From: NasTo: LA Reid, Steve Bartels, Steve Gawley, Michael Seltzer, Joseph Borrino, Chris HicksSubject: PUT MY SH*T OUT!Peace to all,With all do respect to you all, Nas is NOBODY’s slave. This is not the 1800’s, respect me and I will respect you.  I won’t even tap dance around in an email, I will get right into it. People connect to the Artist @ the end of the day, they don’t connect with the executives. Honestly, nobody even cares what label puts out a great record, they care about who recorded it. Yet time and time again its the executives who always stand in the way of a creative artist’s dream and aspirations. You don’t help draw the truth from my deepest and most inner soul, you don’t even do a great job @ selling it. The #1 problem with DEF JAM is pretty simple and obvious, the executives think they are the stars. You aren’t…. not even close. As a matter of fact, you wish you were, but it didn’t work out so you took a desk job. To the consumer, I COME FIRST. Stop trying to deprive them! I have a fan base that dies for my music and a RAP label that doesn’t understand RAP. Pretty f##### up situationThis isn’t the 90’s though. Beefing with record labels is so 15 years ago. @ this point I just need you all to be very clear where I stand and how I feel about “my label.” I could go on twitter or hot 97 tomorrow and get 100,000 protesters @ your building but I choose to walk my own path my own way because since day one I have been my own man. I did business with Tommy Mottola and Donnie Einer, two of the most psycho dudes this business ever created. I worked well with them for one major reason……. they believed in me. The didn’t give a f### about what any radio station or magazine said….those dudes had me.Lost Tapes is a movement and a very important set up piece for my career as it stands. I started this over 5 years ago @ Columbia and nobody knew what it was or what it did but the label put it out as an LP and the fans went crazy for it and I single handlely built a new brand of rap albums. It’s smart and after 5 years it’s still a head of the game. This feels great and you not feeling what I’m feeling is disturbing. Don’t get in the way of my creativity. We are aligned with the stars here, this is a movement. There is a thing called KARMA that comes to haunt you when you tamper with the aligning stars. WE ARE GIVING THE PEOPLE EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT. Stop throwing dog s### on a MAGICAL moment.You don’t get another Nas recording that doesn’t count against my deal….PERIOD! Keep your b####### $200,000.00 fund. Open the REAL budget. This is a New York pioneers ALBUM, there ain’t many of us. I am ready to drop in the 4th quarter. You don’t even have s### coming out! Stop being your own worst enemy. Let’s get money!-N.Jones

Two monumental events are upon us. First is the annual Comic Con Convention in New York City, where tens of thousands of comic and sci-fi enthusiasts convene to celebrate art, story telling and the imagination with in each of us. AllHipHop will be present for the festivities.  For more information on Comic Con or to register as an attendee, click here. To enter to win a pair of tickets, follow AllHipHop on Twitter (@allhiphopcom) and tell us your favorite super hero or comic character. The second event we celebrate is the release of Black Comix, a hardback, sturdy and deep examination of the vibrant African American independent comics community. The book assembles an incredible number of artists that have often been overlooked – frequently without merit. Go to BlackComixBook.com to read more on the book. We wanted to take the celebration a step further. So, we asked Black Comix author Damian Duffy to compile a list of the most incredible, influential and momentous Black comic characters to reaffirm the breadth of content offered in the community. Let the discussion begin. We play no games. The list starts at 1 and ends at 25. (While you debate, enjoy or learn about the characters, peep the portraits throughout the list.)PORTRAITS: BLACK PANTHER AND STORM!      1. Black Lightning Publisher: DC Comics Creators: Tony Isabella and Trevor von Eeden About:  Olympic Gold Medalist and schoolteacher Jefferson Pierce educates the kids by day and slings electricity at criminals by night in Suicide Slum, the Metropolis ghetto Superman apparently forgets to fly over.  The first black superhero to get his own title from DC Comics (in 1977), Black Lightning was almost a character called the “Black Bomber,” a white bigot that turned into a black superhero at times of stress, until Isabella came on and talked DC into stopping the madness, scrapping the Bomber scripts, and letting him create something worthwhile instead. 