Ryan Leslie Plays Over Lil Wayne's "Lollipop" on SIRIUS

Why waste time with laborious verbose illustrations? Thusly, Holmes is Dumbnice!!!

Ryan Leslie (RL) grew up was all over the western United States moving frequently his parents were ministers in The Salvation Army. While attending public school in Stockton, California at age 14 RL found out his parents were moving once again. Rather than having to attend a fifth school, RL decided to finish his sophomore year and then enroll in college. RL took the SATs and received a perfect score of 1600.
Leslie attended Harvard University in the fall of 1994 at 15 years old and graduated at the age of 19 with a degree in Government and Economics.
He now lives in Harlem, New York.

Ryan Leslie (RL) was 19 in the below article. The studio featured in the photo was in the basement of RL's college dorm. RL claims that he was stunned that The Harvard Crimson (THC) wanted to feature him in the school paper for THC's graduation issue. If you've seen any of RL's on-line videos you'll notice that he's still producing the same way.

+DJ Green Lantern: Official Site l MySpace
+Hip Hop Nation Radio: Sirius

Producer Teddy Riley Reportedly Broke

CLD
PRSS

Excerpts from: EURweb:

The Virginian-Pilot newspaper is reporting that famed producer Teddy Riley, born Edward Theodore Riley, October 8, 1967 in Harlem, New York, has fallen on hard times and is selling his Virginia Beach recording studio to help get himself out of debt.

According to the newspaper, the architect of New Jack Swing owes $1 million to several creditors and is hoping money from the sale of his Future Records Recording Studio will satisfy the bill. But that's not likely to happen.

The one-story building was considered state-of-the-art when Riley purchased it for $3 million in 1991, but the equipment is now thought to be out of date. The house was reportedly assessed at only $460,000.

During a court hearing on Friday, Feb. 1, 2008, lawyers representing two different creditors to whom Riley reportedly owes money agreed to seek a buyer for the studio. Both attorneys understand that the studio has dated technology, but Richard J. Conrod, Sr., a lawyer for one of the creditors, is hoping to sell the property as a working business instead of just real estate.

Riley has reportedly been in debt since at least 2002, when he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. He bounced back a year later, only to have the IRS file a $1 million lien against him for unpaid income taxes in 2004. Two years later he was forced to sell his home in the posh Church Point neighborhood of Virginia Beach for $1.5 million to pay off federal and city taxes, as well as the home's remaining mortgage.

In 2007, the IRS filed another tax lien against him for $196,747 and just this past month the state of Virginia filed a $93,684 income tax lien against the musician.

+Teddy Riley discography: Discogs
+On the Continuing Resonance of "Rump Shaker": Village Voice: Status Ain’t Hood
+Harlem Renaissance: Audio Files
+O'Reilly surprised "there was no difference" between Harlem restaurant and other New York restaurants: Media Matters

+Playahata

Harlem of the West

From left: John Handy, Pony Poindexter, John Coltrane and Frank Fisher jamming at Jimbo's Bop City, circa 1950; Johnny Mathis performs at Bop City in the 1950s & Dexter Gordon performs at Bop City in the 1950s. Photos by Steve Jackson, Jr.


From the intestines of NPR comes the below book review:

Books
'Harlem of the West': Memories of S.F. Jazz
Day to Day
May 25, 2006
By Karen Grigsby Bates

The Fillmore is the legendary concert venue that put its namesake, the Fillmore District in San Francisco, on the rock 'n' roll map. The club's walls are lined with vintage concert posters and photos taken during performances by 1960s icons such as the Allman Brothers, Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane.
But before that era, the Fillmore was known as the "Harlem of the West" - a mostly black neighborhood, known for its jazz clubs. Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era, a new book by documentary filmmaker Elizabeth Pepin and photographer Lewis Watts, charts the emergence of the neighborhood's jazz scene and its demise during the "urban renewal" wave of the 1960s.
For the Fillmore, the "renewal" meant bulldozers and wrecking balls. Lots were leveled to make way for high-rise apartment buildings. Businesses and venues such as Jimbo's Bop City -- a legendary jazz club where Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Lionel Hampton and Dexter Gordon once played - disappeared almost overnight.
Lewis Watts compares the Fillmore at its cultural height in the days after World War II to the Harlem Renaissance in Manhattan. The photographic record of those moments was almost lost, preserved by a lone barber in the neighborhood.
"In his back room were ... framed photographs, some of them just in supermarket bags - amazing photographs, some of them torn, some of them water-stained, but just amazing photographs," he says.


+Harlem of the West' Exhibit at the Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum