a poll about shit we forgot

It's to the right there somewhere, a poll I put up because I was looking at our labels list and half the shit is for things we never finished. So I wanted you, random internet fuckface looking at dumpin.net, to let us know how you felt about bullshit. Obviously I expect the EWA 100 thing to get the most love, because we should've finished that forever ago, although you dudes are gonna be pissed when you find out N2Deep's "Back to the Hotel" is in the top ten. I liked the jambox thing, but it was too hard to keep doing regularly. I think I'd rather people have songs to download and they battled than just steal shit all day off the internet. It makes me feel more like a dude who loves music and less like a douche who wants to hoard every piece of hip hop-related music ever made onto my collection of external hard drives I'll never get around to enjoying. The mixtape challenge was great, but we lost interest, although I think Mike and John are supposedly gonna finish it at some point, hopefully before next fall. Personally, I thought the myspace rapper battles by state was some brilliant next level internet time-wasting to be had, but the lack of enthusiasm for the polls leaned against that judgement by the public at-large. So fuck y'all. I was really looking forward to the Iowa/Wyoming/Colorado/Kansas battle. That shit would've been all sorts of funny. Really, the NBA bullshit was dead before it started because the only real hardcore NBA fan is John and he doesn't get a hard dick for making stupid posts like me and Mike do. And once Gilbert Arenas got injured and started seeming more like a fucking punk bitch like every kid in high school than some misunderstood genius like a sober O.D.B., I stopped caring about the NBA again... perhaps forever. The Three 6 Mafia Project probably predates just about anything most of you have seen, as Mike was doing that before any of the rest of us got here, but he never finished it. I wish he would. And then I wish he'd do an ICP project just like it. And I'm being completely serious too.
So post your stupid comments about what you think. If you want. And you can vote for as many as you want in the poll thing.

MR. SR. Battle temporary hiatus

What's up fake people on the other side of the robot box? The myspace rapper state repper battle was rather underwhelmingly received last go-round, and it usually takes like two hours of myspace crippling my internet welfare dial-up for me to get that shit together, so we're gonna put that shit on ice for the time being. Me and Mike thought it was a good idea, and it might be, but it obviously ain't the right time. Motherfuckers is probably tired cuz it's so hot out. Although then again most of you fags is inside on the computer in the conditioned air anyways, so you're probably just a bunch of lazy fucks.
If this dude I know who doesn't have internet welfare at work ups the other stupid song I axed him to, I'll probably change the ewa jambox by the end of the week. Or I probably won't. Hard to tell. I'm a tempermental type of internet faggot and the internet seems mad time-wasteful sometimes, time that could be better spent smashing cars with sledgehammers or smoking weed through beercans in a diesel truck driven by some spanish dude who looks like Osama bin Laden.

MR. SR. Battle - Upper New England play-in poll

Last round went like this... Mr. Lif (reppin' Massachusetts) - 11, The Aztext (Vermont) - 8, Labseven (Maine) - 1, The 603 Kings (New Wackshire) - 0. So Massachusetts and Vermont will go head-to-head to make the final round of 16, motherfuckers.
On paper, this should be an easy win for Massachusetts, with really the only hip hop history out of this four-state grouping. 7L & Esoteric have never really done much for me personally, but I've good friends who swear them dudes are the shit. And they seem like a good choice to try and carry Mass. to the next round.
Tha VT Union is some sort of super-group collective in Vermont's underground hip hop scene, and I will be honest, me and Mike got crazy lulz off of thinking about "Vermont hip hop supergroup". Again though, don't let my cynical mocking nature sway you. Give them a listen, give 7L & Esoteric a listen, and vote accordingly. Poll to the right there holmes, amidst that long line of polls about stupid shit I be running here at dumpin. It's kinda my thing, you know, to ask people shit.

