“Southeast Jerome” is officially gone for good. As well as “Dolla Bill” and “Sheriff Gonna Getcha.”
Clinton Portis was released by the Washington Redskins on Monday, ending a charismatic and sometimes contentious seven-year stay that, for a while at least, made him the face of the franchise.
Injuries and money led to coach Mike Shanahan’s decision. Portis had played in only 13 games over the last two seasons because of a severe concussion in 2009 and a torn groin muscle in 2010.
Portis was scheduled to make $8.3 million next season, and Shanahan made it clear at the NFL combine that the Redskins wouldn’t keep the 29-year-old running back at that price.
“We’re going to let him test the market,” Shanahan said, “and see what’s out there for him.”
Portis told 106.7 The Fan that he was given a chance to restructure his contract, but he said it would be “hard to accept not being the go-guy.”
“It was kind of a mutual decision,” Portis said. “They could have sat and held on and played around. They gave me an opportunity to further my career and go somewhere where I can help.”
Portis is 77 yards of 10,000 career rushing yards and leaves Washington 648 shy of one of his oft-stated goals – Hall of Famer John Riggins’ franchise record.
“If the record meant that much, I think I could stay in D.C. to get it,” Portis said. “Although I wanted it, I don’t think I wanted it bad enough to … continue to endure the area to get it. If John Riggins is the only name you can say did more than me as a Redskins running back, that’s great company to be in. And I’m OK with that.”
Portis will be most remembered for his colorfully productive 2005 season, when he set a franchise single-season rushing record (1,516 yards) and led the team to its first playoff berth in six years while playing dress-up along the way. Every Thursday during the season’s homestretch he would appear in costume, playing a wide range of characters that also included “Bro Sweets” and “Inspector Two-Two.”
Portis is also one who freely speaks his mind, and that frequently got him into trouble over the years. He picked on his offensive line. He derisively called coach Jim Zorn a “genius.” He said female reporters are naturally “going to want somebody” when they see undressed players in the locker room.
He even belittled Riggins, saying the local legend had it easier in the 1980s because it was “really not hard to be a great running back when you’ve got that talent all around you.”
“I always spoke the truth,” Portis said Monday, “and I think that’s bigger to me than the rushing record or the touchdowns or anything else.”
Portis was also profoundly affected by the death of Redskins safety and good friend Sean Taylor in 2007. Both played for the University of Miami.
“Clinton provided excitement from the very first time he touched the ball as a Redskin, and we were lucky to witness every ounce of energy, effort and passion he has given ever since,” Redskins owner Dan Snyder said in a statement released by the team. “We have been through a lot both on and off of the field and we would like to wish him and his family the very best.”
Portis played in only five games in 2010 before the groin injury ended his season. He rushed for a career-low 227 yards on 54 carries with two touchdowns.

“>

In a previously unreleased video, Jay-Z explains how real life experiences caused him to change the double-time flow he used while rapping with Jaz-O.

For those wondering what prompted his move away from the double-time rhyme scheme used on songs such as “I Can’t Get With That” and “The Originators,” Jay-Z says it was a simple matter of style versus substance.

“When I first started writing raps, I was a kid,” Jay-Z explained. “I started when I was nine-years-old, so I didn’t have real life experiences. The thing I drew off of was being creative. It was more about the technique than what I was saying. I was trying to say things in different ways—doing faster flows and triplet styles. It was more of a technical thing.”

Jay added that as he collected more real life experiences, he focused more on subject matter and less on the technical aspects of his rhymes. The slowed-down delivery, with an attention to social commentary manifested itself on songs such as “Minority Report,” which addressed Hurricane Katrina and “Say Hello,” which took Don Imus and Al Sharpton to task in one of its verses.

“It became more about the words, more about what I was saying and more about this emotion and this truth,” Jay-Z said, while pointing out that he revisited the face-paced rhyme scheme, presumably on songs such as “Nigga What, Nigga Who (Originators ’99)” among others. “I still had the technical side because I was writing for so many years.”

