If you’re like me, you probably already thought this whole fiasco behind Janet Jackson’s ‘nipple slip’ would have been done and over with ages ago. Well, you’re wrong. The case has actually been in the courts for YEARS.

After being argued for way too long, Philadelphia’s 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the FCC wrongly fined Jackson and has finally come to a final conclusion that sides with the pop icon and CBS. The television network will not be fined $550,000 for Janet’s notorious 2004 ‘nipplegate’ wardrobe malfunction during the Super Bowl XXXVIII broadcast performance in which Justin Timberlake exposed the singer’s boob when he “accidentally” ripped her costume. Thanks to a ruling that was made today in an appeals court, the ‘scandal’ can be finally put to rest.

Most likely, they had figure out how to close this off with the news that Madonna will be headlining the half-time show act with M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj…

Grammy nominated and ASCAP Award winning songwriter, Lil Playy will be on tour this fall as a part of the BET Black College Tour to help promote his new single, “Birthday Dress.” In case you’re wondering where you may have heard the name from before,  Lil Playy wrote the hook for Ludacris’ hit song “My Chick Bad”. Lil Playy is the first rap artist signed by entertainment executives, Suzanne de Passe and heavyweight producer Rodney Jerkins to Interscope Records. 

Hailing from Houston, Texas Lil Playy was put on the national map following the success of “My Chick Bad”. Soon after, Lil Playy was introduced to Suzanne de Passe who quickly signed Lil Playy to the de Passe Jones Entertainment roster. He then was introduced to super producer Rodney Jerkins, with whom he connected immediately, recording more than 30 songs. The works impressed Interscope Geffen A&M head Jimmy Iovine, who brought Lil Playy into the label home of superstar acts such as the Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, and Eminem.

Lil Playy is currently working on an EP which will be released later this year with its lead single, “Birthday Dress” (featuring Koma). In addition, he released his “Tour Bus Muzik” mixtape this summer, helmed by Jerkins’ Darkchild Productions and is on the road with the BET Black College Tour. Check out the behind the scenes video on YouTube and get a good look at what the rapper, songwriter is all about while he’s travelling and if you can, check out his upcoming appearances for the BET Black College Tour.

11/4 – Montgomery, AL – BET Black College Tour @ Alabama State University/TBD

11/18 – Prairie View, TX – BET Black College Tour @ Prairie View A&M University/Student Center-Lawn

To see more of Lil Playy, follow him on Facebook and Twitter (@LiLPLAYY) and see what he’s getting into at his www.lilplayy.com/. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to Lil Playy’s YouTube channel to stay up to date on the latest videos and vlogs from the rising star.

Following earlier news reports about complications with laryngitis and having to reschedule concerts and appearances back in June of this year, singer Adele, 23, has opted to cancel her remaining leg of her concert tour for surgery and recovery.

The singer made the announcement on her website of the impending surgery and the necessity to cancel. The statement from her website breaks down the decision and outlines the remaining US and UK concerts that were to be affected, “[Adele] is to undergo surgery to alleviate the current issues with her throat and a full recovery is expected. As a result, doctors have ordered her to rest her voice and completely recuperate before looking to schedule any work commitments.”

For information on which dates and appearances were to be canceled, head over to Adele’s website.

There’s something to be said for local and unsigned bands. Be it their passion to get their names out or the spirit of the message they deliver with their music, I’ll stand behind any ‘up and comer’ band almost immediately compared to your every day signed act. Enter Alternative Rock group Aduro, a local act hailing from Norfolk, Virginia.

With already one EP under their belt, Aduro (whose name is latin derivative from the term ‘set ablaze’) is poised to set the world on fire with a sound that has to literally be heard to be appreciated. It could be their energy, or even their sound, but my betting money is on their personality. Every group has their calling card and Aduro’s personality is a signature that is truly unique to experience. Every track from the band’s current EP ‘Listen…‘ resonates with a musical vibe that’s a combination of edge, feel good and inspirational.

