Zeliard said:
Black Star has a tendency to convert the greatest of non-believers.
It really is a great idea to start with Mos and Kweli, grab Black on Both Sides and Reflection Eternal, and work your way out from there. Common's Like Water For Chocolate, some Tribe, the Roots, then something more abstract. Maybe Del the Funkee Homosapien, De la, etc. Doom is always win, too. Currently I'm listening to a bootleg album called RAGU - Raekwon and Ghostface United, and it's pretty solid. If you like Ghostface and/or Wu-Tang, Ghost has been super productive lately, and this is def. worth a listen.
It really is who you are and who you're affiliated with more than what you actually do these days. Would anyone give a shit about my retarded link dump if I wasn't formerly affiliated with gaming mags/sites? I don't kid myself. I've seen thousands follow "I woke up today/Feeling hungry/Ate a hot dog/Going to bed." Think about that. Had I phoned my very best friend ten years ago to tell him that I'm eating a hot dog and feeling happy, he'd say fuck you, stop calling.
I think about that all the time. The only difference that I can see is that the girl is working the system to build themselves up, and you actually built a following by actually having a job which put you in the public eye. Has your twitter account magnified the attention drawn to you? You'd know more than I would. Either way, it wouldn't bother me. I just find myself stunned again and again by my society, that it can support so much inane bullshit: day after day of procedural crime dramas on CBS, Dancing and cooking reality TV shows in prime time slots, the "SyFy Channnel", etc., etc. The trouble with life in the digital age is that the old opiate of the masses has multiplied itself a couple dozen times, and it gets a bit annoying wading through the crap. Then again, maybe I've just got rose-tinted glasses on, and it was the same shit, different asshole back then. "Fuck it dude, let's go bowling."