Russell Simmons: The next Biggie and 2Pac?

Biggie and 2Pac were famously gunned down in their prime, because of Suge Knight. Russell Simmons could be taken out at the ripe old age of 54 or whatever, because of motherfucking Bossip.

He claims to have received death threats, going so far as to compare himself to the greatest rapper of all time, as well as 2Pac (lol), because of posts on Bossip in which he's criticized for interracial dating a/k/a upgrading, and his involvement in the diamond mining business, for which he's referred to as Blood Diamond Russ, or BDR for short. Roffle.

It sounds to me like the girls at Bossip, who probably aren't the best-looking people in the world, got tired of seeing pictures of Russell Simmons out places with women who look like they were conjured from the depths of my subconscious (i.e. extra-tall and skinny white chicks), frolicking on the beach with no shirt on, as if he was The-Dream. The latter is understandable, for a man his age, but the former is obviously just jealousy.

Bossip has been referring to Russell Simmons as Blood Diamond Russ for a while now, probably because they read somewhere (here perhaps) about his efforts to discredit the anti-conflict diamond film Blood Diamond, on behalf of his friends in the diamond mining business, who then set him up with a BS charity organization in which Africa receives $15 for a diamond that they then sell for $5,000. I guess that's still pretty good though, when you consider that an African can eat for a month for $4, via those Sally Struthers commercials. That's almost four months worth of food. I'd attempt to calculate how much money I spend on food in four months, but I'm not sure if I could stand the embarrassment. But part of that has to do with the fact that I get like 90% of my meals from restaurants. (The other 10% of course comes from my parents' house.) I'm not functional enough to prepare my own meals, and of course I don't have a woman to do that for me.

In the New York Times, Rush, who to his credit might be more oblivious than he is genuinely evil (just like the president, and most people who try to work within the system), explained that Baby Phat might charge $100 for a shirt that cost 25 cents to make. (Keep in mind, I'm not making any of this up. You can look it up. Some of you might remember when I wrote about it here back in the day.) I guess the idea being that the difference between the $15 the Diamond Empowerment Fund pays Africa per conflict diamond and the $5,000 DeBeers charges for it is due to value added by DeBeers - shining it up, putting in a box and what have you. All Africa does is have the land where the damn thing came from. Why should that entitle them to anything more than three tenths of one percent of the profit it generates? For what it's worth, that might be a lot more than Africa would normally receive. You've seen those commercials.

Anyway, I don't think Bossip is all that concerned with Africa. I mean, I'm sure they're nominally against colonialism the same way anyone who doesn't stand to make any money from it (directly) would be, but obviously their main beef has to do with the upgrading. If you check the archives, for years and years, all of their posts re: Rush were along the lines of, "Check out these new pics of Blood Diamond Russ and his white modeling chick du jour." (Must be nice.) Then Rush finally got pissed at them for calling him BDR, which makes it seem as if he did something wrong, had one of the kids from Global Grind write a post in which Bossip is declared the black Glenn Beck, and the next thing you know there's umpteen posts about Rush's involvement in the diamond mining business, which hasn't been in the news otherwise since '06-'07. In fact, Rush himself may have been more upset with the posts on his prolific upgrading. (Even the posts on conflict diamonds include pictures of him hugged up with various white chicks.) Supposedly, there's an interview in which he claims to like the nickname Blood Diamond Russ. I didn't bother to look it up, because it's a Friday afternoon, and it's damn near Miller Time. I know I've called him that on a few occasions, going back at least as far as '07, and there didn't seem to be an issue. After all, those posts are still in this site's archive. Zing!

Rush himself entered the fray the other day, with a post on his Global Grind blog called "The Woman Behind the Lies." From what I understand, it originally included a picture of the black chick who owns Bossip, that's since been replaced with what looks like one of those Guy Fawkes masks, from the movie V for Vendetta, after the chick from Bossip sent Global Grind a cease and desist letter, via email. I happen to know, because I read Sandra Rose (assuming she has any idea what she's talking about), that a cease and desist letter sent via email doesn't really mean shit. It has to be sent vial snail mail in order for it to hold up in court. It could be that Rush's lawyer just isn't aware of this. He made it a point to note, in one of his other responses to Bossip, that his lawyer is black, I guess because they accused him of having a Jewish lawyer. (I would, if I had the means.) Why should Rush give a shit anyway? He's worth $340 million, according to the world's most accurate encyclopedia. He can afford to run the risk of some woman suing him for illegally posting her picture on the Internets. I'm sure the settlement in such a case wouldn't be any more than Kimora has spent on a ham sandwich, probably wrapped in solid gold foil paper or some shit. He should put that picture back up, if only so we can see what this woman looks like. I'm assuming the purpose of digging it up in the first place was to insinuate that this might have more to do with her own personal romantic dysfunction than anything else.