Dick Bigems' Blog.

Yup, according to my approximation, which is actually really skewed considering I hardly listen to enough current music to give a thoroughly informed opinion on this matter of who are the best hip hop producers these days. But regardless of my apathy towards checking out all the new hip hop that comes out, I still have a decent enough idea of the landscape to know that if there aren't two white dudes in your top 5 current hip hop producers, you probably got something wrong. The first white (er, Jew) dude you should have in your top 5 is The Alchemist, who has been the producing game for a while and managed to maintain a certain high level of quality in his work through more than a decade, despite that he still chooses to work with a more or less washed-up Prodigy (of Mobb Deep) way too extensively. Why not work more with some younger rappers, Al? Maybe Prodigy has an arrangement where he forces Alchemist to make beats for him, who knows? Thankfully, Alchemist still puts out more than enough work outside of his collaborations with P, making him quite the prolific producer, in age where some rappers are known to releases dozens of shitty mixtapes/albums in the span of a year, Alchemist never lets quantity overtake quality.

The second is El-P, who's perhaps mainly known for being apart of great Run the Jewels nowadays, but more avid hip hop fans will know as the founder of now defunct indie label Def Jux, a label which had been producing some of the best underground hip hop for upwards of a decade up until a few years ago. Generally known for his dense, futuristic, boom bap-flavored beats, El-P is producing some of the most refreshing, yet true to golden era hip hop, rap music out there.

After that things get more arguable. Outside of the twos guys I just mentioned, we have dudes like Exile, Kno, Statik Seletah, Ant, Clams Casino, Edan, RDJ2, ect. Maybe DJ Shadow, but admittedly, I haven't heard much from him in a while. I also think that one homeless guy with the affinity for BBW, Cole James Cash, might be white, though it's hard to say exactly because he wears a mask all the time, but throw in there anyway for his popularity's sake. Then there's also the guy behind Kanye's production, Mike Dean, who's white. 

Now, this is not to say that white producers in hip hop haven't been around for a while in hip hop. No, not at all, considering many of the people I listed have been around for a minute. Maybe it's just now that I'm realizing this. But I guess maybe the point here is that for all the terrible rap music that white people make, there's also a good deal of really talented white dudes making some of the best current hip hop to even it out a little.

I'm sure many of you guys who read this admittedly lame (but still above average) blog are wondering what does a guy like me, who monikers himself with immature sexual innuendo, do when he's not writing all the hip hop-centric crap that he posts on the Internets. Well, let me clear this up for those who are truly curious as to what I do in my free time. Aside from masturbating, mainly I just read recent articles in the news (as to hopefully inspire my own writing), watch a bunch of Tim & Eric skits, and listen to bunch of old school hip hop & R&B, all which spent in pretty disproportionate amount of time in solitude. I'm feeling lazy and got better shit to do than write a real post worth anything, so y'all will have to settle for this boring ass post today.

Originally, when I started writing this, I figured it just be a little 3 minute read that I could use for a post on this blog that no actually reads, but I suppose I was feeling particularly inspired and it turned into something larger. 7 minutes! Impressive, right? Anyway, I decided to publish it on Medium instead, so check it out.

https://medium.com/@DickBigems/kanye-west-is-not-an-asshole-8c71efd574b0

Not that anyone really cares that he's been promoted to official member of the group, other than maybe Cappadonna himself and his nonexistent supporters. But anyone who keeps up with the hip hop news of nowadays knows RZA's been trying to generate as much publicity as possible for this new Wu-Tang album that's apparently coming out this Black Friday - which I don't think people really are all that excited about. I mean, perhaps some people are, but I'm not. If you've listened to the last couple albums Wu-Tang put out as a group (officially, not some Legendary Weapons or Chamber Music type thing), you know that Wu-Tang simply isn't what it used to be. Not as a group anyway. Take in consideration that with each subsequent Wu-Tang group album after Enter the 36 Chambers, every one has been a little worse than the last. Now I don't think they'll do any worse than what they did on 8 Diagrams based on the recent singles they put out, but those are still nothing to go ranting and raving about either. Our best bets with putting money into Wu-Tang Clan's pockets (Warner Bros.'s pockets) are by purchasing their solo albums, of which only three members are actually worth checking out at this point: Ghostface, Raekwon, and Method Man. Plus if those three guys released their arguably more anticipated solo albums - Supreme Clientele 2, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Pt. 3, and Crystal Meth - number one, we'd be getting more music, and number two, they'd probably be better than whatever album Wu is trying to drop now. And everyone would be happy.

