Manny Pacquiao: Is Pac Man Getting Dissed in New Eminem/Bruno Mars Song?

Manny Pacquiao the sport of boxing's biggest name has often been given love and shout outs within the hip hop community. Rap super stars such as Jay-Z has mentioned Pacquiao in his songs.

Rick Ross is another rap star who more recently developed a bit of bromance with the number one fighter in the world as reports came out that he was even going to rap and walk Manny to the ring in his fight against Shane Mosley in May.

Rick Ross of course did not end up coming out to the ring with Manny as he ended up coming out to Survivor's front man singing Eye of the Tiger that night.

There's a new hip hop song now by Eminem who features R&B singer Bruno Mars and rapper Royce Da 5'9 titled Lighters where Pacquiao is again mentioned and used as a metaphor for what seems to be utilized as always being willing to fight.

At first listen it seems like another relevant metaphor to a top boxer where hip hop has a history of referring to past icons of the sport in rap songs such as Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roy Jones Jr, and of course Mike Tyson numerous times in numerous rap songs.

If you analyze the verse further it seems the verse may be criticizing or even dissing Pacquiao by utilizing the word catch-weight as well.

Here is the exact verse by Royce Da 5'9:

"Every hour, happy hour now
Life is wacky now
Used to have to eat the cat to get the (expletive)
Now I'm just the cats meoww, ow
Classic now, always down for the catch weight like
Pacquiao"



So this rapper is acknowledging that Pacquiao has fought for title fights and big fights at a catch-weight and not the actual officially sanctioned weight class weights for a few of his major fights.

Did he intend to give Pacquiao props in his verse or did he intend to say hey I too am a smaller guy at 5 foot 9inches but I'll fight as long as there is a catch-weight and we are more on a level equal playing field? Or was it more of a diss?

Many of Pacquiao's critics have criticized Manny's record breaking accomplishments and one of the most common criticisms of his record 8 world title championships is that he did fight a few of them at a catch weight.

Some have even nicknamed Pacquiao the catch weight king even for this very reason.

For those of you who are not familiar with what a catch weight is basically it is an agreed upon weight limit that both fighters have negotiated that still falls under the official weight class limit. So for example welterweight class has a maximum weight of 147lbs on the day of the weigh in. Traditionally both fighters can weigh anywhere usually from 141lbs to 147lbs on the day of the weigh in.



However if a smaller fighter is coming up in weight and wanted to negotiate an agreed upon catch weight of lets say 144lbs, then both fighters would have to make the 144lbs weight limit and it would still be a welterweight fight and if a title is on the line then of course a welterweight title fight.

In this case usually the smaller fight would have the advantage for he is coming up in weight to make the 144lbs and the welterweight champion who is usually used to only making 147lbs now has to come down to 144lbs which may leave him weight drained, dehydrated, weak, fatigue for the actual fight night.

Catch weights usually come into play when a superstar smaller fighter is moving up in weight to challenge the champion at their heavier weight class to produce a super mega fight for all the fans.

History has shown however that many smaller fighters when coming up in weight class did sometimes fight at agreed upon catch weights and not the official standard weight class weights and still those smaller fighters often came up short and lost.

One super mega fight that comes to mind is when Oscar De La Hoya went up to middleweight and challenged then undisputed lineal middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins. Even though middleweight is 160lbs they agreed upon a catch weight of 158 lbs so that the smaller De La Hoya could have a more even chance in the fight.



Oscar held his own in the beginning of the fight but ultimately lost by a highly suspicious body shot knock out. However if Oscar won that night would we criticize him for fighting Hopkins at 158lbs and not 160lbs?

I would argue probably not since he was the smaller man going up in weight to take on the much larger taller undisputed 160lbs champion Hopkins who conditioned his larger framed body to make 160lbs all those years when he should have moved up in weight himself.

For those of you who have heard the song Lighters, what is your opinion on how Pacquiao is used in the song?

Is Royce Da 5'9 giving Pacquiao props, criticizing him, or even dissing him?



There are some other rap stars who are clearly dissing Pacquiao such as Manny's long time rival Floyd Mayweather buddy rapper 50 Cent who has been making diss tweets via his Twitter accusing Manny of using steroids.

This is interesting since there is apparently rap feuding beef between 50 Cent and Rick Ross who is again a buddy of Pacquiao.

It would be interesting to see 50 Cent and Rick Ross take their supposed beef into the boxing world as well and use both Mayweather and Pacquiao as metaphors, or as rap lyrics in new rap songs.



50 Cent has already walked and performed ring entrance songs for Mayweather for a few of his fights it would get really heated should he actually rap and diss Pacquiao as he walks Mayweather to the ring in September against Victor Ortiz.