Lead singer Travis Heath’s vocals deliver a soulful sound that elevates the music to a level that’s quite past the humbling alternative demeanor of their music but completely complimenting the overall sound of the band. With the talents of Mujtaba Habib on guitar, William Manley on drums, Shannon Farrell with keys and vocals and Jason Durso on bass, Aduro’s sound isn’t cookie-cutter at all. The opening track House of Cards grabs you immediately with its playful guitar, mellow drums and rich vocals and before you know it, you’re experiencing a different taste of rock that most of today’s alternative bands can’t begin to compete with.

Based out of Norfolk, VA, Aduro is currently in the studios wrapping up production on their second EP release which is slated for release in November. The group is also planning for an East Coast concert tour and are currently competing for a spot in the Live at Aloft Hotels: 50 Days of Music competition to open for Daughtry, O.A.R. and other bands in Napa, CA. You can learn more about them via Twitter@aduromusic and follow the group on Facebook.

Check out Aduro’s EP Listen…  at http://aduro.bandcamp.com/ and swing by the Live at Aloft Hotels: 50 Days of Music website and grab a free track from them just by voting for the group in the competition.

I mean…individual acts were good. I don’t want to take away from each individual performer who did their thing, lip syncing or not, and probably satisfied their fans. But the editing and overall format, the lifeless indifference of the teleprompter readers (aka, presenters), the idea of a house band filling every moment of quiet with more noise, so monologues bled into awards bled into performances bled into commercials without any sensory break or pause. What is MTV going for these days? What is the point of it all? It’s like they turned a mic and camera toward Times Square and left it up to the audience to find the sights and sounds that stood out to them from the chaos.

Maybe this is the old fuddy duddy in me blogging, but MTV used to very clearly represent innovation, creativity, and a rebel spirit (also music videos), and the generations that came up with it 10, 15, 20 years after its launch brought the same to the rest of the world. MTV has become more and more of a train wreck, representing hype, shock, discordant noise, and–over anything else–a lack of focus. I can’t help but wonder if these are the virtues that the next generation will bring to the table when they enter “the real world” (the real real world).

Good luck with that, future.

I found it an enjoyable, though flawed, experience.

FEATURE: B
Wu is structured logically, with Enter the 36 Chambers and the origin of the Wu-Tang Clan forming the basis of the introduction of the film. While brief mention is given to the pre-record deal beginnings of the Clan, the majority of the focus is on the Clan itself. The rest of the film moves through specific milestones of the Clan’s career.

I found it an interesting, but not gripping, documentary. It is comprised mostly of old footage, such as limited run television shows, interviews, music video clips, and outtake footage. Newer interviews with rap figures like Chuck Creekmur, Steve Rifkind, and Bobbito Garcia provide context for the Clan’s status.

Partway through, Wu became a time capsule. The early ’90s braggadoccio and style become just as important as the facts being presented on-screen. The early Wu-Tang Clan videos were of the “A bunch of guys jumping around, dancing, and mean mugging in front of a camera” variety. They included curious spellings of Clan member’s names, shaky cam, and timecodes left on the video. Enter the 36 Chambers features scratchy samples and is missing curses entirely on Protect Ya Neck.

All of these are things that would look unprofessional in any other light, but it worked for the Wu. They were excited to be on, eager to get going, and were going to grasp success by any means necessary. In hindsight, it seems like they appeared on the scene fully-formed and amazingly brash. Each member got a solo deal with a different label on top of the group deal, which was unheard of at that point in time. The Clan has enjoyed nearly fifteen years of success as a group and as individual members.

If I had to pin down one thing that Wu is about, it would be the Wu as an entity unto itself. The Clan made it through inter-personal drama, label drama, and real life. The Clan isn’t quite the same juggernaut that it once was, but it still carries that brand name that makes people sit up and pay attention.

The documentary, if anything, is hurt by its runtime. It feels short. While it covers a lot of ground, it is more of a sprint to the finish line, instead of a leisurely stroll. Very little attention, if any attention at all, is given to the philosophies and kung fu film origins of the Clan. Many members do not get a lot of screentime outside of old footage or ancient interviews, leaving the impression that the most important members of the Clan are RZA, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, and Raekwon.

The documentary goes in-depth into the trials of Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and uses the kind of analysis I’d liked to have seen on the other subjects of the documentary. RZA’s production, Method Man’s acting career, Ghostface’s solo career, the Wu-Tang Clan’s ever-present chess metaphors, and plenty of other topics were simply left out.

