The year Y2K seems so recent since it’s in the 00’s...then I remember that we are getting to the end of 2009, that’s nearly 10 years! This means I am well within my rights to term some of the following songs as old school classics...they definitely feel old when you hear them!

The R&B Flash

• Kelly Price - Love Set's You Free

This song featured everyone! Aaron Hall, Babyface, Case, Dru Hill, Kandice Love, LovHer, Montell Jordan (in leather pants! Muhahahaha) & Tamar Braxton...woah! This song sends me right back to secondary school, it was such a jam! But UMG will not allow me embed it, so here’s the Kelly Price & Aaron Hall version. The beat is so reminiscent of the time, I hope it gets you happily grooving like I am now, so here you go...this R&B banger is a bonus track off of Mirror Mirror, Love Set’s You Free.

Music Video CodesMyspace Music

• Ruff Endz - No More

Now if you weren’t feeling this at the time I don’t know WHAT you were feeling! Another solid Y2K R&B banger off of their album Love Crimes, which incidentally had another good song, Missing You, on it.

• 3LW - No More (Baby I'ma Do Right)

Now even at the time this song was a guilty pleasure even though I was young and it was a big tune just because I always thought they sounded so young! I love it though, reminds me of my first serious crush...shout out to Jerry! LMAO!! And also jamming with my SSSO girls and at ’venture!

• R. Kelly - Fiesta (Remix) ft. Jay-Z, Boo & Gotti

My days!!!!!!!!!!!!! Mr. Robert Kelly smacked it on the TP-2.com album, it was soooo hot. For me so many jams for that year came from this album, the I Wish (Remix) To The Homies We Lost was amazing, as were the I Don’t Mean It Remix, Like A Real Freak and Strip For Me. But back to this song in particular—Day-um! I knew ALL the words, yes I was that sad, c’mon now sing along...After the show is the Afterparty, AND, After the party is the Hotel lobby AND...

• Jaheim - Just In Case

Back when Ghetto Love was out, Jaheim was on top of the world, his fortunes have since changed and his popularity has perhaps waned somewhat due to his inability to progress as an artist. However, the album was sooo good, I really did think he has the voice of an angel...!

• Jagged Edge - Let's Get Married

From J.E. Heartbreak, this song along with Keys To The Range and Did She Say were really good. This was a big favourite and I remember everyone vowing that this would be their wedding song! Please note: I went to a girls’ school, I don’t know any guys saying that at the time, but I could be wrong...

• Joe - Stutter ft. Mystikal

I thought this song was groundbreaking at the time, Mystikal’s delivery was fire and it was like waking up sleepy generally boring-love-song-singing Joe to a whole new world of R&B. And his bank balance didn’t suffer for it, either! From the R&B classic album My Name Is Joe (random thought: Have you seen the cover? He looks like such a sleaze!).

• Kelis - Caught Out There

Who didn’t scream along with this, ladies? If you say no, you lieeeeeeeeeeeee! Ah, this song could appeal in various moods...it appealed to pissivity of the highest order, to those days you just wanna crank it up and scream for no apparent reason and when you wanted to listen to mad production. These were the days before everyone had been done by the Neptunes and it was an amazing track off of Kaleidoscope...Caught Out There.

• Kelis - Get Along With You

I didn’t know this had a vid! This was my favourite song off the album, Kaleidoscope. So here you go...

• Lucy Pearl - Don't Mess With My Man

Lucy Pearl...just saying the name makes me smile. So sad there was only one album, because I really liked it, but such is life. Don’t Mess With My Man was one of those tracks that got you neck rolling thinking about if she dared to even think about messing with your man....lol, I was how old at the time, like 14? LMAO, I could still relate!

• Pink - There You Go

Another solid R&B album of the time, Can’t Take Me Home, spawned this megahit. The album was sick, this song was sick and the video was sick...especially when she rides the bike into the window, plus I think she looks real sexy with that hair. Wow, memories of when people used to discuss if Pink was fully white or ‘had some black in her’ a la Charlie Baltimore, LOLS!

• Next - Wifey

Y2K was the beginning of the mainstream success of R&B, and a good time too because R&B was still good then (arguably it’s a bit rubbish now)! And Wifey is a key jam of the time, it was played everywhere at every party and we loved it. I must admit that by 2004 I hated it but recently I have been listening to Welcome II Nextasy and I remember how it used to sound and why I loved it. Now that album was...woah...hmmmm, sex album anyone?

