Do Better Thursday – 1st Edition

***Disclaimer: the following post wasn’t intended to be so long… I don’t believe the subsequent ones will be as lengthy… It’s just the first one out the gate… Enjoy!!!*** 

Do Better Thursday…

Welcome to the initial Do Better Thursday post… It’s been an idea I’ve kicked around for a couple of months… I wanted to highlight people, places or events that took place during the week that were either “Doing Better” or needed to get its act together and “Do Better”… After thinking about it… I’ve decided to proceed in that fashion… the weekly post will recap the high and lows of the week… Hopefully, during the lifespan of the blog it will call out far more things “doing better” than the opposite… In the future, I may vlog about the topics… Seems to be the 2009 thing to do… or rather 2006 way to do so… uStream live is more current I suppose… This 1st post however will be in text… Sorry, gotta read this one… 😉 Also, the weekly entry will have comments and posts from contributors that are members of the Do Better Movement… (Including this one… Levi’s Soapbox accompanies this the launch of Do Better Thursday…) Translation: anyone reading this is apart of the Movement… It’s that simple… Ok… that’s all out the way… Let’s get started!

Last Sunday evening, I was relaxing at home… Watching the Sunday night game between the Steelers and Ravens… An all-around good game… The young 3rd stringer, Dennis Dixon did a good job filling in for Roethlisberger… Almost pulled out the victory… Until the Steelers allowed the Ravens to convert a 4th and 5 attempt… that spawned a sequence of events that resulted in Dixon throwing an interception in OT and losing the game… Nonetheless, a great effort and definitely worthy of a “Do Better” nod…

Now much in the form of a “Simpson’s” episode… the lead-in to this post has nothing to do with the plot… while watching the game… I also checked the pulse of Twitter… basically read tweets… and observed that BET was showing the Soul Train Awards… both facets made me cringe… In the past the Soul Train Awards were decent… I’d say maybe 10-15 years ago… however, in the past decade there have been few reasons to check it out and certainly no reason to do so within the past 5 years… Coupled with that is BET… I don’t think I need to any further and simply state, BET.  If you don’t feel a *groan* in your stomach each time you see those letters… Do Better.  So boom… BET is showing the Soul Train Music Awards… at first… I stayed on NBC… however, the commercials began to repeat itself and as I sat on my couch, supposedly typing receipts for on.us.tee purchases… Twitter kept buzzing about the going-ons on BET… so I made the switch… Jebus… Oh, Jebus… why did I do such a thing… I may offend some with the following but truly… it looked like the Negro Medley Comedy Hour… it was a rotation of new and tired acts… singing a verse and passing the baton to a long-forgotten-lost-its-luster act of yesterday… as a confessed music snob… no one sounded good (well, not entirely true…)… Robin Thicke, thanks for proving to me… you’re horrendous… if you were Robin Sniffilis no one would care… (sorry, had to get that out…) Anyway, the whole thing was tired… borderline embarrassing.  Thanks Terrance “What’s going on wit chu?” Howard and Taraji Henson (although I dig you greatly and you’re a fellow DC native & HU alum) was a smidge OC… (I’m being nice…) …yet even with their antics, the cycle of lackluster performances and the fact it looked like it was shot at Tyler Perry Studios (…no really, was it?) The show had an even lower moment and it came at the expense of the dead… the special tribute to Michael J. Jackson… What can I say about it… hmm… 1st, it seemed like an infomercial for Don Cornelius speech classes… 2nd, was it constructed in PowerPoint?… 3rd, slapping together clips you’ve taken from Youtube and laying spliced interviews with Don C and Young MJ doesn’t make it a tribute… Lastly, how long was it… 2 minutes… truly… it was so short when the commercial rolled it… I thought it was all one and the same… that my friends, was not a tribute to one of the greatest… if not THE greatest entertainers of all-time… so BET… well, we already knew this… but Soul Train… Do Better!

