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| De La Soul, Slick Rick, Isaac Hayes To Be Crowned Rap Royalty At VH1 Hip Hop Honors Posted: 03 Oct 2008 05:39 AM PDT 'It's like the all-star game of hip-hop,' says Travis McCoy of Gym Class Heroes, who pay tribute to Cypress Hill on Monday's show.
NEW YORK — It's that time of year again: The weather is getting colder, days are becoming shorter and legends of hip-hop are being honored. The 2008 VH1 Hip Hop Honors premieres Monday at 10 p.m. ET, and rehearsals were held Wednesday and Thursday at the Hammerstein Ballroom to make sure the honorees were recognized in style. Those being honored this year include Slick Rick, the late Isaac Hayes, Too Short, De la Soul, Cypress Hill and Naughty by Nature. This is the fifth class of legends to be nominated; past honorees include Snoop Dogg, the Wu-Tang Clan, Run-DMC and Rakim. Fellow hip-hop heavyweights Big Boi, Wyclef Jean and Public Enemy came out to rehearse alongside newcomers like Estelle and the Gym Class Heroes. "We're here to be a part of something historical," Gym Class Heroes frontman Travis McCoy told MTV News. "It's like the all-star game of hip-hop." The group practiced their tribute to Cypress Hill with Mack 10, Jim Jones and Fat Joe. The West Coast collective is notable for being the first mainstream Latino hip-hop group. Another West Coast act being honored is Too Short, whose career has been anything but. The MC has been in the game for more than 20 years, spawning hits such as "Short Dog the Pimp" in the late '80s and a guest spot on Snoop Dogg's "Life of Da Party" earlier this year. "Short to Oakland is like Jay-Z to Brooklyn," Mistah F.A.B. said. A video was played during the rehearsal in which Naughty by Nature recalled being accosted by New York crowds early on in their career because they were from New Jersey. They eventually grew to be loved, no matter where they performed. "They're the anthem kings," Big Boi said of Naughty by Nature. "From 'O.P.P.' to 'Hip-Hop Hooray' — every time they put out a song, they had an anthem that the whole globe was singing, man." While Slick Rick and De la Soul rehearsed their sets, Wale, Busta Rhymes, Spliff Starr, ?uestlove, Bun B and Biz Markie mixed and mingled. The ballroom was more like a family reunion then a rehearsal. The only non-rap artist being celebrated is Isaac Hayes, and while the late musician never spit a bar, his work helped inspire many MCs. From the Notorious B.I.G.'s "Warning" to the Geto Boys' "Mind Playing Tricks on Me," Black Moses had a lasting effect on hip-hop. While Biz Markie played a sample of one of Hayes' songs, a cipher featuring Mos Def, Busta Rhymes and others broke out. The Biz playfully stopped the beat, interrupting the freestyle session causing participants to yell, "Yo, keep playing that!" Related Videos Related Photos Related Artists |
| Congress Passes $700 Billion Financial-Bailout Bill Posted: 03 Oct 2008 12:42 AM PDT Senate changes to the bill and encouragement from voters convince House to approve it by 263-171.
On Friday (October 3), the House of Representatives passed the $700 billion financial-bailout bill that it had previously defeated on Monday. After the House approved the rescue plan by a vote of 263-171, it was sent to President Bush, who in a statement to the press said he would sign it into law later that day. "By coming together on this legislation, we have acted boldly to prevent the crisis on Wall Street from becoming a crisis in communities across our country," he said. "I know some Americans have concerns; in this situation, action was clearly necessary." Following Monday's House vote, the Senate made several alterations to the bill, increasing it from a three-page proposal to a 100-plus-page document, and passed it on Wednesday. The bailout legislation allows the Treasury secretary to use up to $700 billion, contributed by taxpayers, toward purchasing troubled assets from banks. It is the biggest government intervention in the economy since the Great Depression. According to CNN, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri, told reporters that many representatives changed their minds about the bill after receiving calls from voters supporting it, having the SEC accounting rules clarified and seeing the Senate's additions to the bill — which included tax-break extenders and an increase in FDIC deposit-insurance coverage from $100,000 to $250,000. "While the focus has been on the Dow Jones and Wall Street, we are addressing the real pain felt by Mr. and Mrs. Jones on Main Street," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters. While some representatives still lamented giving assistance to the very banks they blame for the country's mortgage crisis, the bill's supporters hope that it will both encourage reform and make sure individuals and small businesses continue to receive the loans they need. "The legislation is a critical step toward stabilizing our financial markets and ensuring an uninterrupted flow of credit to households and businesses," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said. |
| Who Won The Vice-Presidential Debate? Share Your Opinion In The <i>Newsroom</i> Posted: 03 Oct 2008 08:49 AM PDT The debate is still raging on whether Joe Biden or Sarah Palin emerged the victor on Thursday night.
