While the Drake hype is slowing down, the hoods hottest North Carolina rapper J.Cole, who has been recently signed to the Roc Nation camp could be the bee sting to take Drake’s status.
He has been the underdog for a while, since Drake has appealed to the mass audience of not only men, but women and has taken over the mainstream market with his debut album moving 462,989 units in the first week of his album release.
J.Cole reminds me of a young Nas, bringing essence in his hood stories, expressing the state of how we are living. His flow is laid back and not boasey, making ‘hard’ music for the fellas to ride to, not too slow grind to.
The problem with Drake is that the rap heads will fade away from his music because some of his music is soft, too much love content and is now viewed, from a rapper who sings to a singer who raps. Especially that his mentor ‘Weezy’ is in Rikers Island, his reign as the ‘Prince of rap’ has lead him to become complacent with his mainstream success.
Having Jay.Z as J’s mentor is a bonus but, it doesn’t determine his longevity in the mainstream, unless he releases that ‘one’ crossover track, considering his tracks are too harsh for the mainstream to handle.
However with the levels of the rap/hip-hop industry, with rappers going into prison or just fallen off the radar and is no longer relevant, the king or prince position can be easily replaced, consistency is the key.
These two talented rappers have both opened a new realm into the rap industry, the scene is evolving and there are the new generation of lyricists to set the barge higher for the next platform of rappers.
Pssst…Give it a couple of months and there will be another breakthrough rapper!
You decide…

Drake’s hot one liners.
“Swimmin’ in the money, come and find me, Nemo – If I was at the club, you know a ball, Chemo” – Forever
“I could teach you how to speak my language, Rosetta Stone” – Over
“I’ve grown tired of these fuckin’ grown man liars, Storytellers, they ain’t even need a campfire” – Light Up
“I swear I fucking does this have these niggas tripping, no luggage” – I’m Sill Fly
“ I’m just tiring you niggas, ya’ll the michellen crew” -  Goodnight and goodluck

J.Cole’s Imagery:
“Everything aint what it seems
Every lady aint no hoe, and every bitch aint no queen
Every nigga aint no dog, and every nigga aint no king
Shit be happening for a reason, everything is everything” – Dollar And A Dream
“Hold up now don’t get it twisted, I aint hating do your thing
I was like a young Simba couldn’t wait to be the king” – Grown Simba
“Your make up like a mask, tryna hide yourself 
It seems on the outside you thinking you the shit
But there’s a soul that’s inside that you don’t even knew exist
So you so out of touch that the world mistreat you” Losing your balance
“Believe in God like the sun up in the sky
Science can tell us how, it cant tell us why
I seen a baby cry then seconds later she laughed,  the beauty of life, the pain never lasts” – The badness

“Plus this slang that I speak dont change that Im deep
As the throat, on a certified freak, will she choke?” – Can I Live
Check out J.Cole debut single “Who dat”

It’s far from over for the Canadian born rapper, Drake having had four years of hard graft as a hot rapper in the underground rap scene, creating raw material on his mixtapes to developing into an artist to bring us his debut album, ‘Thank me later.’

Lil Wayne, his mentor has pushed Drake forward to be one of the best MC’s to date. From his mixtape’s spraying originality of not being the average rapper of splurging lyrics about violence, drugs and guns, Drizzy produces real and uncut insights about life dramas and love, playing on the fusion of R&B and rap, styled with his euphoric way of rapping.

‘Fireworks’ is the soulful introductory song merging a piano melody and hip hop beat, complemented with the talented Miss Alicia Keys on the chorus. He expresses his feelings about love and all the positive and negatives tied to it. In a short verse of the song he talks about the fling he had with the Bajan beauty singer Rihanna, last year May, which he recently confessed on V-103 Rickey Smiley radio show. He’s raps:

“what happened between us that night it always seems to trouble me now all of a sudden these gossip brags wanna cover me”

and continues, “What an experience you coulda been the one but it wasn’t that serious, their was smoke in the air before now its me clearing it”

He blends his singing and rapping skills over the majority of the album. In ‘Karaoke’ he starts with a mellow vibe of singing and then surprises you with his monotone rapping. His versatility of the range of emotions he expresses throughout the album makes it a non-skipping-tracks album, appealing to all, something for the ladies – ‘Find your love,’ an all R&B vocal track showing his sensitive side produced by Kanye West and something for the ballers – ‘Up all night,’ the hardcore cocky collaboration with front woman of Young Money, Barbie Nicki Minaj adding “bad bitch bars.”