Another rapper who has been quite vocal on the Pacquiao vs Mayweather saga is Snoop Dogg. Snoop has been seen in viral videos calling Pacquiao out for not taking blood tests and getting in the ring with Mayweather.

Snoop even ends the video saying Pacquiao will be on the floor implying that Mayweather will knock him out.



Personally I think its great that the world of hip hop is talking about the Pacquiao/Mayweather saga for I am huge fan of both boxing and hip hop.

However Rick Ross, who is siding with Pacquiao seems to be one of the more hotter rappers still putting out hits and these more washed up, past primed rappers such as 50 Cent, and Snoop Dogg do not seem to be burning up the radios as they once did years ago.

It would be interesting to see more and more which of your favorite rappers are going to side with Pacquiao or Mayweather as we are hopefully getting closer to an actual fight between these two biggest stars of our era.

Source is http://bleacherreport.com/articles/774078-manny-pacquiao-is-pac-man-getting-dissed-in-new-eminembruno-mars-song

How to be Creative Like Eminem

I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of Eminen, the rapper. But do you know what makes him great at what he does? His uncanny ability to play with words and create lyrics that don’t seem to rhyme.

Anderson Cooper, from 60 Minutes, interviewed Eminem late last year. In the interview, among other things, Eminem tells Anderson Cooper about his song writing method. I thought this was interesting because Eminem can helps us learn how to be more creative and thought I’d post some of my thoughts here.

I can’t post the video here because embedding is disabled but you can watch the video on YouTube (Editor: try below) and the part where he explains his creative process starts around the 5 minute mark.

If choose not to watch the interview, here are some nuggets:

Anderson Cooper asks Emimen to explain what he means by ‘bending the words’, to which Eminem responds:

“Just the enunciation of it. People say that the word orange doesn’t rhyme with anything and that kind of pisses me of because I can think of a lot of things that rhyme with orange.”

Anderson Cooper continues, what rhymes with orange?

Eminem responds:

“If you’re taking the word at face value, and you say orange. Nothing is going to rhyme with it exactly. If you enunciate it and make it more than one syllable, you can say like: I put my orange-forange-storinge-in storage-in a pourage.”

Eminem continues:

“You just have to figure out the science to breaking down words.”

Eminem says that he thinks about word rhymes throughout the day and drives himself insane with it.

Anderson Cooper mentions and that he heard that Eminem used to read the dictionary. Eminem says he did for a very particular reason:

“I just felt like I wanted to be able to have these words at my disposal in my vocabulary at all times whenever I need to pull them out. Somewhere they’ll be stored like locked away.

He then pulls out a box where he stores scraps of paper with words and phrases he’s written.”

There are a few things to point out here:

Eminem has low associative barriers. Associating is a key habit of highly creative and innovative people. By ‘Bend the words by changing the enunciation’, Eminem is trying to ‘force a connection’ between words that seem to have no association whatsoever. He says he constantly plays with words in his head and drives himself crazy doing it. This isn’t surprising.
He’s constantly coming up with ideas and writes everything down. This shouldn’t be a surprise as musicians have to constantly come up with ideas. But, just the fact that he has a whole box where he keeps his notes (this part made me grin as I have a similar box with scattered notes) tells you his mind is working overtime. Good old fashioned pen and paper never goes out of style.
Practices creativity that works. In saying that he read the dictionary because he wanted to be able to have words at his disposal, Eminem essentially started systematizing his creativity a long time ago. Because our brains process a lot of information, it helps us remember things by placing in shelves in our minds. In Eminem’s case, a lot of words from the dictionary.
As explained in his book, Strategic Intuition, William Duggan says creativity works by taking elements on the shelves on your brain and they come together in new combinations. To be more creative and make new connections, you need to put more things on the shelves of your brain and free your mind to let them connect.

Being creative is hard work and takes practice

Breaking down associative barriers by forcing connections between things that have no obvious connection, relentlessly coming up with lots of ideas and having a system in place to help you fine tune your ideas is how you become creative.

As you can see, Eminem does this. It takes a lot of practice but if you like what you do, it’s fun work!

Editor’s Note: I’ve embedded a different version of the video that I found that hopefully won’t go away, but have left the link to the original. Also, I found it particularly humorous (and insensitive) that the sponsor at the end was Pfizer given that Eminem became a prescription drug addict and almost died.

Soucrce is http://www.business-strategy-innovation.com/wordpress/2011/07/how-to-be-creative-like-eminem/

Eminem and Bruno Mars Filming Bad Meets Evil's 'Lighters' Video

It seems that Eminem and Royce Da 5'9" have decided to release Bruno Mars-assisted track "Lighters" as the next Bad Meets Evil single. As an effort to support the song, a music video has already been filmed and is expected to premiere sometime soon.