MR. SR. Battle - Mid Atlantic prelim

Second group of four locales for this thing, and I think I forgotted to mention last time round that you can vote for two in the prelims and shit. This grouping, we start in Delaware, which is mostly one big truck stop and a shadow of other states. Able Univercity is a group out of one of the few clusters of enough buildings to be urban in Delaware though. And do not let my dislike of Delaware speak badly of the two dudes in this group, because my ill memories of that state say nothing of what they're doing musically.
What the fuck goes on in Maryland? I guess it's all uber-hip and shit now with The Wire being every internerd's greatest tv show evar!!!, and sadly Baltimore's murder rate seems to be imitating the show this year. Still, Maryland seems to break down into two categories musically - the first being the "we are on the outskirts of D.C. so we have go-go influence", and the second being the Baltimore club-influenced shit. Stackz is actually outta Baltimore, which seems far more homegrown than some shit from Rockville or College Park or whatever, so he is representing the Crabcake State (or is National Bohemian state?) in this preliminary round.
Wale is a music critic-style hyped magazine blurb-getter of late, and since I read an interview with him the other day somewhere I can't remember, I chose him over Tabi Bonney for prelim representation. It was really hard not to put Huck-a-Bucks though, even if it ain't for-real rap music.
Finally in this foursome is my home state of Virginia. It always kinda bums me out when I realize my state's hip hop legacy is homoerotic beat machine masters like Timbaland and The Neptunes. Lyrically, we have Missy Elliott acting-a-fool, and The Clipse, who are good but are also one of those groups that in reality is about three levels not-as-great as anybody makes them out to be. Still, the most ballyhooed rap dude in Virginia the past year has been Famlay, who is hooked up with the Neptunes (hopefully not physically) and is supposed to come out on Star Trak eventually I think, if that label will still exist when that time comes. That whole Norfolk/Hampton/Virginia Beach part of the state is like a giant wasteland of sprawl though. I hate it when it comes to being in this state, but compared to the rest of the country, I have to defend it like a stupid older brother who loses his cushy job because he was fighting dogs in the next county over like a fool ass.
So there's the second prelim poll, which should be in the sidebar over there on the side. It is my goal to turn Mike's precious music nerd blog into nothing but a giant questionnaire.

MR.SR. Battle - Upper New England prelim

So here's the first stupid grouping for this thing, with a poll put up at the right for you to vote on.
First up, from the far northeast corner of America, meaning Maine, where I once had a shitty job raking blueberries with illegals, is Labseven, out of Portland, which, if I remember correctly, is the only part of Maine where people read books and shit. Personally, I enjoyed Maine well enough, they had McLobster sandwiches at the Mickey D's, but I left broke, which I guess should be expected since I went broke. Labseven is an MC collective and is opening a show for Jedi Mind Tricks upcoming, so at least they're playing out.
Right to the west of them is one of the most purtiest states I ever went to, New Hampshire, and representing the Live Free or Die state in this group is The 603 Kings. I'm really gonna try to be cool about all this, but there's a lot about The 603 Kings myspace page that is the shit I find funniest about rapper myspace pages (dorm room pics, ringtone sales), but whatever. Dizzy Dave Tastic and Jamisha tha Damaja are doing their thing, and that's what's important.
To the left of that is Vermont, which if I remember correctly is basically a bunch of hippies. The Aztext are gonna be representing Vermont, and them dudes have self-released records featuring Wordsworth on a track (also on their songs available as well).
And finally in this group of four is Massachusetts, which easily has the largest hip hop history of these four states. Reppin' Massachusetts will be Mr. Lif, who you probably have heard of since you're on the internet and into rapping music. He's one of those indie rappers of consciousness who always seems to be on tour forever and a day, so you can probably check him out live if you want to in the next couple months.
Check out the four pages, listen to some myspace rapper tracks, and then vote in the poll at the right. I think it'll be set up where you can vote for however many you want, but I haven't done it yet, so no promises.

