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Being Hip-Hop When Hip-Hop Isn't Hip

50 Cent may have the scars and the criminal record to prove he's "real," but when he and his bullet holes get fed into the pop-music machine, what ultimately comes out is a lethal, KEVLARŪ-wearing, trash-talking version of Britney Spears. Maybe he isn't pretending, but he's pretentious nonetheless.

Tom Dooley

 

Who Killed the Beatles? Or, Leave it to Beaver

As to the deed, we have the lone gunman theory, which implicates either Yoko Ono or Linda Eastman. This hypothesis can of course be expanded into a corporate conspiracy theory of Fuji vs. Kodak. There is also Brian Epstein's ghost to consider, and the question of whether he enjoyed John's company more than we want to know, as one biographer asserts, and whether Epstein's jealousy reached beyond the grave in some Hamlet's-father-for-Banquo trade.

CE Chaffin

 

"Unintended Consequences" and Other Irritants

If John Ashcroft is not a fascist, then the word is utterly without meaning.

Paul J. Sampson