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| UGK's Bun B Reports On Hurricane Ike's Aftermath In Texas Posted: 03 Oct 2008 09:59 AM PDT The rapper takes us around the hard-hit towns of Galveston and Beaumont as people finally return home.
Seven days after Hurricane Ike struck Texas on September 13, I finally got my power turned back on. I live in Houston, a big city that didn't even take the brunt of the storm. But for a lot of the folks living in smaller communities along the Gulf Coast, the impact of Ike was much, much worse. I wanted to show MTV News what it was like for people living in Galveston, in Beaumont, in Orange or in Port Arthur, which is where I'm from. It's easy to bring the cameras one day after the storm, two days after the storm. But what about a week after the storm? Two weeks? Some people are just getting back home, just starting to deal with the reality of what's happened. And that's what I wanted to show everyone: what it's like when the cameras leave, and these people in these smaller communities are left to deal with the devastation.
Our first day was in Beaumont. It's part of the Golden Triangle — Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange. It's pretty much one place; when people in Orange get affected, people in Beaumont and Port Arthur feel it. A lot of the people in those towns work in the refineries, which is one of the main industries in the Golden Triangle. This whole area, the people there, they were some of UGK's first supporters. These are the first places we did shows, first places we sold music. So it was really important for me to come down here and make sure people were OK. It's not about if I know them personally — I know their struggle. We all went through the same thing. If you come from this area, everybody has pretty much lived the same way of life. When we visited Beaumont, it was 10 days out from when the storm hit, and people were just getting back home. We went to the Beaumont Athletic Complex where the buses full of evacuees were dropping people back from all over Texas — San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and smaller places like Tyler, Sunrise, even northern Louisiana. They had to get their stuff off that main bus and then hop on a smaller bus that would take them to their neighborhood. For some people, this was the second time in a month they had to evacuate — Hurricane Gustav was expected to hit these cities too. Most of the people we met were still somewhat in a state of shock from it all. They didn't really know the extent of the damage to their homes. They hadn't seen their houses, didn't know about their cars or whether their place of employment was still standing. Can you imagine if your job wasn't there when you got back? You don't have money to start over, and you don't have a job to go back to so you can make money to start over. It can really throw you off, to say the least. Some of the people we saw were understandably frustrated. They had been displaced for 10-14 days, and the uncertainty of it all was probably too much for anyone to handle, let alone if you're someone with children or trying to take care of your family. I don't want to discredit anyone — FEMA and a lot of the city and state agencies did a decent job getting people organized and getting people on buses out of town. A lot of lives were most likely saved. But I'm not exactly sure how far their plans extended once they did get them out of town. Maybe they were thinking they'd have evacuees for three, four days at most. I don't think they were thinking of having people for one to two weeks. We visited Galveston the next day, the first day they were letting residents back into town. What we saw will never leave me. Galveston is a big beach town. If you were in Houston with an afternoon to kill, and the weather was nice outside, you'd drive down to Galveston. It's like a Santa Monica or a Coney Island. But coming back into Galveston that day, it was something else. There weren't any boats, and there weren't any tourists. Where there were once buildings and shopping centers and people's homes, now there was just a pile of debris. You could tell no one really knew what to make of it all. In each city we went to, it was clear that people were coming together to take care of each other. These are the people who have the least amount to work with in the beginning, the least amount of resources with which to rebuild. If they're feeling that the city, state or FEMA aren't taking care of them during the evacuation, they definitely come together and help each other out. It's a community base in these small towns. People are very close, and you're only separated from each other by one or two people, it seems like. People are used to having to pool resources to make something happen, so when something like this hurricane hits, all they can do is rely on each other. I hope that people understand that these issues that these people are dealing with, it lasts much longer than the news cycle. When you're sitting in your house three months later and thinking, "I wonder what happened to the people from the hurricane?" they're probably still hurting and they probably still need your help. If there's anything I can say, it's just don't forget about these people. Related Videos Related Artists |
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