"I Want You To Want Me"

Have you ever fallen in love? You know, the type of love where you can’t bare to not be around that special someone? Well let me tell you, first hand, that I’m in love with someone that I can’t have. Someone that is amazing in every aspect of their being. With someone that makes my heart pound a million times faster than normal. I think about this person from the moment I wake up in the morning to the time I lay down to go to sleep at night. It takes me hours just to fall asleep because I can’t get this person out of my head. You know how they say, you usually dream about the last thing that you think about before you go to sleep? Well, I dream about you every night because you never ever leave my thoughts. You're always on my mind and there's no room left for thinking. I think about you when I’m writing music, I think about you in the car, in the shower, hell even when I’m at work. I can’t live with knowing that someone may take you away someday; that someone else will sweep you off your feet before I even get the chance to even say hello. I wanna be the one that takes your breath away. I know that you’ve been hurt in the past: lied to, cheated on, and left heart broken one after another. But baby, if you let me in your life, I will never ever hurt you in any way and I will do anything possible to make you smile every day. You have a smile that can melt an ice burg. Nothing and no one can compare to the beauty that you posses. Not only are you a beautiful human being, but your heart is the most beautiful thing that  I’ve ever encountered. No one has a heart and soul like you do. I can see myself being with you for the rest of my life.  Nothing can make my love for you stray or disappear. I will always love you, whether we stay together or don’t become anything more than friends. That’s just how strong my love is. Have you ever fallen in love? You know, the type of love where you can’t bare to not be around that special someone? Well let me tell you, first hand, that I’m in love with someone that I can’t have.

MJ

"What's Going On"

Somebody please tell me why every black boy wants to be a friggin rapper?! I'm getting so sick of people always trying to take the easy way out. If you're gonna make an effort please at LEAST be good at what you're trying to do and not completely SUCK at it. I'm so sick of getting random friend requests from people claiming to be a rapper on the rise and they can't even use correct or proper English. Then they all have these names like Dope Boy Phresh or Thug Nigga, and when did it become ok to use the word nigga? That word was used to demean black people and was also used as a racial slur. Why would we call our brothers and sisters such cruel names and answer to them? What makes it okay for that word to be used in our every day vocabulary and more relevantly used in rap and r&b? The rap now-a-days consists of what goes on in the hood and what drugs they sell/do, and what they do sexually in the bedroom. Why is that in songs? I don't give a flying f*** what you do in the bedroom. For example, 50 damn Cent, every one of his songs has some reference to either money or what he does to women. Lil Wayne, not jocking on his talents, but he is a prime example of what I'm talking about. For example his song Single, like why would you even right a song about such things? Calling women out of their name and describing them as bitches and hos. NOT OKAY PEOPLE. Another perfect example is Khia's song "My Neck, My Back" and that is the ultimate. That is enabling men to call you all kinds of names and demean women. Not only is it in rap or r&b, but its also becoming relevant in rock and metal. I don't think that these musicians need to be making all this money on nonsense. I feel like saying that there needs to be a censor on music all together is going a bit far, but I don't understand or know what else to do. When you watch the BET Awards or the Grammys black people are the only ones that have 75% of the songs bleeped out because of all the ridiculous things they talk about and all of the profanity they use. It makes no since what-so-ever. So come on people, answer me this....what's going on?

"Where'd All the Good People Go?"

Why is the music industry full of bullshit? Why is it that 80% of the so-called artists/singers in the music industry can't sing and can't sing live at that? If the producers need a computer to make it seem like you can sing, your voice isn't worth shit. Why is it that people like Rihanna, Ashanti, Tweet, and Keyshia Cole can get record deals when there are people out there that are just pure, raw talent. Not jockin' on their talents or whatever, but point blank, these entertainers are not the best in the business today; they all have a long way to go. People that have voices that will literally blow your mind, can dance, and are just basically the full package. Undergroud singers like Jayms Madison, Jaiden, and Teron Beal. If you don't know who these people are, its ok because these are the REAL artists of America that don't have enough publicity. What happened to the Lauryn Hills and D'angelo's of our time? Where did all the good singers and actual TALENT go?! Oh believe me, they're still out there, they just can't get recognized for their talents. You know why all of these things that I have just said are 100% true? Because the music industry is full of close-minded, insipid, incompetent imbeciles that only care about how someone looks. The music industry has put in our minds, as citizens, that you have to be the hottest thing on earth and have the most amazing body ever...no matter if you are the biggest dipshit/dingbat in America and don't know how many states we have in our country. Think about it, just take a minute and think.

