This is my cousin. His name is Rasuwl. He’s a rapper, and a pretty fine one at that. Although he won’t like it, I put one of his tunes up here on the snapclap. The name of the song is Revelations. He’s got much more polished and mastered songs than this. However, nothing will ever come close to the first time I heard revelations. Revelations just has that thing, you know? Like when you hear a song for the first time and you just can’t help but nod your head, and the hairs on the back of your neck stand straight up… you know what I mean. Revelations, has a real “made it in the basement” type feel, and I like that. At any rate, this is Rasuwl. If you wanna hear more, you can check his myspace page here. Oh and by the way, here are some photos.

photo by www.thesnapclap.com

Because of their insatiable penchant for extracting every possible nickle and dime from you; coupled with their misplaced desire to handicap, cripple and/or dumb down their products, I have finally freed myself from the shackles called Verizon Wireless.  At first I didn’t want to believe it.  I just knew Verizon was the best cell phone carrier.  I had the best network and I didn’t need all those extra bells and whistles.  But then, a few months ago, my Razr when on the fritz.  I called Verizon and got a replacement.  Much to my surprise Verizon has made it even more difficult to recover your data from your phone.  

Of course the Motorola Razr has built in bluetooth, but with Verizon, bluetooth has been removed as a file transfer protocol; its just for voice data.  You can’t transfer, rings, contacts, movies, pics, nothing!  It sucks but I knew that already.  So, a neat little sidestep was to just email yourself the data.  But alas, now Verizon has incapacitated this ability as well.  I can’t even email myself my own data without it going through some Verizon proxy nonsense.  This is ridiculous.  Mind you, I pay for every single media text message so it wasn’t like it was really ‘free’ for me to email myself the data in the first place.  They just want you to go trough them and buy rings and tones and data cards to transfer data etc etc etc.

I was finished with Verizon.  They didn’t have a great data plan and the phones are dumbed down anyway.

Like a breath of fresh air over a newly shaved bald head, Sprint came along with it’s employee referral plan SERO or (Sprint Employee Referral Offer).  Sprint Sero, has 1250 minutes for $49.99 including unlimited data and text messages!  PLUS Sprint got the one of the hottest phone out right now, the HTC Touch!  I’m there! 

After two hours on the phone with Verizon, I got them to release me from my contract with a minimal early termination fee.  I preceded to order my HTC touch and the rest is history.

The HTC Touch

The Touch is a small phone as you can see from the pictures.  Its just slightly taller than my old Razr and about the same width and thickness.  For a Smartphone, that’s just awesome.  One of the reasons I haven’t had a smart phone for a while is because of that.  Who wants to carry around a big bulky VCR of a cell phone.  The Touch absolutely floored me with its dimensions and weight.  While it doesn’t feel as sturdy as you might prefer it is small and lightweight.
I cannot lie the keyboard is small but there are several aftermarket downloadable freeware keyboards that are dope like the touchpal from Cootek .  I’ve also installed the opera browser which is alittle better than the default pocket IE.  I tried using some of the free push mail clients like Emoze and Consilient  but they never really worked the way that I prefer and besides, who really NEEDS pushmail.

The phone features an ‘innovative’ touchflo navigation interface.  Its ok, but a little overrated.  Its cool and extremely functional, but its far from revolutionary.  The touch also comes packed with like a million wires.  You got the usb cord plus adapter, the power cord plus adapter and a headset with mic and volume control.  It also comes with a 512 microsd card.  I’ve eaten cornflakes bigger than that sd card, man its tiny!

So far the HTC is cool. I’m in love with its form factor.  It has some great features, not many buttons and a slick interface.  My only real complaint is the processing power and the screen.  Although Sprint’s version of the touch got a boost in processing power, the touch is still a tad bit slow when compared with other devices.  Also, the touch sensitive screen is a bit hard and doesn’t respond as quickly as you’d like.  But I’ll deal with the shortcomings if it means I get unlimited data and 1250 minutes, as well as bluetooth file transfer, WOO HOO!!!  Besides I got 30 days to evaluate, if I don’t like I’ll get a 755p Treo like my cousin did.  Oh yeah, big ups to that guy!  He put me on this SERO thing to begin with.   Thanks.

Oh by the way, if YOU want SERO, drop me a line, I’ll give you the details AND stay tuned, I freed my wife as well, she got a red Palm Centro.  Dope!

Photo by lalalaa Dolce Vita

As I get older I start to re examine the things that I did as a youth.  Lately I’ve been on a tear, and I’ve collected alot of old school hip hop and some ‘mid school’ golden area hip hop as well.  While I have my older family members to thank for my appreciation of old school hip hop, you know Kurtis Blow, Bambaataa, Fearless Four etc, it was the golden area that really stands out in my mind.  It seems like everything was great.  I was a teen, hip hop became more active to me.  I began to do hip hop and not just listen to it.  A Friend of mine just dropped a few tunes on me.  One of which was Da Bush Babees, “We Run Things”  I forgot how much I used to really, really like this song.  This song was HOT when it was out in like ‘92; are you kidding me?  

Its funny though, because listening to the lyrics they seem timely even now.  Da Bush Babees talked about representing for ‘real’ hip hop; and lamented that there are a million MC’s and a thousand DJ’s because there’s money in hip hop.  Man where they right!  For them it sprouted out of art and expression.  You know?  It was a golden era.  You did hip hop because you loved it, you did it because it was YOU, you know what I mean?  Nowadays, cats ain’t really down with that.  They just want money.  Forget the artistry.  Forget the expression.  Just give me the dough.

I guess that’s why I dont’ really listen to the radio anymore, or subscribe to the modern day definition of hip hop.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
1 Corinthians 13:11