2. Black Panther Publisher: Marvel Comics Creators: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby About:  Like every monarch of the fictional African nation/technological superpower Wakanda, King T’Challa wears the mantel of the Black Panther to protect his people, superhero hardcore with the Avengers, and randomly marry Marvel’s other African character, Storm from the X-Men.  The Black Panther first appeared in a 1966 issue of The Fantastic Four, predating the formation of the political party of the same name, and becoming the first black superhero in American mainstream comics in the process.   3. Bootsie Publisher: Amsterdam News Creator: Oliver Harrington About: Bootsie was the protagonist of Dark Laughter, the first African-American comic strip to gain national attention, in 1935. A hapless Harlem inhabitant navigating the racial minefield of America, mid-20th century, the political edge of Bootsie’s one-panel adventures eventually won creator Ollie Harrington the attention of McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities committee. Harrington expatriated in 1951, living the rest of his life in Germany.    4. Brotherman Publisher: Big City Comics Creators: Dawud Anyabwile and Guy Sims About: Taking lessons from his community activist parents to heart, Antonio Valor battles the crumbling and corruption of Big City, both as an Assistant DA, and as Brotherman: Dictator of Discipline.  Starting out as a superhero parody to sell T-shirts in 1990, Brotherman grew into a trailblazing powerhouse of self-publishing, putting comics about creating positive black images into the hands of readers from all walks of life, and influencing a generation of black comics artists in the process.PORTRAIT: MARTHA WASHINGTON!    5. Torchy Brown Publisher: Pittsburgh Courier Creator: Jackie Ormes About: The first comic strip drawn by the first African American woman cartoonist, Jackie Ormes, was the short-lived Torchy Brown in ‘Dixie to Harlem,’ about a young girl from the South moving to a Northern big city.  The strip only lasted a year before Ormes moved on to other comics, but it paved the way for Torchy’s return in the 1950 weekly color strip Torchy Brown in Heartbeats.  A romance comic strip with a social conscience, the always smart, stylish, and heroic Torchy and her doctor husband moved to a small Southern town to live through adventures that touched on issues from race to environmental pollution.    6. Luke Cage Publisher: Marvel Comics Creators: Archie Goodwin and John Romita, Sr. About: In 1972, in an attempt to grab some of the popularity of Blaxploitation films, Marvel created their first African-American hero: A wrongly accused escaped convict with bulletproof skin selling his superhero services to the highest bidder.  Over the years Cage shed his silver tiara and cries of “Sweet Christmas!,” connecting with new generations of creators that have re-imagined the Hero for Hire as everything from a thug rapper guy to a film noir detective to the leader of the Avengers.               P.S. Marvel: we’re still tapping our feet, glancing at our watch, waiting for the Cage movie. 7. Green Lantern/ John Stewart Publisher: DC Comics  Creators: Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams  About: Architect and ex-Marine John Stewart was another early black superhero for DC Comics, introduced in 1971 as an understudy Green Lantern, should the primary GL, Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds in the upcoming movie), ever kick the emerald bucket.  Originally part and parcel of writer O’Neil and artist Adams’ sometimes clumsy attempts to inject politics into superheroes, Stewart was recast in 2001 as a founding member of the Justice League in the Cartoon Network animated series.  For viewers unfamiliar with the comics, Stewart was the only Green Lantern; shame he’s been downgraded to a possible cameo for the big screen.    8. The Hole Publisher: Front Forty Press Creators: Damian Duffy and John Jennings About: Yes, we put in our own character, the protagonist of our graphic novel The Hole: Consumer Culture.  But show us another character like the Hole, half ex-con tattoo artist Curtis Cooper, half junkie rich girl Katrina Snodgrass, cursed with a morphing fanged mouth, a sideways gift from the Voodoo spirit of the crossroads, Papa Legba. The amalgam of Curtrina can eat anything, time, memories, gravity, and never get full. Sort of like […]