The singer who influenced the artists that influenced me. The legend who sold more albums than anyone in the world. The abused son that lived a tortured life from the day he was born. There are many labels for the internationally recognized King of Pop. To me I think you can sum Michael Jackson up in one word. SOUL.

I barely remember the day Thriller debuted on MTV. Hell, it wasn’t too long after that when MTV became too raunchy and my parents wouldn’t let me watch it anymore. I was ten  years old when Dangerous came out, and it was one of the very first CD’s I ever owned.

I always had an interest in my parent’s records though. As I got older I began to explore different genre’s of music, and went through many phases, but Michael Jackson’s music always seemed to fit into my life along the way.

When I heard about the child molestation allegations, I was angry. I couldn’t believe that one of my idols could have turned into such a vile person. However, it prepared me for a lifetime of being disappointed by the people I look up to.

By the time Michael Jackson was acquitted of the second set of child molestation charges, I started to feel bad for him. I realized that he never got a chance to live a normal life. It was the people around him that made him into what he had become.

Yesterday, when I heard that he had passed away, it was shocking to me. Michael Jackson was only a year younger than my own father. I can’t imagine what his kids must be going through. I’m 28 years old and I’m not ready to lose my father.

All I can do is remember the good times that I had when his music was involved. I can continue to let his style influence my music. I can appreciate him for what he was, and what he contributed to mankind.

His music will live on forever. No one will ever forget. We will feel his pain through his music and it will help us to get through our own lives. We will dance like fools to his music when we’re having a good time. We will carry on his message, and continue to make this world a better place to live.

I just read about the beef between Will.I.Am and Perez Hilton, and I’m shaking my head in absolute disgust. This is what the music business has come to. Will has been supporting that no-talent plastic butterface, Fergie, for way too long now, and now he’s defending her against an overweight cock-sucking blogger that no one cares about? I’m not even a homophobe. Perez Hilton gives a bad name to the homosexual community in general.

I think a lot of young artists can learn from this though. There is no possible way to break into the mainstream without compromising your morals, and becoming one of these celebrity douchebags. These people only care about mundane shit like The fucking Grammys and what celebrity gossip blogs are saying about them. This is exactly the environment that breeds idiots like Charles Hamilton. Mainstream music is nothing more than a cesspool of ignorance and fraud. I could care less if my music never takes me to that level of stardom, I will never sell out like that.

It’s just sad when you see someone who would otherwise be a great artist, who has gotten so wrapped up in celebrity bullshit that they end up in an altercation with a coward like Perez. The guy sits behind his computer and talks shit, eventually someone was going to hit him. I’m not going to say he didn’t deserve it, but if it were me, I wouldn’t have let him get to me in the first place. Why not just explain to Fergie that he’s insignificant and his opinion doesn’t matter? If she really cares that much, maybe someone needs to smack her instead. I appreciate when a guy wants to stick up for a friend, especially if that friend is one of his bandmates, but are you really sending a tough message to her foe by sucker-punching a portly homosexual?

I understand that people in this business want to make money, but the game is changing. That’s why mainstream artists have to get involved in these scandals and public drama in order to be successful. They are losing profits on albums, the old methods aren’t working anymore so they resolve to petty displays of public fuckery just to keep the spotlight on them.

I think at some point every artist has to face a decision of whether they are going to keep scraping for money in the underground, or if they’re going to go mainstream and make the big bucks. It sucks, but if you love music and you’re in it for the right reasons, working harder to make a living in the business should be a hell of a lot more satisfying to you than having to parade around on E! like an idiot, or walking down some stupid red carpet to get a fake award, not because your music is the best, but because you made a lot of money and kissed the right butt cheeks along the way.

