By Jayson Rodriguez
Lil Wayne showed Louisville a lot of love when we talked to him about the NCAA Tournament last week. The long-haired lyricist picked Rick Pitino's team to make it to the Final Four.
His bracketology was so on point that he made his pick before Selection Sunday and before the Cardinals won the Big East Tournament over Syracuse this past weekend. He told us to watch out for the sleepers but then said, "It's gonna be Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Louisville and Carolina. Teams like that [make it to the end]."
Turns out, all four teams were picked as #1 seeds. Take that, office-pool hacks!
It also turns out Weezy is pretty popular with the Louisville players. On the University of Louisville's athletic site, hoopsters like junior Jerry Smith list Lil Wayne as their favorite rapper. Smith also gave a nod to the Game and Young Jeezy. Sophomore guard Preston Knowles also lists Lil Wayne, along with T.I., Chamillionaire and Lil Boosie. Read more...
By Rahman Dukes
DALLAS — On Tuesday (February 3) in the Las Colinas section of this city, Grammy Award-winning production duo Play N Skillz sat down for an interview with local CBS affiliate Channel 11. PNS were the subject of an upcoming segment airing on the station about their production on Lil Wayne's Grammy-nominated "Got Money."
Nestled in their home recording studio in a gated community, minutes prior to the interview, a red-eyed Play — tired from an all-night studio session with Slim Thug, Paul Wall and Pitbull — sat right up and greeted the MTV News team. "Had a good time last night? You tired?" he asked me. I threw the same question back at him. "This is what we do," he replied.
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By Jayson Rodriguez
Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes was undoubtedly the sparkplug member of TLC. Her energy was endless. So much so that the pint-size rapper felt her creativity couldn't be limited to her trademark 16-bar rushes that turned Chili and T-Boz's sultry vocals into titanic hits.
Left Eye tried to break out as a solo star on a number of occasions. Her first attempt, Supernova, was shelved in the States by her then-label, Arista, which only released the project overseas. Later, Left Eye ventured out West and landed with Los Angeles-based Death Row Records under the perplexing pseudonym N.I.N.A. That project, like her first, never saw the light of day. Next, as we all unfortunately know by now, the female MC died in a car accident in Honduras. Read more...
Today, on Malaria Awareness Day, MTV News producer Garth Bardsley thinks back on his recent visit to Houston, and the boatload of important info he picked up along the way:
Apparently I’m an idiot. Wasn’t malaria essentially eradicated from the planet way back in the 50’s? Or even if it didn’t completely disappear, wasn’t it highly contained, and the few people who caught it were just given a few pills and sent on their way?
Uh, well, nope. While malaria has been contained in the US since the 1950’s and Panama even earlier, in sub-Saharan Africa a child dies from the disease every 30 seconds -- that’s over 1 million deaths a year -- from a disease that’s both treatable and preventable! Ridiculous. And there’s even evidence that links global warming to an increase in the endemic zones.
In anticipation of Malaria Awareness Day, I went to Houston last week -- along with Chamillionaire -- to visit with a bunch of kids at YES Prep, a fantastically amazing charter school dedicated to educating economically disadvantaged youth. While there’s no doubt some of these kids could choose to spend their time bellyaching about what life has handed them, the students at this school -- which has a 100% acceptance rate to four-year colleges -- instead dedicate themselves to serving others.
Through raffle-ticket sales at two different dances in the last few months, the YES Prep students have raised $1,250 to buy mosquito-protecting bed nets to send to Africa. That dough will fun 125 nets, preventing 250 people from ever getting malaria. The organization behind the dances, Malaria No More (recently featured on "Idol Gives Back"), has set a completely attainable(!) goal of getting a bed net to everyone who needs one by the year 2010. They estimate needing 250 million nets. So far, they have enough money to fund 131 million -- over half of the way there.
Obviously, the goal of events like Malaria Awareness Day is to raise awareness, so morons like me know what’s going on. Consider me schooled.
This in from MTV News producer Garth Bardsley, on a shoot in the Lone Star State:
We're in southwestern Houston at a public high school called YES Prep, which is a free high school catering to low-income students, and -- get this -- it has a 100 percent acceptance rate to college.
Tomorrow the students are holding a dance on behalf of an organization called Malaria No More, raising money to purchase nets to protect against mosquitoes in Africa. So Houston's own Chamillionaire swung by to fire up the students and give them props for their hard work.
One of the great parts of this gig is bringing excitement to people who deserve it. When you spend your time doing the so-called "serious" stories for News -- politics, sexual health -- it's kinda cool to bring a couple hundred kids into a school cafeteria and watch them freak out when one of their idols runs in the door and hops up on the table. Personally, I couldn't handle that kind of screaming every day -- good thing I'm not a hip-hop star. Chamillionaire was fantastic, hanging for quite a while, visiting a class, taking pics.
Check out our continuing coverage of the fight against malaria -- a treatable disease that kills an African child every 30 seconds -- in the coming weeks at MTVNews.com. And more photos of Chamillionaire hanging with the class after the jump. Read more...
Bun B is definitely a favorite of most people in the biz and, well, we'll say it, he's one of our favorite people ever in the history of this rap game. Last night, the Texas vet hosted an album listening session for media here in New York and lots of people came out to the spot, including Talib Kweli, Fab 5 Freddy and a host of journos, bloggers and such. And our own Jayson Rodriguez, who reports:
Most listening sessions are a crap shoot. You never really know if folks are gonna show up, and whether its for the music or the free food. But by and large, the throng of people who came out to support Bun were there as much because he's such a good guy as because he's such a good lyricist. And in the wake of Pimp C passing, more than ever it just felt like you were there for your guy. That’s how Bun can make you feel.
More after the jump, including tracklist for II Trill.
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