You would think that it would be so simple… BET presents the Soul Train Music Awards… featuring the lackluster artists of today… and there you have the “Need to Do Better” moment of the week… (oh yeah, as stated earlier, it wasn’t all bad… the tribute to Chaka “I-sounded-the-best-although-I-only-sang-2-bars-that-night” Khan was pretty good… the ladies did her justice… Angie Stone shouldn’t have let Chaka sing though… it only showed much better they have to do… to get on her level… sorry for the ramble…)

But no…

Enter Tiger Woods…

I won’t stay too long on this topic… if you follow @onustees on twitter… or my profile on Facebook… my rants covered the full-spectrum of this mess… and truly don’t want to revisit those emotions right now… bottomline, Tiger… *scratch that* Men… Do Better… if you can’t be an upstanding cat to the woman in your life… don’t get married… and if you do get married… be on.us… let her know… “hey it’s not working out…” and move on… now, granted… I’ve never been married… and I know it’s not that simple to get out of a marriage… especially with years invested, kids involved and future plans laid out… but if you’re feeling a certain way PLEASE TELL YOUR WOMAN!!! I may not know the in’s and out’s of marriage… but I do I understand math… 1 problem (i.e. I need more out of this relationship) is fewer than the multitude of problems that arise once you get caught creeping… and don’t worry playa… you gon’ get caught… and once you do… it’s becomes exponentially much worse than if you tried to address the issue with your significant other… Now, women… I must say this… Not “all men are cheats”… yes, much like all women, all men have the capability to cheat… but not all men do… Please don’t hold good men accountable for the actions of others…

Now, back to Tiger…

Thanks for leaving voicemails, getting caught, clawed up, golf clubbed, chased, car-wrecked and placed in and out of consciousness… you have single-handedly cause a legion of black women (who last week didn’t even care that you existed… because of your spousal choice…) now coming down and *side eyeing* black men across America…

so let’s recap… you, Tiger, marry outside your race (which I couldn’t care less or more about… that’s your decision… cool beans… speaking from the sister’s view point now) …“fine, he don’t want us… we don’t want him… I got me a man who loves this chocolate” and everything is cool… then you get caught out there… “hmm mmm, no good bastard… just like the rest of these men out here…” now, when they say men… they are REALLY talking about the brothers… so, yes… thanks Sir Cablasian… when you were “marry white and doing right”… it was all good… AS SOON AS YOU GET CAUGHT MESSING AROUND… I gotta hear and read this foolishness about how all men are assholes.

Thanks, fam.

Do Better. – dre.

Ahh… now that that’s out of my system…

Let’s move to the “Do Better Approved” segment of this post…

Last night the Grammy Nominations were announced… and lo and behold some music that is currently IN my iPhone was actually listed!!! The biggest nod goes to The Foreign Exchange featuring Phonte of Little Brother and producer Nicolay… I’ve been a fan of both of these cats for some years now… It’s great to hear they’re up for Best Urban/Alternative Performance for their song “Daykeeper” feat. Muhsinah the opener to the album “Leave It All Behind”… Check out the video below… and visit their website @ http://www.theforeignexchangemusic.com …Also, go get the albums!!! Their debut “Connected” is just as dope… So a HUGE congrats to these brothers… and much success in their future of making good music…

Here are some other artists who got the Grammy nod and are Do Better Certified…

• Maxwell
• Song of the Year – Pretty Wings
• Best Pop Male Vocal Performance – Love You
• Best Pop Instrumental Performance – Phoenix Rise
• Best Male R&B Vocal Performance – Pretty Wings
• Best R&B Song – Pretty Wings
• Best R&B Album – Blacksummers’ Night
• Stevie Wonder
• Best Pop Male Vocal Performance – All About The Love Again
• Coldplay
• Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals – Life In Technicolor II
• Mos Def
• Best Rap Solo Performance – Casa Bey
• Best Rap Album – The Ecstatic
• Jay-Z
• Best Rap Solo Performance – D.O.A (Death of Autotune)
• Best Rap Song – D.O.A. (Death of Autotune)
• Q-Tip
• Best Rap Album – The Renaissance
• Common
• Best Rap Album – Universal Mind Control (although, I gotta admit… it was “meh” to me…)

Hope you enjoyed the 1st installment of Do Better Thursday… Be sure to check Levi’s Soapbox featured below!

as always…

enjoy life,

– dre’ of onustees.com