THE WEEK WITH REZ 🗓 28 AUG 2023 📡
MOON LANDINGS, FIRES, ASSASSINATIONS & SUGARMAN 🌑 I done missed a couple weeks fam!!! Here's a recap 💯
What's good fam? 🫡
I haven't been writing much lately, been hella busy with music production, building, work, and life itself but since I missed the last weekly wrap up today we are playing catch up.
So this will cover the last couple of weeks (Maybe even few weeks 🙆) and there sure has been some shit going on.
Fires, Assassinations, BlackRock, Moon Crashings, Moon landings, you name it. 🚀
On a random tangent, thinking about changing the name of this segment to "Stuff That Apparently Happened" or something of that ilk.... consider it a work in progress.
Enough small talk.
Let's do it 💯
WORLD 🗺
🇷🇺
The plane carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was the chief of the Wagner mercenary group which has served Russia in the war with Ukraine, and recently led a coup to march on Moscow in defiance of Putin, crashed last Wednesday somewhere between Moscow and St Petersburg, killing all on board.
There are debates as to whether this is a genuine accident, was a planned assassanation by Putins camp, or potentially a Machiavellian type death faking.
Moscow has just today confirmed his death officially.
🇪🇨
Equadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead in the country's capital, Quito, on the 9th of August.
Six men have been arrested in connection with the assassination, all of them Columbian citizens.
Mr Villavicencio was an outspoken journalist who had uncovered corruption and denounced links between organised crime and officials.
Violence like this seems to be becoming quite commonplace in Equador, prevalent in large cities which have been overrun with drugs traffickers.
Apparently the cities Mayor, Augustín Intriago, was shot dead just two weeks earlier.
🇺🇸
In case you were under some rock and didn't hear about it, the island of Maui in Hawaii was the victim of some pretty vicious fires recently. The fires have completely decimated some areas of the island, with 114 souls dead so far and hundreds of others missing.
The historic coastal port city of Lahaina was basically completely destroyed.
Experts have said the fire was potentially started by downed power lines from high winds.
Locals are criticizing the local governments response and failure to utilize the loud speaker alarm systems to alert the populace of danger.
Local officials state that the alarm system is being decommissioned and wouldn’t have been effective anyway.
Hmmm.
Also, many locals are reporting developers and corporations are attempting to buy up any land they can get their greedy hands on for as cheap as possible...
More on BlackRock soon 😉
🇷🇺
The Russians have launched their first lunar mission in decades and been rewarded with the rocket being destroyed by accidentally crashing it into the moon surface, the russian space agency Roscosmos reported on the 20th of August.
Apparently the Lunar 25 spacecraft crashed into the moon after communication was lost momentarily with the command centre.
Roscosmos, said it lost touch with Luna 25 on Saturday around 2:57 p.m. Moscow time.
The Luna 25 mission cost an estimated $200 million, which covered a wide range of expenses, including building of the spacecraft, developing launch operations, mission control, and scientific analysis of data returned from the moon. Luna 25 was launched with the mission to explore the Moon's south pole region.
🇮🇳
Coincidentally (or not) India has also participated in a moon shot last week, with their Chandrayaan-3 lunar module successfully touching down on the dark side of the moon. They become the fourth country to land a module on the lunar surface and the first to ever land near the lunar south pole, which is apparently uncharted territory.
The mission is a vindication for ISRO, which is the Indian Space Research Organization, after its first landing attempt in 2019 with Chandrayaan-2 ended with a crash because of software errors.
Hours after landing on the moon, The Vikram lander released a six wheeled solar powered rover called Pragyan, which carries various instruments to analyze soil composition, detect traces of water and ice, and listen for seismic activity.
You'd think they already know what the moons surface consists of, wouldn't you???
NZ 🇳🇿
The long awaited confirmation of the fact that Jacinda Ardern appears to have been doing secret deals, and selling our country out, to multinational investment conglomerate BlackRock arrived last week. Always good to get confirmation.
The government announced on the 9th of August that they would be partnering with the notorious BlackRock investment group on a $2bn energy deal involving solar, wind, and hydrogen.
The "investment fund" is proposing to help NZ reach a 100% renewable energy status by 2030.
Sounds good in theory, but we already know they will maximize profits any way they can.
In 2022, BlackRock purchased NZ company solarZero in a $100 million plus deal.
Apparently BlackRock boss Larry Fink had a crush on Jacinda Ardern.....
He must be a sucker for those horse teeth 🐴
FULL ARTICLE ABOUT THE BLACKROCK TAKEOVER COMING SOON 👀
More shootings in Auckland and Palmerston North.
Please, don't shoot each other folks.
If you must shoot someone, shoot these fuckers in parliament.
MUSIC 🎶
It is with great sorrow and sadness I announce this music news.
Sugarman is dead 😢
The singer Sixto Rodriguez, known professionally as Rodriguez, died on Tuesday the 8th of August in Detroit City. He was aged 81 years.
Rodriguez famously faded into obscurity in the US music scene, believing his career to be fizzled out and not as successful as he may have hoped.
Unbeknownst to him, he had achieved superstar status in South Africa, mainly due to his songs becoming anti-apartheid anthems.
His album Cold Hard Fact is a timeless collection of unique anthems.
If you ask me, "Sugarman" by Rodriguez is right up there with JJ Cale's seminal "Cocaine", Manfred Mann's euphoric "The Mighty Quinn", and Jefferson Airplane's psychedelic anthem "White Rabbit" as one of the greatest narcotics derived classic rock tracks of all time.
It's a cold, hard fact.
R.I.P SUGARMAN
The Band songwriter and singer Robbie Robertson died on the 9th of August.
The Band initially found fame as Bob Dylan's backing group before becoming highly influential in the 60s and 70s.
If you haven't heard the song "The Weight" by The Band, you need too.
In Hip Hop news, standout artist Rez Unique releases his "Where's Greta?" music video to much critical acclaim.
You can check that out here 👇
https://youtu.be/1LIYICBL1_U?si=wUldpx2Tp92YWXFw
DJ Muggs of Soul Assassins and Cypress Hill fame releases Soul Assassins 3 : Death Valley, complete with an all star cast of feature artists.
It's one of the best Hip Hop albums I have heard so far this year, no cap.
SPORT 🥊
Yesterday morning, Oleksander Usyk defeated Daniel Dubios by way of TKO in the 48th second of the 9th round in their heavyweight bout. Asked whether he would be fighting Tyson Fury next, the Ukrainian replied "I'm ready tomorrow".
Tyson Fury fights UFC legend Francis Ngannou next, but boxing fans wish to see Usyk and Fury fight it out for a unified belt holding champion to be crowned.
Usyk holds the WBA, WBO, IBF, and The Ring Heavyweight belts, while Fury holds the WBC Heavyweight belt and is the ESPN number one ranked fighter.
We need this fight 🙏
In NZ Boxing, Mea Motu, Lani Daniels, and Jerome Pampellone both won their respective fights this past weekend 🥊
Mea Motu beat Malawian fighter Ellen Simwaka to retain her IBO world super bantamweight title.
Lani Daniels extend her own IBF world heavyweight title reign with a fourth-round TKO over previously unbeaten South African fighter Razel Mohammed.
Jerome "The Panther" Pampellone won his IBF intercontinental light heavyweight title bout against South Africa's Luvuyu Sizani in just over one minute in the first round, extending his record to 16 - 0, with 10 knockouts.
Definitely a man to watch, he's on a come up for real.
That's all I got for this episode fam, hope you enjoyed it and thanks for reading!
REZ OUT 🛸