AUDIO: C
For a film about a music group, surprisingly little attention is given to the music itself. Barring talk of record deals and sales, we do not get much information about the music beyond the ever present background music, which is mostly composed of Wu-Tang Clan instrumentals, and even that is never identified.

The sound mix is nothing special, which is to be expected from a documentary, I think. It doesn’t need the trickery and gimmicks that accompany summer action movie releases. It simply needs to get the point across, which it does.

More information on the music, or even a hint of what was playing when, would have been welcome. It lowers the music to the state of generic background tunes, which is less than it deserves.

PRESENTATION: C
There isn’t anything particularly special or innovate about Wu’s presentation. The box is your standard DVD case, and the menus are as simple as they come. They are functional and easy to use, but not particularly interesting.

EXTRAS: C+
There are a few extras on the disc, which are between five to fifteen minutes in length. There are extended segments with Raekwon, RZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s widow, and others. These are interesting, though parts of these pieces can be found during the course of the documentary.

A classic Wu-Tang Clan music video rounds out the extras.

OVERALL: B
I can’t help but compare Wu: The Story of the Wu-Tang Clan to The Wu-Tang Manual: Enter the 36 Chambers, Volume 1. It was a book released in early 2005 that detailed the lives of Clan members before the Clan existed and spent a lot of time going over minutia and trivia of the Clan.

The documentary’s scope is more of an overview or a primer, rather than an in-depth work. Overall, it is a solidly enjoyable work, but I would have liked to see something a little more brave or less safe than what we got. That may sound a little unfair, so I do want to emphasize that the documentary is a pleasant watch– it just isn’t everything it could have been.

Comics helped a lot in teaching me to read. Obscure science terms, made-up words, and things that sounded like made-up words but were actually real words after all littered my early comics reading experience. So, comics taught me a love of words.

Rap taught me to love wordplay. It’s about taking a phrase you know and turning it on its head. High School Me would hate me for being about to quote Young Jeezy, but this part from his verse on Put On is great and he’s from the next town over, so suck it, 2001-me.

Passenger’s a red bone, her weave look like some curly fries
Inside’s fish sticks, outside’s tartar sauce
Pocket full of cel-e-ry, imagine what she telling me
Blowing on asparagus, the realest shit I ever smoked
Ridin’ to that trap or die- the realest shit I ever wrote
They know I got that bro-cco-li, so I keep that glock with me

And yeah, it’s typical ignant thug rap– this is still Jeezy, after all. He makes the extended food metaphor work, and for some reason, it ends up being pretty clever. There are other great examples. Big Pun had that killer tongue-twister flow (Dead in the middle of little Italy, little did we know that we riddled some middleman who didn’t do diddly) and Ghostface is still rap’s very own Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Another place where rap and comics intersected for me was in that they both portrayed heroes and role models for a very young David Brothers to take in. The difference between the two is that comics had heroes, black or white, who were generally written for white guys by white guys, while rappers were generally black guys who were usually aimed at a black audience.

The majority of black comics characters were, for years, either black characters filtered through an extremely non-black lens (Storm), unrelateable (Panther), parodies (Cage), or awful (Bishop).

Rap offered a slightly different perspective. I was just old enough to sneak in on the tail end of the pro-black movement of rap. Midnight Marauders hit when I was nine or ten (along with the Malcolm X movie). I had the Wu. I had Nas. I had a ton of people who taught me that being black is awesome, having money is great, and that crime is exciting. When it came down to choosing Iron Man or Tony Starks… I went with Ghostface Killah.

Most comics, with the notable exception of Milestone and occasional “outreach” books, aren’t aimed at me. That’s changed somewhat in recent years, but Marvel and DC are still relying on the same fanbase they’ve had for forty-plus years.

This brings me around to what I think are the two most important books in comics since… I dunno, the Jemas-era began. Nat Turner by Kyle Baker, and Sentences by Percy “MF Grimm” Carey and Ron Wimberly are books that are aimed at me. They’re by black people and aimed, if not at black people directly, at a wider audience than just “fanboys.”

