Wednesday, December 20 01:58 PM
Urban Expose Presents: The Top 100 People, Places, and Things With No Buzz.
The year 2000 is almost at a close. While it has been a good year, it hasn't been a great year. The year 2000 rolled in more like a lamb than a lion. There are no flying cars or personal jet packs. The closest thing we have to anything space aged is a color palm pilot. New Year's Eve proved to be very anti-climatic for many. Many people wished there was a Y2K disaster just so something interesting would happen. We realize that as a nation we can't make up our minds. We don't know if content is truly king or if it's about e-commerce. We don't know whether to use our cell phones, PDAs, or two-way pagers to check our voice mail. For fuck's sake we had to let the Supreme Court choose our President for us. This indecisiveness has plagued the emerging urban entertainment dot-bombs. Perhaps that is why in this first year the urban sites and their principles occupy a large amount of the No-Buzz list. We expect a lot out of the urban web properties that were launched, and like the New Year that passed they, for the most part, fizzled. In the year where urban films flourished, and cable channels multiplied by a factor of 10, the Internet was still where everyone's attention was truly focused. Now we finally know what WWW stands for. What Went Wrong? With that, we proudly present the UE 100: 100. No Limit Records No Limit Records changes the way we thought about music promotion, album covers and what a sweet deal with a record label was all about. With a large roster of some of the worst named acts No Limit climbed to the top of the charts with lyrics that were not understandable above the Mason-Dixon line. After the departure of Snoop Doggy Dog and Mystical, No Limit Records finds itself with a roster depleted of A list talent and sagging sales. They still however have a lock on movies with retarded people on bikes chasing rappers in slow motion. 99. Our New President George W. Bush has won the presidency. We now have a president that wears utensils around his neck. Good thing daddy put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court back in the day. At least Judge Rehnquist got to show off his little gold brushes in public again. Awww, they're so cute. 98. Corey Poldolsky Corey Poldolsky came into Urban Box Office early on as SVP of Product Development. He convinced George, Frank and Adam that he was some responsible how for Flashradio at Sonicnet. He provided UBO a dense layer of bureaucracy that slowed down anything remotely productive happening. He brought in his wife to help with Womanhood and get a double check. When asked about whether he had ever checked out the competition a month from the close of UBO, Corey said "Black Planet? What's that? I never have seen it but we are going kick their ass!" 97. E. David Ellington E. David Ellington, card carrying boulé member, runs Netnoir.com. He gets quite snippy if you forget the E in his name. He is currently transforming Netnoir from a web company into an events / marketing company where they throw parties for Black BBW's and Bi-Curious chatters across the country sponsored by cheap liquor companies. Perhaps that is why David Watkins (#27) is headed out to the west coast. 96. Othervision Urban Box Office launched Othervision.com which featured the most derivative storylines ever featured in cartoon series on the web. One of their series for IndiePlanet (#47) is eerily like Gattica meets Logan's Run with a nerd as the protagonist. Their premiere cartoon, the bizarrely named Bulletproof Diva, features porno-star party fixture Heather Hunter. The storyline is like Spawn meets Dark Angel, except her character wears more makeup. Production on the series was halted due to accidental fellatio. 95. Honey When Honey Magazine launched, it captured the imagination of young women of color everywhere. Once and for all it made Essence your mother's magazine. Honey recently had a new editor appointed. At least she is more concerned about menopause than manicures during meetings. Somewhere along the way Honey lost that ethereal spark that made it a must read. Now it's like YSB for people who are fucking. 94. John Pasmore John Pasmore publishes One World Magazine, a magazine with slightly less depth than Bennetton Colors. The Bi-yearly magazine has spawned a generation of writers and editors who now ask for checks up front. He is a partner with Russell Simmons on the rag. Russell provides his name and an editorial column his secretary probably writes. John Pasmore belongs to the same ethnic group as UPN news anchor Reg Wells. He currently moonlights as a middle manager at Hookt. (#6) 93. Brett Wright Brett is the SVP of Marketing at Hookt (#6) who has overseen the placement of Hookt magalogs and posters laying on the ground all over New York. Thanks to Brett, Hookt is now a household word among employees of hookt.com. He has a good rapport with music artists because he makes them feel tall. In addition to his salary, Brett's contract stipulates that he is to receive equity and a lifetime supply of activator. 