long the rap sheet.

But if the store owner's father is
giving KMTV television the straight scoop, Baby either was in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time, or he decided to add armed robbery to his repertoire . . . and it didn't work out.
The store's owner Andre McKesson tells his family three men came into the store about 10:30, one had a gun. McKesson claims he fired at the three men to save his own life. McKesson's father Flynn Franklin tells Action 3 News, "He was just trying to protect himself. Three guys tried to rob him and two got shot." Omaha Police have not confirmed the family's account of what may have happened in the store; police have said they are not looking for a suspect.
A YEAR and change ago, Goynes thought everything might work out for her baby boy:
"I hope he gets back on track and does the right thing," Goynes said. "I think this scared him. Hopefully, when it's all over, he can get back on track and go back to school and be the boy I know he is."
HE DIDN'T. In this case, you not only can cut the irony with a knife, you can slice it six ways from Sunday.

At any rate, all that counts now is that Marcel Davis Jr. died the boy we knew him to be -- the boy he was doomed to be through (lack of) nurture and (a deviant) popular culture. That's a tragedy.

And given how the Mother of the Year acted at one of Baby's hearings in late 2007, his funeral will be anything but dull.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Barbarism to a phat beat

In the first Dark Ages, the barbarians were the uncouth louts who showed up at the city gates -- or, rather, stormed the city gates -- to kill, rob, rape and pillage. Fatally weakened by the rot within, even mighty Rome could not hold off the Hun armies.

In these new Dark Ages, the barbarians don't need to storm anything. They're homegrown, they're mainstream, and they're a vital part of the "bread and circuses" distracting a postmodern empire as everything falls apart. But for this multitasking generation, our "entertainment" -- in the name of lawyers, guns and money -- also represents the s*** which has hit the fan.

And now --
as the minstrel Reuters regales us -- one tribe of well-paid savages stands accused of waylaying an unsuspecting teen wearing the mark of a rival tribe, and is thus being sued for a share of their plunder:
The lawsuit filed by James Rosemond and his mother, Cynthia Reed, says Universal Music Group -- owned by Vivendi SA -- and its labels Interscope Records, G-Unit Records and Shady Records, bear responsibility for the assault because they encourage artists to pursue violent, criminal lifestyles.

The lawsuit also names 50 Cent -- whose real name is Curtis Jackson -- Violator Management, Violator CEO Chris Lighty, Tony Yayo, a rapper and a member of 50 Cent's G-Unit hip hop group, and Lowell Fletcher, an employee of Yayo.

All defendants declined to comment.

Rosemond says he was assaulted on a Manhattan sidewalk in March 2007 by four men including Yayo and Fletcher.

The lawsuit claims Rosemond was targeted because he was wearing a T-shirt by Czar Entertainment, a management company that represents The Game. The Game is a former G-Unit rapper who fell out with the group and had become a rival rapper.
PEOPLE OFTEN SPEAK of the "culture of death" solely in terms of widespread, legalized abortion. I think that's wildly inaccurate. Abortion is just a symptom. As is the gangsta cultcha for kicks and profit.

The "culture of death" is all about what we -- as free people in a free society -- have come to value, of our own free will. And in so many ways, for such a variety of souls, it is death we crave.

It is death we sow. It is death we reap.

Somewhere, Atilla the Hun surveys what's left of Western civilization, shakes his head and ruefully observes, "And they called me a barbarian."