Final Scenes for ROTM's new "Die For My People" Video!!

We shot the final scenes yesterday for our upcoming video "Die For My People", one of the singles of our new album "HONOR IN SIN". Much love to everyone from the community who came out.... all my cousins, and my brothers and sisters in the struggle. To help emphasize the human side of our peoples' struggle for freedom, we held up portraits of fallen revolutionaries and freedom fighters to symbolize the individual loss/destruction of lives in this massive movement. Here is one of the shots from yesterday's shoot:



And here are a couple of screenshots of main video shoot from last month. This video will drop this summer, and trust me its ridiculous. Shout out to director James Mann.

Is I.Sheik gonna have to slap a b!#ch?!?!

In the space of 1 day, I went from never having heard of 23-year-old Persian-French tennis player Aravane Rezai, to having a favorite tennis player for the first time in my life, to wanting so slap some sense in her ignorant young ass. How the hell did that all that happen in a day? Well here's the breakdown.

Late yesterday morning, I get some emails that some Persian chick upset Venus Williams in the finals of the Madrid Open. Dizzam!!! I didn't know we had Persian tennis players, and she slapped Venus in two sets?!?! I had to google it right away, and I saw her standing with her trophy in hand.
Not too long after that, I am on the air co-hosting Iranican Live (if you couldn't figure it out from the title, its a talk show about Persian-Americans) and one of the other hosts tells me about a YouTube video of Rezai and her mom in Iran, gushing over how they just got to speak with punk-ass "President" Ahmadinejad. The young brainless broad starts going off about how he's upholding the pride of our country, and (here's the clincher) she gets f*%kin teary-eyed while talking about this murderous SOB (watch the clip, disgusting):

Now there have been some reports that she just talks all that pro-government garbage cuz she's in the public eye and she wants her mom to be able to travel back-and-forth to Iran safely, but at a time like this, there is very little room for these "shades of grey", especially when you're a public figure. You want your family to be safe? You don't want trouble? You don't do politics? Fine. Keep your mouth shut. Don't espouse this type of crap and expect to get a free pass. Like I said, no shades of grey, either you're down for the cause or you're not.

Then there's the other option, just as likely, that this chick is actually brainwashed enough to believe that stuff she was saying, which obviously is a hundred times worse.

Either way, no free pass. So congratulations Aravane, you just went from my favorite tennis player to my least favorite tennis player in the span of 6 hours. I hope you accidentaly mess up Serena's hair at the French Open and she puts you in a damn headlock!!

Silent End for "Quiet Dynasty"

In the end, they lost the same way they won...quietly. Even though the Suns closed the coffin on the Tim Duncan era Saturday night behind a fourth quarter performance for the ages by Goran Dragic (who??), it was another short white man, Steve Nash, that put the final nail in, with one eye no less.

But even though the Spurs were dead in the water already, damn near nobody thought they were gonna get closed out in a sweep Sunday night. Champions don’t just roll over. And to their credit, the Spurs didn’t. They played tough all four games. Actually, that might have been the highest quality series to ever end in a sweep. Just quality basketball from both teams. The crazy thing is that the team that could never close games...never... found a way to close out four straight against the team that always found a way to beat them.... always.

I’m talking about the Spurs that knocked the Suns out of the playoffs in ’06 after Joe Johnson broke his friggin face, even though Stoudemire averaged like a 100 points per game; the same Spurs that only beat the Suns in ’07 because Robert Horry tackled Steve Nash and Nash’s teammates got their boy’s back, earning automatic suspensions that cost them another shot at the championship; the same goddam Spurs that needed Duncan (who can’t even make his free throws after all these years) to hit a game tying 3-pointer in overtime to beat the Suns in ’08.

But sometimes that’s the only way that a team’s karma really changes... in a fluke ass way that nobody coulda predicted. Nobody woulda guessed the Suns would outplay the Spurs in crunchtime 4 straight games. Nobody woulda thought the Suns could win ugly games where they didn’t shoot the ball well (like they did in Game 1 and 2). And nobody would have expected that in the 4th quarter of game 3, Dragic would turn into Isaiah Thomas from the ’88 Finals. With the Spurs facing the end of their dynasty (since this was their last realistic chance to win a ring with a Duncan-led team), Dragic scored 23 points in the fourth quarter as some of the most accomplished players in playoff history stood helpless. And Dragic’s performance was a microcosm for the game.

