Jay Electronica – Exhibit C

So the big news of the weekend was the signing of Jay Electronica to Jay Z’s Roc Nation. On Friday night Jay Z hosted an exclusive event at NYC’s The Box titled  “Jay-Z Invites You to an Evening of Magic: Experience The Turn” where everyone from Beyonce to Jay Electronica’s mother were in attendance to help the nicely suited up New Orleans MC celebrate his big move to the Roc.

The news was met with immediate congrats from celebs and fans alike via twitter but it soon became pretty obvious that there was a certain famous ‘uber twitterer’ who was suddenly unusually quiet. This obviously being Puffy aka Mr. Tweet himself. When he finally emerged to comment, the twitterverse was surprised to to see the emotional message he put out that could have been directed at either Jay Z or Jay Electronica:

So why all the dramatics from the mogul? Apparently Puffy had been in talks to sign Jay Electronica to his Bad Boy/Interscope record label for over a year. In Diddy’s mind it was pretty much a done deal so he was completely blindsided at the news of Jay Electronica going to Roc Nation. But what he didn’t know was that Jay Z was also peeping the dope MC and after a chance meeting between the two at Jay Z’s  West Village eatery, The Spotted Pig, it soon became obvious to Electronica that he had a much better chance at success over at The Roc rather than with Bad Boy  - whose roster for the most part seems to be unknown to many. (*cue in Biggie’s ‘soon as he buy that wine I just creep up from behind’ verse from “Big Poppa”)

It was pretty much a no brainer move for Jay Electronica. Puffy undoubtedly is a successful business man but his need to wear many many hats, (one of them being an entertainer himself) has definitely affected his  ability to focus on being the respected label boss he once was in the 90′s and early 2000′s (although ‘respected’ can certainly be debated). Bad Boy is now considered by many to be a graveyard of some sorts; a place  where talented artists go to dig a spot for their final resting place - because the odds of them succeeding with Puff are slim to none. Although Janelle Monáe has respectively given the label a much needed boost. Diddy also wears the hat of artist manager and has seen success with managing Rick Ross but has reportedly just lost Nicki Minaj to music industry vet Benny Medina.

Roc Nation however is slowly becoming the label/entity to watch. Its artist roster so far includes J. Cole, Willow Smith and Jay Z and it also acts as a management company overseeing the careers of artists such as Rihanna, The Ting Tings, Wale and Mark Ronson; producers like No ID and Lab Ox; and  DJ’s like D Nice, Samantha Ronson and Solange. Surely this list is destined to only grow longer in 2011.

Although Jay Electronica is still riding the indie wave and has yet managed to fully crossover, he has shit load of talent and potential to be one of the hottest MC’s out (“Exhibit C” anyone?). He is entering Roc Nation with a very respectable catalogue and if he sticks to his script hopefully he will have no problem reaching the top. And with Jay Z promising that his first official Roc Nation album will drop sometime during  the1st Quarter, it appears that we will not have to wait long to see what’s next. I think Diddy (who I can’t front… I have a serious soft spot for) needs to understand that business is business and it is a known fact that he has pulled many shady moves on many people in his lifetime, so the best thing he can do is get over it and move on.

But what do you guys think? Was Jay Electronica wrong for breaking his verbal deal with Puffy? Should he not have gone with Jay Z? Will this put a permanent dent in Puff’s relationship with Jay Z?  Weigh in and let us know your thoughts.

Sorry, but I can give a damn when I see rappers and entertainers cutting videos for Obama. I’m sure its there little way of contributing to the cause, but people on the ground are wondering….could we do more?

Take Puffy. Even though the man tried with the Vote or Die campaign in 2004, the dude has been very silent in 2008. Except on Youtube.  Even though Puff says that he wants Obama to win, what is doing on the ground to help this man get elected?

Puffy, instead of cutting YouTube videos “for” Obama, why don’t you go to your neighboring state of Pennsylvania and rent buses to get low income voters to the polls? Pennsylvania does not have early voting so the African American turnout may be substantially less then states like Georgia and North Carolina. Pennsylvania is also a battleground state, where Kerry only narrowly won in by 2% in 2004, and where McCain is making his last stand in this election.

There are thousands of people in places like Philly and Pittsburgh that do not have transportation to get to the polls that could swing the election in this state if they get out to vote. If Puffy just dropped approximately $30,000 for 100 school buses, it can bring 5,000 people to the polls in 1 trip.

If those 100 buses took 30 trips to the polls tomorrow, it would out almost 150,000 voters.

If I had the money to pull this off, I would. But I don’t. You know who does? Puffy.

I wasn’t a big fan of The Wire’s focus on the Baltimore Sun. I thought that David Simon, the creator of the show, who made a blistering critique of our public schools in the fourth season, was basically using his show as a personal gripe since he worked at the newspaper back in the day and quit to write his books, Homicide and The Corner.

But looking at this whole LA Times thing, I gotta give Simon credit, where credit is due. The LA Times got pwned by some dude in jail, who acted as an FBI informant, and gave the newspaper false documents, which were to prove that Puff Daddy and Biggie had something to do with Tupac Shakur getting shot in Times Square in 1994. Most people credit this event as the beginning of the East Coast/West Coast hip-hop feud of the mid 90s.

But the LA Times was wrong:

Reporter Chuck Philips and his supervisor, Deputy Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin, issued statements of apology Wednesday afternoon. The statements came after The Times took withering criticism for the Shakur article, which appeared on latimes.com last week and two days later in the paper’s Calendar section.

The criticism came first from The Smoking Gun website, which said the newspaper had been the victim of a hoax, and then from subjects of the story, who said they had been defamed.

“In relying on documents that I now believe were fake, I failed to do my job,” Philips said in a statement Wednesday. “I’m sorry.”

In his statement, Duvoisin added: “We should not have let ourselves be fooled. That we were is as much my fault as Chuck’s. I deeply regret that we let our readers down.”

Said documents were those of con man James Sabatino, of what The Smoking Gun calls “little more than a rap devotee, a wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as ‘a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.’”

So how does the LA Times get punk’d by some dude in jail? Was it because of the pursuit of a Pulitzer Prize?

See, the Pulitzer Prize is like the Academy Awards in journalism. People break their necks to get one of these things. Not only does the journalist and their respective organization get a skeet inducing ego trip, but they get $10,000 as well as a shot a book deal. And since this everyone wants to jump on this hip-hop cash cow, I’m sure the dude would get a movie offer or two.

The journalist who wrote the piece won a Pulitzer Prize. Was he going for another?

David Simon was hinting at this type of reckless journalism in The Wire. Scott Templeton, the snot nosed, ass-kissing reporter for The Baltimore Sun, straight up invented stories, characters, and situations for the pursuit of……guess what…..the Pulitzer.

Sure, we are talking about two different situations. The LA Times reporter didn’t make up a situation, just relied on completely false information. But the fact that a real life news organization didn’t even follow up and investigate its sources thoroughly shows that art sometimes imitates life. This half assed journalism is real.

(via Byron Crawford, who called this thing a week and a half ago)