See, the ship already sailed for Wu-Tang to release a group album a year ago when there was talk they might release it on the 20 year anniversary of their debut. So they can't really pull that whole promotion shenanigan anymore. Thus RZA has had to resort to different promotional tactics to get word going about the new Wu-Tang group album that's about come out. The first was the whole thing where they were going to only make one copy of their next album and then sell it to the highest bidder, which according to RZA apparently is going pretty well, getting offers for it for up to $5 million I think (suckers). Actually it appears that there are two separate albums in question. The one that's gonna be sold for evidently millions of dollars is called Once Upon a Time Shaolin and the one that's gonna be mass produced and available for download legally on Black Friday is called A Better Tomorrow. Talk about making moves. A Better Tomorrow, which is the title of an older song of theirs, has this other unorthodox promotional thing where part of the album will be put out on some sort of portable boombox a few weeks ahead of the scheduled mass release. It's on a portable boombox because there's really no way to go transferring the tracks ingrained in it to the internet so everyone else can hear them. (Well, I suppose there is a way to transfer them, but there'd obviously be some audio quality lost as a result.) So if you really wanna hear some of these new Wu-Tang tracks early, you're gonna have to buy some speaker that you don't actually want. I say good for Wu-Tang. If they can get some naive white kids to buy their album ahead of time at an extremely inflated price, then cool, but you'll never see me doing any shit of that sort. I mean, I'd say I'm a fairly big fan of Wu-Tang, but even I don't care that much.

Meanwhile, as RZA is still waiting to see if these promotional ventures are indeed successful, he's dispelling what everyone's been pondering for years: Is Cappadonna a member of the Wu-Tang or not? I would've personally said no, especially considering what they did to him on the Iron Flag album cover. Plus he's been kind of hit or miss in relatively more recent years when he's on a track. Still, he's not as bad as U-God, but there's more deserving Wu-Tang affiliates that are worthy of membership in my opinion. How about some Killah Priest, Hell Razah, or Killa Sin? Perhaps the real reason why those guys - better rappers than Cappa by all accounts - haven't been asked to join the Clan is that they don't appreciate being regarded as weed carriers. Something to think about.

Not that I wish bad upon anybody or anybody's family, but I was kind of hoping eventually I'd be able "report" on the struggles of Big Pun's family as new developments surfaced... 

Now we all know Big Pun's wife was probably left with a fair sum of money when Pun died, as well she also made 160k from that one posthumous compilation album that was put out back in 2001 which was released with the clear purpose to help support her and the three children she bore to Pun. But evidently all that money she ended up getting from that deal was not enough to maintain the lifestyle she had grown so accustomed to when Pun was bringing in the dough, collecting a few hundred thousand in insurance policy money [1] and cashing checks from his platinum album sales. So she went through whatever Fat Joe managed to get out to her, then had to resort to selling Pun's Terror Squad chain on eBay for a mere $9,600, which I imagine wasn't only a way to make some money, but also a way to spite Fat Joe. Because Liza Rios (Big Pun's wife) thinks somehow the weight of supporting her and Pun's three children now falls on Fat Joe because how of much he profited from being in cohorts with Pun. Which of course is ridiculous, but I'm sure she had more than enough money left to her to go on living a comfortable middle class lifestyle, she just didn't know how to manage her finances well. Plus, she got too used to sitting on her ass all day, so it's not like she went out to get a job after Pun died. She was fully expecting that she'd be set for life after being married to a platinum selling rapper like Big Pun, and she probably thought she deserved to be set for life too, if only because she stuck it out when Pun got into his fits of rage and decided to take out on her by pistol whipping her in the face.