With the Spurs legacy hanging in the balance, they expectedly had their big guns on the court in the fourth quarter (Duncan, Ginobili, Parker, etc.). The Suns? They had Grant Hill and a bunch of bench players on the court to try to put the dagger in one of the greatest dynasties in the NBA history. And while the Suns best players cheered from the bench, their back-ups were unstoppable, scoring 39 points in the fourth period to seal the deal.

So, obviously, the surprises were done for this series, right? The Spurs would come out like a wounded animal in Game 4, and win easily, especially since the Suns were now playing with house money.

But nothing about this series was predictable. The Suns came out in Game 4 with a purpose to kill the beast while it was wounded. And even though Nash got his eye busted by Duncan’s elbow, the kid went to the locker room to get stitches, and played the whole fourth quarter with one eye swollen shut.

I didn’t think anything could be more memorable from this series that Dragic’s Game 3 performance. But after Game 4, the lasting image of this battle will be Nash executing the Spurs -- busting 25-footers, and-one’s, and running floaters -- all with his eye busted like Rocky Balboa. Finally slaying his demon.

Even though no one coulda seen this coming, deep down we all knew this is the only way the Suns could overcome their tormentors... in a way that defied all logic and history. And just like that.. the witch is dead.

Deeeaaammm, Jada killed this ish!!!

My homie sent me this new track today, "Soldiers Survivors" by Jadakiss featuring Nas and Sheek Louch (just those three names alone should make any real heads stand at attention) off Jada's new mixtape The Champ Is Here Vol. 3. The subject of my boy's email was "Nas murked this!!". Yo, I love Nas, he's at or close to the top of my favorite MCs list, and no artist has been more influential on my rhymes..... but Nas' verse was just aiiiiight.

Jada on the other had, oooooh my gooooodddd!! I was gonna put some of his punch lines here, but the verse is damn near a 16-bar punch line in itself. Am I buggin, or did this verse kill 99% of the flows that Jada spit on his actual album? And I was kinda feelin that LP too. Here's some of Jada's quotables:

Not a killa, nah I'm in the villa chillin out/ With ur girl pourin coconut Ciroc in her mouth.

Bumpy Johnson was rich but he wasn't wealthy/ money ain't everything, you happier when you healthy

Right there in front of ur momma, you get pounded/ treat the track like Rihanna and Chris Brown-it!!!

I mean c'mon, and those three quotes didn't come close to doing the verse justice. The way he set them up with his rhyme patterns, and the rest of the lines, straight fiiire!!

Oh, and not to be outdone, Sheek Louch, the master of taking a simple ass line and saying it so that it sounds like the dopest thing ever, finished his verse like this:

Don, 357 long/ Put the hammer in your mouth...trey songs

Hahahah. Nas probably had the weakest verse on the track, and that sentence by itself should let you know the caliber of rhymes being spit. The dopeness of this track also made me NOT listen to the rest of the tracks on YouTube. I'm waitin to get this mixtape as legit MP3s so I can twist up and listen to it properly. Link is below. Enjoy. And ur welcome.

ROTM NEW YORK performance at UNITED NATIONS!!

Peace,

ROTM is proud be joining with thousands of activists standing up for a Free Iran at demonstrations to be held in front of the United Nations General Assembly Sept. 22-24, to protest the arrival of Iranian “president” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The three-day demonstration across NYC is bringing together organizations and individuals from all over North America and the world to denounce the brutal crackdown, torture and murder of Iranian people that have risen up against the repressive regime in recent months.

ROTM will give a special performance as part of the demonstration on Sept. 23, at U.N. Plaza in Manhattan. Please continue to support the struggle for basic freedom and human rights in Iran. I know the images are no longer flashing on your TV, but believe me real shit is still going down there every day.

Just yesterday, Friday Sept. 18, tens of thousands of opposition protesters took to the streets of Tehran and clashed with pro-government rallies on Quds Day (an annual holiday in support of Palestinians). The three top figures in the opposition movement joined in the marches and had to fight off pro-gov’t attackers in the crowd. So the situation is still volatile to say the least. 

I hope see many of yall out there in NY. And be on the lookout for some brand new remixes this week a FREE ROTM MIXTAPE  for download coming real real soon. 

Peace & Respect,

ROTM