 MJ

"Why Do We Love Love, When Love Seems to Hate Us?"

I hear you Jazmine Sullivan, that title is the says it all. Why the hell do we love love so much and no matter what we do we always end up broken hearted...well that is the ones of us NOT living in a fairytale fantasy. Love never seems to favor us in the real world. Love is either a friend or an enemy. It never really is a good thing until you've found that special someone that you'll favor your entire life. My favorite quote about love is believe it or not from the bible. It's the a verse from 1 Corinthians 13, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." It continues on with more clever notes about love, but it is without a doubt the truth. Love is tossed around way too much now-a-days. People use love to get by and use it to get what and who they want. People don't know what love really is until they've experienced it fully. Love makes a man happy, and makes a man want to do better and want to be a better person. When you're really in love, you want to do good things and make something out of your life. Love should never be forced, it should all just come naturally.Whether its young love or old love, it should always be true and pure. I think that if people use love more often in the world and in current events, the world would be a better place. I think love needs to be more relevant and more involved in everyday life experiences. But honestly, love will never truly conquer all until everyone sees the big picture.

MJ

"A Beautiful Awakening Has Happened in my Soul"

Born on March 3, 1986, the now 23 year old super star has made a huge impact in the pop industry and in so many people's lives. With her 3 1/2 octave voice of an angel and her versatile style in any genre, Miss Orrico is the most talented and true artist that I have personally ever encountered. The Seattle born native never thought that her talent was as great as the public eye perceived it to be. Stacie did not know that her talented singing, song writing intellect, and vivid piano skills would get her as far in her career as she ever dreamed of.
Stacie Orrico was born in Seattle, Washington to Christian missionaries Patti and Dean Orrico. Stacie Orrico was always told that she had the voice of an angel but she never thought that big record producers would be scouting and telling her the same exact things her family told her every time she opened her mouth to sing. Her family background is surrounded by music being that her father plays guitar and her mother and four other siblings all sang as well. Stacie started playing the piano at age 5 and by the age of 6 wrote her first song entitled “Always Answer” and ever since then she began writing and composing her own music along with developing the amazing 3 octave voice that she has.

Stacie and her family ventured off to a Christian musical festival where her mother entered Stacie into the contest unknowingly and she agreed to participate. By the end of the contest Orrico not only walked away from the festival a winner and very happy young lady but at the age of 12 she was also offered a record deal with ForeFront Records in which she took the offer and signed with the Christian affiliated record label in 1998 and then later switched labels and joined Virgin Records. From that day on, Stacie’s world was going in a whole new direction that she was unsure of but also very nervous and excited about; being that Stacie never had any interest in becoming a singer/artist. She had recorded her first album called Genuine in 2000 when she was at the tender age of 14 which sold over 13,000 copies in its first week of sale. Ultimately her first album ended up selling over 500,000 copies and was certified a Gold album. Later in 2003 her self-titled album Stacie Orrico was released and there were several hit singles which promoted the album enough to sell 3.4 million copies worldwide and was also nominated for the 46th Annual Grammy Awards.

Stacie Orrico has toured in many places around the world including various locations in the world; just to name a few: Australia, Japan, France, and Singapore. Stacie had a very strenuous schedule when it came to touring, recording, and making music. Although she loved her fans and really enjoyed making music, one day she woke up and felt physically and emotionally exhausted in a way that really took a toll on her state of being in which she was on the brink of breaking. She had lost many friends and also lost long years of her social and personal life and growing up because of her job as a musician. She decided to take a break for a few years in which she described as her way of “reconnecting with the rest of the world.” She got to experience life in a whole new light and also in a way that she could understand why she began making music in the first place.

