Earl Simmons…aka DMX platinum selling, multimillion dollar
making hip hop artist of the 90’s was just featured on Iyanla Vanzant’s Fix My
Life which aired on OWN network Saturday April 13, 2013. His story was so
remarkable and if you haven’t seen it I challenge you all to watch it and not
be judgmental as you watch.
DMX’s drug addiction was put on display; however there is
clearly a deeper hurt that has consumed him. Childhood hurts have affected him
mentally and have not allowed him to forgive and forget the actions that
started with his own mother. As a child DMX was sent to a group home at the age
of seven. During the interview his emotions are at an all-time high when trying
to tell the story. He relates his issues with his mother “not wanting him” to
the way he expressed his love with his girlfriend who is now his estranged wife.
When he fell in love with his wife he was so afraid that she would leave him;
just like his mother. His feelings of rejection never allowed him to fully have
a successful relationship.
"Colette introduces a new range of candles, each inspired by various different scents including sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Three candles in total are offered, each featuring artwork by Genevieve Gauckler in vibrant colors. The candles can be pre-ordered through the colette online store, each priced at approximately $31 USD." -HypeBeast
We're giving away a copy of the memoir Queen Pin by Jemeker Thompson-Hairston, with David Ritz!
Queen Pin is the true life account of Jemeker, one of the most successful drug dealers in the '80s/'90s. This is her struggle to keep her drug business afloat after the death of her husband, how her empire crumbles, and how her faith in God saved her from a life of crime.
In order to enter the giveaway contest, simply leave a comment saying why you love The Black Urban Times. As simple as that! One winner will be picked at random. Be sure to leave a valid email address in order to receive notification if you're the winner! Contest ends August 7, 2010.
Contest open to residents of the U.S. and Canada only. No P.O. boxes, please.
Book review of Queen Pin coming soon!
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Desperate times call for desperate measures. The characters in Teri Woods’ novel Alibi are desperately trying to survive in the tough streets of 1980s Philadelphia.
The book starts with two young men desperate to make it in the drug game decide to rob a stash from Simon Shuller, the city’s biggest drug lord. The robbery is spontaneous and unplanned, and they run into Nard, who is desperate to keep his good name with the boss. This results in a shootout, where Nard is the only survivor. As he flees the scene, he is spotted by a neighborhood child and his mother. Now Nard is desperate for an alibi.
That’s where Daisy comes into play. She’s a stripper that does more than tease her customers. She’s also broke and takes care of her ailing mother. She’s desperate for some cash. When Sticks, Nard’s running buddy and Daisy’s part-time lover, approaches her with a wad of cash to provide Nard with an alibi, she accepts. It sounds like a good deal to her; she thinks all she has to do is talk to an investigator and that’s it. Besides, she’s desperate for the extra money.
Unfortunately, the plan doesn’t go through as Sticks predicted. There are some loose ends that need to be tied up – like the two witnesses to the shooting. Instead of talking it over with Simon Shuller, the main boss, Nard takes matters into his own desperate hands, making more of a mess for himself and his buddy Sticks. When holes begin to appear in Daisy’s alibi, Sticks adds to the body count in a desperate attempt to keep Nard from getting a heavy prison sentence.
Stick’s efforts are in vain, because Daisy wises up and bolts out of state, to live with relatives in the south. Daisy is a naive woman desperate for love. When her new boyfriend, who planned to marry her and buy her a house, disappears on her, and the authorities begin to pressure her, Daisy wants to leave it all behind and escape. Once she is on the run, Sticks and government agents follow her, both desperately trying to drag her back to Philly.
The book is non-stop action; full of plot changes and shootouts, as fans of Teri Woods’ writings have come to expect. The book has a frenetic pace; everything happens quickly and time gets compressed. To keep the action moving, there isn’t many parts for introversion by the characters. Especially for Daisy, who deals with a personal loss and being raped, but doesn’t seem effected by the events as one would imagine. After each traumatic event, Daisy continues with life as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. It isn’t that she’s a character with a particularly strong will.
Woods’ exchange of emotion for continued action is probably the book’s most glaring flaw. But Woods does a great job of adding short little quips of thought from inside characters’ minds – oftentimes the thoughts are humorous. If Woods’ goal with Alibi is to entertain and increase the heart rate of her readers as they read, then she hit the proverbial nail on the head.
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Throughout history, charismatic, powerful, and ruthless men have built empires only to have them crumble after being disposed. In-fighting between lieutenants and successors, and opportunistic rivals are the usual suspects for the downfall. It happened to empires built by Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan. In Teri Woods’ novel Dutch II: Angel’s Revenge, it happens to Dutch’s street empire.
