Everyones gone Big Brother mad over here in the UK. Its day 57 out of 64 for the fly on the wall TV show – if you ain’t from the UK then you may be a bit puzzled about whats happening but you can find out more at www.bigbrother.terra.com. So what the hell has this got to do with Hip Hop, well its even caught on in some MC circles. I saw Common on MTV last week freestyling a verse on stage with the line ‘You be watching me like you watch big brother’ and something about ‘Nasty Nick’, like I said if your still confused check out the official website and see what the fuss is about.

So how you doing? Its been a long time right? Well in that time Hugos come back from down under and I took a short break to Zante in Greece for a few days so tha-real.com should be in full flow right? Wrong!. Things have been a bit slow over the last few weeks as we get back to normal and you may have noticed that the updates may not have been as good. Well lets explain another reason why, you may not know this and everything here is the truth. This site has run up major debts now, its not making any money (although that’s not its purpose and intention) and server costs are a burden on us, I don’t get paid for this, I don’t ask you to vote in any website chart and everything you get on this site is FREE. We can no longer do it so what do we do? Host the site on a free server that may not be able to take the amount of hits?, Ask you to do a marathon ‘Banner Click’ on the sponsors to generate some serious cash for the next week?, Ask for donations from you (if 1000 of the daily 6000 plus visitors donated just a dollar each it would secure the site for a very long time) or just simply shut down?. Well up until last night it looked like the last option was the way we were going until we got some help but that help is only temporary so the problem has not gone away. Start appreciating this site or it will be gone – that’s not a threat that’s a call for help. If we opened an online store would you buy? If we put more adverts would you click? If you want to advertise for a small cost would you? I want to know this and I want you to email me and let me know or any other viable ideas to keep tha-real.com alive. E me at phil@tha-real.com

I also say this because I am very unmotivated by the whole thing, nothings driving me to contribute to this site anymore, money was never an option or the reason for doing this, the music and support from labels and visitors was. Now my Inbox is empty most days even though the hits are the same, take the time out to give us advice, tell us what you want, how we are doing in bringing you the latest music and news, don’t leave it up to anyone else.

The Music has been unexciting lately although the new Royce track gets a lot of play here and although I haven’t listened to it properly I think the Ugly Duckling album is heading for the top 10 of the year. As for Wu, that buzz has started again and with tracks leaking left right and centre on the net I hope it doesn’t spoil ‘The ‘W’’ for me, on the other hand I could be selfish and not post any new Wu as we get it but we’ll see how it progresses. Reflection Eternal shouldn’t be far away, next month in fact and as I told you a while back the album won’t be made up of previously released material. Liked Ant Ones review of LL Cool J? well the album drops this week and its probably the best LL album since ‘14 shots to the dome’, hes improved but hes not amazing. And on a non hip hop related note, just 2 words to people in the states CRAIG DAVID.

I’m currently looking for work and as a Business graduate I’m finding it hard, rather than opening a lot of doors its closing too many – overqualified. If your in the same position as me you know how hard it is. Ideally I’m trying to get into marketing and this site has been my main focus as a marketing project over the last 2 years, taking our Launch figure of 1000 daily visitors to a top figure of around 7000. To be honest I think we have all done well, its been in Magazines, TV, Forums, other sites features and news bulletins, got shout outs on album sleeves and is respected by some of the best Underground artists out there, so whats next? That’s your decision.

PHIL