92. Joel Dreyfuss Joel Dreyfuss left his comfy job at Fortune magazine reviewing digital watches to join a dotcom in hopes of stocks options. After interviewing with everyone in the space, who found him arrogant and overpriced, he found a home at Urban Box Office where he spent his time writing diatribes, wandering the halls aimlessly, and responding disdainfully to requests for help. His crowning achievement at UBO is the copy for thewilliamssisters.com, which he has submitted to the Pulitzers board for consideration. If only Ben Bradlee could see him now! 91. Black Voices Black Voices serves up exciting chatroom fare to participate in such as "Ebony and Ivory", "The Stove Top", and "The Christian Upper Room". Its dwindling market share is due to the success of blackplanet.com. They have maintained their audience by siphoning off the last few users left at Netnoir. They have recently launched a print magazine to promote the brand to college students called BVQ. The site features a mini-site for Tavis "Baby Joyner" Smiley, and a database of personals with pictures from lonely black people from every state. 90. Sheryl Huggins Former publisher of Shadè magazine, Sheryl Huggins was an executive at UBO who has the unique distinction of running through 2 staffs and developing two sites which never launched(the Gauge, Urban News Wire). Her dream is to bring capsule club and restaurant reviews from all 50 states in one site. Sheryl dances just like the Peanuts gang in the It's Christmas Charlie Brown TV special. She likes to bring Joel Dreyfuss (#92) around to cocktail parties for a sexually neutral dance partner. 89. SayShe.com Let's create a magical place for urban women who shop at Conway's, by bourgeois women who shop at Takashimaya. It will be a place where they can read articles about how artists don't show up for SayShe interviews and women can be swamped with ads for hip-hop sites and their new product line, Urban Luxe; cosmetics for light-skinned mulatto girls. 88. Urban Cool Network Urban Cool Network was perhaps the corniest urban web portal play of the year. Its featured an insulting Jim Crow logo and content that even your father would think was square. Now that the IPO market went south, this Texas based roll-up did just that. We don't think anyone even noticed. 87. Chris Sealy Chris jumped from Loud to work at a company that implemented his idea. It was called AKA. Chris spent an inordinate amount of time talking up the horribly named Loophole Magazine. This magazine would be revolutionary in that it would feature Mos Def on the cover every issue. The online version of the magazine has mysteriously disappeared after his exit from the AKA fold. 86. Steve Rifkind Steve Rifkind had it rough growing up as a 3rd generation music mogul. It was tough growing up in a crib with gold records hanging over it. After funding AKA, he learned that misspelled hip-hop articles hosted on angelfire servers by kids in Iowa aren't as valuable as Mobb Deep albums. 85. Soulhouse The legendary artist Isaac Hayes backs the online commerce destination for Soul. Soulhouse has currently closed its doors, but claims that it will re-open December 2000. You used to be able to buy soul music, soul books, soul I-openers, soul travel arrangements and soul E-meters. They would make a killing if they allow you to buy those velvet astrology posters with naked people in different positions. 84. Y2G Fubu and Samsung got together to deliver a urban content play that has consistently been under the radar of most write ups of the online urban space. They support the 5 people who chat on the site with articles about the FUBU front men's nightlives, modeling, 2 way pagers and celebrity gossip. Somewhere among all of this they also sell those Fat Albert Shiny Jackets. They also shrunk Fugina's teats, which was the first time we ever saw a gossip columnist with negative body image. FUBU is rumored to be working on Stymie thongs for their summer line. 83. Retha Hill Retha Hill used to write catty descriptions of women's outfits in the Beltway for the Washington Post's online site. Now she oversees the blandest content on the net as VP of content for BET.com. At least she knows how to jump Double Dutch. Yum! 82. Rap Pages Taking it's place beside other fine Larry Flynt fare like Barely Legal, Rap Pages was a nice counterpoint to The Source. After Flynt pulled the plug on the struggling monthly, founding editor Dane Webb, who negotiated its sale to Timaj publications, revived it. Timaj publishes teenybopper and inmate rags like Black Beat and Word Up, which ironically contain pin-ups and centerfolds of celebrities just like a Larry Flynt publication. Sigh, a far cry from its dreamy halcyon days. 81. Russell Simmons One World Using the meaningless let's all be friends and hold crystals psychobabble "One World" as a brand, a name synonymous for mediocrity and blandness, Russell Simmons found the one host that could make one long for Dee Barnes to return to hosting. Kimora Lee, his future wife, helmed the vanity show until dismal ratings raised disputes over ownership and control. 