Day 6: 30 Days of TUNECHI for National Poetry Month

How A New Orleans Label Went Big: A Prose Poem

Once upon a time there was a white woman named Wendy Day:

“Around Memorial Day of 1997, Day went to New Orleans for a convention. She stopped by Peaches, one of the best known local record stores, to find out what was hot, and landed on a CD by an artist named Pimp Daddy. After a listen, Wendy Day liked the album enough to seek out the proprietors of Pimp Daddy’s label. Day ended up wandering the Magnolia Projects of uptown New Orleans—a strange White lady asking anyone if they’d heard of Cash Money Records.”  (522)

Magnolia Projects 

The Magnolia Projects (noila, NOYLA) or C.J. Peete Projects was among one of the largest housing projects and notoriously one of the most dangerous. Bounded by Louisiana Avenue, South Claiborne Avenue, La Salle Street and Washington Avenue, the Magnolia Projects were located within the 11th and 12th Wards of New Orleans. At its height, the Magnolia projects had 1403 units. Now redeveloped, the current housing site is called Harmony Oaks.

“Wendy Day drafted an impressive business plan for Cash Money Records, and an audacious deal proposal for such a small label. Cash Money wanted 80/20 pressing and distribution deal—the most lucrative for them, the least lucrative for the distributor. But they also wanted something virtually unprecedented. Before any records were sold, Cash Money wanted a multimillion-dollar advance on sales. Advances of this magnitude were unheard-of for P&D deals.”  (523)

 “On June 18, 1988, Universal Records announced its landmark distributing and marketing deal with Cash Money Records, for its roster of virtual unknowns: Big Tymers, B.G., Juvenile, and a sixteen-year old rapper named Lil Wayne” 

“ [Russell] Simmons thought Cash Money had achieved the impossible by not knowing that they were asking for the impossible. Their ignorance, he presumed, was their strength. But the Williams brothers [owners of Cash Money Bryan “Baby”["Birdman"]  and Ronald “Slim”] knew, because Wendy Day taught them.” 

Wendy Day eventually had to sue Cash Money for default of payment for brokering this lucrative deal with Universal. As such, you won't find her name in the Cash Money history. In fact, when Lil Wayne raps that he made the game, that he taught everyone how to do this, that he was the trail blazer; well, as part of Cash Money at 16, he was. Cash Money changed the rules and changed the game. But they also predictably erased one of the game changers: Wendy Day. 

"In early 2010, Birdman launched an oil and energy venture under the name "Bronald Oil" with his brother. "Bronald" is a combination of his name, Bryan and his brother's name Ronald. Their plans were to explore and develop oil resources in the U.S. Gulf Coast and Oklahoma Osage County. Bloomberg.com has reported that Birdman has declined to provide info about the company. The company is registered to a Miami condo and phone numbers associated with that name do not take incoming calls." 

New Orleans rap: a myth

New Orleans Cash Money: a myth 

New Orleans: a myth 

Final Quote: 

http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/richest-rappers/birdman-net-worth/

Excluding final quote, all quotes from The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip Hop by Dan Charles (New American Library, 2010) pp. 522-525

Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics

Seriously, Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, where have you been all my life.

This journal rocks, and I am biased because I happen to adore prose poems/ poetic prose. Doubly amazing, the Sentence Feature in issue 7 is Contemporary American Indian Prose Poetry with poems by Sherman Alexie, Sara Marie Ortiz, Orlando White, LeAnne Howe, Susan Deer Cloud, and more to just name a few.

The feature section has a wonderful introduction by Dean Rader exploring the link between prose poetics and oral tradition, esp. in relation to American Indian Poetics. The rest of this journal is just as wonderful with a rich range of styles and voices that keep you wanting to read this thick tome. This is 300 pgs of great writing for 12.00 bucks from Firewheel Editions.

Order below:

http://firewheel-editions.org/sentence/subscriptions.htm

I just ordered this book, Had Slaves by Catherine Sasanov from Firewheel as they had sections in #7 Issue of Sentence. Here's a brief description of it from the website:

"Two words, stumbled across while going through family papers, upended everything poet Catherine Sasanov thought she knew about her Missouri ancestors. Using extensive research and imaginative speculation, Sasanov not only constructs fragments of what might have been the lives of the central figures in this tragic drama—the eleven men, women and children held in bondage by her great-great-great-grandfather and his family—but also offers a larger view of American slavery and the artifacts and attitudes that are its ongoing legacy."

In the excerpts in Sentence, one of the things I like about these poems are the titles. Here is an example "Line Drawing of Ex-Slave, James Cannefax, Consisting of Ink Lifted from Newsprint, Probate Files, Census Pages, Historical Gossip, a Cemetery Map, and One Ripped Watercolor." The poem then tries to assemble these disparate pieces so that a collage emerges of the character. I like the scientific catalogue of where the facts are coming from, and the idea that we are being given the medium before viewing the "painting" in its entirety.

Morton Marcus has two poems in Sentence, "Pears" and "Navel" which both present an image, and then the writer turns and turns and turns the image until its inside out and upside down. Marcus does this with great effect. "The Guitars" by Ray Gonzalez is another one of my favorites; it literally catalogs famous guitar players and the weird incidences involving their instruments; it's both fascinating and macabre as he places these instruments in the room where "Eric Clapton's four-year-old son fell out of a 49th floor apartment to his death..." All of these tales swirl around these guitars that are part of these musicians like an extra limb.