Sample of the Day (Day 1)

Welcome to Where's My 40 Acres' Sample of the Day, highlighting some of the best production in the hip-hop game.
First out the box is Solomon Burke's "Cool Breeze," off his 1972 film soundtrack od the same name. This song was sampled by Hassan for Ghostface Kilah's Supreme Clientele album on the classic, super-quotable Ghost track "Apollo Kids."


For me, the wild thing about this track is that since I'm a massive Ghostface fan, it sounds to me almost like Solomon Burke made a track after chopping up Apollo Kids on his MPC and then playing the rest of the stuff. The pieces of the sample don't fall in the same order they do on Apollo Kids, so it always throws me. Anyway, this song is a classic blaxploitation jam and is a great example of Solomon Burke's massive musical abilities. If you don't know, check him out! R.I.P. Solomon Burke, long live the music!

Solomon Burke - "Cool Breeze"


Ghostface Killah - "Apollo Kids"

I will fully support BET when...

This band wins a BET Award.

God Forbid - "Anti Hero"


Sincerely,


Xmike.

April Smith and The Great Picture Show

We featured her cover of Trey Songz' "Bottoms Up" on one of our podcasts, but here she is in all her glory. Toms River, NJ's April Smith! This band is very energetic and does a good job blending vintage vibe and instrumentation with modern songwriting and lyrics. Follow her @aprilsmithmusic. Album is in stores/iTunes called Songs For A Sinking Ship and it is quality.

"Terrible Things"


"Bright White Jackets"


"Bottoms Up"

Top Ten Cloves: Other Pope Tweets

By J. Thomas Duffy


News Item: Pope sends first tweet, launching new Vatican site


10.  Can't wait to see Transformers 3 ...


  9.  Anybody know how to upload some pics to FB? ... Shitass things won't take ...


  8.  Don't know bout this writer, but we doin fabulous with deals from Groupon ... Got this badass iPad with bomb of a discount!


  7.  Who looks better in his shorts, me or that Weiner guy?


  6.  Tell the Egyptians to "Get A Life!"


  5.  Follow Me! ... I want to make a run at Lady Gaga this month, for tops!


  4.  WTF NY? ... We'll have to reach out to our boy Pat Robertson, see if he can conjure up a hurricane or tornado ...


  3.  Here's a "Shout Out" to my boys in Philly ... Hang tough, we'll all get thur this (and use the Woodstock thing, it's the bomb)


  2.  I don't know about you, but I would $$ to see Bachmann and Palin mud wrestle!


  1.  Hey ChrisF on Haypi Kingdom, I'm cummin' after U MFer! ... U stole my crops!



Bonus Riffs


Blessed be thy tweeters: Pope issues praise in fewer than 140 characters


Know Thy Pope


Retro Garlic: "We Got An Eight-Page Layout With Viceroy ... The New Pope Is A Thinking Man ..."


Vatican Discounts "Bonfire Pope"; Says Flames "Not Hunched Over Enough"


Top Ten Cloves: Things The Vatican Has Done To Make Good Friday Even Better

Cross posted on The Garlic: All The Cloves Fit To Peel

Florida Governor Rick Scott's "tough love" not so popular - are we surprised?

By Richard K. Barry

Quick update here on the woeful performance of Republican Governor Rick Scott of Florida, at least by the standards of current approval ratings. Yes, the New York Times reported today that Scott has the lowest approval of any governor in the country. What a distinction!

Not surprisingly, when asked about his 29 percent approval rating in a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in May, he said, "I don't think about it." Well, he might want to start.

As the Times reports:

His negative rating has soared from 22 percent in February shortly after he entered office to 57 percent, suggesting that the more Floridians get to know him, the less they like him.

No matter how this may impact him whenever he has to face the voters again, the real issue could be what it does to federal races in Florida in 2012.