• X-2-C - Bonafide

This song features on Save The Last Dance, a film I loved at the time and still quite like now. I bought the soundtrack to the film such was my love for that film and this was one of my favourites off the album and the film. My Window by Soulbone was great as well, I know you’re all thinking shouldn’t Shaka Demus and Pliers, Ice Cube or Fredro Star remind me of the film...ok yeah they do, but this was a better song. I was became soooooo sick of You Can Do It!

Soon come, with the rest of the Y2K jams, gotta cut this before it gets way too long. Plus, I’m off to have a Y2K R&B par-tay!

Bye people,

xXx

Nsoromma...Child of the Heavens

After visiting Pen Powder's blog the other night, I started thinking (yet again) about the plight of mother Africa as a whole. How can the most resource rich continent be so abjectly poor, governed by dynasties of despots who reinforce the illegitimate actions of their fellow tyrannical despots through lavish gifts the likes of which most of their countrymen will never see? I know it's nothing new and has been going on since we started to gain our independence but it came upon me again, and I was enraged (you will start to see a pattern with me, I get enraged and then I feel you must know about it! Sorry!).

When I was still in school and the term 'third-world country' was still politically correct (if you don't know, it is no more, instead we now have LEDCs - Less Economically Developed Countries - get to know!) I learnt that Africa was the ONLY continent on God's good earth that was 100% third-world. Yes, people the WHOLE thing including the likes of Egypt and South Africa, who were not classed second-world like Brazil was (the mind boggles...). Anyhoo...after President Obama (Omama) came to Ghana and spoke to the people about Africa solving her own problems many Africans were outraged. How can our brother come and say such things to us? Does he not realise that our continent was ravaged and pillaged by the colonial powers and they still have us in chains?

Now, don't get me wrong I have sympathies with the neo-colonial arguments. There is barely anywhere in Africa you can look without seeing American, British or French neo-colonialism, you only have to look at Liberia, Angola or Sierra Leone (to name a few) to be slapped in the face with it. And in much the same way that African-Americans can still complain about the effects of slavery crippling their people the same can be said of Africa's neo-colonialism.

However, just like I feel African-Americans use slavery as an all-encompassing excuse for social degradation and low achievement so do Africans. Firstly, Obama is your brother? Really?!?!?! His Dad originated from Kenya, he is half-white and fully American, is it so surprising that he came out with that view? Think about it, as a high-achieving black American I'm sure he's heard all the complaints about 'the white man keeping us down' and has decided that a lot of the time they are excuses. But just as the whole 'Cambridge officer acted stupidly' incident indicated, he is not unaware of what black people face in his country. In the same way with his connection to Africa, I doubt he is unaware of how thoroughly his country has colonised his father's continent.

However, he did see it as an excuse for Africa to blame their plight on other people and I think to some degree he is right. We are all too ready to blame other people for our problems, while we are in in a position to do something about it. I'm a firm believer that its the little things that we do which create the stage and pave the way for bigger movements and change. This is no less the case when we are dealing with the mammoth task of making out continent more self-sufficient. Tell me how on earth can we complain about Africa begging for handout's when on a local level we perpetuate the very same type of behaviour. Are we (as in Africans abroad) not in anyway responsible for this 'give me, I want, I need, you owe me' attitude when many of us are killing ourselves over here to feed and clothe those who are more than capable of doing it themselves?

Now before I am inundated with personal attacks about not understanding poverty, blah-de-blah, consider...I know a family of six living in a teeny, tiny flat, in a bad area who are really struggling for basics. A 2 bed flat and one of the rooms is a half room really, can't make ends meet and merely existing exacerbates their poverty. Yet they are in abrokyrie (tr. abroad) and so life is great? Hmmm, so supporting 8, 9 people in Ghana who claim to want need, etc. new laptops and mobile phones to show off with is understandable? Repeatedly sending 'school fees' only to be told school fees have not been paid and now are desperately owing or else poor little Kojo can't finish school? They do not live in shoddy housing and many do not work because abrokyrie will provide? Consider, my mother's younger sister in Ghana has four kids and a husband, a shop my mum got for her and a house abrokyrie money built for her. All her children will be able to go to school to the highest level. But she doesn't work and yet when she needs things and abrokyrie should provide?

If we do not stop such fuckeries on a local level then Africa will never stop it on an international scale either. Since cutting off my Aunty's requests for 'needs', the woman has been slowly learning self-sufficiency. It's long, painful and at time she makes damn silly decisions but she must make them in order to grow.