The Slim Shady and Royce filmed the clip in Los Angeles with director Rich Lee ("Not Afraid"). In a picture taken from the set, it's seen the two rappers will share screen with their featured guest Bruno. The threesome are snapped striking a pose together wearing casual attires.

In related news, Eminem and Bruno Mars receive multiple nods at this year's nominations of MTV Video Music Awards. The "Love the Way You Lie" hitmaker grabs four noms, while the "Grenade" crooner follows closely with three. In one of the categories, they bump into each other, vying for Best Male Video along with Cee-Lo, Kanye West and Kid Cudi.

2011 MTV VMAs is going to air live from Nokia Theatre in downtown Los Angeles on August 28. Lil Wayne was recently said to be one of the musical guests, but official performers won't be announced until later this month. Fans can vote for winners by visiting vma.mtv.com beginning July 20. For Best New Artist, they can additionally determine the winner by texting BNA to 66333.

Source is http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00042261.html

Eminem Calls Sway's First Shade 45 Radio Show

MTV News correspondent tries to coax Em to freestyle on first broadcast of 'Sway in the Morning.'

Sway's a.m. takeover has begun.

On Monday (July 18), the MTV News correspondent broadcast his first episode of "Sway in the Morning" on Sirius XM's Shade 45, and in addition to playing hip-hop's hottest tunes, he conducted interviews with Bun B, Lupe Fiasco, Diggy Simmons, Estelle and "Entourage" actor Jerry Ferrara; even Eminem called in to toast the new host.

"You played such a vital part in my career and such a big role in hip-hop, we're just happy to have you," Eminem, who owns Shade 45, said to Sway. But when Calloway asked for a freestyle, Em joked, "It might be dial tone."

Sway also unearthed an old interview that he conducted with Em, dating back to when the rapper first signed with Dr. Dre. 'When Em got signed, he came to our house in L.A., and he was just like, 'Man, I got this opportunity with Dre,' " Sway recalled of his and King Tech's earlier interactions with Em on their legendary on-air "Wake Up Show" in the late 1990s. "Then we had him come up on the radio show to make that announcement and he busted a freestyle, so we played that segment."

That wasn't all for the debut broadcast: Sway, who co-hosted with Houston on-air personality Devi Dev, played a portion of a never-before-aired interview with the late Tupac Shakur from the set of his "How Do U Want It" video. In the clip, 'Pac expresses his love for Oakland and downplays the East Coast/ West Coast rivalry of the mid-1990s. "I felt like whatever I am, the Bay Area had something to do with making. So if I'm bad, they had something to do with making me. If I'm good, then they had something to do with making me," 'Pac says before showing love to the various cities where he spent his formative years. "Between the East Coast, the Bay Area, L.A. and Baltimore, those places made me."

"All in all, it was good," Sway told us after the show wrapped on Monday. "We played a lot of hip-hop music and made a good relationship [with the listeners]. I'm going to try to tie in all of these worlds: MTV, Shade 45, pop, politics, culture, music, all of that. At the end of the day, that's the vision for the show."

Source is http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1667443/eminem-calls-sway-in-the-morning.jhtml

Eminem commits suicide in new music video for ‘Space Bound’

Eminem is torn apart by love in new music video for "Space Bound"


Eminem officially premiered his new music video for the song “Space Bound” on Monday.


The Joseph Kahn-directed video, shot in February, features the rapper battling his demons, which ultimately ends with shocking results.


The song, similar to the theme of his previous hit “Love The Way You Lie,” tells the story of a relationship where the rapper would do anything to keep his girl in his life before it ends.


The video begins on a dark foggy road, where the rapper is approached by a car. Eminem’s love interest, porn star Sasha Grey, is behind the wheel. Once inside the car, an alternate Eminem appears. While the mellower rapper sits in the passenger seat, the angered Eminem spits expletives at his girlfriend from the back seat while a gun sits in the glove compartment.


Grey and Eminem arrive at a diner where the screen splits, and the two Eminems go their separate ways. The mellow Eminem joins Grey in a booth, while the alternate, more human Eminem sits at the counter.


The mellow Eminem finds out his girlfriend is cheating when he looks in her phone after she gets up, and that is where he begins to fall apart.


Events are foreshadowed in his lyrics: “I’ll blow my brains in your lap, lay here and die in your arms.”


When the rapper and Grey go to a motel, he remembers the gun in the car and the text he found that revealed his girlfriend had cheated. He attacks his girlfriend, only to find she’s not really there. It is then, as he sings, “Tears stream down both of my cheeks, then I let you go and just give. And before I put that gun to my temple, I told you this,” he puts a gun to his chin and pulls the trigger. He, along with the alternate version of himself, who stayed at the diner, fall backwards. After that moment, the video rewinds and all the events that played out are shown in reverse.


