loosie: words: Hand of God

Hand of God

As the rumormill churns: Human growth hormone, Busta becomes a Blood and Condi and Bush get busy.

by Staff | 2006.06.08

Thumbs up to Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Jason Grimsley for tattling to the feds on other steroid users. It's not so much that we want to cleanse baseball of cheaters -- we just like all the gossip and speculation about which players have been pumping up with human growth hormones. It's the new gay.

Thumbs up to evil harpy Ann Coulter's willingness to insult the widows of 9-11. Although the straw-haired Brownshirt's overarching point about liberals trafficking in WTC grief is absurd in its hypocrisy (her neo-con heroes started a war based on a cocktail of fear and flag-waving, for fucking out loud), we agree that using victimhood as armor in a political debate is sort of an unethical breastplate. Victims' rights groups are more or less whiny vigilantes who seem to believe their collective suffering gives their opinions greater gravity than those unvisited by tragedy. Those still twisting within a maelstrom of pain are probably the ones most likely to support death by stoning for whoever keyed the door of their Pontiac Silverbird.

Thumbs up to Franklin Avenue's Yafaa Money Market for getting Kettle Chips. Mohammed was boasting about the imminent arrival of "white people chips", and here they are, all roasted red peppery and goat cheesy. Since it's one of the grimiest bodegas on F.A., we've decided to assist in the whole process of gentrifying their foodstuff selections for the sheer ridiculousness of it all. With our recommendations, soon there will be stacks of Sabra humus, rows of gorgonzola and aisles full of duck liver products to go along with 50-cent Newports and bootleg copies of Agallah's Propane Piff mixtape.

Thumbs up to the rumors that the First Lady has checked into the Mayflower Hotel after learning that the President has been shagging Secretary of State Condi Rice. The subsequent whispers from a Nevada dominatrix about Bush going boy-on-boy with Ambassador-to-Poland Victor Ashe back in 1984 are just icing on the cake. The downside to any investigations of these alleged dalliances is that Bush will probably declare war on China as a distraction.

Thumbs down to Busta Rhymes' thuggish dope-dealer persona. His new LP, The Big Bang, is legitimately a good album, but hearing the former member of the PTA-fearing Leaders of the New School bellow about guns and drugs requires a healthy dose of amnesia. We don't even take umbrage with rappers who conjure up fictional tales of coke by the boatload -- but as Hip-Hop nerds, we're insulted that Busta assumes we don't remember him wearing a dress and politic-dittoing it up with Martha Stewart. We'd be willing to chalk it all off to shrewd Aftermath marketing, but after getting word through the grapevine that Busta recently became a Blood, we're thinking this is a bizarre mid-life crisis. There's only five years left...'til 40.

Thumbs down to Missy Elliot again, crooning about her genitalia on "How We Do It Over Here". All is not lost on the track, however -- we love both the airhorns and the fact that the rotund self-righteous neo-souler from Floetry completely debased herself on the hook by singing about "Mansions, money, cars, clothes, sexy broads". Somewhere one of Common's knitted yak-fur kufis is unravelling in its grave.

Thumbs up to Raekwon saying "We gangsta Republicans with them big things, big rings, get your head shot off" on Busta's track "Goldmine". Actually, everything we've heard of late from the Chef has been stellar: "Blue Angles", "Heavyweights", "State of Grace" and damn near everything off Ghost's Fishscale. That said, we were excited for Cuban Linx 2 off the strength of those pics of Rae cavorting with guns, bags of kush, boxes of cereal and bodega Arabs sans Kettle Chips.

Thumbs down to wasting four Hand of God judgments (including this one) on Busta's album instead of telling our boy Douglas Passion to crank out a real review. Unfortunately he's somewhere in Interzone with a needle in his forearm, hammering away at a cockroach typewriter.