Your Favorite White Boy

They say confession is good for the soul. Today we offer another installment of The Confessional, an ongoing feature on Your Favorite White Boy, where your man B-Double will be confessing certain things that he would not dare bring up in the company of his hip-hop brethren.

Bless me Reverend Run, for I have sinned.

It’s been 7 days since my last confession.

I have been debating all weekend on whether I should post these thoughts, which made me realize that I probably should – that’s the point of  the “Confessional” series.    As I mentioned, my man Guy Fawkes and Eskay over at Nah Right got into a bit of a scrap after Fawkes equated Nah Right to southern rapper Plies.  Apparently, Guy echoed a certain sentiment out there, as a number of the comments found the comparison both entertaining and accurate.

In fact, even since a group of blogs got together to form the New Music Cartel (NMC) I have seen and heard a number of shots aimed their way from my fellow bloggers.  Look, I have no problem with any of those dudes.  I never have.  Its not because I feel everything that they post – I don’t.  But I guess the difference is that I respect the lane that they have created. 

As a hip-hop blogger, I get a lot of music sent to the YFWB inbox; only a fraction of which I put up.  I decided a long time ago that I cannot and will not compete with the NMC for breaking new music.  I made the choice to offer opinion and post only what I like.  Members of the NMC and Eskay in particular (who seems to get the brunt of the criticism), have made an editorial decision to go with new breaking content rather than their own personal preferences.  Of course, I’m assuming that.  I can’t see a dude like Eskay feeling everything he puts up, the same way a music  magazine editor doesn’t feel everything they publish.  Maybe he does.  But I doubt it.

At the same time, I’m willing to accept that the content posted by these blogs is not for everyone.  I respect the fact that dudes like Fawkes – who is always schooling me on new underground hip-hop – wouldn’t be down with a lot of what goes up on Cartel sites.  But both have the right to exist.  Both are important, even vital, parts of hip-hop culture.

I actually think that the NMC is good for the online hip-hop community because it forces labels to acknowledge the role bloggers and siteowners play in distributing new content to heads.  Don’t for a second think that these labels don’t look at all of us as puny little peons.  If they can divide and conquer all of us, they would.  So I respect these sites coming together to act collectively.  There is power in numbers.  More bloggers should follow suit.

I give Fawkes his due – at least he came out and publicly expressed his views on Nah Right.  There are a lot of bloggers that secretly hate on the NMC, but still post their ish on the daily.  That’s where I differ: I openly applaud these dudes.  If they want to leverage their industry connects, more power to them – that’s what they’re for.

And I’m the first to admit that I would love YFWB to attain the same stature.  Who wouldn’t?  I’m not one of these bloggers who acts doper than his readers but checks his stats every few hours.  And yeah, I emailed Eskay in the early days, when I was young and naive,  and asked for a spot in his blogroll.   Although, I should also point out that I e-mailed him a few weeks later and told him that I’m going to earn that spot rather than beg for it.

That’s the point: I’m going to do my thing on my terms.  We all have our own decisions to make on what our sites represent.  The NMC posts and distributes new content.  That’s their hustle.  Win or lose, YFWB represents me.  I have different objectives.  Truth be told, the fact that this site is a favorite of a head like Fawkes is worth a lot more than a gang of site traffic.

In the name of the God’s Son, Father MC and the Holy Ghostface.

Tags: 2DopeBoyz, Nah Right, NMC, OnSMASH