Artists, be true to yourself. Good artists get sucked into the mainstream music business every day and they are ruining what the rest of us are working hard to keep real. This is a new day and age where you can make it on your own without the help of a major label and distribution company if you’re willing to put in the hard work. If Perez Hilton talks shit about you, enjoy the free press and ignore that 12-year old like everyone else in the country. In the end, I guarantee those that don’t sell out will be richer by far in ways that money will never be able to replace, and if you make some money along the way, Great! Just ask yourself, are you in it for the right reasons? Have you compromised your values to get to where you are? When you were young and dreamed of being a big star someday, did those dreams include getting in catfights with morons who don’t mean shit to anyone?

…Or do you want to be remembered as someone who made true contributions to music, and never pretended to be someone else along the way?

I would like to preface this post by talking a little bit about J Dilla. A few years ago I befriended a cat who was a hip hop DJ in Detroit. When I met him, he had recently closed down one of the most popular hip hop record stores in the area, and had been very well known in the circuit as an accomplished vinyl collector and scratch DJ. I have always been a fan of hip hop since I was young, but I had never really delved into the world of hip hop enough to learn about the culture, the artists and the history behind it all, until I met this guy. I have learned a lot from him over the last few years, he taught me how to scratch, he taught me about different underground artists in the Detroit scene, and most importantly, he taught me about a little-known gem that came out of Detroit by the name of James Yancey, AKA J Dilla.

Being from the area, I had heard the name but I never understood the hype. I figured he must have been a good artist, but his talent was being exaggerated by the Cobain effect. Once I was introduced to his music and started to understand the contributions he made to hip hop, it was clear to me that there was no hype. Dilla not only produced the best beats coming out of the 90s, for the greatest artists on the radio and in the underground, he also proved that he could rap better than any cat out there on an album that he produced called “Welcome 2 Detroit.” Dilla had an amazing record collection, and gave birth to a more intelligent form of sampling that changed the game of hip hop forever. He is respected throughout the world hip hop community, his name is a legend, and he produced hits for such artists as Q-Tip, Busta Rhymes and De La Soul.

Needless to say, J Dilla is a sacred namesake here in Detroit. One can imagine by Detroit’s reputation that it wouldn’t be a very good idea to do anything to disrespect his legacy, especially if you are trying to make it as a hip hop artist. I think it’s safe to say that Charles Hamilton is trying to make it in the rap game. He released something like thirteen mix tapes over the span of one year, including a “tribute” he made to Donuts, Dilla’s masterpiece album of beats. Charles didn’t get much love from Detroit on the mix. It was seen as an attempt to step into the limelight by riding in on Dilla’s coattails. Aside from this, he’s an attention whore who’s always opening up his big mouth and stirring the pot, and not in a good way.

The overall attitude around Detroit was just to write the kid off. He has a big mouth and he likes to get involved in “controversies” which he thinks will help him get his name out there, so the logical thing to do is ignore him and hope he goes away. But he came out with some decent tracks, got Green Lantern to produce for him, did some joints with Common and The Game and landed himself a spot in Austin’s South-By-Southwest festival. During his performance there, he played a track he called “Shinin” featuring a beat made by a producer by the name of Black Spade. Now, hip hop artists take each other’s beats and rap over them all the time, nothing he did was out of the ordinary, but when Black Spade approached him to say that he liked the song, and that he made the beat, Charles tried to say that he made the beat. Twitter and hip hop blogs were all abuzz over this controversy.

To make a short story long, Charles went at it with a few cats on freshselects.net. The debate got even more interesting as Black Spade posted a video where he not only re-made the beat on his MPC, but also went on to further explain that the “sample” he used wasn’t a sample, but was Spade’s voice recorded into a mic. To further dig his own grave, Charles posted his Pro Tools files thinking that it would prove him right. This idiot posted the Pro Tools files with Spade’s beat as a 2-channel track, and even worse yet, it was a special version of the beat that Spade only posted on his Myspace. Spade’s video, screenshots of Hamilton’s Pro Tools file and all the bickering are posted here: http://www.freshselects.net/charleshamiltonstealsbeats. If you really want to waste some time, scroll down and watch the whole thing unfold as Hamilton goes from saying that he sang in the sample, to saying that he used a sample from the original song, to making threats at people as he finally got exposed and basically admitted to the whole thing, even though he still hasn’t given any credit whatsoever to Black Spade. Some serious hoe shit going on here.

