Sunday, November 30, 2014

Introducing Canadian Artist Kaydee/ The Transition (Mixtape)


There's a new Canadian artist making his way into the music scene. Hip Hop artist Kaydee has been making music for a year and has come out with his first mixtape The Transition. According to Kaydee, a lot of work was put into making this album.  Below is a little more that he said about The Transition and what you can expect from him as an artist.

Kaydee Is Not An Imitation of Drake
Being from Toronto is particularly hard because since Drake has opened the door for Canadian artists to get recognition, a lot of people are on the hunt for the next Drake. Sorry, that is not me at all, I am the 1st Kaydee. This is a completely different sound that people don't associate with Toronto artists and I am comfortable being in my own lane. While crafting this album, I set out to make something that is classic, something that could be played 10 years from now and will still be appreciated. There isn't any poppy singles, no DJ Mustard type beats(no disrespect), just real rap from a kid from Toronto who is trying to tell his story.


Kaydee assures you that The Transition is a good album.
In no way am I this cocky, up and comer; I just know the work that I have put in to make sure this album could compete with the best. If I were to compare my album to any recent releases, it would have to be YG's My Krazy Life and Good Kid, MAAD City, only because all of our albums follow a narrative and tell a story.

His favorite songs from The Transition are INTROduction, St. Joan of Arc, Peyton Manning, Northside Behaviour, King Kaydee and Crime Pays. Listen below. 










Sunday Reflections 11/30/2014

When in the process of growth, you get offered many options. However, you can't take them all. You can't continue all of those family visits you've been doing since childhood, plan out plenty of vacations throughout the year, and be expected at work during every holiday. You can't pursue being an entrepreneur either if you're doing any of the others. Actually, if you even try to attempt two of those at the same time, then you eliminate the option to sit down and rest. Who wants take away their option to actually take breaks and do nothing? 

My current problem is that I actually thought I was doing it all right as a youth. I went on all the family vacations with no arguments. I was glad to be around everyone even when I was bored out of my mind. I continued to do all of these trips up until adulthood. However, they couldn't be continued. For some of us, parents act real crazy when you're in the position of being a college graduate but career doors just aren't opening up for you. They blame you for every problem. I finally was able to get a job, but it eliminated the option to use holidays as times to visit family. 

Well, I could visit family but then it would create another problem. Before graduating college I already had it set in my heart that I wanted to move to a certain place. That didn't happen, but I also set a new goal that I would not sit around and watch everyone else "live" their lives. I would not sit around and watch them gain experiences that made them happy, helped them to grow, and fulfilled them in ways they would never have thought of without venturing out. I wanted and still do want to be fulfilled. 

However, when it comes to fulfillment of self, I also don't want to continually let others down. I don't want to let anyone down, but I also don't want to continue to go back to the old routines while being unhappy. I want them to be happy for my journey. Is that too hard for anyone else to understand? Others who have gone through it seem to understand, but maybe it'll always be hard to understand the ones closest to me to get.


Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Celebrating The Holidays: Old Traditions And Future Ideas

Christmas/ Thanksgiving
In a perfect world no one would ever think about how they would be spending the holidays. It would be an automatic assumption that a family gathering would take place. Everyone in the family would get together and lots of home cooked food would be eaten in the midst of laughter, bonding, and reminiscing over memories. However, perfect is only a figment of the imagination.

In reality homeless people are forever on the streets begging for any amount of change they can get. More jobs tend to stay open during the holidays and some jobs just can never afford to shut down even around major holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even entrepreneurs get stuck in the hustle of continuing future planning and have to avoid what others do to celebrate. This means there is always someone that is not celebrating like others they know. It also means that during the holidays there are some people who spend that celebratory time alone. Yeah, for some people yearly gatherings during these wonderful holidays ends at 18 years of age and sometimes 21 if they make it through college.

For me, every year up until I was 18 I would spend every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and college homecomings around family members. After stepping into adulthood my schedule started becoming harder to get away to family. College professors never ceased on assignments, so I would sometimes skip seeing them on Thanksgiving but be sure to spend time with everyone during Christmas. Well, the routine officially ended in 2011. 2010 was the last year I went to Plant City, Florida to be with everyone. The majority of my family is not in Houston and has rarely left the state of Florida. That means a new routine is needed.