The video interview is part of a promotional campaign for an iPhone application in conjunction with Jay-Z’s Decoded memoir/lyric book. A similar interview, also found on Jay-Z’s official YouTube channel emerged last fall; the clip featured Jay explaining the lyrics to his song, “Most Kings.”

Birdman says that in 2010, he received a nine-figure check that he shared with his team.

On the Big Tymers first album, 1998’s How You Luv That Birdman (a/k/a Baby), Mannie Fresh and Juvenile made a song called “Try’n 2 Make A Million.” Almost 13 years later, Birdman says he recently made a hundred of them, in one transaction. During a recent appearance on Big Boy’s Neighborhood radio show, the Cash Money Records co-founder was asked the largest check he ever cashed. “A hundred million dollars, ’bout…six months ago,” said the executive-turned-rapper with a smile. What did he do with said money? “Go straight to the team…then it’s playtime.”

Birdman did not reveal who wrote the check, and for what services rendered.

Later in the interview, Birdman was asked about any things from his business career that he wished he’d down differently. He referred back to former Cash Money artist B.G.’s 1999 album Chopper City In The Ghetto’s first single, “Bling, Bling.” The hit became a cultural phenomenon, leading to the slang term for jewelry to end up in the Oxford Dictionary last decade. “‘Bling, bling’ for sure,” explained Birdman. “We was young, and ain’t really know. If so, we woulda been rich-er. ‘Bling bling’ is definitely something that I wish we [trademarked]. But I guess, keep goin’ in life [and] we’ll get where we tryin’ to go.”

Six months after their public war of the words, the former collaborators finally make peace over Twitter.

It’s not too often Hip Hop artists settle their conflicts over Twitter. That particular online medium seems to be reserved for flaring public beefs rather than squashing them, which is why Wale and Kid Cudi’s public peacemaking comes as a surprise.

The two crossed wires last September when Wale mentioned Cudi in a song. Cudi shot back in Complex Magazine by calling his DC-based peer “a simple-ass rapper.” Both artists addressed the beef, but never attempted to make amends until now.

“>

Hmmmmmm….Thisis50.com released lyrics to an unheard verse by Eminem from “I Get Money.” In the song, Eminem mentions Jay and Kanye. Not exactly a shot, but certainly a statement. See the line before…and no, there is no audio yet.

“They keep on saying the same rappers are the best, Jay-Z & Kanye West Maybe they’re just trying to distract you from the fact that I’m coming back Or maybe it’s cause I ain’t Black, Maybe it’s because of that, Maybe it’s because I’m the highest selling artist in rap”

Terius Gray, professionally known as rapper Juvenile, was arrested Saturday on possession of Marijuana charges and driving with a suspended license while in Louisiana.

Sterlington Police reps said that the rapper was released after he posted $750 bond.

Juvenile has been arrested and found guilty on the same set of charges in the past.

According to published reports, the rapper was driving and pulled over. He then gave them a small bag of weed after they said they smelled the scent emanating from his vehicle.

He’s due in court again on April 1, widely recognized as April Fools Day.

President Obama on Saturday delivered his sharpest message yet to Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy: Leave now.

Obama for the first time called for Khadafy to step down as the UN Security Council hit the embattled strongman with stiff sanctions.

“When a leader’s only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now,” Obama told German Chancellor Angela Merkel, according to a summary of the conversation provided by the White House.

Obama’s blunt message marked a departure for the White House, which had earlier insisted it was up to the Libyan people to decide who should lead their country.

Hours after Obama’s pronouncement, the council ordered an arms embargo, assets freeze and travel ban against the Libyan government, Khadafy, his close family and associates. It also ordered a crimes against humanity investigation into the bloodshed.

Khadafy, earlier in the day, signaled he had no intention of giving up power as he handed out guns to his supporters and urged teams of young men to hunt down dissidents.

Terrified anti-government protestors braced themselves for more bloody battles as gunfire continued to ring out across the capital.