80. Places Of Color The charming Dash helms DME. A reverse-merger penny stock roll-up that allowed a company called Digital Mafia Entertainment to be listed on Over The Counter stock exchanges. Their premiere product is Places Of Color. Their original plan for the site included exciting content idea like weather and music artist interviews. Now they sell refurbished computers and Internet service as an ethnic front to HP. It's kind of like a Buy.com except without the large selection. 79. Netnoir Netnoir's slogan, "Taking you there, Wherever there is.", sounds like a bad James Baldwin quote. They have fired anyone who could actually do anything effective and feature content like pictorial-based soap operas. It's member base has also dwindled in a small part due to the success of Blackplanet.com and blackvoices.com. Netnoir is built using Cold Fusion (ALLR), a dying scripting language that is as ineffective as it is cheap. Netnoir was also foolish enough to pay AskJeeves (ASKJ), a dying search engine company, to put a giant search box to put on their page. The search engine takes users to other sites away from their advertisers using a fake natural language parser equivalent in power to Liza. 78. Corey Suspect Pay to play. 6 Degrees of David Watkins. 77. Douglas Niblet: Touré Touré is currently a contributing editor to Rolling Stone. Touré has made a career of writing glowing reviews of Bad Boy releases. He used to supply Mays-friendly features to the Source. He has a penchant for looking up Langston Hughes quotes to use in his music reviews to seem deep. He worked as Editor-in-Chief at One World magazine early on, defining it as a leader in middling multi-racial entertainment. 76. Steven Samuel The Ogre of online hip-hop is oft referred to as Al Roker with balls. He and his partner / lover Felcia Palmer attempt to run online hip-hop with an iron hand. Always the rebel at UBO, he sent a message to the internal UBO listserv that said, "unsubscribe" after building the only CPS in UBO history. 75. Frank Cooper The quiet man ran from responsibility like the dead-beat dad like in the Cheryl "Pepsii" Riley video. He even abandoned employees he personally anointed for senior executive positions. He is currently kicking dirt on his partner surreptitiously and trying to wrest control of the remaining UBO properties for a warm restart. It's not clear if his new Benz SL-500 was paid for by from his record labels stints or the $1.8 bridge loan from Interfase. 74. Urban Direct Artist Direct's weak attempt at capitalizing on the urban market. It consisted of copying over all the message boards from the hip-hop and R&B artists to a new niche site no one cared about. The site hasn't been touched since the firings at Artist Direct. You'll have to get your Missy Elliott shoulder pads elsewhere 73. RJ Vilardi R.J. is Mr. Dowdell's assistant at Volume.com. He answers calls and writes memos. He walks, walks, walks, and he pecks, pecks, pecks. You know your pure content web play is in trouble when assistants have to pitch in and write stories about egg sandwiches and baseball. 72. Miles Rose The ousted business development manager from Y2G has restarted his siliconalley.com venture. He left Y2G with a ton of useless business relationships from IPIX to Centerseat. He has now returning to trolling the outskirts of silicon alley fetes for business cards. At least he got a cool mp3 player out of it! 71. McLean Greaves Mr. Greaves, who likes to refer to himself as a cybernegro, founded VMI an early web development company that ran a web content play called Café Los Negroes where McLean ran stories about himself, an artsy Canadian techie transplant to the heart of Bed-Stuy living in a crack building that dislikes hip-hop. Volume confused audio recordings in the hallway of McLean's apartment building for cutting edge content, McLean was appointed to the VP of Content Development for Volume. Mclean is the first strike in the VMI curse, however he has now jetted to the west coast to pursue a career in rock music and ginger. 70. Ray J Look Brandy. You can't make us like him. 69. Smokey Fontaine The former music editor of the Source landed the Director of Content spot at Volume.com where he developed cutting edge content such as little 100 pixel by 100 pixel video clips of rappers chilling with strippers. Bounced from Volume to write book on DMX. 68. Rapnetwork.com Founded by John Schecter. Anything that has Stretch Armstrong's picture on the front page cannot possibly be hot. 67. BET.com BET's online strategy is now in it's third incarnation. It has declared war on all others using the strength of its offline brand and now its larger parent corporation, Viacom. They plan to fight the long war of attrition by soaking up advertiser dollars for a second tier product. Sticking million dollar sponsors in low traffic content areas on the site ought to get them excited. Eventually they will focus on what their core audience is: Young adults willing to calling long distance to abate loneliness and travel to fuck strangers. 