Like most people, I will never forget this time two years ago, in the days/week after Hurricane Katrina first struck New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. I was literally glued to the TV's non-stop news, streaming images of the devastation and tales of the horrific conditions. I was transfixed by the shocking images and I was dismayed by news reports of the ridiculously delayed help getting to those who needed it so desperately -- mostly the region's poor inhabitants. And yesterday, as I watched the 3-DVD set of Spike Lee's HBO documentary When The Levees Broke, I was reminded of all the horrors of Katrina.

Since September 2005 the national media's focus on New Orleans may have faded considerably, but the needs of its inhabitants have not. Luckily there are still a great many individuals and organizations  actively involved in helping in the long recovery process that has quite a ways to go still. As you probably already know, Amoeba Music is one of the many organizations doing its bit in the effort to help the victims of Katrina, through its Amoeba auctions to benefit Katrina victims. Meanwhile, one of the many individuals involved in helping the recovery process is my former KALX Cultural Affairs Dept. buddy Rohit Gupta, who is one of those wonderful, quietly humble and giving individuals who is always down to help out those in need. Rohit lives and works in Los Angeles but has been making frequent visits down to New Orleans to volunteer in the slow post-Katrina recovery process. I invited Rohit to write a report on what it is really like right now in New Orleans for this AMOEBLOG. Here is Rohit's story:

New Orleans emcee Mia X is from the old school and has been making hip-hop for twenty plus years. She is probably best known by most rap fans for the period she was signed to and associated with Master P's No Limit label, but her rich rap history goes back long before that. However, searching under the artist's early rap years online will inevitably yield inaccurate results -- whether searching on the AOL.music, All Music Guide, Yahoo, VH1 websites, or on "her" Wikipedia bio which erroneously states: "Although born in New Orleans, Mia began her rapping career in Queens, New York as part of New York Incorporated, which disbanded after only four years. She then returned to New Orleans and met with Master P, an aspiring rapper and producer who signed her to his record label, No Limit."

"That's not correct and I am tired of people telling me that I used to live in New York and started my career there," Mia X said by phone recently, noting that she never lived in New York -- always in New Orleans. So how did this misinformation get out there in the first place? "I think it was someone at VH1 who first got it wrong in a story about me," Mia X said. It turns out it was John Bush -- a writer for All Music Guide -- who got it wrong, but then all the other websites listed above (Yahoo, AOL, VH1), plus many others, including whoever entered the artist's Wikipedia information, copied the erroneous bio. The original mistake came about apparently based on the fact that one of the members (Denny D) of New York Inc. was from New York, but he lived in New Orleans before returning to New York, according to Mia X. So, for the record, here is the updated, accurate bio on Mia X c/o the AMOEBLOG:  

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