For his next act of fuckery, Hamilton staged a “rap battle” with a woman who is supposed to be his girlfriend. She starts it off by rapping about their relationship and ends by dumping him. He then proceeds to counter her rap by airing out some personal shit about her getting an abortion, after which she rears up and punches him the face. Watch the video here:

This week, things got even more interesting as Charles Hamilton attempted to name J Dilla as the executive producer on his new album. He claimed that he was down with Dilla’s mom, aka “Ma Dukes” and some other cats that were close to Dilla, and that he was going to donate the money he made from the album, which at one point he said was supposed to a free album, to the J Dilla Music Foundation. Problem is, no one associated with Dilla had even heard of the guy, including Ma Dukes.

I tried to do a charity show back in January that was supposed to benefit the Dilla foundation, but I found out that the foundation had to be closed down because of legal issues dealing with Dilla’s estate. I only had to read a few articles on the internet to find out what was going on. Charles Hamilton didn’t even bother to do a fucking google search, let alone try to contact any of these people he was supposedly down with.

DJ Househoes breaks everything down in this Youtube vid, but I saw it all go down on Twitter.

Now, all of this douchebaggery aside, what’s really going on here is a guy that’s so desperate to break out into the mainstream that he’ll do anything to get his name out there, including dragging it through the mud. You can tell he doesn’t even respect himself, because he doesn’t respect anyone around him. What I’m saying is that none of these stunts are for real, they were all staged. He purposely stole Black Spade’s beat and played it in front of him, just to start some beef and get his name out there. The video of the girl slugging him was staged as well, it turns out that the girl in the video was his assistant. Above all this, he knew exactly what was going to happen when he put Dilla’s name on his album. He knew the right buttons to push and he knew the fiasco he was creating throughout this whole controversy, from every tweet to every word spoken on the phone, everything from the beginning was staged to create real rage around his fake charity album.

If I’m wrong though, then Charles Hamilton is the dumbest motherfucker on the planet. Either that or his life is a really bad Ben Stiller movie. I’ve never been involved with any “rap fued” and normally, when it comes to attention seekers, I tend not to give them what they want. In this case, however, Charles Hamilton needs to learn the hard way that there is such thing as bad publicity. When Houseshoes and the rest of Detroit is finished exposing this fraud for the fuckhead he is, no one is going to work with him, no one is going to want to be associated with him, and no one is going to give a fuck about him anymore. Game Over.

What’s really sad about this is that if I had heard this guy’s music without hearing about any of his antics, I might have given him a solid chance. Brooklyn Girls isn’t a bad track, and the kid certainly showed some fury by releasing a shitload of mix tapes. I would even be hypocritical to say that I don’t like rappers’ antics, because I was always a big fan of Eminem and got a kick out of everything he did off-stage. I mean, pistol whip some bitch, pull your pants down in front of the President, leak a sex tape, whatever, I love seeing the crazy shit that artists do, but above all you need to respect yourself and especially respect the craft and the people who made it in the game before you did.

I’m not even an accomplished person of any kind in the music business. I spin records, I like to go to shows, I got a few Detroit artists together and did a hip hop show for Obama’s Inauguration back in January and I have fun just being a spectator and listening to good tunes. I’m not going to act like I’ve accomplished anything more than showing love for a form of music that I have loved since I was 10 years old. I get involved when I can, and to me it’s the best hobby I could ever have. What I do have is love for this city, and the people who have made it what it is. So unless you woke up this morning and decided that you want to get beat down by the baddest motherfuckers on the planet, take a lesson from Charles Hamilton and show some love to the D.