Condemnation mounted from world leaders the day after Obama authorized U.S. sanctions against Libya, with Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi saying it appeared Khadafy was no longer in control.

The dictator’s son, Seif al-Islam, dismissed suggestions the country was slipping from his father’s hands, saying three-quarters of the country remains under government rule and was “living in peace.”

He added that if anti-government demonstrations by “terrorists” do not end, Libya risks descending into civil war “like Somalia.”

News filtering out of Libya painted an entirely different picture as new details emerged of the violent methods used to quash the protesters in recent days.

The New York Times reported loyal Khadafy forces shot at people from within ambulances and used anti-aircraft guns against crowds.

Witnesses said the dead and injured were being rounded up and taken from hospitals to cover up the alleged human rights abuses.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said more than 1,000 people have died in the unrest in Libya, but it has been impossible to establish an exact death toll.

The eastern part of the country was largely free from Khadafy’s control, but he vowed to fight to the bitter end as tanks and all-terrain vehicles patrolled Tripoli.

Afrika Owes was a 17 year old with everything going for her. A precocious child growing up in Harlem, her talents were not deferred but frequently rewarded: She attended basketball camps, sang in the choir at Abyssinian Baptist Church, won a poetry contest and even earned a scholarship to the elite Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. A savvy and ambitious student, she had her sights set on either NYU or Columbia for college, or perhaps the University of Pennsylvania if things didn’t work out in New York. She had options, and she knew it.

Despite all that, Owes made headlines last weekend not for her intellectual achievements but for something else entirely – her unwavering loyalty to a nihilistic street culture that is devouring young blacks. Owes was arrested for running drugs and guns on behalf of her incarcerated boyfriend, Jaquan Layne, a member of the “137th Street Crew,” a violent street gang that sold crack not too far from the Abyssinian Church.

Afrika seems to have been many things: She was “real,” she was “cool,” she was “down” and most likely she was a victim – but sadly she was not unpredictable. Though I don’t know this teenager specifically, I know a good deal about the culture that has shaped her generation and mine, telling us repeatedly that black authenticity is inextricably linked to street credibility. Allow me to extrapolate.

I can imagine a 12-year-old Afrika, just as she’s becoming aware of boys, singing along in her bedroom to a seemingly innocuous song like Destiny’s Child’s “Soldier”:

I need a soldier

That ain’t scared to stand up for me

Known to carry big things

If you know what I mean

If his status ain’t hood

I ain’t checkin’ for him

Betta be street if he lookin’ at me

I need a soldier

That ain’t scared to stand up for me

Gotta get dough

And he betta be street

I can imagine that young girl realizing that the college-bound boys at her school aren’t nearly as appealing as a young turk like Layne.

Fast forward five years, and I can imagine Owes taking the subway down to the New York Public Library on 42nd Street to hear the famous black professor from Princeton, Cornel West, live in conversation with the rapper Jay-Z. Perhaps she has recently read in Rolling Stone that Jay-Z is one of the President’s favorite artists; perhaps that was something she already knew.

I can imagine Afrika listening as West asks Jay-Z, the ex-crack dealer made good millions of times over, to expound upon the similarities between, of all things, “the hustler and the freedom fighter.” I can hear the applause as Jay-Z responds, “the difference is the level of maturity.” I can envision the pretty girl with a bright future leaving the talk persuaded that maybe, just maybe, there is something noble about the crack dealer’s calling.

I can see her back home in her bedroom, on the phone with her boyfriend at Rikers, assuring him that she will stay true to the cause.

These are only my imaginings. Maybe it wasn’t like that at all. Maybe Afrika is simply a bad kid, nothing more or less. The fact remains, though, that the youth culture she has grown up in valorizes the kind of man she fell in love with while rationalizing the disastrous decisions she made to prove herself to him. At the same time, the very public leaders who are in the strongest position to refute this folly more often than not make careers out of contorting themselves to justify it.