The Times story continues:

Mr. Scott's sinking popularity has Republican politicians and some strategists worried that his troubles could hamper their chances of tilting the state's 29 electoral votes back into their column in 2012. President Obama won Florida by 2.8 percentage points in 2008.

Republican Senate and House candidates are also worrying, strategists say, that the governor's rapidly declining popularity will affect their chances of winning election.

Mr. Scott's unpopularity is mostly rooted in his aggressive push for large cuts in the budget and pubic-sector work force, his decision to reject $2.4 billion in federal money for a high speed rail project, and the dismissive and even abrasive way he deals with those who disagree with him or ask a lot of questions.

He also promised to create many jobs, and it has been the mantra of his tenure so far. But the state's unemployment rate, down from a high of 11.9 percent, is still at 10.6 percent.

And, of course, the Republican push at the federal level to "re-tool" Medicare can't help politicians at the local level in a state with so many elderly residents.

Here's the thing. Karl Rove and other GOP spinners want to argue that unless the economy substantially improves by 2012, which now seems unlikely, Obama is toast. But it does seem to me that at the local level (props to Tip O'Neill), the Republican governors who are inflicting all the pain better have a lot to show for it by the time the polls open again, or voters could decide to go with the president and the party that have at least tried to help and haven't been such pricks about it.

Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan are all states with relatively new and precariously perched Republican governors. There are a lot of electoral votes there that could go either way and not a few interesting House and Senate races. We'll see who pays the most for a poor economy in 2012.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Shell Game

By Carl

 

My suspicion is Al Qaeda and their sympathisers are a lot more clever than we credit them for:

KABUL — Kamel Khan, 32, a businessman, was chatting with two friends on the poolside terrace of the hilltop Intercontinental Hotel Tuesday night when he heard a burst of gunfire and looked up. A man carrying a machine gun, with an ammunition belt across his chest and a knapsack on his back, was standing a few feet away.

“He stared at all of the guests like he wanted to kill us, and he had enough bullets to do it, but for some reason he just turned and kept going,” Khan said. After a moment of shock, Khan and dozens of other guests made a dash for the garden wall and fled downhill, while heavy shooting erupted behind them.

I don't think it's much of a coincidence that we announce a troop drawdown in Afhganistan and fighting begins to flare up again.

It seems that a strategy of trying to exhaust the resources of the greatest military in the history of the planet is underway. It's a smart strategy. Our armed forces are pretty regimented in terms of materiel and personnel. We don't really have a flexible strategy to keep our troops fresh and we certainly aren't about to start a draft at this point in time. We've got the forces we're going to fight with and can only hope they're up to the task over the long and difficult haul.

Thank you, George Bush. Sometimes, listening to Jesus means actually taking his advice and turning the other cheek. But I digress...

We've been at this war, on and off (because you sure can't call the first seven years anything more than lip service to accomplishing a goal) for almost eleven years now and will certainly surpass that mark before our troops come home.

By contrast, World War II took less than half that time, we beat the Nazis AND Japan in two theatres. By that measure, this Middle-South Asia adventure has been a debacle. We wars on three fronts (if you include Iraq and Pakistan) and are rumbling with Libya.

The paranoid in me believes there's more here than meets the eye. After spending nearly forty years in a cold war with the Soviet Union, perhaps its possible that the Chinese were taking notes. If they can get the US to dismantle our economy willingly in pursuit of ghosts and vapor trails, the Chinese can rather quietly declare checkmate on us and our economy.

We've certainly demonstrated our willingness to take our economy to the brink in order to beat a military rival. China doesn't even have to lift a finger except to fund the Taliban and Al Qaeda (as well as Hamas and Hezbollah, among others) to keep our military spending up, our debt purchases flowing and our military exhausted.

After all, would you send in American troops after a decade of fighting an exhausting and draining war into a dispute in the South China Sea?

(crossposted to Simply Left Behind)

Tv One's Unsung "Big Daddy Kane" [VIDEO]