For his debut, it would have been ideal to launch himself as the spotlight of the album, instead of the contributing headliners on almost every track, from Jay-Z, The dream, Swizz Beats, Young Jeezy and Lil Wayne. However, undoubtedly an artist who’s filled the void of the recent absence of original rappers, highlighting his poetic flair for the conscience minds and street style swagger.

Taken from Computer Arts article.

Continuing with a Japanese theme. World Cup mania is getting underway in Japan thanks to a new manga animation produced by TBWA/Hakuhodo agency.

The animation story was inspired by the design of the national team jersey, which features the feathers of the Yatagarasu, a mythical three-toed crow.

First, a printed comic was distributed in sports stadiums, followed by the animated version online, in-store and on stadium screens. “The graphic novel approach was (consistent) with a global campaign from Adidas”, said Kazoo Sato, TBWA/Hakuhodo’s senior creative director. “But since Japan has such a manga and anime culture, we saw an opportunity to localise and deliver something very entertaining and engaging for the Japanese audience.”

They have gone on to create massive comic panels that were completed with the help of local communities that were then photographed and put onto the connected website. These, along with messages of good wishes, were intended to show the nations support to their team.

All the animations finish with the wording ‘Impossible is nothing’. Judging from recent form though winning the World Cup this time around might be.

Check out the ads for yourself below.

TBWA/Hakuhodo’s own site is worth checking out too.

Taken from Creative review article: Drainspotting by Mark Sinclair

Of the 120m manhole covers in Japan, many sport eye-catching insignia, continuing a long tradition that pairs industrial design with graphic art. A new book documents this truly street-level subculture…

Remo Camerota is a self-confessed ‘drainspotter’; one of a small legion of ‘manhoru’ maniacs. Manhoru is the Japanese word for ‘manhole’ and, in Tokyo, Camerota’s adopted home, there are thousands of them on the city’s streets. It’s the manhole covers that attract the fans and what Camerota’s new book, Drainspotting, is dedicated to. This seemingly purely functional object, a semi-hidden element of the municipal landscape, is reborn in Japan as a brightly coloured emblem of civic pride.

The word ‘manhoru’ in fact derives from its English equivalent, a result of overseas influence on the modernisation of Japan’s sewerage systems in the late 19th century (more basic versions of which had been in place in the country for around 2,000 years). As Camerota describes in the introduction to his book, it was foreign engineers who were to introduce modern underground systems to Japan – the new, above-ground access points adopting the manhoru name.

The first manhole covers made in Japan were of a fairly basic design, occasionally patterned with geometric shapes merely to improve surface traction. But by the middle of the 20th century bespoke designs were emerging, and by the 1980s, as more areas outside of the country’s major cities had been modernised, manhole covers began to evoke regional identities, local landmarks, flora and fauna, and even Manga characters. Manhoru cover design had become a council-sanctioned form of urban art.

It was while researching his previous book, Graffiti Japan, that Camerota took an avid interest in the varied manhoru covers that peppered the roads. He was aware of ‘drainspotters’ – the breed of ‘otaku’ (fan) dedicated to photographing the best covers and blogging their findings – and decided to embark on his own ‘treasure hunt’: a journey around the prefectures of Japan with the aim of recording some of the most interesting manhoru covers he could find.

“There are two types of covers in Japan,” Camerota says as an introduction to the project. “Every city has their own local fire department design, for use on the points where the firemen can access water, and then there are the designs for each of the prefectures that have something on them specific to the locality; the flowers or birds native to a particular place. In Nagoya, for example, they have a fish on their covers as the area is famous for big tuna.”

So striking are some of the designs Camerota has photographed, that it’s hard to believe they are bolted down on pavements and roads across Japan, when they look like they should be exhibited in a gallery. “The Japanese take pride in visually presenting something,” explains Camerota. “If you buy anything in a shop, the assistant will wrap it beautifully. For me, the manhoru covers are a way of presenting the city to the public. It’s like the icing on the cake, decorating the local area with these everlasting designs.”

Camerota’s travels took him to both of the country’s dedicated manhoru museums (yes, there are two) and also to Nagashima Steel Works, one of the three foundries that have been producing covers since the 1940s.

“In the late 1970s they thought of incorporating the city mascot into the design of the manhole covers,” says Camerota of his meeting with Hirotaka Nagashima, the Nagashima foundry’s president. “They suggested it to one council, who liked the idea, and from there the trend caught on. It was good for tourism and it certainly brightened up the streets.

