DWYANE WADE AND CHRIS BOSH TALK ART AND BASKETBALL AT ART BASEL IN MIAMI

Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh tagteam off the court to host the “Art of Basketball” exhibit in Miami. The NBA stars spoke on expressing oneself through art and giving the neighborhood a chance to flaunt their passions. “Teaming up with Chris Bosh, we’re giving the kids and the community the opportunity to showcase their talents,” says D. Wade. “At one point in our lives, we all thought we were artists. We all feel we’re artists in our way, and it’s great to express yourself.” Local artists framed their best basketball-inspired portraits and street art, even incorporating basketball rubber provided by Spalding into their work, at the annual Art Basel festivities. Catch their interview with VIBE on the red carpet below.

http://www.vibe.com/article/dwyane-wade-and-chris-bosh-talk-art-and-basketball-art-basel-miami

Flip the Script: 3 Key Questions to Ask During Your Job Interview

It’s important to note that the best interviews are never a one-way dialogue. While it’s the employer’s job to ask potential candidates questions about their ability to fill the position, it’s always impressive when the interviewee has questions of his/her own. Not only will these questions show how well-prepared you are, they will also make your interview memorable and put you a notch above your competition. Even more important, they’ll give you a sense of whether the job is even right for you.

What’s an average day like? While some jobs require you to handle different tasks each day, this question will at least give you an idea of what to expect if you take on the position. It will also give you insight on how you can best prepare yourself for the first day.

What are key qualities you’re looking for in an ideal candidate? Asking this question early on will give you an idea of what personal qualities you should highlight during the rest of the interview that will show you are a good fit. Remember, you want to make the employer feel like no other person is better for the position than you.

What are the challenges? Asking about the challenges of a position is the best way for you to be prepared even on a bad day. Knowing the challenges of a job can help you get a clear understanding of what it is you need to do to better the company and make sure you are one of their most prized assets.

Street Drug Dealers Fear Business Loss From Legal Weed Dealers Across Country

With the coming “Green Rush,” street level weed dealers fear the future — With the recent passage of laws partially legalizing marijuana in Washington and Colorado, weed dealers find themselves faced with a problem familiar to almost all small business owners. How do you as a little guy compete with a larger competitor? In the same way your local drugstore’s sales would be affected by the opening of a Wal-Mart in your town, street level drug dealers fear “Big Marijuana.” Of course by federal law marijuana remains illegal, but to an industry which counts on customers relying on the black-market to procure their products, legal marijuana is a scary proposition. In a recent thread on the popular social media site Reddit, pot dealers anonymously expressed their concerns. One wrote “[someone] with a bunch of seed money might open a 7-11 weed store and shut me down.” Another stated, “I never will be able to compete though, and I have no idea how to run a legal business. Corporate pot is coming, and it scares me. It should scare all of us.”

The concerns of these small (albeit illegal) businessmen and women are a legitimate fear. Companies such as Medical Marijuana, whose mission is to become the industry’s “premier cannabis and hemp industry innovators,” have the size and resources to easily crush small time dealers. Other dealers see this as a chance to use their “small business status” as a selling point. One Reddit user wrote he’d combat “Big Cannabis” by distinguishing his services. “People still want to know where the [marijuana] is coming from, delivery options, 24 hours of operation, anonymity and most importantly IOU’s which big businesses won’t cater to, I do.”

Source: Reddit.com

Jazz Saxophonist’s Daughter One of Victims in Conn. School Shooting

The New York Amsterdam News is reporting that jazz saxophonist Jimmy Greene’s daughter was one of the many children killed in the Newtown, Connecticut shooting. Ana Marquez Greene was one of the first 20 children identified at Sandy Hook Elementary. The family reportedly moved from Canada to Connecticut this summer. She attended the school with her older brother who was unharmed in the shooting. Read more at the New York Amsterdam News

Rap or Rock or Folk-Jazz, They’ve Got Soul: Jon Pareles’s Top 10 Albums of 2012

1. FRANK OCEAN “Channel Orange” (Def Jam) The moody introspection of a soul-ballad man fuses with the metaphor-making skills of a rapper in the sparse, aching songs that fill Frank Ocean’s official debut album. Even with some resemblances to Prince and R. Kelly, he’s an unusual character for R&B: estranged but observant, admitting an attraction to a man, finding emptiness where others find material or emotional comfort.

2. FIONA APPLE “The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do” (Epic) Fiona Apple’s fourth studio album teeters, moment to moment, between obsessive confession and dark vaudeville.

3. BOB DYLAN “Tempest” (Columbia) Sure, his voice is a wreck. But nothing any prettier could encompass the bitterness, sorrow, lust, nastiness, longing, vengeance and backhanded humor that course through the songs.

4. KENDRICK LAMAR “good kid, m.A.A.d. city” (TDE/Aftermath/Interscope) Kendrick Lamar wades through contradictions on his second album. He’s from Compton, Calif., gangsta rap’s home turf in the 1980s and ’90s, and in some ways he’s an old-fashioned hip-hop storyteller, chronicling a cityscape still shaped by poverty, gangs, crime and police, over tracks that echo both ’70s soul and vintage gangsta rap.

5. GRIZZLY BEAR “Shields” (Warp) Grizzly Bearclarifies its music without simplifying it on its fourth album. Vocals are less hazed in overdubs, drums are pushier, lyrics are slightly less enigmatic as they ponder intimacy and distance. Yet the new songs are still labyrinths of tension and release; there’s no telling which way they might waft or surge at any given instant.

6. ALABAMA SHAKES “Boys & Girls” (ATO) This isn’t a soul revival. It’s plain old soul, and the only gimmick is that there’s no gimmick. Alabama Shakes are a small-town Southern band with a singer, Brittany Howard, now 24, who earns Janis Joplin comparisons because she’s dynamic, direct, improvisational and raw.

7. NORAH JONES “Little Broken Hearts” (Blue Note)Norah Jones modestly (of course) but thoroughly overhauls her music here. The 100 percent organic, folky-jazzy whisperer has metamorphosed into a deft pop songwriter, with pithy breakup and post-breakup songs — sometimes doleful, sometimes sly — that turn a handful of moving parts into mechanisms of catchiness.

8. METZ It’s just about always clobbering time for Metz, a three-man Canadian band that has reclaimed and distilled post-punk into a galloping, scrabbling, feedback-laced catharsis. The arrangements and production on “Metz” (Sub Pop) focus the music into a bristling, concentrated attack, so fierce that the complaints that fill the lyrics come across as full-blown existential crises.

9. BETTYE LAVETTE “Thankful N’ Thoughtful” (Anti-) Along with a rip-roaring autobiography, “A Woman Like Me” (Blue Rider Press), the soul singer Bettye LaVettemarked her 50th year as a performer with this cannily chosen assortment of songs about alienation: romantic, political, psychological and philosophical. Her voice bites into every one, from Neil Young’s “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” to Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” drawing lessons informed by her unerring sense of drama and by the scarred resilience of the blues.

10. DJ RASHAD “Teklife Vol. 1: Welcome to the Chi” (Lit City Trax) The budget is minimal and the creativity extreme for DJ Rashad, who makes music to accompany footwork, the competitive dance style that has been a local Chicago phenomenon for more than a decade. With the shallow, brittle sounds of cheap drum machines and keyboards, stray vocal snippets and very rarely, out of nowhere, a recognizable instrument or chord, DJ Rashad sets up twitching, spattering rhythms, then splinters and fractures them; it’s ultra-austere music that keeps ambushing itself.