[News] Is A Google Executive the ‘Face’ of the Egyptian Revolution?

You couldn’t make this story up: Wael Ghonim, a photogenic young international executive at a cutting-edge new media company starts a Facebook page that sparks a revolution across an entire country. Even if the story didn’t go exactly that way, I’m pretty sure we’ve found the basis for a ‘sequel’ to The Social Network!

Read more on the Google exec, Ghonim’s release from jail and immediate return to the protests in Tahrir Square after a 12-day detainment: CBC | The New York Times

And then click this link for CNN’s take on the question (I would’ve embedded this but was prevented from doing so on ‘copyright grounds’ :/ )

[Event] In Toronto TONIGHT (Feb. 9): TownHall Meeting on the Shutdown of CKLN

This post is stickied to the top of the site until Wednesday night. New posts will follow below but T.dot heads: PAY ATTENTION TO THIS!!!

I touched on this briefly on twitter earlier yesterday but let’s get into it properly now. Here’s the deal:

ALL Toronto Hip-Hop Heads:

The imminent shutdown of CKLN (whether through faults of their own doing or not) on Feb. 12 and the attendant shutdown of all the specialty shows on the station including the long-running city institution, the Saturday 1-4PM rap show currently inhabited by The Mixtape Massacre is one thing (and I explained in a little detail on Saturday why that was such a blow to the hip hop scene in Toronto). But the wholesale cleaning of shop of all the hip-hop mix-shows including the long-running Real Frequency Show and Ty & Rez Digital’s OTA Live on the main ‘urban’ commercial station in town, FLOW 93.5 as part of it’s sale to the CHUM Radio Group last week also was a double blow to the city’s still emergent urban music industry.

Kids: don’t take it for granted that the hip-hop you love will always be so freely accessible as it has been over the past few years. As you can see, the mass channels of access on the radio can easily be shut down with just a few swift actions and all of a sudden, we’re back to 1985 and hearing barely a couple of hours a week of hip-hop on the radio.

Y’all can have your little viewpoints on whether TRF and OTA Live were adequately doing what they should or not as far as promoting local music, but be clear: artists like Drake, Kardinal Offishall, K’naan and Shad did not break in a vacuum or strictly through commercial channels. In one form or another, they all paid dues and built a base from which they went on to achieve success by first stating at or benefiting from the support of underground and specialty radio shows like these.

“Yeah, but there’s always the internet, Ian” you might say pointing to the rampant file-sharing and “let one million hip-hop blogs bloom” landscape and the font of endless hip-hop music-on-tap its given us as proof. In response to that, I would say though: DON’T BE SO SURE…..

Here’s the ‘official’ plug for Tonight’s event set up by Manifesto to discuss the implication of these events:

What Just Happened?

SPREAD THE WORD!

If you can make it to this, YOU SHOULD GO!!! Even if you (think you) haven’t got anything to contribute, now is the time to show the ‘powers that be’ that there’s numbers in the community and we care about decisions that are being made about us. So be there, I will – hearing the music you love in an accessible way in the future may very well depend on it!

[MP3] The Pop Life Podcast with Jeff Sledge & Angelique Miles (2.7.11)

Music industry vets Jeff Sledge and Angelique Miles in the second installment of their new entertainment and pop culture podcast speak on the Black Eyed Peas half-time show and Christina Augilera’s national anthem flub at the Super Bowl, the AOL-Huff Post deal, Halle Berry’s recent f-ckery, the ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ TV show, Black History Month, and ‘Speaking White.’ And speaking of that last issue, I had the same experience as Taylor the intern when many people met or talked to me (listen to the podcast). I feel ya, girl!

I also co-sign the homie, Sledge on the Halle situation but he gets the gasface for not knowing Garret Morgan invented the traffic signal, especially as an OG hip hop head who’s also a veteran employee of Jive records, the long-time label home of KRS-One and BDP – “You Must Learn”!




MP3: The Pop Life Podcast with Jeff Sledge & Angelique Miles (2.7.11) [zshare download link]



Related (to a couple of topics discussed in the podcast):

– Halle Berry: my daughter, Nahla IS Black! [via Twitter]

Previously on The Kitchen:

– [Podcast] Pop Life with Jeff Sledge & Angelique Miles (1.31.11)

[Video] Bill O’Reilly interviews President Barack Obama before Super Bowl XLV

Frankly, O’Reilly does not have the first clue about what the President is about or willfully ignores reality in front of his nose: he think Obama does not have enough dissenting opinions around him?! Part of Obama’s problem might be that he has too much of that. Frankly, Bush could have done with more during his administration but I don;’t recall Bill having that issue then. Also, dude just read Obama’s book now and thinks he’s thin-skinned and self-absorbed and yet he claims his interview with the president was instantly the ‘most widely-viewed in the history of the internet’ immediately upon broadcast (current views on Fox Sports: 23,957)! *Smdh….*

Fox News and Bill O’Reilly are a f-cking joke!



More:

O’Reilly reacts to his interview with the president: Part 1 | Part 2

[Video] Ronald Reagan Super Bowl XLV Tribute

Good grief! This tribute video to former President Ronald Reagan will be shown just before the kickoff of Super Bowl later today. *Smdh…* I for one will never fall for this revisionist nostalgia for the legacy ‘The Gipper.’