I have known several Afrika Owes in my life. During the second semester of my senior year at Georgetown, one of my classmates, the product of a posh New England boarding school and a star tennis player, was expelled just weeks before graduation. As my friends and I scratched our heads trying to figure out what infraction he possibly could have committed – cheating on an exam? driving drunk? – details of a different sort soon emerged. It turned out that our talented classmate led a dual existence. Even as he burned the midnight oil in the library and ate with us in the cafeteria, he never stopped being a soldier. He toted a handgun and sold drugs for a D.C. crew. One evening, he burst into the dorm room of a student who owed him money, gun in hand, looking to collect the debt.

Responding to the question, “Who gives us our values?” Albert Camus answered with a question: “Don’t you believe we are all responsible for the absence of values?” As another Black History Month draws to a close, we must face one of the great tragedies of our time: After so many obstacles have been overcome, our limitations are being chosen deliberately.

It is at our own peril that we fail to realize that ideas matter, that what we put inside our heads matters and that the values we choose to live by make all the difference in the world.

Lil Wayne had one hell of a greeting party at Opa-Loca Airport in Miami earlier this week — where the rapper was stopped and searched by federal agents after he got off his plane … TMZ has learned.

Law enforcement sources tell us … multiple agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency performed a contraband search on Weezy … who’s currently on felony probation stemming from incidents involving drugs and guns.

But Weezy was squeaky clean — so the agents let the rapper go on his way with no further incident.

Candles used in a voodoo sex ceremony ignited a fast-moving fire that swept through a Brooklyn apartment building on the evening of February 19 and into early February 20, 2011, and killed a woman, according to FDNY fire marshals and a city official.

Also, an open door and a delay in calling 911 allowed the fire to get even bigger, the marshals determined.

“Time and time again we respond to tragedies that could have been so easily prevented,” Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano said. “This fire had so many of those elements — candles left on the floor near combustible material, one of the occupants trying to douse the flames before calling 911 and an open door, which allowed fire to spread into the hallway. Hopefully others will learn from this tragedy.”

Fire marshals said the fire started around 6:40 p.m., when a woman visited a man in the building and paid him $300 to perform a voodoo ceremony to bring her good luck. The man was known in the neighborhood as a voodoo priest, the AP reported.

A city official told the AP that the ceremony involved the man and woman having sex in a bed surrounded by candles. Those candles set fire to the linens and clothes on the floor, the FDNY said. But instead of calling 911, the man conducting the ceremony tried in vain to douse the flames with water.

Then another person in the apartment opened a window and propped open the front door to in an attempt to vent the smoke, but instead wind gusts of “shot the flames back inside, creating a blowtorch effect as winds whipped in through the open window and pushed fire out into the hallway,” according to an FDNY statement.

When the people in the apartment ran out, they left the door open, fire officials said. Flames quickly spread to the fourth, fifth and sixth floors, causing part of the roof and fourth floor to collapse, the FDNY said.

Mary Feagin, 64, who lived on the sixth floor, died in the fire, and at least 20 firefighters and three other people were hurt, the FDNY said.

Nearly 200 firefighters from 44 companies spent almost seven hours bringing the fire under control, the fire department said.

Last week, one of Hip Hop’s pioneers was victim of a theft at New York’s 40/40 Club. He’s offering a cash reward in hopes of getting it back.

Legendary Bronx, New York deejay Grandmaster Flash is offering a reward for a stolen laptop. Widely considered one of Hip Hop’s forefathers, the member of Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five had the device stolen last week at New York’s 40/40 Club, founded by Jay-Z.

Flash took to Twitter, in hopes of seeing the laptop returned to him, and offering a $1,000 cash reward.

Previously, rappers such as Keith Murray and Talib Kweli have had devices stolen from them. People with any information are urged to contact Flash.

Although Waka Flocka Flames may have been the victim during a shooting on February 16th that resulted in the arrests of six men, the Atlanta rapper is not in the clear just yet.

Parents of the Charlotte, North Carolina men was charged with shooting up Waka Flocka’s tour bus want charges to be brought against the rapper’s security guards, raising the claim that members in the Waka’s entourage fired the first shots.

