We have been upping Wale since day one on The G Manifesto.
I haven’t given it a full listen, but here are some tracks:
Wale – Miami Nights
Wale – Double M Genius
Wale – Don’t hold Your Applause
Wale – Lotus Flower Bomb ft. Miguel
5. Lotus Flower Bomb (ft Miguel) – Aight first off yo. Fuck this song title b. This shit dropped a while back n I never even peeped the shit cos the song title sounded like a yoga pose nahmean. Its sounded like some shit the broad in Coldplay might bang vaginas wit Gwyneth Paltrow too yo. But after listenin to this shit I feel like I need to slap box witta minotaur jus to restore some manhood to my senses b. This shit is like havin a waterfall of ovaries comin thru all the windows n doors in ya crib when you listen to it son. Its like audio breast milk. Ayo I understand you gotta gear summa ya shit to the females bruh…but this shit is straight bitchmade son. A dude listens to this shit one too many time n he gon get a period if he aint careful g. I hope I dont hear this shit again for like the rest of my life yo.
4. Legendary – 1.5 seconds into this muthafucka n this shit was already my favorite joint so far b. This beat got some actual hair on its chest son. I aint even kno it was a Toomp joint til I recognized this shit was superior to all the shit I been hearin n checked the credits son. Actually this shit makes me HATE the 3 joints before it even more. The nigga actually spittin forreal on this shit too yo. Its kinda hard to take the “fuck fame, n fuck money” hook serious tho…since the nigga been in full time diva mode for like 2 years now son. But I dig this shit nahmean. Imma probably even dump this joint into a playlist on the iPod my nigga.
Wale – Ambition (Ft. Meek Mill & Rick Ross)
11. Ambition (ft. Meek Mill & Rick Ross) Yall mighta heard this shit before. Son got The Ralph Tresvant n Bobby Brown of MMG on this joint (word….Wale definitely the Ricky Bell of that shit). This shit probably the best joint on the whole album son…which kinda makes up for that 4 song streak of tampon music that came before this muthafucka namsayin. Not really tho…cos those joints was like listenin to son drop down n get his eagle on for like 15 minutes. I aint probably gon forgive the nigga for that shit b. But this joint goes hard as fuck son. This shit make you wanna go cop a 8 ball to cook up n start sellin to ya own nephews n nieces on some guerilla pimp dont give a fuck bout nobody type shit nahmean.
Wale ft. Jeremih & Rick Ross – That Way (Official Video)
15. That Way (Ft. Jeremih & Rick Ross) – Damn yo….the homie Lex Luger did this shit? Ayo the Superfly shit aint nothin new but Lex kinda changed his shit up here b. As far as the vocab…I mean at first you might think its jus another joint aimed at broads…but this one kinda fly nahmean. Rozay did his thing of course. Jeremih croonin some gentle ass shit as usual…but this shit jus works yo. See a lot a yall might think that the god dont like no laid back shit that you can cool out wit a broad to…but I jus dont like when that shit aint done rite son. This shit here is some fly ass smooth shit yo. Anyways son…I fucks wit it.
The Rest is Up to You…
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
AKA The Sly, Slick and the Wicked
AKA The Voodoo Child
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
Early morning in a nearly filled corporate ballroom at the Cobb Energy Centre, a second-tier event stadium on the outskirts of Atlanta. It’s late September, and a local conservative think tank is hosting a get-together with Rick Perry, whose front-runner comet at the time is still just slightly visible in the bottom of the sky. I’ve put away five cups of coffee trying to stay awake through a series of monotonous speeches about Georgia highway and port reform, waiting for my chance to lay eyes on the Next Big Thing in person.
By the time Perry shows up, I’m jazzed and ready for history. You always want to remember the first time you see the possible next president in person. But as every young person knows, the first time is not always a pleasant experience. Perry lumbers onstage looking exceedingly well-groomed, but also ashen and exhausted, like a funeral director with a hangover.
In a voice so subdued and halting that I think he must be sick, he launches into his speech, which consists of the following elements: a halfhearted football joke about Texas A&M that would have embarrassed a true fan like George W. Bush, worn bromides about liberals creating a nanny state, a few lines about jobs in Texas, and a promise to repeal “as much of Obamacare as I can” on his first day in the White House.
An estimated 650,000 consumers have closed their bank accounts and opted for credit union membership over the past four weeks, according to CUNA, bringing the approach to Saturday’s Bank Transfer Day to a crescendo.
