Da Underground Informer : October 2017

Friday, October 27, 2017

Suge Knight Drops Lawsuit Against Chris Brown

Suge Knight is dropping the lawsuit he filed against Chris Brown stemming from a 2014 shooting at 1 OAK nightclub TMZ reports. If you forgot, Suge was shot seven times at the pre-VMA party hosted by Breezy, who was believed to be performing when the shots rang out. Suge believed security was lacking, which allowed the gunman to fire multiple shots, hence why the lawsuit was followed through.

Chris’ lawyers from the Geragos & Geragos firm reportedly sent out a “nasty letter” to Suge, saying Suge's case was for sure going to lose and when it was eventually thrown out Chris would counteract with a malicious prosecution lawsuit. Apparently, that was enough to scare Suge & his lawyers, who dropped the lawsuit entirely this week. And no money was involved either, just straight scared of another lawsuit did the trick reports claim.

This report comes just days after finding out that Suge sent threats to Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray for his portrayal in the film. Suge reportedly called & texted Gary and said “I will see u in person … u have kids just like me so let’s play hardball,” one the texts read. According to new details, these threats left Gray so shaken that he failed to accurately respond to questions surrounding the incident while on the stand in February’s hearing.“He’s so afraid he came in here and lied under oath,” Deputy District Attorney Cynthia Barned told the grand jury. “He’s perjuring himself because he’s that afraid.”

As for Chris, things are finally starting to look good for the R&B superstar, who’s been dodging legal issues this year and preparing to release a double album next week called Heartbreak On A Full Moon. The 45-song album is set to feature guest appearances from Jhene Aiko, Future, Young Thug, Lil Yachty, Usher, Gucci Mane, and many more.

Houston Texans NFL Owner on Kneeling: ‘We Can’t Have the Inmates Running the Prison’

During a closed-door meeting among NFL team owners and executives, Houston Texans owner Bob McNair made a stunningly inappropriate analogy about allowing players to kneel during the national anthem. “We can’t have the inmates running the prison,” said McNair, a multimillion-dollar Trump campaign contributor, according to an ESPN report about the conference. NFL executive and former player Troy Vincent reportedly took the most offense to the comment, engaging in heated back-and-forth with McNair and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones—a hardliner against NFL players kneeling. McNair later apologized to Vincent, per ESPN, “saying that he felt horrible and that his words weren’t meant to be taken literally, which Vincent appreciated.” Additionally, the report observed how Jones and Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder were openly angry with San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York for allowing ex-quarterback Colin Kaepernick to kneel a year ago, kicking off the league’s national anthem “crisis.”

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Basket Ball and Other Things Book - Shea Serrano

If you've spent literally any time online in the past few years, you're probably familiar with Shea Serrano and his prolific, hilarious, one-of-a-kind Twitter account. A staff writer with The Ringer, and New York Times best-selling author, Serrano's writing, sense of humor and generosity have garnered him an almost cult-like following online, where his fans, the #FOH Army, will send him pictures after big life events such as getting engaged, and answer the call when he asks for donations to help people in need. Recently, following Serrano's initial push, they raised over $100,000 for Hurricane Harvey victims. In the age of social media and brands, Serrano has turned himself into a formidable one-man marketing machine. In the months leading up to the release of his latest book, Basketball (And Other Things), he generated over 24,000 pre-sales, almost exclusively through social media. Shortly after the release of B(AOT), CBS Sports talked with Serrano about the book and basketball.

Q. How are you feeling now that the book is actually out?

A. At the moment I'm feeling frustrated because a bunch of the shipments weren't able to be fulfilled because we sold more copies than the publisher thought we were gonna sell for some reason.

Q. Ah, man. Yeah, that's a weird feeling because you're happy you sold a ton of copies, but people can't even read it.

A. Exactly.

Q. So you finished this book a while ago. What is it like sitting around waiting, like, 'OK, I've written this thing, and now I've gotta just wait around for months for people to actually read it?'

A. Well, the waiting period is actually a lot less than that, because for a book like this we're going through proofs, where they're sending me all of the pages to make sure all of the colors are right, junk like that. So that happens all the way up until about a month out or something, and then they start printing them all. There's less downtime than you would think, but yeah, once the book is done, once I finished writing it, and once I have a digital version of it I want it to be out. I'm ready to do it that day. I'm used to writing things and they're published 20 minutes later. I would feel nervous waiting that long. Like a sense of doubt and second guessing myself.

A. Oh yeah, that's a big part of it. That's definitely a big part of it.

Q. If you were trying to pitch this book ... If you were trying to explain it to someone that was completely unfamiliar -- it's so broad -- what would you tell people this book is about?

A. With vinyasa yoga, you move gracefully from pose to pose. In this super-popular practice, you focus closely on breathing.I would just say it's the coolest basketball book that's ever been created. There's never been a book like it. I would just try to oversell it. I would tell them there's a picture in there of Dominique Wilkins dunking on Jesus. So go buy it.

Visit CBS Sports for full Q&A with Shea Serrano.