Unfortunately for her, that's simply not the way life works.

I just looked up Fat Joe and Liza Rios in Google, and according to TMZ, in a story reported on September 18th of this year, Liza Rios had filed a $1,000,000 lawsuit against Fat Joe. Meanwhile the world keeps turning.

If you want a better breakdown of the finances of Liza Rios, I recommend reading this article written by Combat Jack that I just found in which he explains some of the ins and outs of Pun's financial affairs.

While his mom was complaining about not having enough money, Big Pun's son, Chris Rivers, has been trying to make it in the rap game, putting out his own underground mixtapes and making guest appearances on songs by obscure rappers. Which sadly wasn't bringing in quite enough for his grandmother (Big Pun's mom) to not resort to robbing banks, George Clooney in Out of Sight style.

I figure there's some silver lining here, and this story of people blowing all their money that was made off of rap kind of relates back to this other story I did about Coolio on Medium. But that Combat Jack article opened my eyes a bit to the realities of how much rappers were actually making back in the '90s - not as much as one might initially think. Though Coolio probably made a lot more money than Pun, I feel the point still stands here that many rappers and their enablers simply don't have the proper mindset to manage large sums of money when they come into some. Thus I deduce that for as long as those in dire states of poverty keep mismanaging their funds after they strike it rich, there'll always be those poorly taken care of grandmothers who'll have to go robbing TD Banks just to get by. This is as good of a point I draw from all this right now. Forgive me, I'm coming off a wearisome weekend (hence the lazy writing and not posting this till 3 in the afternoon).

[1] Perhaps a little known fact, one that I picked up from watching some cheaply put together Big Pun documentary or other, was that he got a lot of money in inheritance before he actually struck it big as a rapper. I couldn't find any articles on the web to validate this, but there are pictures out there of him as a thinner, younger man wearing gold chains and suits and stuff. Where do you think he got the money to buy that stuff? Selling drugs? Pshaw!

So apparently Wiz Khalifa and Amber Rose are split, which according to a few Internet memes I've seen the last couple days is much to the delight Kanye, a former notch on Amber's fuck list. But don't people realize that Kanye has moved on? After all, he has a kid and a wife now, albeit that wife also happens to be a porn star, which I'd argue is not too far off from Amber Rose's former stripping profession, so I'm sure y'all can draw the connection there. Still, if anything you'd figure Kanye was the one that broke off the relationship with Amber because when you think about it, Amber probably needed Kanye more than he needed her. This is discussed in much greater detail in Byron Crawford's book Kanye West Superstar, and I suggest if you really want to read about the ins and outs of Kanye's relationships with Amber and Kim you go there - assuming you're willing to chip out $10 for it.

Let's not get distracted with these old stories that have to do with Kanye. The new stories I've seen revolving around this divorce of Wiz Khalifa and Amber Rose appear to involve infidelity from both sides. Which is tragic to think because their marriage only lasted all but one year before one of them had to go chasing some other tail. Merely from the clickbait article headlines and sub-headlines, I gather that Wiz was cheating on Amber with these two women, twins(!), named Nes and Jas, who coincidentally happen to have the same last name as his wife. I looked up some pictures of them. They iight, but they're definitely not on no Amber Rose level. And Yeezy probably didn't teach them either, because they don't seem to live up to Kanye's standards for women (as wonderfully displayed in Drake's music video "Best I Ever Had").

