The Daily Beast Records, Featuring The Notorious John Forté

So yeah, that mean Tina Brown is Diddy.

You know we had to do a remix, right....

Ti-Na, come out and plaaaay-ayyyy ...

Exeter, Stand Up!!!

But like, for real tho, when I think about my own assimilated resume (Choate's first Obama, book that will shatter earth space time continuum, etc.) I talk to my imaginary Carlton friend -- assimilateds often have an imaginary Carltons, cause we're all Will Smith in our minds -- and I'm like, "yo Carlton, I was thinking about how my facebook profile would be even hotter if I, like, actually went to jail, and if I, like, didn't just rhyme but had real success as an emcee." Exeter, Fugees Credits, plus Jail, that's a perfect storm of hot-like-fire realness. That's like the TAN Trifecta: You want suit-and-tie sensibility, I got you. Oh, I got to rock this crowd in Brooklyn, wordemup. Oh, you want me to teach and talk to these kids on the street, I'm feeling that.

That's being strapped for the war ahead, no matter what happens. And that's Forté right now ...

John and I were in Prep 9 together, we were never ace-ace boom, but we were cool, and there's only like 25-30 of us. And Prep homeys are fairly tight and fraternity-like with ours; I always got a pound for a Prep dude, and vice versa. So I'd be interested in this story regardless, but I think there's probably more here since so many of us Preps have followed the same formula: go to prep school, do the college thing (with hit-or-miss achievement levels) and then step out, at least for a minute, to do some creative shit, most likely hip hop.

I'm getting a feeling with this current leveling-of-all-fields apocalypse going on, something like The Daily Beast Records is not necessarily far off from reality. Maybe this is the jumpoff right here, in which case regardless of your feelings about the song it's kind of hot just to realize how Forte's video on The Daily Beast is a kinda-sorta iconic snapshot of America in 2009 ...


John Forte "Runnin Up That Hill" from The ICU on Vimeo.

image via