Over the years, Kanye West expressed his desire to build his own utopian community, which appears to be the same thing that Elon Musk plans on doing in Texas. Per WSJ, Musk acquired 3,500 acres of land just outside of Austin. The SpaceX founder plans on turning the plot of land into “a sort of Texas utopia along the Colorado River, where his employees could live and work” near the facilities for SpaceX and Boring Co. This would reportedly allow Musk to develop his own regulations on the land which would help speed up his plans.
Apparently, Elon Musk consulted Kanye West about building the Texas town. According to WSJ, Ye, and Elon Musk held a meeting in 2022 to discuss these plans. Details surrounding the meeting remain unclear but Ye’s expressed his fondness of Musk’s innovations and vice versa. During a Q&A at SXSW a few years back, Musk named West as a person that inspires him. With that said, it’s no surprise that he would’ve wanted Ye’s thoughts on his Texas town.
Kanye & Elon Musk’s Fall Out
NEW YORK, NY – APRIL 21: George Lucas, Kanye West and Elon Musk attend TIME 100 Gala, TIME’s 100 Most Influential People In The World at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 21, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for TIME)
At this point, it’s unclear when the meeting took place. Kanye West and Elon Musk haven’t necessarily seen eye-to-eye in recent times due to the former’s anti-Semitic comments. Musk suspended Ye from Twitter for posting a swastika on his page in the midst of his hateful 2022 tirade. Musk also said that he “personally wanted to punch” Ye over his spree of anti-Jewish comments that ultimately led to Adidas and GAP parting ways with the artist.
In response to the suspension, Ye questioned whether Elon Musk was a “genetic hybrid” of a Chinese genius and a South African model. “Take a Chinese genius and mate them with a South African super model, and we have an Elon,” he said. “I say an Elon because they probably made 10 to 30 Elon’s and he’s the first genetic hybrid that stuck.” We’ll keep you posted on any more details surrounding Ye and Elon Musk’s meeting. Would you live in Elon Musk’s “Texas utopia”? Let us know in the comment section below.
50 Cent has been making his moves all around Houston, Texas. Since being a city resident since 2021, it’s clear the “In Da Club” rapper wants to make a positive impact in Houston. The Queens businessman has his hands in the community, from being the Grand Marshall in last year’s Thanksgiving Day parade and hosting parties to sitting courtside at Houston Rockets’ games. He recently attended the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo International Wine competition, where he made a massive purchase.
The International Wine competition is an annual event in which over 3,000 entrants from over 18 countries compete. The three-week livestock and radio show is the world’s largest rodeo and cattle auction. The 2023 Reserve Grand Champion’s best of the show was the Bernhardt Winery Antiquity Chardonnay Reserve, with a price of $165,000. 50 Cent and his company, Sire Spirits, won the wine at the auction. Not only did his company win big at the event, but 50 also won.
His French wine brand, Le Chemin du Roi Brut Champagne AOC, won the Grand Champion Best of Show Award for International Wine. A real estate company based outside of Houston, J, Alan Kent Development, won the bottle at the auction for a record price of $325,000! The Get Rich Or Die Tryin rapper is no stranger to winning at this event, as he received an award in his third year in a row.
Numerous Texas prisoners are taking on the second week of a hunger strike in protest of indefinite solitary confinement– a form of incarceration in the US that is largely frowned upon by human rights activists.
Across the Texas prison system, inmates have been refusing food since January 10 to form an organized objection against being held in isolation for up to a decade. The exact number of prisoners involved remains unknown, but an estimate from the Texas department of criminal justice (TDCJ) puts it at 72. Yet, outside advocates communicating with strikers say there are more than 138.
In the state of Texas, solitary confinement is used as a means of control designed largely to prevent violence between prisoners. The practice itself has origins that trace back to the 19th century when Quakers in Pennsylvania used this method as a substitution for public punishments. The goal is to segregate prisoners involved in gangs, known as “security threat groups.” Amongst these groups are the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood and the Mexican mafia.