The mother of Antonio Stukes, who was shot in the shoulder during the altercation, claimed there was another side to the story.

Antonio Stukes’ lawyer claimed his client was there simply to meet Waka Flocka Flames about a record deal.

“I’m no friend of Flocka. I’m a friend of Jesus,” Stukes told WSOC Channel 9.

Stukes claims he was caught in the cross-fire when two vehicles open-fired upon the tour bus, which was being fitted with a new stereo system at Car Stereo Warehouse.

“Just don’t listen to one side of the story because there is always another side,” Stukes’ mother Antoinette told The Charlotte Observer.

Stukes’ mother is organizing a rally along with the other mothers of the men charged.

“So us parents are trying to get together so they can hear our cry and release our kids,” Stukes said. “I don’t understand why they are not locked up or being questioned for shooting at people.”

Surveillance video of the shooting exists, but police and the store have refused to release the tape, despite offers as high as $5,000 dollars for the footage.

All men have been charged with robbery with a dangerous weapon and discharging a firearm into an occupied dwelling.

Four members of the Black Mafia Family organization were arrested earlier this week, including one suspect who was on the Atlanta Police Department’s 10 Most Wanted list. Police busted Ernest Dennis, 37, and Jonathan Manigualt, in the Buckhead section of Atlanta, which was once a strong hold for members of BMF. The other two members, Ricardo Webb and Tovis Raines were also taken into custody, leading U.S. Marshals to declare that BMF has effectively been shutdown. “We know that they don’t have level of contacts or access to drugs and money the way they had before, so we’re slowly destroying their organization,” U.S. Marshal James Ergas told Atlanta’s Fox 5. In a previous interview with AllHipHop.com, BMF’s founder Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory denied the organization was weakening, despite the fact the he and his brother Terry “Southwest T” Flenory are each serving 25-year sentences.

Rapper Nas is back in the studio working on new material with Canadian songbird, Nelly Furtado. According to sources, the new track with Nas will be featured on Furtado’s upcoming album Lifestyle, which is slated to hit stores later this year. “Just finished rough mix of my track featuring @Nas,” Nelly Furtado tweeted. “You’ll hear it soon!!! Xo.” Throughout the years, Nelly Furtado has collaborated with a number of rappers, including Timbaland, The Roots, Missy Elliott, Jurassic 5 and others.

The Beastie Boys have revealed that their highly anticipated album Hot Sauce Committee Pt 2. will land in stores this May. The album is the second installment of the unreleased version of Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 1, which was shelved indefinitely, although the music on Part 2 contains all of the tracks slated for Part 1 of the album. According to representatives for EMI, Hot Sauce Committee Pt 2 will be released to the public on May 3rd.

“>

“>

“>

“>

A Boston nightclub has agreed to pay a fine, issue a public apology and have its staff attend anti-discrimination training for closing the club when a significant number of black attendees showed up, according to an agreement reached with Attorney General Martha Coakley and the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.

The agreement was based on a complaint made by a group of black Harvard graduates who had organized an event at Cure Lounge as an after-party to the Harvard and Yale football game last November.

Approximately 400 tickets were purchased before the sold-out event. But about an hour after the 10 p.m. starting time, Cure Lounge abruptly ended the event and told all guests that they needed to leave. The vast majority of event guests who stood in line and who entered the club were black, according to the complaint.

Under the agreement, which states Cure Lounge violated state laws prohibiting public places from restricting entry or limiting use based on race, gender, or national origin, the nightclub must pay a $30,000 fine to the state.

The majority of those funds will be distributed to entities that assist black students seeking higher education opport

The majority of those funds will be distributed to entities that assist black students seeking higher education opport

“Massachusetts businesses cannot refuse to host events because of racial reasons,” Coakley said in a statement.

Coakley added, “in this case, club waitstaff made harmful and ill-conceived conclusions based on the simple fact that mot of the guests were black. This type of behavior is the essence of racial stereotyping and it is a reminder that, despite the many strides we have taken, there is still progress to be made.”