Once Stacie got to experience life for the first time ever since she got her record deal she began writing and got in contact with her music again and she mainly included things that she got to experience in her two to three years of off time and it soon seemed like a beautiful awakening she described and later named her new album after. Moving in a new direction in her music, Stacie reappeared on the scene in 2006 with a new album and a huge realm of songs in which focused on public and personal struggles in her life that she experienced throughout and also while she was on a brief break. As she caught up on life she wrote many songs and it was said that when she came back into the studio for the first time in three years she had written 55 songs and was ready to take on the music industry once again with a huge bang. Stacie released Beautiful Awakening in 2006 to many other countries except the United States for unknown reasons. The newly released album of the time sold over 100,000 copies in Japan alone in which gave this album another Gold certified stand point. After a while Capitol Records and Virgin Records were talking about merging and as a result Stacie Orrico decided to withdraw herself from the label and took another break. In these seemingly long breaks Orrico took, I seemed to lose faith in hearing from her again. It has been nearly 4 years since Stacie has produced or even recorded anything with anyone. She had her side projects that she was working on but to my knowledge, I had not been able to hear or enjoy her uplifting music and lyrics for myself. I felt a bit disconnected from music because Stacie’s music is not only amazing, it is very vivid and paints a beautiful picture of her life and talent but also a very real, down-to-earth connection with her listeners because she talks about real-life issues taking place all around the world. Looking to the future now, Stacie has recently been working with the Creative Jenius Record label in which has been known to specialize in Hip-Hop and R&B music. The earlier rumored but recently confirmed fourth studio album is said to be released and is in production as of now including writers such as Toby Gad and Onree Gill. The album is to be released sometime in 2010, most likely the mid to end of this year. Hopefully Orrico will have as many hits as she has had in her past and also be able to deliver more to the United States and take the music industry by storm and take over the music industry all over again.

"Please Don't Stop the Music"

Music is something I take very seriously. Its not something i just listen to, its something i study. I honestly think that everyone would be lost without it, thats just my personal opinion and belief. Music opens up the soul and opens up the creative logic behind lyrics and song composition. It also gets the creative juices flowing all at once while the mind/brain process this thing called a melody.

See thats just it, music isn't just a 'thing' to me, its a passion. Music takes my life to a whole new dimension in a world where everything revolves simply around music itself. Its the different key changes, the versatility of different styles, and the appreciation for all sorts, types, and genres of music. Music makes the world go around, that is good music. Who can really say what 'good' music is anymore? Now-a-days it seems like music is just a way to make a quick buck here and there to help pay the rent and get mom a nice big ol house in the suburbs while i stack up on Bentley's and Maseratis. When did music become a way to demean women and talk about the various sexual things you do in the bedroom? When did it become okay to have several sexual innuendos embedded in the lyrics for little children to not catch or understand and have them singing along with the song? When did it become okay for black men and women to say the N word several times in a song referring to a fellow brother or sister? When did dancing around half dressed and talking about complete nonsense become a fashion statement? When did its become relevant for a drug addict to become a role model? When did all of this become okay? To be honest, I can't answer my own question; thats the sad part about it all. We can't trace the tracks and go back and figure out where any of this started. But furthermore, I will not go back and try and find the bread crumbs that led to this problem.

The only thing that people like me, who believe in real music, can do is hope, pray, and support the real musicians out there that do it just purely for the love of music. The musicians and artists that actually write their own songs and have meaning behind them. The people that actually possess talent. The ones that actually care about who they're influencing or helping. I would also like to thank music, for always being there when no one else was; to get me through all the hard times and heart ache. Music is my best friend and the only thing that has my heart forever.

