Freaknik: A Pictorial Montage

When you hear the term "Freaknik" or "Freaknic," a certain cannotation comes to mind: Unruliness, debauchery, black people having a good 'ole time with no regard to society's woes, traffic or otherwise. Is this characterization somewhat accurate?
In the immortal words of the familiar refrain on Dr. Dre's "The Chronic" album:
"Hell Yeah!"
Let's go down memory lane, Peachtree in fact, in pictures from Freakniks past.



Adina Howard was a household name back then.



Back then, there was "No Time" for fake ones.



Let's be honest: To some people, it was a paradise. To others, it was the day the niggaz took over.



Everybody was on a Creep in the mid-1990s.



Tunes of the times: "Swing low, sweet chariot and ... Let me Ride".



They didn't mean to be so destructive, use your heart to forgive.



People were on some "goobitty gooks" stuff too.



"Still clowning with the Underground, when they come around." - 2Pac, 1993



It was all about "Electric Relaxation" - Tribe Called Quest.









Fancy cars, wild women, men in a metropolis: In 1992, you couldn't ask for a better scenario.






Freaknik does not belong in the 21st century, it died unceromoniously in 1998, choked to death by Atlanta's politicians and beaurocracy. The free-wheeling and high times of the 1990s have been killed by the fearmongering and economic waste of the 2000s. It is what it is.
In conclusion, Freaknik was not a party, it was an idea, a mind-set. Thus, it can never truly die.
It exists in the mind.





















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Royce Reed: NBA Bad Girl?

It takes expert editing to manufacture a villain for reality TV. Footage has to be carefully spliced together, sound bites must be edited, and voiceovers added. Then came Royce Reed, the very obvious and deserving antagonist of VH1's new show, "Basketball Wives".
In the case of Reed, a former Miami Heat and Orlando Magic dancer, the show's title is a misnomer: Reed is not married to a basketball player, nor is she married at all. But that doesn't matter to VH1, just like it matters not to the farmer that shoots a wolf that killed one of his sheep. Any wolf will do.
And Reed, who has a baby, Braylon Joshua Robert Howard, by Magic center Dwight Howard, is a wolf in sheep's booty shorts.
To people in Florida, Reed is well known. But VH1 introduced her to the world.
The show, framed against the hedonistic flair of Miami Beach, features other non-basketball wives, such as Evelyn Lozada, the former fiancee of former Heat player Antoine Walker. But it's Reed who earns the Hatorade for her hot-in-the-pants antics and wild booty-shaking that made it to Youtube (Thanks Ms. Bar B).
Reed, who will be confronted by nearly all the wives on the show, is the NBA Bad Girl de jour but only for so long. Before it's over, Shaunie and all of them will drink the Hatorade juice.

Check out the trailer for "Basketball Wives"


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Beyonce, Lady Gaga's 'Telephone' rings loud

The sizzling hot phenomenom which is for henceforth called BeGaga has altered space and time as we know it with their 9-minute epic video for "Telephone".
Beyonce, at her Sasha'ing best, brings the muscle; Lady Gaga the wired brains as two of music's biggest females debuted their hit song to enormous results on the Web. Some music TV channels have banned the video due to suggestive and downright odd sensual scenes.
But not Youtube. The clip is on pace to become the most-watched video on the Internet. Ever.
Talk about girl power.
Watch.



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Meagan Good to produce 'Video Girl'

Hollywood actress Meagan Good will take a turn behind the cameras, producing "Video Girl," a film about, well, video girls. The film will star such highly esteemed video stars (I'm using the words loosely here) as Esther Baxter, who's claim to fame is Petey Pablo's "Freak-A-Leek" and Hollywood socialite Claudia Jordan, the black Kardashian. The film sounds like a vanity project, but who knows? Could Meagan bring home an Oscar? Meyer? Weiner?


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Is Everybody a Model Now?

Just a few short years ago you had to actually be working for a talent agency to be considered a model. I mean, you had to actually have face shots, and in most cases, a real, live, walking, talking agent.
But along came Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, Black Planet, and Xango, or whatever.
"Models" exploded out of the woodwork. Their credits were simply club shots that somebody took of them with a group of people on the dance floor. Some simply bought a new bikini, a lace front and slapped it on the Internet -- POW -- a model, just like that.
I mean, what would Tyra Banks say?
Now, don't get me wrong a person can choose to make a living or be as entrepreneurial as their work ethic allows, but com'on. All of a sudden the Internet is filled with fiddyleven models?
And the only pose they know? The booty pose, that's it.
Is it me, or can anybody be a model nowadays?


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Bey, Alicia Keys go Carnival style

Your favorite superwomen, Beyonce and Alicia Keys, got into the Carnival spirit recently with a video shoot in Rio de Janeiro recently. Keys, fresh off a condo buy in New York, has to be glad she's not back in the States after a blizzard came through this past weekend. The Brazil shoot is for the duo's song "Put it in a Love Song," which will be released shortly under Bey's catalog. According to the Associated Press, the Brazil slum where the women were is the same ghetto that Michael Jackson performed his "They Don't Care About Us" video. (cue the crotch-grab and primal yell here).

Beyonce upstages Lady GaGa in 'Video Phone'

Well, Lady Gaga had her first real opportunity to shine next to a luminary, and she kinda fell back big time. In the "Video Phone" video, directed by Hype Williams, the woman known for the most outrageous outfits was upstaged by Beyonce in every clip. The homages to Hollywood were evident when the clip came on and you would have figured that it was just up Lady Gaga's alley right? Wrong.
She played it straight. This is a woman that had blood curdling out her chest at the VMAs and she's with a filmmaker who gets off on blatant color orgies, and she shoots her shot with a white dress on.

Other than that, the song is just okay, but the video really signals the return of Wiliams, who's been kinda low key lately. Check the video out in the right rail.

Amanda Diva spits "Hot S---t"

This is some ole retro Amanda Diva, the Columbia University-educated rapper **slash** actress.

Wherefore Has Melyssa Ford Gone?

The term "video vixen" didn't have much resonance until a curvaceous Toronto native stormed the hip-hop video world in the late 1990s. Her name was Melyssa Ford, discovered pouring drinks at a T.O. nightclub by a video director. She went on to do modeling work, TV and radio, and has recently been seen on the big screen (Days of Wrath). While always priding herself with not being a groupie and sexual object, her career has taken a noticeable dip lately. She has gotten cameos in movies, but no starring roles. She has gotten magazine spreads but no prominent interviews. Is Melyssa Ford winning? Other video vixens have catapulted past her, namingly Superhead andBuffie the Body, using their curves to sign business agreements, but Ford who studied forensic psychology in school, has yet to show the business acumen that the other women have. Of course, the other women are alot more naked than she is. But will Ford keep her moral standards, or dip down into the money-rich lair of semi-nudism that so many other video women have found themselves?