Thursday, March 27, 2008

Rap Sheet

Okay, nap time is over - time to sink our teeth into the idiots of the rap scene game world.

Nothing says cred and skill at coming up with rhyming words that get put over generic samples and sparse drum machine beats than getting a criminal record. Yeah, those records drop just as often as their next single.

I suggest that the court system add a new, independent circuit just for rappers and their ilk. It would pretty much operate from 9pm to 6am, so hardcore muthafuckas could get arraigned in between hopping clubs, getting into scraps, and generally being up to no good. That would also free up the other courts to continue their failure to bring old white men to justice for any number of fiscal rapings and business malpractices inflicted on the public. It's still a crime if there's not a gun involved...but it's not as sexy.

And I ask you, what's more sexy than a catfight outside a nightclub? Certainly not a handcuffed, sobbing Remy Ma! Who? That's right. A nobody. A nobody who chose a professional name after a liquor. Moron. Yeah, her resume reads she was nominated for a Grammy as part of the "Terror Squad" for the 2004 hit (?) "Lean Back". but my elderly neighbor and the Chinese woman who runs my favorite flower shop are also Terror Squad members. She also claims to have appeared on recordings with Busta Rhymes and Eminem, which is the equivalent of having a Myspace band page. Seems like a conviction for assault (that's a legal term for shooting a woman) is a tearful bummer.

The defense had conceded that the entertainer (and boy do I use that loosely) fired a shot toward a friend she suspected of stealing $3,000, but said it was an accident. Let me pause to say how much I hate defense attorneys. Only an asshole of defense attorney magnitude could make a statement so full of contradictions and illogical premises. Accidental shooting? Suspected a friend of theft? Please. There's still charges of weapon possession and attempted coercion to factor into the sentencing. And when you add the acquitted charges of witness tampering and gang assault (related to an attack on the boyfriend of a witness who ultimately testified against her), how can you look at those events and try and spin them in your client's favor? In addition to the rap circuit, I suggest legal council gets one quarter the term of their clients if convicted, just for being such terrible pieces of shit.

And sentencing it shall be! Remy Smith faces up to 25 years in prison, just a year more than her age. And to really give her the shaft, she'll be jailed without bail while awaiting her April 23 sentencing.

How did the prosecution see it? Remy Ma (no relation to Yo-Yo Ma) got into Makeda Barnes Joseph's car after a party last July and demanded that she dump her purse. The defendant "took an illegal .45-caliber automatic and loaded it with hollow-point bullets," then used both hands to cock the weapon as she got into the car. Now, that's just more strange discussion, with "illegal" guns and two handed gun cocking (did her third had hold it?), but it's a lot more believable than the accidental discharge that occurred as the women struggled over the bag.

Also enjoying life is Clifford Harris, who goes by the equally menacing name T.I. (and who is tougher than a guy who takes the name of a calculating and technology manufacturer?) He pleaded guilty to federal weapons possession charges and is to be sentenced in one year, after completing a period of community service. My advice - don't be in a hurry to finish that community service.

He'll have to complete at least 1,000 hours of a total 1,500 hours talking to youth groups about the pitfalls of guns, gangs and drugs. For a rapper, that's awesome. Maybe self-effacing sentencing would be good for all. Imagine the shame of Elliot Spitzer or Paris Hilton if they had to impugned their own image by fessing up again and again to their own failures. It makes you wish James Frey could go on Oprah every day!

Harris was nailed with possession of an unregistered firearm, possession of machine guns and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Like a proper idiot, he was arrested just blocks away and hours before he was to headline the BET Hip-Hop Awards in Atlanta last October. Big show coming up? Not without my arsenal! Who can perform these days and not try to buy unregistered machine guns and silencers? Since the incident he was under house arrest. More like house party arrest. Holla!

Sex and drugs are to rock as no-talent is to American Idol contestants, and as trouble is to rappers. They say you can take the rapper out of the 'hood, but you can't take the dumb, crime prone stupidity out of the rapper. Point proven again and again.

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