MJ

"Tell Me Something Good"

Lets talk about something meaningful, something good. Something that gets the brain working and the mind intact with everything being said or written down. Now I know what you're thinking, I'm one of those cats that talks about the same old thing and is trying to make myself sound "educated" in some way. No, I'm not talking about how the economy sucks because of years of bad politics or an incredibly horrible oil spill that was supposedly all BP's fault. I mean lets talk about life and the appreciation for it. Now some people don't appreciate life, thats why I feel that it is 'meaningful' to talk about it for once. Lets talk about how screwed up people are or how mean some people can be. Or lets focus on a simple crime whether is be hate or homicide. Or why the hell all this turmoil in the middle east has anything to do with the U.S., but yet we're still over there wrecking havoc: raping women and children, stealing from innocent civilians, and murdering men, father's, husbands, brothers, friends for Christ's sake.

Speaking of Christ, lets talk about how screwed up some of the so-called "Christians" are that are the most judgmental people, EVER most of the time. God wouldn't like that very much. Lets focus on the fact that life is taken for granted too often and sometimes we need to sit back and really look at how good we have it, the fortunate ones i mean. But then again, no one really ever is 'fortunate', because everybody hurts. Everyone has gone through things in their lives that have either set them back or made them stronger in some way or another. Lets talk about love, and how that word is tossed around like a hot potato in the middle of August. No one really knows what love is anymore; i mean REALLY knows or knows what on earth it feels like. Lets talk about something meaningful, something good.

MJ

"Guess Who's Back, Back Again. Stacie's Back, Tell A Friend"

In my previous blog I wrote about a woman I find intriguingly interesting and without a doubt the most amazing singer/songwriter to ever live in my generation. Now if you're new to my blog you might be wondering who I am talking about. Her name is Stacie Joy Orrico. Let me give you a little feedback and background information about her.
She was born March 3, 1986 and after her mother unknowingly entered her into a talent show on a family vacation, Orrico finished in first and what happened next was history. She was scouted and signed to ForeFront Records, in which Orrico agreed to and became one of the worlds most renowned Pop icons of the millennium; shortly after releasing her first album, Genuine, in 2000 at the young, tender age of 14. She released 4 albums, including her Christmas album, which have over the years had overwhelmingly incredible success in the US and other neighboring countries such as Japan, Australia, and Canada.

She left for a while after the release and huge success of her second album entitled, Stacie Orrico, but soon returned with her 3rd Studio album in which she named Beautiful Awakening. Soon after the release and also huge success of Beautiful Awakening in 2006, Stacie once again took a break from the music industry, possibly to find herself and get back in touch with why she fell in love with music in the first place. Not only did she leave for personal reasons but she also left supposedly because of the merging of Capitol and Virgin records in which she signed with after switching genre's from Contemporary Christian to Pop in due time of her second self-titled album in 2003 (Virgin). After gaining her wisdom and taking another break from the madness of the music business, she later returned to Capitol Records in 2009 and as of 2010 it is still unclear but also rumored that she is to be releasing a fourth studio album in mid to late 2010. With the help of singer/songwriter Jayms Madison and also producers and writers such as Onree Gill and Toby Gad, her effort to resume her career and continue where she left off with her music is only an uphill battle and soon to be success for the young 24 year old pop star...or should i say the R&B/Soul singer she is today. Stacie has a very versitile tone and also a wide range not only in her vocals but also in her musical background; where she gains her inspiration from artists such as Lauryn Hill, D'Angelo, and Ella Fitzgerald. She is a very innovative and talented young artist that is and always has been a huge role model for young teenagers, specifically teenage girls, her entire career. Miss Orrico is phenomenal in every way and I can only hope and pray that her fans welcome her back with open arms and hearts wide open. This time hopefully everyone will appreciate her music and really dig down to the core of her thoughts and her experiences that she incorporates so beautifully. I can only assure you that my heart is open and ears are listening for my favorite singer/songwriter to return. Back, again....

MJ