new format

Hey my loyal readers, I just wanted to let you know I am going to a new format. Starting next week I will be live on Blogspot radio 3:00pm est. It's still Opinionated, but now it's Opinionated with dmsmith .This gives me a chance to interact with my people in real time. You will be able to call in ask questions ,say hello, give your opinion or just to cuss me out lol.  I will be providing links to the show . So even if you can't listen live, the shows will be archived. I will still be doing blogs occasionally, and will let you know when one is up. The topics will be the same, the attitude is the same, we are going to remain forever Opinionated!!! Remember each one teach one!!

When keeping it real goes wrong!!!

12:30 a.m Thursday morning Denise Darbeau, 24, of Queens, and her pal, Rachel Edwards, 24, of Brooklyn went to a McDonalds, near Sixth Avenue. It was a decision they will both live to regret. Darbeau,handed the cashier a $50 to pay for their food. The cashier Rayon McIntosh, told her he had to scan the $50 bill to make sure it was authentic, before he would give them their food.You know, standard procedure in most fast food restaurants to insure against being handed counterfeit money. That's when all hell breaks loose.Darbeau then slaps McIntosh across the face, prompting him to lunge forward and shove the two women. She leaps over the counter, while her friend Edwards retreats to the other end of the restaurant. They are heard screaming obscenities at McIntosh and calling him a p*ssy among other things. Now here is where keeping it real goes wrong, and the whole incident went left for our  brazen duo. Apparently they forgot that you don't hurl obscenities, much less put your hands on someone you don't know. After they ran behind the counter to attack a full  grown man bigger than themselves, they came face to face with a metal pipe. McIntosh proceeded to beat the brakes off both woman .

 Now I am never ever one to condone putting your hands on a woman . I have my mother, my sisters, my children, numerous aunts and female cousins, so I would never applaud any man being abusive to women. In the words of Chris Rock on the flip side "I understand". These "women" attempted to assert their control over a situation and a person that they had no control over. The tried to represent and keep it real.They  got a real ass whooping in the process.  Darbeau and Edwards picked the wrong person to try and bully. McIntosh served more than a decade in prison after being convicted of killing a classmate at Bronx's Evander Childs High School in 2000, when he was  19 years old. The two women were taken to the hospital. Darbeau suffered a fractured skull and broken arm which required surgery. She is in stable condition. Edwards suffered a deep cut. In the video, you can hear one woman screaming  "Stop it! Stop! Stop! Oh my God!” . “Someone call police!”Watch the video for yourself and give some feedback. I did not add the music

The Wrath of Cain

First and foremost, I want to send my condolences to the Family of Rev Fred Shuttlesworth. He was a founding member of Southern Christian Leadership Conference along with Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Rev. Shuttlesworth was the catalyst  who convinced the Rev King  and the movement into taking on "Bomgingham AL ", as it was known back then. Condolences go out to the family of Apple founder Steve Jobs, who changed the world of computing, recorded music and communications. Jobs was a true visionary and innovator, who created the first personal computer, the ipad, iphone and ipod. Last but not least, condolences go out to the entire Raider Nation for the passing of owner All Davis. Elected in 1992 to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Davis was a trailblazer. In 1988, he hired Art Shell, the first black head coach of the modern era. He hired the second Latino coach, Tom Flores; and the first woman CEO, Amy Trask. Davis motto "Once a Raider always a Raider".

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, is back to putting his foot in his mouth. After winning a straw poll in FL last week, beating out Romney and Perry, he did an interview with the Wall Street journal .While discussing out-of-work Americans and the "Occupy Wall Street" protests, he had this to say    “Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself…It is not a person’s fault if they succeeded, it is a person’s fault if they failed.” Did you read that? Blame yourself if you got laid off. Blame yourself, if your job downsized. Blame yourself because the economy tanked. I understand the pull yourself up by your boot straps mentality, I really do, but this is something altogether different. This is irresponsible and patronizing. For someone running for President of the United States to tell  unemployed and laid off Americans that it is there fault for being laid off or unemployed, is like telling the victim of a hit and run, it's their fault for driving the speed limit.

Cain said today on CNN that he didn’t believe racism was a major factor holding minorities back in America , asserting instead that African Americans had a level playing field on which to advance economically. Cain said on CNN’s “State of the Union “I don't believe racism in this country today holds anybody back in a big way,”.” “Are there some elements of racism? Yes. It gets back to if we don't grow this economy, that is a ripple effect for every economic level, and because blacks are more disproportionately unemployed, they get hit the worst when economic policies don't work. That's where it starts.” CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley asked if he thought African Americans had a level playing field, Cain said he thought most of them did, using his own experience in corporations as an example. I will agree to a certain extent, I do think we as a people need to take more responsibility for our communities and our economic development, but to say the playing field is level, is beyond nonsense. I am not going to get into educational, economic and unemployment disparities. That is not what this blog is about today; it's about the message being conveyed by Cain. When you go to the ballot box next year, remember to vote for the person whose beliefs and stances most mirror your own, not the one who is" talking loud but ain't saying nothing".

To the Beat ya'll

i said a hip hop the hippie the hippie 
to the hip hip hop, a you dont stop 
the rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie 
to the rhythm of the boogiedy, the beat  
now what you hear is not a test--i'm rappin to the beat 
and me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet .


Everyone of us is familiar with this verse.I know as soon as you read it you smiled, and started singing the song "Rapper Delight"!! What you may not have known, was the woman who brought us this song Sylvia Robinson passed away this week. She was as important to bringing Hip Hop to the mainstream through her legendary label Sugarhill Records in the late 70's and early 80's, as Puff Daddy would be in the 90's. “Rapper’s Delight” is generally considered hip-hop’s first recorded single. I for one do not remember if I heard "Rapper's Delight" or  "King Tim III" by the Fatback Band first .It really doesn't matter because Rapper's Delight introduced the emerging art form to the world. The record sold more than 14 million copies . “She was the first person to tap hip-hop culture and fix it on a record,” “She made rapping a viable commercial endeavor and created the rap business.” Dan Charnas, author of “The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop said in an interview.


Mrs. Robinson told Vanity Fair in a 2005 profile, that  she attended a party at an uptown Manhattan club, Harlem World in 1979 .There, she watched in awe as a rhyming DJ hyped the crowd up. He would say something every now and then like ‘Throw your hands in the air,’ and they’d do it, “If he’d said, ‘Jump in the river,’ they’d have done it.” Mrs. Robinson said she sensed the music’s selling potential. “A spirit said to me, ‘Put a concept like that on a record and it will be the biggest thing you ever had. So following that spirits advice , She signed three rappers to her Englewood-based label, Sugar Hill Records, named after an area in Harlem, and dubbed the trio the Sugarhill Gang. Big Bank Hank, Wonder Mike and Master Gee would be catalysts for a musical revolution. She would later sign Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Sequence and a host of other groups. Sugarhill Records would succumb to unscrupulous business practices, shady deals and not paying artists their fare share of royalties . You know, the usual in the industry . This blog today is not about what brought down  Sugarhill, it's to celebrate a Hip Hop pioneer and the genre she helped unleash on the world. Sylvia Robinson was just as important to Hip Hop history as Kool Herc, Flash or Afrika Bambaataa. So I salute Sylvia Robinson, while standing in my B-Boy stance, with some classics from a classic label.











she even introduced us to Angie Stone