But then again, twins! It's one thing to be able to get one women to have sex with you. It's another thing to get two (count 'em) women to have sex with you at the same time. Then it's a whole another thing if they happen to be twins. Considering that Amber was probably a little loose and still recovering from having a baby, much less being prego for 9 months prior, I could kind of understand why Wiz would succumb to the enticement of having two women on his jock simultaneously, Jesus Shuttlesworth style (only blacker and with smaller tits).

Amber Rose on the other hand, let's see. According to the stories Yahoo filters out to me on their front page, Amber's been planning on her next move for a while. There's also been a lot of news swirling that Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey's marriage is on the rocks and that since they took a photo together (& I think he might have signed her to his entertainment company or something) Amber and Nick must be hooking up. I suppose it was a pretty solid move on both Nick and Amber's parts, being rebounds for each other. Amber needs another rich black guy to fund her lifestyle and Nick wants some younger pussy now after hitting that dried up shit - which is Mariah's vagine - for so long.

I guess they all moved on to bigger and better things in the end. Wiz is tapping twins, which Amber Rose probably anticipated as the demise of her marriage with him, so she got another black guy to take her on. Then Nick Cannon is finally getting to hit some younger and finer pussy after having to deal with Mariah's crazy and dusty ass after all these few years. So it's all good.

At the end of the day, you can't really trust these gossip stories. They're often just fabricated off various conclusions people jump to, with no real credibility to them. Case in point, Yahoo! has fed me two contradicting articles on the relationship status of Selena Gomez recently. According to them she's going out with both Justin Bieber and Austin Mahone. I don't know what to believe! Perhaps she is going out with both of them though. These assumptions on the personal lives of these famous people often end up being right one way or another.

Surfing various websites to find a story that I could thus more or less copy and use as a post for this blog, I came across this article on Daily Dot about this homeless rapper in Chicago who disses various more popular rappers [1] so that he can get more popular himself (the old fashion way). He basically forces people to bare his mediocre rapping, though admittedly fairly solid off-the-top of the head freestyling, while they wait for their train in the subway.

Apparently, even though he is homeless, he has enough for a mic and an amp, and didn't have to resort to selling those to fuel some insatiable addiction to alcohol or crack (as famously described the song "N.Y. State of Mind." by Nas). So because of his being "clean," er, sober, unlike so many other homeless people who are not, this is supposed to be some kind of hopeful and positive story in the mist of other stories you see everyday that aren't so hopeful or positive. In this day and age, it's good to have someone we can all root for and hope "makes it," even when the chances of that are slim to none, and this guy in particular doesn't necessarily deserve to have success in the field of music. In the videos he's rapping about basketball and socially conscious stuff, plus looks to be in his late 30s. Where's the appeal? I suggest if he really wants to give it a go at "making it," especially in a place like Chicago, that he start making some trap music and flowing like those guys in Migos. I'm afraid I think that's really his only chance in the biz, and if he doesn't take it he might just end up becoming a wino after all. And nobody wants that.

[1] One of the people he dissed, according to that Daily Dot article, was Chief Keef. He should be trying to hook up with Chief Keef if he really wants to stop being homeless. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Those who stumbled upon this website looking for pictures or videos of big dicks will likely end up being a little disappointed.

I don't imagine at this point that this blog will amount to anything lucrative or even, at the very least, somewhat profitable, but who knows? They say you gotta play to win. Maybe I can get some advertisements going on here, "earning" a few pennies by making peoples' computers run slower. Or maybe in this age where everyone's a writer (and everyone's got an opinion) and prospects of a job in hip hop journalism are in the gutter, I'll get a website like Complex to hire me so I can make shitty clickbait posts on there, simultaneously building up my star, yet only making sweatshop wages for all the work. One can only cross their fingers.

At least for now till I figure out what exactly I want to do with this site, posting will be inconsistent and content will vary. My audience at the moment is small af anyway, so it's not really like anyone is checking out for this shit in the first place. I suppose you gotta start somewhere. (As you can see I'm feeling rather fond of cliches today.) For me, 6 Twitter followers and counting is that somewhere. lol