In the last couple of years I've developed an obsession with creating special memories. You can't create memories if you're always at work or always following the same routine. It gets monotonous. You lose track of time. You find 500 and then 1,000 days passing by and they all look the exact same way. You can't separate the first day from the 1,000th day. I'm not one of those people that can live happily ever after by the responsibilities that are never ending. This is all where the obsession comes in.

It's always easy to brainstorm new spontaneous ideas upon waking up on a day off. It's also easy to plan for that future family that I'll one day have. Hopefully my future husband will agree to this, but we're definitely not spending every year deciding who celebrates with which side of the family. We'll create vacation ideas of our own. However, at the moment I'm stuck on how to make the holidays special.

Thanksgiving is definitely going to be a day for rest, but Christmas is different. Maybe this year I'll actually have a few decorations to make it feel more like a holiday season. If you've stopped the tradition of being with family, how do you celebrate now?




Tuesday, November 25, 2014

The People Behind Social Media Are Not To Blame

For hours last night we waited for a decision we already knew the answer to. A little after 9 pm eastern Attorney Robert McCulloch announced the verdict of whether Darren Wilson would be indicted or not. Of course Darren Wilson was not indicted, but before getting to that point McCulloch did something super shocking. He blamed the citizens of Ferguson and social media for spreading the death of Michael Brown.

"On August 9th Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson. Within minutes various accounts of the incident began appearing on social media; accounts filled with speculation and little, if any, solid accurate information. Almost immediately neighbors began gathering and anger began growing because of the various descriptions of what had happened and because of the underlying tension between the police and a significant part of the neighborhood."
the reaction of @feministajones

McCulloch blamed you, me, and all our friends that use sites like twitter for spreading what was going on. He accused everyone that may have tweeted about Michael Brown being killed and subsequently said we had a negative affect on how the citizens reacted. He blamed the distrust that the citizens already had for the police on the citizens, even though a police officer had killed one of the citizens.

Michael Brown's death is not our fault. Anything anyone said on twitter at the time and in the months since then have not had any negative affect on anyone. What talking about this has done was put the issue at the front of everyone's eyes. Continuing the conversation has opened a dialogue for how safe we all really feel in the United States of America, how to protect ourselves more, how to avoid innocent people getting recklessly killed by police officers. In no way did we contribute negatively to a case that Ferguson, Missouri police was desperate to initially pretend didn't even happen.

This kind of stuff really makes me angry. We have young adults working so hard to be in jobs that don't pay enough, youth work their way up the corporate ladder, youth becoming entrepreneurs, and still taking the time for the ones they love. However, when these young adults are showing that they are getting involved in important events, whether good or bad, to make a stand, people like this idiot attorney want to demean them. I don't understand that part.

#LHHHollywood Lil Fizz Calls Himself A Mother On National Television

"I will always be the mother if I have to be the mother"- Dreux Pierre Frederic, aka Lil Fizz

Traditionally we hear lots about single mothers. Since there's a Mothers Day and a Fathers Day, we often hear single mothers calling themselves fathers too since they feel as if they do both jobs. However, times have really changed. It was two yeas ago that I came in contact with a single father raising his child all by himself. In a sense you could say he was acting as mother and father since the mother was absent in the partnership. It was fascinating to hear his story of how he ended up as the sole person caring for the child, especially since we always imagine the one that gives birth wouldn't want to abandon her most precious creation.

However, although men have not started a single father movement yet, they are making progress to show their responsibilities. One such person helping to bring light to the situation is former B2K member Lil Fizz. Courtesy of Love & Hip Hop Hollywood, we were able to hear Lil Fizz describe himself as both a mother and a father this. His exact quote was "I will always be the mother if I have to be the mother."

So you've heard women call themselves the mom and dad in the situation. How do you feel about men calling themselves the dads and moms when they are the only ones parenting?