In a survey of 5,000 of its credit union members CUNA estimates that at least 650,000 consumers across the nation have joined credit unions since Sept. 29, the day Bank of America unveiled its now-rescinded $5 monthly debit card fee. Also during that time, CUNA estimates that credit unions have added $4.5 billion in new savings accounts, likely from the new members and existing members shifting their funds.
I was at an event on the Upper East Side last Friday night when I got to talking with a salesman in the media business. The subject turned to Zuccotti Park and Occupy Wall Street, and he was chuckling about something he’d heard on the news.
“I hear [Occupy Wall Street] has a CFO,” he said. “I think that’s funny.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” I said. “Why is that funny?”
“Well, I heard they’re trying to decide what bank to put their money in,” he said, munching on hors d’oeuvres. “It’s just kind of ironic.”
Oh, Christ, I thought. He’s saying the protesters are hypocrites because they’re using banks. I sighed.
“Listen,” I said, “where else are you going to put three hundred thousand dollars? A shopping bag?”
“Well,” he said, “it’s just, their protests are all about… You know…”
“Dude,” I said. “These people aren’t protesting money. They’re not protesting banking. They’re protesting corruption on Wall Street.”
“Whatever,” he said, shrugging.
These nutty criticisms of the protests are spreading like cancer. Earlier that same day, I’d taped a TV segment on CNN with Will Cain from the National Review, and we got into an argument on the air. Cain and I agreed about a lot of the problems on Wall Street, but when it came to the protesters, we disagreed on one big thing.
I’ve been down to “Occupy Wall Street” twice now, and I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal.
But… there’s a but. And for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it’s hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I’m guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they’d won round one of the messaging war.
Why? Because after a decade of unparalleled thievery and corruption, with tens of millions entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to artificially inflated commodity prices, and millions more displaced from their homes by corruption in the mortgage markets, the headline from the first week of protests against the financial-services sector was an old cop macing a quartet of college girls.
“I hear your complaints,” Bloomberg said. “Some of them are totally unfounded. It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp. Now, I’m not saying I’m sure that was terrible policy, because a lot of those people who got homes still have them and they wouldn’t have gotten them without that.”
To me, this is Michael Bloomberg’s Marie Antoinette moment, his own personal “Let Them Eat Cake” line. This one series of comments allows us to see under his would-be hip centrist Halloween mask and look closely at the corrupt, arrogant aristocrat underneath.
Occupy Wall Street has not yet inspired many true villains outside of fringe characters like Anthony Bologna. But Bloomberg, with this preposterous schlock about congress forcing banks to lend to poor people, may yet make himself the face of the 1%’s rank intellectual corruption.
This whole notion that the financial crisis was caused by government attempts to create an “ownership society” and make mortgages more available to low-income (and particularly minority) borrowers has been pushed for some time by dingbats like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, who often point to laws like the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act as signature events in the crash drama.
Well, you know what, Mike Bloomberg? FUCK YOU. People are not protesting for their own entertainment, you asshole. They’re protesting because millions of people were robbed, by your best friends incidentally, and they want their money back. And you’re not everybody’s Dad, so stop acting like you are.
Last night Occupy Oakland’s General Assembly did something that is likely to catch on with occupations across the country.
They voted to encourage the occupation of foreclosed properties across their city. After all, the bursting of the property bubble is part of why they’re on the streets right now.
There is a movement similar to this under the overall Occupy umbrella, It’s called Occupy Vacant Properties, and it has been most visible in San Francisco, where families are even reclaiming their old homes post-foreclosures.
Years back, when I was a young up-and-coming G’ on the rise, I was chilling in The Ritz Carlton, New Orleans at the lobby bar. (Which is quite possibly the best lobby bar in the world).
I was waiting for a business associate, doing some “work” down there, but that is not really here nor there.
I noticed The Los Angeles Lakers Basketball team, which I guess had just won the Championship the year before, were staying at the hotel.
While chilling at the bar, Custom Suited Down, Rick Fox pulled up a chair and ordered a burger. He looked over to me and said, “Great Suit”.
I thanked him. One of my friends later told me that Rick Fox is a Playboy of sorts, so I chalk it up as one of those “Game Recognize Game” type situations.
It was a little while after that, when I noticed the celebrity lawyer, Johnnie Cochran making his way through the lobby bar.
On the other side of the lobby bar, I saw Shaquille O’Neal and some other Lakers walking through.