The MR. SR. Battle - the Introduction

So ever since I joined up on Mike's stupid blog rather than bugging him to post more on our stupid joint blog elsewhere, I figured I should come up with some ultra-nerdy project that hopefully will lead to introduction to new shit, people arguing about stereotypical opinions on the internet with each other, and hopefully some good laughs at other people's expense. So I came up with the following bullshit long-term project (by fleeting A.D.D. internet people standards) - the Myspace Rapper State Representation Battle (from here on referred to as the Mr. Sr. Battle). I'm sure you have noticed like everybody else how in any issue of any rap magazine or zine or promotional flyer or bathroom graffiti there's a slew of up-and-coming artist myspace pages. You can't spit in a crowd of people without hitting a myspace rapper. Shit, even I'm a myspace rapper. Well, one of the great things about myspace - actually probably pretty low on the list and far below like fucking women you don't know at all who live fifteen minutes away - is the fact you put your home on there for everybody to see. Well, taking into mind college football rivalries and bullshit like that, plus people having to be proud of where they're from, I decided to create a multi-round myspace rapper battle where each state (as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico, to make it an even 52) do battle amongst each other, and we - the unproductive sacks of shit that make up the internet - will decide the winner. Here's how I'm breaking it down, round by round.
PRELIMINARY ROUND: I broke up the 52 geographic entities into groups of four, clustered by their location, which means we're gonna have some pretty shitty groups of four when we get to that vast wasteland of earth past the Mississippi River to the west coast. It also means that some hip hop heavyweight states will be matched up early, like Jersey and New York, or Georgia and Florida, but whatever. In these preliminary rounds (13 total), you can vote for however many of the entrants you want. Each state will be represented by a single rap artist's myspace page from that state. I will try to look for popular ones or pick the semi-famous as much as possible to be fair, but obviously I've got my limitations. (Towards the end of this explanation will be an email address you can send me suggestions for inclusion if you know Tha Dopest Undiscovered Shit on the internetz.) The top two of each group of four will move on to the next step.
PLAY-IN ROUND: This is where the top two from each group go head-to-head, with a new single rap artist's myspace page representing it. In other words, no one artist can carry his state all the way through, because I'm gonna change it up each time. But it'll be one-on-one, with the winner taking a spot in the next step. Since there's only 13 groups, and since some states are gonna get screwed early on unfairly by groupings, 3 wild cards who get plenty of love will also move into the next round even though they lost in this one.
FIRST ROUND: 16 states left by this point, which will probably be sometime in 2010 knowing me, and they'll go head-to-head, one-on-one. I'll probably seed them at this point, but I may not. These head-to-head match-ups will be best of 3 series of polls though, with three completely new stupid Myspace rapper pages showing and proving against each other. So essentially you're voting for the best page vs. the other page, with the idea being that each state's hip hop scene is only as strong as its weakest link. Winners of best 2 out of 3 in this move on.
QUARTERFINALS: Same deal, one-on-one between previous round's winners, and best of three series again. Winners move on.
SEMI-FINALS: We'll have worked down to four states left by this point, and it'll stay head-to-head, one-on-one, series of pages against pages, but this round will be best of five series instead. First one in each match-up to win three polls moves into the finale.
THE MISTER SENIOR BATTLE FINALS: Last two states left will go against each other, best of seven series, with seven completely new and not yet used myspace rapper pages reppin' each state going against each other. First one to win four will be the winning state, and ultimately, the True Home of Hip Hop.

I'll be putting the first one up later tonight, hopefully, since I have internet welfare which means myspace clogs up the hamsters turning my computer pixels into shapes and colors, so it takes a while. In fact, I'm gonna have to go to the library every week on the one night they're open till nine to actually listen to this shit myself and vote accordingly. If you know of any myspace rapper pages I should check for inclusion, even really famous people's ones (because don't assume I will know anything at all, and don't trust me to make things right), send them to me at raven mack at gmail dot com. You should by now how to make that work right. Make sure the myspace is one that has songs for listening at so if we use that shit, folks got something to listen to to base a decision upon, instead of thinking dudes look stupid. The winning state will get a trophy, meaning I'll buy an obnoxious trophy with ribbons and eagles and shit and ride the Greyhound to their state capital and leave it in a park with some funny looking homeless people, taking Polaroid pictures of the event to prove to the internet I really did it, and probably drinking with the homeless.
So there's the giant stupid deal. Your involvement will only make this better.