Lay It Down, Lay It Down!

Lay it down, lay it down, you “**#$” lay it down.

So I have finally decided to publish this. I’ve been talking about from time to time, as circumstances and situation call for the need for some to LAY IT DOWN!

Welcome to the first session of Lay It Down. The purpose of Lay it Down is to put on blast those people, places, things, ideas, etc. that need to LAY IT DOWN!

Session one is dedicated to all those hip-hop artists who lack originality in giving themselves a moniker. If your stage name begins with Lil’ or Young, (even if you spell it Yung) – SHAME ON YOU. If someone gave you the name, you should have politely and firmly said no. If you gave the name to yourself, you need to be flogged.

Special allowance is given to Lil’ Wayne. If your skills are a tight as the “Best Rapper alive since the Best rapper retired” or if you sell out millions as this Cash Money Millionaire does (as evidenced by the recent release of The Carter III)– then by all means. Passes are also given to Lil’ Jon – you put Crunk on the map buddy! YoungBloodz also gets a pass; a group name.

However if you are new and have not established yourself, please, do us all a favor. Don’t enter the game with something as weak and unoriginal as the Lil’ or Young/Yung adjective in front of your name.

So for:

· Lil’ Flip, Lil’ Boosie, Lil’ Keke, Lil’ Scrappy, Lil’ Troy, Lil’ Romeo, Lil’ Wyte, Lil’ Weavah, Lil’ Ru, Lil’ Skeeter, Lil’ Fame, Lil Fame, Lil' Ru

· Young Jeezy, Young Buck, Yung Joc, Young Dro, Yung Berg, Yung Ralph, Yung Wun

LAY IT DOWN!

-If I forgot or left off anyone’s name off of this list, it probably means you are not well-known enough to be named (or didn’t show up on Google). You still have a chance to change your name.

How long can you be Lil’ or Young? At some point you will grow up or get older.

Are you hoping that you can capitalize on the name recognition of someone better than you? Maybe you would like to achieve success by association? Whatever the case it is hard to separate the true talent in the deep pool of mediocrity in which you all dwell.

There are plenty of examples of originality and creativity for names: T-Pain, Trick Daddy, Jadakiss, Ludacris, LL Cool J, Mos Def, any of the Wu-Tang among so many others.

Thank you Bow Wow and Webbie for dropping the Lil’ from your name, it is appreciated.

Let it be known, that this in no way reflects on how I feel about your music, only on the name. In fact I’m a fan of Jeezy, Buck, Dro, Joc, Scrappy, but drop the prefix.

For those of you whose names begin with “Big” – this extends to you too – LAY IT DOWN!

Stay tuned for the next edition!