Friday, October 13, 2017

Stream Gucci Mane's New Album 'Mr. Davis,' Featuring Migos, The Weeknd & Big Sean

Gucci Mane has dropped a new album on Friday (Oct. 13) titled simply Mr. Davis. His second album of 2017 -- following May's release, Droptopwop -- Mr. Davis cites the Atlanta rapper's real name, Radric Davis.

The album boasts tracks featuring Migos, The Weeknd, Ty Dolla $ign, Big Sean, Monica, ScHoolboy Q, A$AP Rocky, Chris Brown, Nicki Minaj and Rico Love. Migo's feature, "I Get The Bag," was released as a promotional single in August, and The Weeknd-featuring "Curve" followed with a September release.

A 17-track album isn't all that Gucci Mane has produced lately -- not even close. On Sept. 19, The Autobiography of Gucci Mane hit stores in correlation with the end of his probation for a federal gun charge. (He had been in jail from 2014 to 2016.)

In addition, Gucci has a clothing line (Delantic), a shoe with Reebok and a BET wedding special coming up on Oct. 17.

Lil Pump's "Lil Pump Tape" Review

Rap has always favored the young, but never more so than in 2017, where the genre’s entire distribution model is tilted toward internet-savvy artists on the vanguard of social and musical trends. Along with fellow Miami native and frequent collaborator Smokepurpp, 17-year-old Lil Pump is part of a surge of SoundCloud rappers so intuitively aware of what plays online that, knowingly or not, they’ve essentially Moneyballed rap music, racking up tens of millions of streams with no-budget songs they’ve barely even bothered to master. Major labels used to spend small fortunes to achieve that kind of reach. Lil Pump doesn’t even need a real microphone.

In truth, even the most well-financed A&R team could only dream about creating a rapper as shareable as Pump, who at first glance can seem less like a real artist than a computer’s too-perfect aggregation of what rap looks and sounds like at this precise moment. He’s got Lil Yachty’s sense of flamboyant style and adventurous hair and Lil Uzi Vert’s taste in drugs, designers, and bright, cartoony cover art. His biggest, most blown-out tracks play like the tortured last gasps of an imploded subwoofer. And, in an evergreen angle that’s always catnip for the media, he carries an air of punk rebellion. A memorable New York Times profile opens with an account of Pump sparking an all-out brawl after kicking a fan in the head on stage, then instructing a friend to send footage of the scuffle to a hip-hop blogger. A self-marketer to the core, he played the incident for maximum viral reach.

If all that suggests a certain cynicism, it’s to Pump’s credit that none of it comes through in his music. There isn’t a moment on his brisk self-titled debut album where he doesn’t sound completely, endearingly stoked, and that kind of total commitment is all too rare on any rap album, mumble or otherwise. Where Uzi and Yachty tend to check out of their lesser material, Pump doubles down on every song, injecting SremmLife-levels of enthusiasm into even the rare ones that fall short of their goal of rattling around in listeners’ heads for hours after just a few exposures. Every track is loud, hyper, and catchy just to the brink of obnoxiousness, with only a couple crossing that threshold by a step or two.

Chief Keef is ostensibly the model for Pump’s economical, catchphrase-heavy style of rapping, and Pump has cited him as an inspiration. Compared to Keef’s tough guest turn on “Whitney,” though, Pump sounds like a kid brother too giddy with mischief to maintain a straight face. The album is filled with moments like that, guest spots from elder statesmen that mostly underscore Pump’s youth. A throwback, Lex Luger-style beat from producer Bighead highlights the generational divide between Pump and a half-present Gucci Mane on “Youngest Flexer,” while Rick Ross has never sounded more like a wooly mammoth succumbing to the tar pit than he does cast against Pump’s boyish patter on “Pinky Ring.”

As the first extended exposure to an artist previously heard only in brief fits, Lil Pump’s debut is impressively consistent, a sign that the divisive rapper may have more staying power than his many detractors have predicted. But even at a trim 36 minutes, the album does hint at some of the traps Pump could fall into if he runs out of ways to keep his routine fresh. Like Lil Uzi Vert or Mac Miller, whose voice Pump’s recalls during some of the album’s lazier hooks, Pump sometimes defaults to sickly simple melodies. The album’s two outright duds, “Foreign” and “Iced Out,” tell a stark cautionary tale: If you scale back Pump’s modernist trappings, buff away his signature distortion, and tame his jumpy energy, you’re basically left with Wiz Khalifa, and the world really doesn’t need another one of those.

While nobody would mistake him as one of rap’s great thinkers, Pump isn’t nearly the meritless insult to hip-hop that his grumpiest critics have cast him as. Compared to some of his SoundCloud peers, his album is almost downright traditionalist—it’s certainly not as audacious as Playboi Carti’s own self-titled debut, a perpetual motion fidget spinner of an album that regarded rap as entirely optional. That record was, in its own way, an art piece, but Pump couldn’t care less about art. Even his distortion isn’t artful in any meaningful way; it’s just a signifier of volume and excitement. Lil Pump’s one and only concern is turning up and he can do it with the best of them.