Monday, November 24, 2014

#DumbAndDumberTo I Lost A Couple Brain Cells And Didn't Mind

If you are one of those people that take your money budgeting to the extreme, Dumb and Dumber To is not the movie for you. Don't waste your money. However, if you are in dire need of a good laugh and don't mind losing a couple of those genius brain cells in the process, go watch Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels act a fool.

Without giving way the movie, I'm about to try to point out some of my favorite aspects of it.

The Sexual Fetish
A comedy isn't a comedy if sex isn't included. Since this movie was made for all audience, it made the PG13 mark but still had to have some form of sex. To keep it classy while still being hilarious the rich stuck up woman had a toe fetish. She liked sucking toes even if the man she was with didn't like it.

The Pranks
Imagine changing someone's diaper, switching out their pee bags, and having to visit them at least once a week for 20 years. It makes you feel sad for the person they used to be. Well Lloyd Christmas pretended to be the helpless person in a nursing home for 20 years while Harry Dunn was the faithful friend visiting and caring for him the whole time. Of course at the beginning of the movie Lloyd screams "Gotcha." It was all a joke, but that shit wouldn't have been funny to the average person.

The Plot Twists
Their were several plot twists that scared me and the reason why is because of a movie Adam Sandler did a while ago. It was called Funny People and after an hour I wanted to commit suicide for going to see it. Funny People went three hours long and it was the worst thing ever made. The plot twists in Dumb and Dumber To had me panicking thinking it was going to go on for hours and hours and I would have to walk out before the end. Instead the movie stayed nice and sweet with the timing.

Now remember, this isn't the kind of movie you spend if you're great at budgeting. Obviously I'm not and I needed the laughs. There were 3 of us in total yesterday at the 3:15 showing.


Friday, November 21, 2014

(Music) Beyonce 7/11 and Ring Off

"Never drop that alcohol." "Mad cause I'm so fresh. Fresher than you."

The days of trying to read the Knowles family is over. Beyonce is laying out all the family's dirty laundry in her new music, but of course she's also getting ratchet too. In her new track 7/11 Bey reminds us of the value of having fun by partying to the full extent.

 However, although it's cuffing season Bey has a new track called Ring Off, which describes her steps in helping her mother move on after divorce. Ring Off is very motivational. Listen to both songs below.

Photo via Instagram.





Wednesday, November 19, 2014

My Favorite Parts From Jaden & Willow's T Magazine Interview


I picked out some of my favorite parts of the Willow Smith and Jaden Smith interview from T Magazine. These also happen to be parts that went over the average person's head. 

WILLOW: I mean, time for me, I can make it go slow or fast, however I please, and that’s how I know it doesn’t exist.

JADEN: It’s proven that how time moves for you depends on where you are in the universe. It’s relative to beings and other places. But on the level of being here on earth, if you are aware in a moment, one second can last a year. And if you are unaware, your whole childhood, your whole life can pass by in six seconds. But it’s also such a thing that you can get lost in.
WILLOW: Because living.

JADEN: Right, because you have to live. There’s a theoretical physicist inside all of our minds, and you can talk and talk, but it’s living.

This was on the list of craziest things people read. I'm not sure why though. When we're at work the time moves absolutely slow. It is because we're not in control. During that 8 hours we're doing what someone else wants us to do. However, when we're on vacation we get to choices of doing whatever we want. The time flies by and we just so happen to create an abundance of happy memories during it. You can't create happy memories when you're on someone else's schedule. 


 JADEN: The P.C.H. being one of them; the melancholiness of the ocean; the melancholiness of everything else.

WILLOW: And the feeling of being like, this is a fragment of a holographic reality that a higher consciousness made.

They are just talking about that feeling of pureness that is hard to describe when you are really in a moment of calmness. Have you ever been so excited that it scared you? Us normal people are not taught to hold onto those moments of joy. We're almost taught that we should have those moments of joy because someone else is always doing worse. 

Willow on Her Growth: "Caring less what everybody else thinks, but also caring less and less about what your own mind thinks, because what your own mind thinks, sometimes, is the thing that makes you sad."

Most of the time when people give you advice, it is unsolicited. Most of that unsolicited advice is the opposite of what you already know you need to be doing in order to fulfill your desires. However, it has also been proven that our fear can be our worst enemy. Just think about something you're highly afraid of. That fear of spiders is your mind telling you that you're not brave enough to be near any spiders. Your mind is psyching you out. 