”

The Nagashima foundry now only makes manhole covers, seeing the work through from initial design (the in-house artists are briefed by local councils) to the industrial production process. “Each of the coloured covers costs about $3,000 to design and then up to $30,000 to make the first one,” Camerota explains. “The foundry has banks and banks of archived moulds, about 6,000 different designs on wood. The process begins in wood, then they pack this mould with sand. The metal is then poured onto the sand and they have the final mould.” Instead of then painting a fired finished object, the steel covers are ‘filled’ using a tree resin that contains a colour pigment. “The cover artist uses a plastic tube full of colour,” says Camerota, “that’s how the covers are so perfect and flat; they’re actually filled up with colour that sets with gravity.”

Camerota was also invited to view the design room at Nagashima, though the designs being worked on were guarded with some secrecy. Here, eight designers are responsible for the pictorial elements on the covers; from flowers to fire trucks and civic symbols, with one artist even specialising in Manga. AutoCAD is apparently the design programme of choice, which can give the covers a distinctly ‘vector-art’ appearance. 

In fact, the thick black outlines to each manhoru image serve a practical purpose, too: they offer grip to the millions of tyres that will pass over them during the course of their lifetime. And as Drainspotting proves, while there’s much to love about Japan when looking up, there’s also a whole world of great design to be seen on the ground.

Drainspotting by Remo Camerota is published by Mark Batty Publisher in March

The reason why I say this is it all comes down to your own perspective, by which I mean what country do you come from and what team do you support. With all these two base factors to consider it is quite easy to say that if you come from England and support Manchester United, you would probably say that the best league in the world is the Premiership. But if we cut out these factors and try to look at it without bias, which league would come out on top? With this in mind we’ll take a look at what I think are the top five League in the world, The Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga.

To break this down I will be taking in to consideration the three main points, which league has the richest football clubs? who has the best players? and who has won the most cups recently?
Firstly we will look at which league has the richest football clubs. According to The Deloitte Football Money League which shows the top twenty richest clubs for 2008/09, there are seven clubs from England, Germany has five, Italy has four and Spain and France have two each. Now as we all know money is not everything (but it does help) the more money the teams have, the more completive the league will be.

Let’s take a glance at the top ten richest clubs, (remember this is not taking into account how rich the chairman is, this is about how much the football club make as a business)

1. Real Madrid €401.4m
2. Barcelona €365.9m
3. Manchester United €327.0m
4. Bayern Munich €289.5m
5. Arsenal €263.0m
6. Chelsea €242.3m
7. Liverpool €217.0m
8. Juventus €203.2m
9. Internazionale €196.5m
10. AC Milan €196.5m

I think the Premiership win’s this one with four teams out of the top ten.

Now lets look at who has the best players. When I was younger it was all about Serie A they had the best players such as Ruud Gullit, Marco van Basten and George Weah.
Serie A is not as strong as it used to be, they still have good players but most of them are claiming their football pension . The French and German leagues don’t have that many stars either, so it really comes down to Spain and England.
I go with Spain here with players such as Messi, Kaka, Xavi, Ineista and Cristiano Ronaldo just too mention a few. To back my point take a look at the shortlist for the top ten European football players 2008/2009 also known as the Ballon d’Or.

Didier Drogba (Ivory Coast, Chelsea)
Samuel Eto’o (Cameroon, FC Barcelona & Inter Milan)
Steven Gerrard (England, Liverpool)
Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Sweden, Inter & FC Barcelona)
Andres Iniesta (Spain, FC Barcelona)
Kaka (Brazil, AC Milan & Real Madrid)
Lionel Messi (Argentina, FC Barcelona)
Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal, Manchester United & Real Madrid)
Wayne Rooney (England, Manchester United)
Xavi (Spain, FC Barcelona)

Spain has six players in this shortlist and Lionel Messi won!!

Finally we will take a look at who has won the most cups recently. Here is the list of the last ten winners of the Champions League.

2009 – FC Barcelona
2008 - Manchester United FC
2007 – AC Milan
2006 – FC Barcelona
2005 - Liverpool
2004 - FC Porto
2003 – AC Milan
2002 - Real Madrid CF
2001 – FC Bayern Munich
2000 – Real Madrid CF

Spain wins this one with four out of the last ten winners.

So according to the the three main points Spain wins two out of three, which I think is just about fair. Until the Premier League gets some more world class players and wins some more Champions Leagues it will just fall short of La Liga.

Check out the links for a bit of background info:

Props to callumtoenail

As you saw, the powers that be wearn’t too keen on Graff, just as they aren’t much now (so no change there). Which means that if you partake in a bit of rebellion using an aerosol can, you could earn yourself community service, probation, a fine or even a little stretch as it is a criminal act of vandalism! (not good for the CV)
However, with beuatiful pieces such as this around, can all of it be classed as vandalism?