The end of the video ends right where it began: on that foggy road. It is left with an open-ended conclusion leaving fans to wonder if it all happened, or if it was all just in his head.


Source is http://thecelebritycafe.com/feature/eminem-commits-suicide-new-music-video-space-bound-06-27-2011

Digital album sales soar, thanks to Adele, Eminem

Are digital album sales finally taking off?

Just one week after Eminem's Recovery became the first album to sell 1 million digital copies, Adele's 21 has surpassed the milestone and is now the biggest-selling digital album in history.
Digital sales of 21 exceed 1.017 million (out of 2.6 million total), compared with Recovery's 1.005 million (out of 3.9 million).
Overall, almost a third (32%) of the 155.5 million albums sold in the first half of 2011 were digital, according to a midyear report released last week by Nielsen SoundScan. That's up 19% from the same period in 2010, when 27% of 153.9 million album sales were digital.
Adele is helping fuel the rapid growth in digital album sales overall, but "she's not just a digital phenomenon," says Keith Caulfield, Billboard's associate director of charts/retail. "She appeals to older consumers, who will still buy full albums, and to younger people who may just buy a single track."
She also has sold more than 4 million copies of hit single Rolling in the Deep, but "she connects with people in a way where they feel she is a 'full-package artist' and you want to hear everything she sings."
Caulfield says at least two more albums, Lady Gaga's TheFame (976,000) and Mumford & Sons' Sigh No More (890,000), probably will join the 1 million digital sales club by the year's end.
These days, music buyers have ever-increasing options for accessing music, including phones, computers and other electronic devices, as well as cloud and streaming services. Caulfield says the technology is moving at a faster pace than it did in the past, when the move from cassettes to CDs took more than a decade.
"If you ask anyone under the age of 20 how many CDs they have, they might look at you with a blank stare," he says. "This is completely normal and expected. Every day brings a new service or wrinkle to how people get their entertainment or music."
Physical CDs still make up two-thirds of all sales, so it's unlikely they'll disappear anytime soon. But Paul Resnikoff, publisher of Los Angeles-based Digital Music News, says he expects digital album sales to increase for the next three years before flattening out. He says CD sales will continue to decline as consumers get more comfortable with downloading and CDs get increasingly harder to find in stores.
"The reality is that digital formats have shown growth because they started from zero, but they haven't come close to replacing the physical totals of 10 years ago," Resnikoff says. "The problem hasn't been one of appetite. There is more access now than there has ever been in the history of music, but there hasn't been an ability to price that music.
"You can sit in front of YouTube for 12 hours a day and not pay a dime.

Source is http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2011-07-13-eminem-adele-digital-sales_n.htm

Eminem & Royce Da 5’9″ Fly Past Big Sean on the Charts

Bad Meets Evil reclaims the top spot for a rap act on the Billboard Top 200…


With no major hip-hop album releases last week, Hell: The Sequel, from Eminem and Royce Da 5’9”, and Big Sean’s Finally Famous were the sole rap reps holding down top spots in the Billboard Top 200 albums chart, released today (July 13).


Bad Meets Evil climbed four spots this week from the No. 9 slot they occupied last week to No. 5, moving 35,500 units, according to the Nielsen SoundScan report. After four weeks the Detroit lyricists sold about 311,400 discs. Fellow D-Town native, Big Sean, sold 27,400 copies of his Def Jam debut in it’s second week, to register in at 114,700 CDs sold-to-date.


At No. 16 sits Pitbull’s Planet Pit, which, in it’s third week, sold 18,800, resulting in a total of 102,200.


Rounding out the Top 40 are Nicki Minaj, Wiz Khalifa, and Eminem, who came in at No. 25, No. 29, and No. 34 slots, respectively. Pink Friday, which moved up nine spots from last week, moved 12,600 in its 33rd week since being release. Young Money’s first lady has now sold 1,473,200 copies of her debut. Young Khalifa jumped back in the Top 40 after a one week absence, bolstered by 11,300 sales of his Atlantic Records debut Rolling Papers, as the XXL Freshman alum has moved 495,200 units to date. Slim Shady is creeping in on four times platinum, as Recovery sold 10,700 this week, bringing sales to 3,943,000


Check back next Wednesday (July 20) to find out how The Cool Kids’s When Fish Ride Bicycles, Pimp C’s. Still Pimping, Trae Tha Truth’s Street King, Cali Swag District’s The Kickback, and MellowHype’s BlackendWhite fare on the charts. —Adam Fleischer


Source is http://www.xxlmag.com/news/2011/07/eminem-royce-da-59-fly-past-big-sean-on-the-charts/