Weezy Makes History in Newark?
Mug shot, AZ.
According to the NYT’s music brotha, Kelefa Sanneh, Lil Wayne’s weirdness kept 2800 people waiting 3 hours late but he was still amazing:
Forget a good or even great show; what they got, instead, was a peculiar, riveting hourlong performance that felt positively historic…
“I would love for you to put me in your prayers tonight; I got court in the morning,” Wayne said. He was due in New York, for an appearance stemming from his arrest on weapons possession charges in July, after his last New York area concert, at the Beacon Theater. (The Monday morning court date might explain why he booked himself to play Newark on Sunday night.)
I attended the Beacon show last summer (with Dave “Teardrop” Murphy). Wayne was 3 hours late that night, too. Outside the venue, cops, cops, cops, barricades, checkpoints, like a Baghdad Forward Operating Base. Jim Jones was denied entry—because he’s a Blood—even though he was scheduled to perform.
We bought weed before the show in Central Park (from the ever reliable Sheep Meadow beer hustler with the weed-leaf hand tattoo and bandana, you know the guy). Instead of smoking inside the Beacon and having to deal with 8 checkpoints, we ran over to Riverside Drive.
Later that night, after the show, Ja Rule was busted smoking weed on Riverside, and Wayne down the street. Cops sure hate rap in New York. They’ll even chase after rappers’ scents.
These days I’m a bit sick of Weezy F. Too much hype, too many guest spots, etc. But he was great at the Beacon—a raging, fucked-up machine, half-stoned and half-jacked, like on a coke-weed ball. He wore a Run DMC shirt, had Kayne come out for a song, Baby and Khaled on stage, Juelz and Mac Maine as hype-men, and jammed on a guitar for “Leather So Soft.” Best show of 07 for me, for sure.
Wayne’s next album, Da Carter III, drops in April. It could be his “Graduation,” maybe even better, who knows? Wayne shares management with Kayne, and I assume the marketing will be similar, ie. huge.
That is, if he’s not in jail. Aside from weapons and pot charges in NY, Wayne was arrested a month ago in AZ with a gun, 3.7 ounces of weed, an ounce of cocaine (wow), 41 grams of Ecstasy, and $22,000 dollars in cash. He seems to like a good time, but those are heavy charges, so he needs a “Shyne,” a fall guy. Maybe Diddy should be his lawyer.
Related
A few weeks ago the Village Voice ran a feature on Fabolous, a Brooklyn rapper tied to a Bed-Stuy gang called Street Family, who’ve been involved in various high-profile Manhattan club shootings. It’s nice to see the Voice covering rap in depth. Rap’s some of New York’s best music and often gets overlooked. Never mind that Fab’s as underrated as they come…
2. Prepare for the Gawker Wars
The turnover continues at Manhattan’s premium media gossip website. They’ve lost their ENTIRE staff in the last few months, but is it about to turn nasty? (from Radar blog, edited by ex-Gawker Alex Balker):
Nick Denton (Gawker media group founder and current Gawker editor) fired Shnayerson via email last night. She emailed him back with what she called “an updated version of the resignation letter” she had written the previous Friday but never sent. Shnayerson says she has no immediate plans, but knew her time was drawing to an end when she “started thinking about leaving without a safety net.
“The constant churn of employees at New York media website Gawker has claimed another victim: Maggie Shnayerson, hired in September of 2007 to fill the media reporter role vacated by Doree Shafrir, has been let go, making her approximately the 1,450th employee to have joined or left that site since November. Shnayerson has been released due to poor numbers: An e-mail from Gawker Media overlord Nick Denton put it this way: “I’m afraid your stories are not performing well enough on Gawker, and I don’t see how you’re going to turn that around. Last month, you got about 400,000 pageviews; this month you’re at 160,000; even taking into account your break, that’s still far from satisfactory. You should be doing some 670,000 views a month to justify your advance. You’re a good writer, and your stories are fine; you just seem to wrestle with them for longer than we can afford. I don’t think you’re suited to the pace of Gawker.” Shnayerson is, in fact, a fine writer, and would be a welcome addition to any news organization’s staff. Denton was unavailable for comment.
According to ousted Gawker editor, Maggie Shnayerson, the site has “changed dramatically” since her arrival in September 2007. “You have [Nick Denton acting as] publisher and an editor, and I think that’s a conflict of interest,” she told us by phone Monday afternoon, adding that “he’s trying to make Gawker much more mainstream, but I’m not sure if [Gawker] works as a HuffPo.Shnayerson, formerly PR director at the Village Voice, says she understands Gawker’s need to make money (”I’m not going to be one of those people who complains about publisher’s trying to make money.”) and has “a lot of respect for Denton,” but worries that his vision for the site is ruining its place in the media landscape. “He’s pushing Gawker to its broadest conclusion — and this reduces its caché. It’s not smart business. It’s not smart editorially, and it’s very hard on employees.” She also noted that she’s heard anecdotally that “people in power say they don’t read it as much. That’s really sad. Gawker shouldn’t be a depository for the latest viral video.”McInenr MIAMI http://www.portfolio.com/culture-lifestyle/culture-inc/arts/2008/02/19/Art-Basel-Comes-to-Miami
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