Identity Theft sucks. The following happened on my birthday, last Friday, February 6th:

I got to work and checked my bank account [online] and found some fraudulent charges. someone was using my debit card #/clone of my card and going on mini shopping sprees at a Wal-Mart in Austin, Texas. I haven’t been to Austin since Austin City Limits. And I don’t think I even know where a Wal-Mart in Austin is. I had to cancel my debit card, which took about 2 hours at the bank; they got me for a few hundred dollars. Jerks. They even got a $15 car wash. I don’t even own a car fam.

Said card was connected to a bunch of necessary things, like my cable and internet, my iPhone bill, my Rappers I Know server, student loans—even rent.

So yeah, Rappers I Know was down. The server had to sit idle for a few days and considering we do so much traffic that the host on top of our regular hosting bill hit me with a pretty sizeable bandwidth overage hosting bill that I wasn’t prepared to handle considering someone spending up all my hard earned HOT 97 and indie rapper album cover money on 20 lb bags of Hershey Kisses and bulk packs of Hanes V-Neck undershirts at Wal-Mart.

So yeah, if you wanna donate a few duckets to help keep the site up, that’d be sweet. And if you don’t and want to just download free music, that’s also sweet.

On some extra-keep it real shit (when keeping it real goes wrong?), I’ve neglected to seek out outside sponsorship or investors to (help) pay for the site, because I dislike answering to any agenda but the one I’ve set forth, to showcase music and art that I like by rappers (and producers and singers and djs and graphic designers and photographers and … and …) I happen to know. And as we all know, when the economy gets bad and the going gets rough, the first things that usually go are Entertainment and the Arts. Sadly as an out of pocket endeavour that I love to do, because I love music and narrative and shared experience, I won’t be able to do alone. I mean, not on this 7 figure a month HOT 97 salary anyway. I gotta pay for my grillion dollar Scandanavian architected, and at some pointed posted on Kanye’s Blog, Bruce Wayne loft in Midtown and my platinum-plated Metrocard.

Otherwise most is well for now, and on the road to being fixed up, but man. What a headache. Watch your things and things of importance. Don’t let identity theft happen to you. And please watch your credit rating. It’s not a game! Not that a good credit rating means much in this economy either