JADEN: Anything that you can shock somebody with. The only way to change something is to shock it. If you want your muscles to grow, you have to shock them. If you want society to change, you have to shock them.

I do believe one of the reasons we rarely see growth in our society is because we're stuck on using methods that have already been proven to not work. 

JADEN: Here’s the deal: School is not authentic because it ends. It’s not true, it’s not real. Our learning will never end. The school that we go to every single morning, we will continue to go to.

Several articles said the school statement didn't make sense, but how could it not? Depending on where school starts at 8 am and ends around 3 pm. School starts in pre-kindergarten and 12th grade is supposed to be the end, unless you go on to college. Learning, however, continues until the day we die. When we absolutely stop learning, we no longer have anything to live for. I've learned a lot more on the streets and through friends than in any classroom. 

WILLOW: That’s what I do with novels. There’re no novels that I like to read so I write my own novels, and then I read them again, and it’s the best thing.
JADEN: Willow’s been writing her own novels since she was 6.

I love the novel part because of childhood. When I had no company and no one to entertain me, I'd spend hours trying to create stories. I didn't write novels, but had enough material before the age of 13 to publish a novella. Too bad no one took me seriously. That's the difference people the average person and the wealthy person. The wealthy person is more alert to what is going on around them and how to use take advantage of that creativity in the moment. 

Don Lemon Gives No Fucks About Sexual Assault Victims


Don Lemon gives no fucks about sexual assault victims. Recently our favorite yellow-boned nerd had the pleasure of speaking with one of Bill Cosby's alleged assault victims, Joan Tarshis. During the interview he asked her very uncomfortable questions about her experiences with Cosby and she tried her best to keep her calm. However, Don overstepped several boundaries in the interview. The biggest boundary was telling Joan how she should have never gave Cosby oral sex.  

"You know there are ways not to perform oral sex if you didn't want to do it."- Don Lemon. 

He really asked the stupidest questions that we all know the answers to. Bill Cosby was a man in his prime. As a Black man, he paved the way for many actors and comedians. While having a huge celebrity status, Bill was also a man and men have needs that not all know how to resist. These women looked up to him and would do whatever he told them to. There is no questioning why they continued to go back and take the free trips around the world afterward. 

Then again, this is television and sometimes you have to make a woman look bad for ratings purposes. Don must be watching and taking notes from Love & Hip Hop like the rest of us. 

Monday, November 17, 2014

Rush Hour Love

As she drove down 59 South headed toward Sugar Land, traffic slowed until cars weren’t moving at all. She stared at the time and it read 5:30 pm. She wouldn’t get back home in time to tune into the first showing of Love & Hip Hop, but it was all good. New shoes were haunting her in her sleep and this was the perfect moment to head to the mall.

While this traffic jam was irritating, ratchet music helped calm her nerves. The current song playing was by Sauce Walka and she couldn’t help but move to the beat. The music was flowing and she was in her zone. The day could only get better.

The man in the car next to hers was the one that wanted to make her day better. The moment he noticed her sitting there, he felt the need to say something. She was so beautiful to him. She looked happy and the sun made her brown skin glow. He wanted to be the one to make her happier, so he motioned for her attention.

It took a couple moments, but they finally locked eyes. He was happy she finally looked his way, but she was confused as to why this guy was waving her down.

Did he somehow know her already? She wasn’t sure so she waved back at him just in case. It wasn’t good enough though because he didn’t stop. He motioned for her to roll down her window and she hesitated. He was  cute, but who does this on the highway in the midst of traffic? The cars in front of her moved up a little, so she ignored him and proceeded to drive.

She didn’t get far before she was practically parked behind a million cars again and his car was still next to hers. She looked his way and saw that he was still staring. She finally said what the hell and rolled the window down. Maybe, just maybe this dude could be her Tupac with a degree.


He got out of his car and walked over to hers. They talked as fast as possible, exchanged names and phone numbers, and he promised her that he would be calling as soon as he could. He was a man that wanted to call her first and that turned her on.

Lashuntrice

Lashuntrice