66. Volume.com Yawn. 65. Dalton Higgins Dalton Higgins, Toronto-based fashion dread, has made his name with a dull pen and forked tongue. Resells phoner interviews to as many venues as possible. He also lists the free reviews he does on amazon.com on his resume. His favorite technique at causing controversy is leveling charges of racism. 64. Tyrone Thomas Tyrone is the former network card installer for Virtual Melanin Inc. who became CTO of Urban Box Office. The second strike in the VMI curse, spent more time practicing Capoeira during meetings than he did integrating technology. 63. Source.com A frame-based monstrosity that brings nothing new to the table but a jumbled mess. Any hope of a clear message being sent out is lost in this attempt to throw in everything but the kitchen sink. Basically a website for 20 people to chat on. They're hoping they get some more hip-hop fight footage to keep the traffic numbers up. 62. Urban Magic Urban Magic is currently about to close up shop. Once again, Scient botched another company's business plan before they even made it to market. Anne Simmons will have to find another top spot to fill so that she can subject her underlings to long-winded speeches about shopping at Tiffany's and how wonderful it was to work at RUSH. We wonder if Impact will take Barry-Mother-Fucking-Wade back. 61. Biv 10 Records Michael Bivins loves producing little boys. The more the merrier. Groups include ABC(6), Subway(4) and now Pee Wee All Stars(10!). What's up? We are still waiting for Sudden Impact. Evidently they aren't young enough. Now the term Boyz 2 Men finally makes sense. 60. Chas Walker and Peter Griffith Chas: "Yo Bro! We stuffed ourselves in this little Porsches and we are on our way to floss at Dillon's! I hope there are some waitresses that will recognize I am rich and sit in my lap! " Peter: "Did you pay Puffy the $49,200.35 we need to get him to nod his head at us tonight?" Chas: "Yeah. Hey, Tina Imn sure is fine! I'm glad we bought platform. We already know that she doesn't mind a belly after going out with Ben White. Oh boy! We are here!" Peter: "We are going to win dammit! Chas, please stop that crying shit. Chas, stop spitting on Puffy as you talk. Your embarrassing me." 59. MC Hammer M.C. Hammer is back in 2001 with a tell-all biopic on Showtime on how he went from a hot star to selling long distance and dancing for chicken gizzards on television. Don't hurt them hammer. 58. Lisa Shorter 6 degrees of David Watkins. She sued David Watkins after he fired her for getting pregnant. 57. Ben Klipstien The former Editor-in-Chief of onelevel.com was once responsible for a sprawling empire of content that included 5 articles in 6 months. 56. Jimmy Walker Currently operating as a conservative radio host in Utah. He spends his time lamenting on what bad guys limousine liberal are. His favorite targets are Bill Cosby and Tom Joyner. 55. Lisa Lindo 6 Degrees of David Watkins. 54. Marc Gerald Marc runs The Syndicate Affiliated. Wesley Snipes is a partner in this imprint dedicated to Donald Goines-esque pulp novels that attempt to convey the most negative, violent, misogynistic, images of poor blacks and Latinos that are marketed to poor ghetto youth. The books also contain CD's of 3rd tier hip-hop cuts. They hope to get kids interesting in reading about ak-47's , bitches, and heroin. 53. Platform Hookt recently acquired platform.net in its rollup strategy hoping to consolidate the urban space to look attractive as an acquisition target. The new platform lead by Ben White has everything it should have had from the beginning: the ability to buy things immediately, a key promotional area, clear text and community aspects integrated into the site. All done in up PHP with cute quotes under the logo just like.. urr.. well.. Urban Expose. Platform must have really been in trouble if Hookt acquired them. Battle on Tina! 52. Noah Kerner Noah Kerner runs the online equivalent to Delancy Street. Onelevel.com has shed all content and now sells urban apparel and DJ equipment. Maybe they can get a deal to sell gazelles online from Sol Moscot. Noah Kerner cried after the onelevel.com piece appeared on Urban Expose. 51. Mario Van Peebles He sure isn't his old man. Sonny Spoon spent this year doing straight to video releases after ruining several subjects that every black filmmaker coveted: The Black cowboy movie (Posse), The Black Panther movie (Panther), and the Black robot movie (Solo). He is now poised to make a comeback playing Malcolm X. 50. Urban Box Office Relaunch Party It's was David Watkins's day. It would be bazaar unlike any other that would thrust him into the annals of history. The purpose of the party was three-fold. First it would boost morale of employees. It would also garner press coverage that would make UBO a household world. Third, it would hopefully help Adam impress investors with the possibility of getting laid and how cool they were. The queer thing is that none of the celebrities invited came. As a matter of fact, UBO star power consisted of Big Lez showing up dressed like Mary J. Blige. The sad thing is India's speech was more inspirational and relevant than the CEO's. Oh well, the food was good. Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

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