“The Wrestler” was an awesome movie. Being a lifelong fan of professional wrestling, it was an eye opening look at how many greats may have lived their life. Also being a life long Hip-Hop fan I thought to myself and realized many MC’s have lived this way. I’m not a big fan of MC Hammer at all, but you can kind of compare his struggle to The Ram’s (minus the drugs, alcohol, and trailer park). Hammer performed all over the world, sold out concerts, the biggest arenas in the world. Unfortunately Hammer was the flavor of the week. People loved him in the early 90’s, but he became a fad and people stopped buying his albums. Obviously the money he made, he didn’t know how to manage it properly, and was forced to file for bankruptcy in ‘96. Hammer still makes music today, got his life back on track, but is not the financial success as he once was. He’s still in the game, but who cares? He’s not relevant no more.

One of my favorite MC’s of all time is DMX. X ruled the late 90’s and he was the shit. With his signature swagger and growl, he sold 28 million records during his career. Drugs gotten the best of the Dark Man X. He is now well known for his multiple arrests and unusual behavior. I can go on and on with this post. You can probably name a few names that are not as big as they used to be. There’s plenty of well respected MC’s out there that sold out Madison Square Garden, but now do shows at grimey clubs performing for less then 200 people. Longevity and relevance is the name of the game, but so is being smart. This message goes out to everybody, when you know your time is up, please be smart with the success you made for yourself. Otherwise you’ll just be another sad story, talking about the good old days when you were cool.

Stay True,

RCV