Failed careers + corrupt journalism = kaboom!

As perhaps the only person on the Internets to have beefed with Lupe Fiasco and Prolyfic, and eskay, I feel like I'm uniquely qualified to comment on the fracas that took place on Twitter yesterday.

Especially old people will recall that Lupe and I first got into it (no homo) in the summer of 2006, when he tried to use the leak of his first album, Food and Liquor, to generate publicity for himself. Atlantic Records didn't want to release the album, because there was no business case for it, and he went on okayplayer and claimed that it was because it hit the Internets a few weeks before it was set to hit stores, and that as a result he might retire before his career even officially began, Kid Cudi-style (but before there was a such thing as a Kid Cudi), as if his was the first album to ever show up on the Internets before it showed up in stores.

Hence I wasn't surprised in the least bit to see where Lupe is promoting some petition to Atlantic Records to release his album Lasers, or whatever it's called, supposedly started by one of his fans. Both the fact that the TIs know better than to release his album before it's advantageous for them, for tax purposes, and the fact that he thinks he can save his career via Internets shenanigans are typical. All that was left was for him to threaten to jump off in somebody's ass, just like the good old days. Pause.

eskay and I have gotten into it so many times I'd honestly have to consult the Google to give you a rough number. Nullus. And by "gotten into it" I mean I made a perfectly fair, valid criticism of his site, and he responded by pretending as if he was going to drive all the way from Yonkers, NY, or wherever the fuck he lives, to the shanty town I live in here in St. Louis, climb up on a milk crate and punch me in the face, One of the more recent examples is when Def Jam arranged for Shyne to call him and read from a set of talking points about how the reason his new music sucks balls is because he's got a whole new perspective on shit after having spent a full decade in the pokey, new songs about shooting people notwithstanding, and eskay slavishly repeated said claims and told us we should respect it.

That's why they pay him the big bucks.

This guy Prolyfic, on the other hand, has been complaining for years that his children are starving (his words, not mine), because he couldn't get beats on any Lupe album other than Food and Liquor. My fear is that they may have actually died. How else to explain why he's so upset that Lupe's career is coming to a sad, early conclusion. I don't buy that his part in this beef has to do with anything other than him fretting for his own financial situation, and neither would anyone else, if they had any idea who he is. I'm only familiar with him because I caught him on, again, okayplayer a couple of years ago whining about how my old friend Lupe had fucked him over. No homo. Then he popped up again in an interview with the then-obscure Fake Shore Drive. I knew I recognized him from somewhere. Then I got to the part where he called Lupe the most disloyal person in the history of disloyalty, or something to that effect. He got all pissed off when I excerpted it on my own site. He must not have thought anyone would read it.

This all came to a head [||] yesterday afternoon on Twitter. Several years after the fact (several decades in Internets time) Lupe was still in denial about the state of his career, trying to prove to the white people in charge at Atlantic that people really would be willing to pay for another Lupe Fiasco album. It says so right there on Twitter. This past weekend, Prolyfic, who could use some help himself, tried to give him some advice on how to get his career in order. It was obvious to me that Prolyfic heard about how Lasers had been shelved and felt like this was a good opportunity to gloat. But who knows? He may have also felt that this was a good opportunity to secure a beat placement on the next Lupe album or (more likely) mixtape. I wouldn't want to assume anything about him. He has a hard enough with people repeating things he actually said.

Lupe, to his credit, I think really does put a lot of time and effort into writing his lyrics. I'm no big fan of his music, like my boy TPAR, but I really did think he had the talent to carry the torch for artists enjoyed by aging haters such as myself, like A Tribe Called Quest. That's why people were so upset when he couldn't be bothered to memorize the lyrics to "Electric Relaxation" (which he should know by heart anyway for the VH1 Hip Hop Honors a few years back. He spends all that time working on a song, then the white guy from 2DopeBoyz hacks into his email account and steals it. Then he has to start over again from square one. In the meantime, Gucci Mane has already put out several mixtapes. I wouldn't go into the studio as much either, if I were him. There's literally no point to it. Case in point, his version of Rawse's "BMF," in which he took the names of famous drug dealers and replaced them with the two figures from black history that even the GED recipients amongst us (like Nas) are familiar with - MLK and Malcolm X. It's as gay as a three dollar bill. He's hardly even rapping on it. He must have rushed it out to capitalize on the joementum from the petition to get his job back.

eskay seemed to enjoy it, but then eskay has seemed to enjoy pretty much everything Lupe has done, except apparently for his indie rock side project. I'm not saying he was the biggest Lupe Fiasco stan in all of the Internets, but he was the biggest Lupe stan I was aware of, with the caveat that I try not to read very many blogs. It's not good for my writing. Which put eskay in the weird position yesterday of having to dis Lupe and not come off as some jilted Internets stan. In retrospect, he probably would have been best off not posting any more of Lupe's music after Lupe and his weed carriers roughed up the white guy from 2DopeBoyz. (XXL's own Meka is the black guy from 2DopeBoyz. I wonder what he has to say.) eskay and 2DopeBoyz are supposedly part of the same crew. If Lupe and his weed carriers beat up one of my (imaginary) friends, you can rest assured that I'd do more than just refrain from giving him free promotion on the Internets (which is all a post on Nah Right amounts to). It'd be full-on character assassination, possibly of a sexual nature. Nullus. But that's just me. I'm not gonna post something just because I think I could make a few dollars from it. Even the pr0n I post is not necessarily the kind everyone enjoys. That, my friends, is called integrity.

I might have to write that down, in case I ever deliver a high school commencement address.

Even Lupe himself seemed surprised to see his version of "BMF" on Nah Right, supposedly because he thought he was banned from Nah Right, just like yours truly, and probably because he put his shoe on one of eskay's alleged friends. Lupe was probably right when he implied, yesterday on Twitter, that eskay had set aside their issues for the sake of a few pageviews. eskay must have seen this while going through Lupe's timeline to follow the beef with Prolyfic, and that's when he decided to ban Lupe for good, once it was necessary to appear credible. And so what had been a beef between Lupe Fiasco and Prolyfic, a guy whose career has seen better days and a guy who hardly ever had a career to speak of, suddenly became this huge clusterfuck involving eskay and, by extension, every other blogger who didn't have shit else better to do yesterday afternoon, admittedly myself included. Somewhere (probably in his parents' basement), Prolyfic must have been pissed that what could have been his opportunity to generate a little publicity for himself based on Lupe's misfortune had been hijacked. Maybe he can still talk eskay into posting a few of his beats, to spite Lupe.