So do you agree that:

• We (as in Africans abroad) are in part responsible for this 'give me, I want, I need, you owe me' attitude?
• Effecting a change in abrokyrie-relatives-back-home dependency will benefit our continent?

Image Credits: www.travelblog.org/africa/

Didn't I promise you a part 2? Get your box of kleenex and your cup of tea ready. Here we go:

6. Lesson Learned- Alicia Keys ft. John Mayer

One of the highlights of As I Am and a bonafide "break-up song". Ms. Keys and Mr. Mayer give us pure perfection in this melancholic song.


7. The ice was getting thinner- Death Cab For Cutie

Perfect example of the type of songs to expect from the poster kids of the emo movement. Documents the point in a relationship when you realise that the whole relationship was built on air and there's no longer anything to hold on to.

Hope you enjoy these selections. Maybe we'll have some fun next time with "Songs that make me happy". One can only cry so much!

Haven't heard this song in aaaaaaages and thought I'd share. Completely sums up how I'm feeling right now. Hope you enjoy

I can't believe I'm actually writing this post. I am a life-long, die-hard Liverpool fan and everybody knows that Arsenal is the team I hate most in this world (followed closely by Manchester United). I also have no particular feelings either way or another for Manchester City. However, I've been reading/ hearing all sorts of rubbish today about Adebayor's behaviour towards Arsenal today and I thought I'd throw in my two cents.

Quick recap of the background story before the game today:

Emanuel Adebayor just signed for Man City from his former club Arsenal this summer after publicly declaring his desire to leave said club. Basically Adebayor said he would like to play for AC Milan because he felt as though he was being treated unfairly at Arsenal and this abviously did not help to endear him to the Arsenal fans who had already turned against him. The deal with AC Milan fell through but he eventually ended signing for Man City at terms that were more than agreeable to both clubs.

Ok, now keep in mind that the Arsenal fans have given this man all kinds of abuse both before and after her expressed a desire to leave the club. One "fan" even attacked him at an airport amidst accusations of his laziness whilst at the club. Now some may argue that this abuse was/ is warranted given his outspoken declarations against Arsenal. Fair enough. However, I feel that if one can dish it out, one must be able to take it too.

This brings me to today and Arsenal vs. Man City. Now keep in mind that this game has been hyped up to no end and the entire footballing world is waiting with bated breath to see how Adebayor will handle himself against his former club. Footballing wise, Adebayor thrives under the pressure and scores a goal against his former team-mates. In celebration, Adebayor runs to the Arsenal fans, who have been booing him incessantly throughout the match, and slides on his knees, arms held out in jubilation. This clearly riles up the Arsenal fans who respond by hurling any available missile at him. In a post-match interview, Adebayor apologises (without any urging) to the Arsenal fans he offended and admits that his emotions ran away with him.

Now this is football. Arsenal fans have been giving this man stick for months now, booing his every touch, hurling insults etc. etc. and now they want to get up in arms when he decides to rub their noses in it a little? Like I said, don't dish it out if you can't take it. I've heard criticisms bemoaning the fact that as a professional football player, he is a role model to kids and blah blah blah. Please! He's a mere man who happens to be a good football player. If you're looking to a random stranger to be a role model to your children, may I kindly suggest that there is something quite wrong with you? These same people accusing him of being a poor role model, are the same people who today, displayed such acts of classlessness by throwing missiles at him, spitting, etc. etc. Yeah, great role model you are.

Now after all this, I have to admit that I don't even like Adebayor. The man is a whiner and you all know how I feel about grown men whining.... His actions towards his former team-mate Robin van Persie were questionable at best and each angle of the video replay tells a different story as to whether he deliberately stamped on his face. However, I have to say that I really felt Adebayor today. Like him or not, his reaction after scoring that goal made me very very happy inside.

Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments!

Image courtesy of BBC Sports

Would you ever get married to someone outside of your race? Or perhaps, outside of your nationality? Would you marry somebody who is not of the same faith as you? A conversation with a (yoruba) friend of mine got me thinking long and hard on this issue. I asked her if she would ever consider dating an Igbo man, the fiery response I got back was "God forbid! Olorun maje!". (Please forgive me, my nigerian friends if the spelling is wrong) Now I don't exactly know the politics between the different tribes in Naija but I can tell you that sister girl was not looking to get too up close and personal with any man whose name doesn't begin with Ola...or Tola... or Bola... or end in ...femi or ...yemi or ...kemi.

Am I afro-cen...