I See Dead People
Written by Misha Stallworth
Hallucinations and delusions of grandeur are generally symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, but apparently in the music world today this is a new way for weak artists to produce albums. Charles Hamilton aka Sonic the Hedgehog (yes, a grown man is calling himself sonic), has listed the late, great James Dewitt Yancey bka J Dilla, as an executive producer on his recent album in the making to be released as early as June 23. Dilla passed in 2006 known then and still known as "one of the music industry's most influential hip-hop artists," when Charles Hamilton's name wasn't even in the phonebook, just a name in a high school year book, if not middle school. Even now, unless you saw him get his jaw rocked by his ex-girlfriend/staff member, you probably still don't know who he is. His actions are completely unacceptable, not only has he disrespected Dilla's memory by claiming that he's produced something that he had no hand in, he also went so far as to lie about knowing the Yancey family, specifically Dilla's mother Maureen Yancey (affectionately called Madukes)--a claim that was quickly shot down by people known to be actual friends of the Dilla family.
He also lied about the proceeds of the supposedly free album (to be released by Sega?) going to the Dilla Foundation that while launched, never quite got to the point of accepting donations per-say.
Not crazy enough?
That's cool because it gets even more strange. Hamilton attempted to defend, rationalize, justify (or whatever you want to call it) his actions by suggesting that the "paranormal," ("how much of the paranormal do you believe in," he asks) ghost form of Dilla, spiritually guided him in making the album and that's why he said Dilla was executive producer. You know, he was in the studio and like felt a chill down his weak spine and was like "that's Dilla" (pause.), so it was only right that the hallucinated projection of Dilla get credit right?
wrong.
That's what 'shout-outs' and 'thank you's are for and we all know that, we give shout-outs every chance we get; half the mixtapes that come out have a shout-out on every track. Just because you smoke a blunt, do some "meditation", or set the studio up with feng shui does not mean that your created zen has resurrected greatness and brought forth spirits to produce your album. If that was the case Ouija boards would be sold out and every episode of cribs would have one in the studio.
It's crazy, this cat truly has the internet going nuts on a regular basis with his recklessness. I honestly didn't know he was utilizing oxygen until the "Sonic Man" lost all his rings after his girl's fist hit his face in a video on worldstarhiphop.com. Really big ups to Brianna (<--example of shout out) for that, because he deserved it.
Apparently his internet failures extend beyond attempting to justify lies about a legend producing his album with blog entries about the paranormal and then getting punked on twitter by Detroiters everywhere for doing so--they extend back to the end of 2008 and a beef with Soulja Boy Tell Em', you know, the youtube teen dream, who sometimes sounds like he may just have a touch of down syndrome. And even with Soulja Boy's horrible speech he was still able to make Hamilton look dumb.
Step 1: Apologize
But you know what, I have to give credit where it's due and maybe he does have good intentions. But there are enough of those on the road to hell so it's still pretty insignificant. And all that bringing attention to the Detroit hip-hop scene stuff, I'm pretty sure we're good on the kind of attention he'd bring. Paying respects to Dilla is legit, but there's a way to do these things and it's not by plugging your album as being produced by him and then talking about how it happened like you're on some fatal attraction stuff.
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