Both aren’t necessarily the most marketable “comic books.” One is a book about a guy whose claim to fame was killing a lot of white men, women, and children after he was given a sign from Heaven. The other is about a rapper, but the greater message isn’t about “bitches and switches and hoes and clothes and weed,” which is what you’d usually see out of basically anything involving rap in the media at large.

Sentences was probably my favorite complete book out of ’07, including single issues, and it totally got robbed for that Eisner. I think it’s an important step in a lot of ways, and the least Vertigo-style title Vertigo has published. It isn’t a long and boring, goth-y, about vampires, religion, or your usual Vertigo cliche of choice. It’s just about a dude, his life, and the choices he made that got him to where he is now. It’s also about growing up black, falling into traps, and digging your way out of a hole you’ve dug for yourself.

There were any number of scenes and references in that book that I immediately got. I thought the bit with the mom in the beginning was hilarious. Why? Probably because I’d seen my mom swing on a grown man for messing with my little brother and any number of verbal sonnings while out shopping. I can relate to Carey’s love for his grandmother because we’re on the same level there.

In a very real way, it’s a book about me and my experiences. It’s about someone who looks like me, has gone through some of the same things I’ve gone through, listens to the same music, and even hung out with some of my own heroes. I don’t have to play down the obvious racial and class differences between me and most comics characters. I don’t have to worry about shocked stares when I say I haven’t heard of some apparently huge band. It’s the power of shared experience working in my favor. I finished the book feeling like I could go “Midnight Marauders or Low End Theory?” and “Ether or Takeover?” and get into an hour-long fight or an hour-long conversation, depending on the answer.

(Midnight Marauders and Ether are the right answers.)

Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner was my Sentences for when it came out. I recently re-read it on a long plane ride few weeks back, and finishing it prompted a few things. First, it made me realize that I had to do this essay. Second, I resolved to give the book (which I had just purchased a few days earlier) away the first chance I got, because people need to read it. And I did.

Nat Turner, the person, has been an interesting figure to me since I first heard of him. It could have been from a rap song, or from one of the footnotes in a school textbook that Baker mentions in his text pieces in the book. I know (off the top of my head) that he was mentioned on Wu-Forever, Sean Price’s Brokest Rapper You Know, and the Talib Kweli + dead prez joint off Lyricist Lounge.

Nat’s claim to fame, and I’m not embellishing anything here, is that he killed fifty-plus white men, women, and children. He led the largest slave rebellion in the States. Obviously, he was a murderer, and that isn’t something to be proud of. At the same time, though, he stood up tall and spat in the face of a system and country that believed him to be less than human. There’s a lot to appreciate in this story, though that probably makes me sound like a sociopath.

Baker’s approach to the book gives it a storybook kind of feel. There are only a few word balloons, leaving the action to stand on its own. The majority of the text is taken directly from The Confessions of Nat Turner. It comes in chunks and often relates to the scenes being depicted on the page, but its tone is jarring. The rebellion happened 160-some years ago, so the language and times are different. It’s like peeking into another world, or reading about a faraway land. The essay is very methodical and sometimes stilted. Premediated is an apt description, as well.

The art sells every emotion and scene perfectly. Sadness, determination, hate, and love all come through clear as a bell. One scene expertly shows a situation in which killing your own child is the greatest act of love you can perform. It’s depressing, it’s tough, and it’s a downer, but it’s a necessary one. It’s like medicine. You have to take it, and after you get past the taste, you’ll feel better.

I feel like it’s a book you should have to read at least once. It tells a story that doesn’t get a lot of attention, but is still well-known and loved by a lot of people. It’s a story that illuminates both universal rights and what happens when someone is pushed too far and too hard.

Nat Turner and Sentences were like comics dipping their toe into the pool. They were warning shots. They are saying “We are here, we have always been here” to the industry and “Don’t go anywhere, there is something here for you, too” to the audience. I really wish that these books had been around for when I was younger. They’re exactly what I was looking for, but didn’t know I was looking for.

It was the equivalent of one of my favorite images from the past.

Now, though, I just want more. My two loves are on speaking terms. Let’s keep at it, yeah?