While recently digging in my hip-hop archives (circa 2000) I  came up the offbeat advertising picture (left) of Rudy Giuliani from the long defunct, short-lived but most-promising Russell Simmons' website 360hiphop.com.  The image, which was used as one of the advertising shots by the website whose offices were on 10th Avenue in New York City, was a deliberately unflattering one of Giuliani. Released in 2000 it was long before Rudy would even think of running for president and when he was still mayor of New York City.  It was mid 2000 when it would still be over a year until 9/11 when Guilianni - long despised by many New Yorkers who perceived his clean-up tactics as facist-like - would redeem himself with the leadership qualities he displayed in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

The print ads, which were also stickers (one in a series of "I Am Not Hip-Hop"), were overseen by Russell Simmons whose website 360HipHop.com never really got off the ground despite an amazing amount of research work and online posting that its hardworking staff of about 100 passionate hip-hop heads put in - not to mention the fact that it had gotten major investments dollars from both SONY and Universal and was later snapped up by BET.  At the time the hip-hop mogul & Def Jam mainman told New York magazine that "Hip-hop people wouldn't lock up homeless people. They believe in freedom of expression. They're compassionate. They talk about education" - in  a direct dig at Giuliani's mayoral tactcs, adding that Giuliani should react in a positive way to the ad campaign.  "He should be happy about it. He should look at this and think, 'Great! I'm not hip-hop.' "