The book opens with the aftermath of a bloody courtroom shootout between Dutch and his team against the law. The body count starts out high, and the law wants the world to believe Dutch is a member of the fallen. This only escalates the turf war in Newark, NJ, as dealers – major and minor – want control of the streets that were once firmly held in Dutch’s grasp.
Angel and One-eyed Roc, two of Dutch’s generals, are released from prison after serving three years each on life-sentences. When they get out, the streets of Newark are in the power of Roll, a rival drug lord who had snatched control from Dutch’s successor Young World. Angel and One-eyed Roc both plan to rid the streets of Roll, but for different reasons.
Angel plans to wrestle back control of the streets for herself and for Dutch, whom she believes is still alive. As the book’s subtitle implies, Angel is pissed and starts knocking off anyone that had done Dutch wrong, including former friends and rivals.
In prison, One-eyed Roc grew closer to the Islamic faith and changed his mission: he now wants to rid the streets of drugs and depredation. He stopped being One-eyed Roc and became Rahman, militant Muslim using violence and intimidation to push hustlers and pimps off the streets. Eventually, Angel and Rahman find themselves on opposite ends of the battleground.
Unfortunately, the confrontation between Angel and Rahman doesn’t live up to the anticipation built from the constant foreshadowing. The bloody mayhem and body count leading up to the ending confrontation is what makes this book extremely entertaining. There are club massacres, C4 explosions; enough gangland violence to make any police commissioner or district attorney cringe at the murder rate. This is what happens when emperors fall: his subjects scramble to pick up the crumbs.
Dutch barely appears in the book, yet his presence permeates through the pages. His mother has conflicting emotions; she misses her son, not the monster he grew into. His ex-lover Nina struggles with his memory as hints of her past with Dutch begin to cloud her current relationship. The streets look to Dutch’s profile for guidance, and hands reach to grab his gaudy dragon piece, which symbolizes control of the streets.
Woods does an excellent job of keeping the action moving forward with riveting and creative descriptions. There are a couple of heartwarming scenes between Rahman and his family. Woods smoothly injects strong emotional sequences into this world where heartlessness is valued.
There are some passages and sentences where the syntax makes the reading confusing and unclear. Sometimes Woods’ transitions between scenes and points of view are clunky and don’t flow. The overall ending is a letdown featuring coincidences masquerading as surprise twists.
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Phoenix mayor welcomes border buildup By JACQUES BILLEAUD, Associated Press Writer Jacques Billeaud, Associated Press Writer Wed Mar 25, 7:27 pm ET
PHOENIX – Posing as police officers, gunmen in bulletproof vests pulled over a motorist, took him to a Phoenix house, bound him with zip ties and held him for a $30,000 ransom in an abduction that may have been carried out by Mexican drug smugglers.
The abduction earlier this month was one of nearly 1,000 kidnappings reported in Phoenix over the past three years in a surge of lawlessness so terrifying that the mayor welcomed the news this week that Washington is sending more manpower and equipment to the Mexican border, 180 miles to the south.
"It's a good first step, but we'll need to do more," said Mayor Phil Gordon, who had pleaded with Congress for help.
The Obama administration announced Tuesday that it will dispatch nearly 500 more federal agents to the border, along with X-ray machines and drug-sniffing dogs, to stop the spillover of violence into the U.S. from Mexican drug- and immigrant-smugglers.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that the move is just a first step and that National Guardsmen might also be sent, something Texas Gov. Rick Perry has requested.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton paid her first visit to Mexico and pledged that the U.S. will help Mexico fight its murderous drug cartels, a battle that has cost more than 7,000 lives south of the border. click here for the full story
How US Drug Policies Destroy Our Inner Cities And The Third World By Casey Gane-McCalla March 18, 2009 1:13 pm
Drugs are a serious problem in America but, unfortunately, so is the war on drugs. Drugs mess up peoples’ lives, but not as much as the war on drugs where blacks and Hispanics are scapegoated for America’s problem. Despite the fact that studies show that blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate, blacks are incarcerated for drugs at a rate 6 times that of whites 4.2% vs. 0.7%.
By arresting minorities, America tries to show that it’s fighting the drug problem while whites in the suburbs stay free to use and abuse drugs without solid police interference. In fact, while use of the stereotypical drugs associated with African-Americans (i.e. crack and marijuana) is declining, there are major meth and prescription pill epidemics occurring across poorer rural and more affluent white communities. This problem has gone virtually ignored even though this level of drug addiction has become a silent killer in many of these areas.