Wealthy guests started pointing out Shaquille O’Neal to their wives and getting giddy at the sight of the basketball star.
Then Shaquille O’Neal came up and said hello to Johnnie Cochran and Shaquille O’Neal and the other Lakers started getting giddy upon greeting Johnnie Cochran.
It was a full on Layer Cake in action:
Wealth guests were acting like little kids upon seeing Shaquille O’Neal.
Shaquille O’Neal was acting like a little kid upon seeing Johnnie Cochran.
So what did I do?
I turned around, ordered another cocktail, and lit up a smoke.
Possibly the greatest of all, was Carlos Monzón. For the young up-and-coming G’s on the rise out there who don’t know their International Playboy history, Carlos Monzón was arguably the greatest middleweight Champion of all time, along with other G Manifesto Hall of Fame Members, Marvin Hagler and Sugar Ray Robinson.
Not suprisingly, Carlos Monzón was also a top notch International Playboy and traveled the world with Argentine and Italian models and actresses.
Let’s break down this G a little as there is a lot to learn from Carlos Monzón:
On Carlos Monzón’s Stamina and Training Habits:
Monzon’s stamina was probably his most impressive and illogical asset, since he was ever bit as proficient as Stanley Ketchel and Harry Greb at taking the rule book and throwing it out of the window. Ketchel invariably whiled away his leisure time by drinking and whoring out on the old Barbary Coast. Greb was a walking encyclopaedia on the best nightclubs and pool halls in any given town.
Monzon kept his body beautiful in trim by resting it horizontally against any passably attractive woman and by blow-torching his lungs with up to a hundred cigarettes a day. His nicotine intake would decrease by an impressive fifty a day when he got down to serious training, including a few smokes on the run to relieve the tedium of roadwork.
Author George Diaz Smith wrote of Carlos, “A guy like Ricardo Mayorga (another G Manifesto Hall of Fame Member) would be a novice compared to the likes of the iron lunged Monzon. Nobody could figure this out. For all of the years that I’d seen him, Monzon never gasped for air, tired or opened his mouth gagging for oxygen in any round.”
“There was an arrogance, even an insolence about Monzon. He carried himself like a winner. I was in the office of the promoter, Rodolfo Sabbatini in Rome with my wife of the time when Monzon strolled in, impeccable in a white suit, bronzed skin, smoking a cigarette, looking as if he had walked in off the set of a Federico Fellini film.
“He was a very cool looking guy and obviously a man absolutely full of confidence. He was one of those boxers who entered the ring as if he KNEW he was going to win, just a matter of how he did it.
“Although very good at long range, Monzon could bring up shorter punches. My memory tells me that he really hurt Jose Napoles with a right to the body in Paris. Although that fight was officially stopped because Napoles was cut, believe me, Angelo Dundee was glad to get his guy out of there because Jose was starting to get destroyed.”
When Monzon shocked the boxing world by winning the World Middleweight Title by knocking out Nino Benvenuti, people rubbed their heads and said, “Carlos Who?!” Fame and fortune were now his. His ego and temper grew. Even though he was married, he had countless romances on the side. Actress Suzanna Gimenez was seen with him. Monzon acted in eight Italian and French films, including starring in the movie, EL MACHO. He jet-setted with movie star Alain Delon. He kept winning and winning. He survived a gun shot to the shoulder from his wife; an accident they said.
He was accused of breaking a reporter’s jaw. He was friendly only with the elite of the elite. He had a soft spot for Bennie Briscoe and always greeted his arch-rival with a big smile and firm handshake. He retired undefeated over the last thirteen years of his career. In retirement boredom set in and so did his demons. Caught up in the party lifestyle, it came crashing down when he was convicted of killing his common-law-wife.
I like the fellow
who in the heat of battle
was able to plant our flag
in the toughest terrain.
Champion in his game,
confident in his ability, he saw the vultures grouping,
chased them with his hat
and seared them with his poncho.
If you go forward tenaciously
you’ll struggle through with your message,
even though your wagon gets stuck
and the cattle crush you. There’s nothing wrong with the man
who wears out his knife
defending his honor.
The coward hands it over to the police
without ever taking it out of its sheath.
Here’s to you, Carlos Monzon.
one hundred percent Santafesino.
the new world champion.
Strength, fists and heart.
From this old tree, for you a prize of honey
and a laurel wreath. From your tent a cry of victory,
a woman’s hand in yours,
and a carnation pinned to your lapel.
