Makin' It Magazine

There’s no denying the relationship between hip hop and basketball and no matter how many changes they make to the dress code, the culture is still going to bleed on to the court. In between the fact that every rapper thinks he could’ve went to the NBA and every basketball player thinks he can spit a hot sixteen, I don’t see this relationship coming to an end any time soon. Go to any basketball game and you’re likely to hear MIMS, Jay-Z, or Nelly playing throughout the arena. Turn on MTV or BET and you might just catch a story about Jay-z or Nelly buying a team.

So when John Ameachi outed himself, becoming the first openly gay man to have played in the NBA, I had to turn my head toward the hip hop world and wonder… Which one of our favorite rappers is living a life on the Down Low? Now, I’m sure Wendy Williams would love to give you a list of names with addresses and telephone numbers, but for our story we’re just going to focus on one, Kanye West. It’s no question that a lot of rumors have been thrown around regarding the Chicago rapper’s sexuality. And while a lot of it stems from his diva-esque Grammy rants and prima-donna attitude, I believe there was no bigger contributor to the rumors than his notorious outburst on MTV regarding homophobia in hip-hop. For those of you that don’t remember lets just rewind the clock back a few years to late 2005. Kanye was fi lming a special for MTV to promote his new album, Late Registration.

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Now just wait one G– D—- minute, you telling me that rap music is to blame for Don Imus calling a predominantly black female basketball team a bunch of “nappy head hoes.” Well if you let Oprah Winfrey or the ladies of Spelman tell it, you might be led to believe Don Imus was bumping the new Young Jeezy CD on his way to work that morning. It’s crazy how the media has spun a cut and dry case of a bigot making an obviously racist statement into a crusade against hip hop. For the second time in less than a year (Don’t forget about Kramer) a white man has made a racist outburst and instead of us examining the institutionalized racism that permeates every aspect of American culture, Oprah Winfrey and the Ladies of Spelman have chosen to focus on rap music. Now, I got nothing but love and respect for Oprah and the ladies of Spelman but they have clearly got a problem with hip hop. The way Oprah has used this racist outburst to rally her followers against rap music, reminds me of how Bush used 9/11 to invade Iraq.

I must say I was very disappointed to see Oprah and the ladies of Spelman attacking rap music and blaming it for the downward spiral of the black community, but I suppose that’s much easier than looking at the role they play in the situation. It has become increasingly obvious to me that the primary concern of our so called best and brightest has turned from collectively advancing our people to distancing themselves from them.

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One week before we were scheduled to go to print I found out that I would have to be going out of town for a funeral. So I loaded up my laptop and headed out to Indianola, Mississippi. I spent the next five days with my family and by night putting the finishing touches on the May 2007 issue of Makin’ It Magazine. I must say I was pretty proud of the new issue I had totally revamped the lay out and the cover story was going to be one of the best I had ever written. I had only one story to fi nish before I could send everything off to print. I decided to write it on my phone during the return trip to Atlanta. Well after we got back to Atlanta I was up till 5AM catching up with paperwork and emails. The next morning I grabbed my external hard drive and a power adapter out of my laptop bag. I hooked it up to my desktop so I could copy all the fi les for the May issue and send them to print but for some reason my hard drive wasn’t connecting. The lights just kept fl ashing on and off. After fi ve minutes of tinkering with it, I realized that I had the wrong power adapter plugged into it. I had accidentally grabbed my laptop (AC) adapter instead of the (DC) one for my laptop.

I immediately rushed my hard drive to a computer specialist and found out the drive had been fried. I then took the drive to a data recovery company and found out that they could retrieve the data for $1,400. All it took is a one simple mistake and in less than 30 seconds months worth of work and planning were gone like that. Not only did I loose the May Issue, but I lost the newly designed template for the magazine. I lost my business plans, My Forms, My Contacts, I didn’t even have a copy of the company logo and all it took was one simple mistake and less than 30 seconds. Learn from my mistake and make sure you regularly backup all of your important data. You never know when you may be a victim of natural disaster, theft, or just plain bad luck. Follow these following tips and protect yourself from my misfortune.

1- Backup any fi les that can not be easily recreated. (i.e. Protools Sessions, Graphics, Beats or Business Data)

2- Make regular backups (Monthly, Weekly, and Maybe Even Daily) of any fi les that change often.

3- All of your important data should be stored in three separate places. One of these locations should be offsite. This is incase you are the victim of natural disaster or theft. If your office/studio burns down and all your backup data was in there you will be in the same position as if you never had it.

4- Don’t procrastinate. Had I taken 15 minutes to follow this advice I could have saved myself $1,400 in data recovery fees and months worth of work.

For me January 17, 2007 is a day that will never be forgotten. I sat at the studio with my producer and watched as Atlanta Fox 5 reported that the Fulton County SWAT Team along with Clayton County officials and the RIAA had just raided DJ Drama’s downtown Atlanta studio seizing everything in sight. CD’s, recording equipment, company records, cars, money, and pretty much anything that wasn’t nailed down was confiscated as DJ Drama and DJ Don Cannon were taking into custody and latter hit with a RICO Act for racketeering.

Now for those of you who don’t grasp the severity of what the RICO Act is, I’ll explain it. The RICO act was created back in 1970 to aid law enforcement agencies bring down organized crime families. Simply stated, if you commit any 2 of the 35 crimes specified in the Act within a 10 year period you can be hit with a RICO charge which carries a maximum fine of $25,000 and 20 years in prison. Now with that in perspective, let’s get back to the subject.

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This is the second installment of our series about myspace promotions. Last month we filled you in on some of the most common mistakes made by people new to the whole Myspace scene. This month we are back at it with a list of additional tips to help you create a powerful buzz both online and offline utilizing the power of Myspace. Just remember Myspace is only what you make it.

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