One of the biggest problems with the war on drugs is the level of guns and violence involved. By criminalizing drugs, the US puts the distribution and manufacturing of drugs in the hands of violent, competing criminals. Gangs like the Bloods and the Crips all get their guns from US manufacturers. Often these guns are bought by gun runners who buy or ’steal’ the firearms from Virginia and then sell them up and down the east coast. Most guns used in drug related gun violence are illegally sold, but there has been no action by the US government to crack down on these illegal sales and, whether legal or illegal, all firearm profits somehow still get into the hands of gun manufacturers.
American gun laws not only fuel the drug war at home but also around the world. Recently on 60 Minutes, Mexican officials complained that most of the guns used in Mexico’s drug wars were bought in the USA. The Mexican drug wars are caused by American need for drugs as the cartels fight over who gets to service American addictions, leaving thousands of Mexicans dead, injured or kidnapped. The high level of money that American drug addiction brings into the United States makes it impossible for the Mexican government not to be corrupted. When the only Third World billionaire is a drug dealer, it’s obvious that drugs have become that part of the world’s major industry. click here for the full story
U.S. preparing integrated plan on Mexico drug war By David Morgan David Morgan Tue Mar 17, 6:39 pm ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government is working on an integrated plan to address Mexico's escalating war with drug traffickers and could complete work on the initiative as early as this week, a top U.S. military official said on Tuesday.
Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, who oversees U.S. military interests on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border as the head of Northern Command, told the Senate that the plan would likely involve all agencies of government including law enforcement and the military.
Among the priorities are likely to be measures to deal with violence that spills over the U.S. border, the flow of small arms from the United States to Mexico, support for the Mexican military, tightening border security and the spreading presence of Mexican cartels in U.S. cities.
The military is already employing border security techniques mastered in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, including unmanned aerial vehicles and technology capable of locating underground tunnels.
But an interagency government team, meeting this week at the Department of Homeland Security, is expected to produce a broad new initiative to confront a drug war that has killed thousands in Mexico and spilled over into U.S. cities such as Phoenix in a surge of kidnappings and other gang-related violence. click here for more
Oregon proposes taxing medical marijuana Last updated March 12, 2009 8:25 a.m. PT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SALEM, Ore. -- The Oregon Legislature's latest idea for a tax? Medical marijuana.
The state would take over growing and distributing marijuana to patients in the medical-marijuana program under a bill introduced Wednesday. Sponsored by Rep. Ron Maurer, R-Grants Pass, House Bill 3274 imposes a $98-per-ounce tax, which would cover the state's cost of operating and securing the production center.
"I'm not a pot guy, but the water's under the bridge. That's not the issue," Maurer told The Oregonian newspaper. "Let's not even discuss that. Let's discuss is the program working? The answer is unequivocally no, that the program is not working."
Oregon voters approved the use of medical marijuana more than a decade ago, deciding chronically and terminally ill patients should be allowed to use the drug to ease pain. Roughly 21,000 Oregonians now have cards authorizing them to use it for medicinal purposes, according to the state Department of Human Services.
Maurer and three co-sponsors think the bill would improve public safety by eliminating private medical-marijuana grow sites. Some private growers have been accused of illegally selling marijuana to those who don't have cards; other sites have been targeted by burglaries and home invasions. click here for the full story
Rush still might be on the "medicine"..that explains his rant Editor's thoughts By Mr. Abba A. Onyeani Ceo of theblackurbantimes.com
If you have read the news lately it seems to be that the Elephant is lost in the sand. The Republican party is lost and it will have to die off as it is now to ever recover. The radio host, Rush Limbaugh, has taken control of a party that had Lincoln as their once great legacy. Its over now. Please get the tissues Grand Ole Party.
The Obama party bus is going to stay on the road for 8 years before you can even put down new foundation. The very nature of the party is to now go against the most conservative of their party elders and believe that doing nothing is the solution to every problem. Its unfathomable that a political party would rather watch the President of The United States and people of this great nation fail than recover after a disasterous 8 years of Bushonomics(do nothing theory). Its now the time of the Democrats to destroy and rebuild the Republican party for them. I say this because they don't understand the concept of working together and they let elected officials be controlled by a loud mouth, Rush Limbaugh, who is a former DRUG ATTIC.
Have we all forgetten his drug issues that he has so publicly put in our faces only to be given over $400 million dollars worth of a radio contract?! This is very, very dangerous politics folks. Any member of the Republican party reading this need to seriously think about how they will rescue their Party back from Pookie aka Rush Limbaugh.
