After a falling out and later reconciling with Big Boi over the Purple Ribbon record label, Killer Mike now says he understands what his former boss was going through. “Doing this has made me a lot more sympathetic to what Big Boi was going through,” he told MTV of his label, Grind Time Official. While Mike is the label head, he recognizes that he can’t run the company all by himself. “It can be suffocating, overwhelming. You have to find a certain peace within yourself and dedicate a part of yourself to the music and the business. My goal is not to run my company. My goal is to be an artist that does great things [with] my company and set a certain vision for my company. But I want somebody that’s qualified to run my company to run my company. That’s just a wise move.” In addition to preparing another mix tape and solo album, Killer Mike offered up a message on the importance of independence and doing for self: “If you have a boss, and you don’t like your boss, fire your boss, and be a boss! If you don’t have an idea, lay down, develop a dream, wake up, have a vision, get to the money. Feed your immediate family; provide jobs in your community. Do something instead of doing nothing. I do not pledge my allegiance to dope. I do not pledge my allegiance to some funky job. I do not pledge my allegiance to waiting on the government to feed me. I pledge my allegiance to getting rich independently.”
While many traditional Hip Hop outlets covered Beyonce and Jay-Z’s wedding, coverage was surprisingly lacking from mainstream media sources that are typically all over celebrity sightings. Now, racism is being blamed for the blackout (no pun intended) on their star studded celebrity nuptials. According to several people in the tabloid industry, black stars just don’t pack a big punch at the cash register. “We have a saying, ‘Only Oprah.’ Oprah is the only black celebrity big enough to put on our cover,” an unnamed tabloid source told EURWeb. Janice Min, who is the Editor-in-Chief of Us Weekly—which was the only celebrity magazine to feature the wedding—co-signs the unnamed source’s assertion saying that there is a perception in the industry that black stars who grace covers don’t sell well but also says “Typically, you will hear that discussion among a group of all-white editors.”
Internet company Google announced that they will be teaming up with the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations to provide a new platform to learn about refugees in various countries. Among the areas spotlighted are Iraq, Colombia and Darfur. Web surfers interested in learning more can download Google Earth software to view images of different refugee areas. In addition, the U.N. provides information about what’s going on in those areas and how citizens can donate directly to aiding those in need. “Google wants to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,”Samuel Widmann, the head of Google Earth Europe told CNN. Since its launch, Google Earth has partnered with several other nonprofit organizations but does not control the information published using its software.
