Time for a priority check, Jay-Z

In case you haven't heard, Jay-Z is teaming up with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan (like the president of the world, except he lacks the power to do much other than condemn the US and Israel) and once-important cable network MTV to bring water to the kinds of countries that don't have water.

Seriously, water. Who knew this was such a crisis? Aren't the polar ice caps rapidly melting? You can actually see water being "created" in real time in that Al Gore movie. The shit looked mad drinkable, too!

But according to MTV's website, one billion of the world's six billion people can no longer find water suitable for drinking. Which makes me wonder, a) What the fuck have these people been drinking, and b) Where did all of this water go? I can't imagine that it could just dry up, what with so much water being created on a daily basis.

If I had to guess, I'd say the problem is that too many people are trying wash their asses in the same water other people are trying to drink from. An obvious solution would be to separate the water used for ass-washing from the drinking water, but there may not be enough to cover both uses. As such, the problem isn't so much that one billion people can't find water as it is the fact that the earth has so many people to begin with.

If this is the case, I wonder if there's anything that can be done. Jay-Z's got a lot of money, but not enough money to buy a bottle of Fiji for a billion people. Think about it: bottled water costs more per gallon than gasoline. Even the cheap shit that's poured off of a tap somewhere in New Jersey will run you. Also, I wonder if this isn't one of those problems where trying to solve it will only serve to help exacerbate it.

To paraphrase my man, T.I., perhaps the most erudite of southern rappers (I know, I know), it may sound mean, cruel, and harsh, but if these people don't have any water to drink, maybe we shouldn't be giving them anything other than the time to sit and think about how they got in this situation in the first place. I don't think you can blame this one on George W. Bush.

Also, more importantly, how in the world does Jay-Z plan on having a new album out by Christmas if he's over in Africa talking to kids about how they don't have any water? What about the kids here in the US who don't have any decent rap albums to listen to? Pharrell, Kanye West, and Timbaland all claim to have been in the studio with him recently. What ever became of this work? Was the shit really that wack?

And who's going to run Def Jam while Jay is over in the Congo somewhere doing "Big Pimpin'" and handing out bottles of Fiji? Memphis Bleek? Let's face it, that Nas album is only going to sell about one million, tops. What else does Def Jam have lined up for the fourth quarter, another Young Gunz album?