The state currently has more than 3,000 inmates in “restrictive housing”, as solitary is known. Of those, more than 500 have been isolated for at least 10 years and 138 for at least 20 years.
The process of identifying “gang status” inmates includes an assessment for tattoos and other gang activity indicators. Once labeled with gang status, inmates are placed alone in a cell indefinitely, regardless of any behavioral violations or wrongdoing.
Due to the indeterminate length of a solitary term in Texas, the state is a national leader in the use of this extreme form of lock-up over prolonged periods.
Brittany Robertson, an outside representative for the hunger strikers, told the Guardian that, “Most units don’t allow calls, no contact visits, no oversight or effective grievance process. Mail is delayed up to a month, there are staffing shortages and with no security checks there are a lot of suicides.” She added that the prisoners who had joined the protest “truly feel this is in the best interest of all, including the prison employees who are suffering appalling conditions as well.”
Robertson has assembled a set of official complaints from solitary prisoners. One inmate reported that he had an infected abscess on his back that was going untreated; a Black prisoner complained that African American in solitary were being singled out for “physical and psychological abuse”; and a third offender requested being transferred out of the solitary unit because “my life is in danger here.”
The Texas strike is modeled on California’s example where prisoners staged a hunger strike in 2013. Two years later the California inmates successfully litigated a federal settlement that ended the use of solitary in the state based on gang status alone.
Texas hunger strikers prepared written demands which they presented to the prison authorities three months before they started the current action. Their main demand is that Texas refines the current system of putting prisoners indefinitely into solitary based on their gang status to a “behavioral based system to address the behavior of individuals – only those who engage in serious rule violations should be placed in restrictive housing”.
The CLA-Liman report states that Texas had the largest number of prisoners who had been held in solitary for more than 10 years. Only Alabama and the federal Bureau of Prisons comes anywhere close. Data accumulated by the Correctional Leaders Association (CLA) and the Arthur Liman Center at Yale law school estimates that there were between 41,000 and 48,000 in isolation in US prison cells in July 2021.
In a statement, the TDCJ said that “if known prison gang members in state custody do not like their current confinement conditions, they are free to renounce their gang and we will offer them a pathway back into the general population. We will not, however, give them free rein to recruit new members and try to continue their criminal enterprises.”
After turning up the heat last month with his new mixtape, Bad Azz Yella Boy, Asylum’s Yella Beezy cranks up the heat as he pays homage to the legendary Texas rapper Pimp C with his new single “Pimp C” featuring EST Gee, which is accompanied with a music video featuring a guest appearances with Pimp C’s UGK rap partner, Bun B. Baccend Beezy continues his infectious return with another impressive southern-fried rap. He spits:
“That lil’ h** messy, you can’t tell her nothin’, on God she gon’ spread the word, lot of grammies like I’m tryna win awards, waitin’ on the first and third, got a lotta bows and I ain’t talkin’ ’bout clothes, but he tryna get a shirt, young n**ga bustin’ pack after pack, I’m tryna get a vert, heard them n**gas saying that they still tryna get me, well I’m tryna get ’em murked, I don’t take shit lightly when they talkin’, ’cause I’m ’bout to get ’em first…”
Bun B appears on the visual to co-sign the fellow Texan and the use of Pimp C likeness. Linking with EST Gee was also a great choice as he has been on a trailblazing path to the top in today’s hip hop. This year alone, EST Gee has released several collaborative projects, a deluxe version of his new album, and a string of a-list collaborations.
Yella’s Bad Azz Yella Boy features newly-signed QC’s Icewear Vezzo. The 16 track project includes buzzworthy singles “DFWM” and “Not Me.” Beezy signed with Asylum earlier this year following his departure from L.A. Reid’s Hitco Records.
Beezy is currently preparing his as-yet-titled forthcoming album, expected top of 2023.
Watch “Pimp C” above and stream Bad Azz Yella Boy below.
