Welcome to the kick-off of the 2012 Black History Month Amoeblog series in which, over the upcoming month of February 2012, we will honor Black History Month via a series of blogs covering an array of black history and culture pieces from the various Amoeblog contributors. This latest Amoeblog series will continue the tradition of honoring Black History Month here on the Amoeblog not just in February but all year round with pieces such as Eric Brightwell's thought-provoking Happy MLK Day. Yo, whatever happened to peace? Amoeblog from two weeks ago. Eric Brighwell will be among the many of us Amoebloggers posting articles on Black History Month. Oakland author / journalist / broadcaster JR Valrey, who was recently profiled here on the Amoeblog about his latest book Block Reportin', will be a guest Amoeblogger for Black History Month and contribute an article on his views on black history and culture titled The Black Experience Study Guide: My Top 7 Books, Movies, and Albums for Black History Month. I plan on posting several Black History Month 2012 Amoeblogs including this one on the highly recommended, recently released The Black Power Mixtape DVD.

      


Yesterday after stopping by Amoeba Music Berkeley to talk with E-Lit at the East Bay Amoeba about the new hip-hop releases of the week (check back here on Friday for the latest Hip-Hop Weekly Rap Up Amoeblog) I ran into local indie hip-hop talent Celsius 7 outside the store on Telegraph Avenue who - on the spot - did the above freestyle rap. Celsius 7, who has been interviewed here on the Amoeblog a couple of times including five years ago around the time he released his debut solo album Wanderlust, officially began his hip-hop career back in 1995 when he formed the group Psychokinetics along with his best friend Domingo (aka Spidey). The group, that soonafter added iLL MEDia and Dj Denizen to the lineup, never officially broke up but haven't done anything as a crew in years.

Without Psychokinetics Celsius 7 has remained active in hip-hop as a solo artist and his lomgtime musical partner Spidey even makes a cameo on his latest solo album Life Well Spent. The longtime East Bay emcee/producer who, as he explained in his second Amoeblog interview a few months ago when his latest CD first dropped, that the album had been in the works since 2008 when he first started writing some of the new songs adding that, "I worked diligently on Life Well Spent for probably about the last year....It just took me awhile to find inspiration as I was maybe a little bored with my chosen creative outlet. Once I started getting all these good beats from all these producers I solicited, it all pretty much wrote itself. Sometimes that's all you need; the right beat."

No doubt you're aware of Bait Car - the engaging popular reality TV show on the truTV channel that follows, via tiny hidden video cameras, the exploits of opportunist car thieves who can't pass up the temptation of an empty unlocked car with its engine idling & keys clearly in the ignition crying out "Steal Me!" Of course, as the show's title implies, it is merely bait laid out by police as part of an elaborate entrapment scheme. This entrapment approach as a means of catching "bad guys" has become increasingly more common by law enforcement agencies in recent years. Examples include the NYPD entrapment scheme in which the cops planted "drunks" asleep on subway benches apparently with their wallets or purses open to thieves. Another example that, like Bait Car made for good reality TV, was the predator entrapment practice that would become popular Chris Hansen hosted TV show To Catch A Predator. Two recent cases of entrapment, that would have made for some interesting TV viewing, are two specific cases by law enforcement that are stranger than fiction and each involved rap music as bait.  The two cases, both highly complex and involving approximately one year each, took place in Washington DC and in the UK one and four months ago respectively.  

As reported by several news and hip-hop outlets last month in Washington DC cops along with ATF agents wound up an intricate one year undercover sting operation that entailed agents posing as “music industry insiders” running a "fictional rap label" and amounted to authorities  making numerous arrests and confiscating over $7.2 million in drugs and 161 weapons. The DC sting, which began in November 2010 and went to great lengths to ensure results, involved D.C. police creating the Manic Enterprisess studio in Northeast Washington, even going so far as to create for the fictional label the fictional rap artist Richie Valdez. (Note that unfortunately - and oddly - no images or music reviews or website links seem to exist of this fake rapper.)  Next, reportedly, agents then told the underground world and black market that they were seeking to purchase weapons and drugs which resulted in money, drugs, and weapons: 161 firearms including a rocket launcher, 29 assault weapons, 80 pounds of methamphetamine, 21 pounds of cocaine, 1.25 gallons of PCP, 24 pounds of marijuana, and undisclosed amounts of heroin and ecstasy.

        


Even those Bay Area residents who are normally non-plussed about sports can't ignore the excitement brewing in the days/hours lead up to today's important hometown football game when the San Francisco 49ers host the New York Giants in the NFC championship at 3pm (6pm EST) at Candlestick Park. This game is of nail-biting importance for football fans in the Bay since it offers a shot at the Super Bowl for their beloved Niners who are the underdog in today's sold-out game. Artists feeling this excitement that had to express their feelings via hip-hop include such local rap artists as Bailey and his uplifting 49er rap anthem "Who's Got It Better Than Us" and San Francisco collective of Equipto, Baldhead Rick, Shag Nasty, Curt Sak, Ike Plump and Sellassie who, with production from JDef, under the name S.C.O. (Solidarity Co Op) have collaborated on the "49ers Anthem" song "Faithfully" (Solidarity Records). The video for the song above, which was shot in part at The Ave Bar on Ocean Ave in San Francisco, was made by Tony Rain for Strive Films while the song can be downloaded for free here.

Early this morning I caught up with longtime SF hiip-hop head and "Faithfully Niners Anthem" producer JDef (aka self-described "old school JDEF from KCSF/Bomb Mag./Rymskeme/KNT days!") to ask him how he and the guys got the idea for the song and how to structure it? "Basically, I had had this idea for a while. Sampling the Journey song for a Forty-Niner song just seem to go together perfectly. I wanted to really try and get working on it after the Philly game," he explained. "But it kept getting pushed back because of other things and plus I was getting caught up in the moment of each win. I always had Equipto in mind and wasn't sure who else to put on it, I just knew they had to be a "FORTY-NINER FAITHFUL". So one day, I had a recording session with Nim-One (F.M.D. of FM2O) at my studio and we were working on a song feat. Equipto.

Wow. What a sad week it has been for blues, R&B, and funk fans with the passing of Jimmy Castor, Johnny Otis, and then yesterday morning (Jan. 20th) more sad news arrived with word that Etta James had died in Riverside, California following complications from leukemia, which she had been undergoing treatment for for some years. She was 73 years of age but was just about to celebrate her 74th birthday next week. 

Born in LA and raised in the Fillmore District of San Francisco, Etta James (who won four Grammys in her lifetime) was loved by music fans worldwide and was inducted into both the Blues Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her music could be filed under blues, R&B, rock and roll, and even jazz sometimes (her album Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday won her a jazz Grammy). Even though James is best known for her soothing soulful rendition of "At Last," I personally always thought of the singer, who I saw in concert many times and was always blown away by her performances, as a gritty soulful blues singer since she always brought so much raw emotion and passion to her music. As anyone who has ever seen James in concert will attest, she brought sexy (or "raunchy" as some said) to her stage act in which she always gave it her all.

       

James was discovered by Johnny Otis, who in a tragic twist of coincidence passed just 3 days earlier this week, back when she was just a teen and recorded her first record when she was only 15. That record was “Roll With Me Henry,” which -- because of its sexual innuendo -- had its title changed to “The Wallflower" and as such became a 1954 hit on Billboard's Rhythm-and-Blues chart. A year later, a more whitewashed, toned-down version of the song retitled "Dance with me Henry" by white singer Georgia Gibbs became a mainstream number one Billboard pop charts hit. Understandably, that bummed out the black singer who had created the song.