Mr. Struggan's Regards

Hello, Wilson and NIco here. It’s been a quite the slow month for us here at the Regards, an ebb in productivity that Mr. Struggan is constantly fighting against in his determined fight to be the best blog mogul / philanthropist / international man of mystery / reclusive savant he can be. Mr. Struggan has come out of his rut to disburse this month’s Kiva loan, which we are pleased to announce to you here today.

Each month, Mr. Struggan will be pledging a $25 loan to a borrower on Kiva’s website, which helps connect loan applicants from around the world with people who are willing and able to provide them with the funding they need. These microloans can go a long way towards helping people, especially in parts of the world where typical banking infrastructures are inadequate or do not exist.

This month’s Mr. Struggan Foundation loan recipient is Mariatu, a 41 year-old wife, mother, and business owner from Sierra Leone who has applied for a loan for her construction supply business. A loan of $1,175 will help her buy additional building materials for her company’s inventory.

Please consider helping Mariatu out; she is only $1.050 dollars away from getting her loan fully funded. For lenders new to Kiva, use this invite link to sign up, and The Mr. Struggan Foundation will receive an additional $25 for our endowment. Once you sign up, you can become a Foundation Member by joining our Lending Team, where you can track the Foundation’s progress and attribute your own lending activity to the fund. After four months of progress, our endowment currently sits at $125.

Mar 24

Hello there. Wilson and NIco here, wishing you a peaceful and positive Palm Sunday. Mr. Struggan, quite counterproductively, told us earlier this month to stop publishing posts on the blog, explaining to us that he’d given up blogging for Lent. This didn’t make much sense to the two of us, but we were unable to convince Mr. Struggan to remain on our regular schedule. After much pleading, he finally agreed to disburse this month’s Kiva loan, which we are happy to announce today.

This month’s Mr. Struggan Foundation loan recipient is Ganbayar, a 23 year-old man from Mongolia and recent college graduate who has applied for a loan for his furniture manufacturing business. A loan of $1,450 will cover the costs of starting inventory to get his business up and running.

Please consider helping Ganbayar out; he is only $875 dollars away from getting his loan fully funded. For lenders new to Kiva, use this invite link to sign up, and The Mr. Struggan Foundation will receive an additional $25 for our endowment. Once you sign up, you can become a Foundation Member by joining our Lending Team, where you can track the Foundation’s progress and attribute your own lending activity to the fund. After two months of progress, our endowment currently sits at $50.

Mr. Struggan sends his warm regards.

Mar 06

Feb 14

Regarding Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap

Wilson here. Mr. Struggan, the hip-hop aficionado he is, assigned me to review last year’s documentary The Art of Rap for our film review this week. He has been bugging me for quite some time to watch it for him, ever since he learned of its release from a subway ad tucked away in Brooklyn’s Morgan Avenue station last summer.

The Art of Rap is a strong, but incomplete history of rap and hip-hop’s roots and traditions. The film’s goal, as director and narrator Ice T states from the start, is to give insight into the technical processes behind the global cultural movement that is rap music. Towards this end, he takes the audience on a loose and winding historical tour through the Bronx, the movement’s birthplace, south through New York City, then across the country to Los Angeles. Along the way, Ice T stops to meet with some of hip-hop’s greatest emcees to chat about their processes, approaches, techniques, experiences, and influences. What comes out of this odyssey is a remarkable amount of insight into the art form and what it takes to be the best in one of the world’s most popular musical genres. We also get treated to a wide range of entertaining freestyles and anecdotes from some legendary figures, including Grandmaster Caz, Melle Mel, KRS-One, Q-Tip, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg (pre Snoop Lion reincarnation), Eminem, Yasiin Bey (The Artist Formerly Known as Mos Def), Kanye West, and others.

Ice T, as our tour guide, is able to show us the inside story from the perspective of a true insider. He is perhaps the most logical fit for a project of this scope and ambition, considering his own position as a founding father of the hip-hop movement in LA and his consistent career as an actor. The perspective he is able to offer is fascinating and what he achieves is a film that truly celebrates the craft of hip-hop, without damaging itself by taking a self-congratulatory tone.

What Ice T doesn’t quite achieve, however, is the full picture. There is an over reliance in the narrative on the dichotomy between hip-hop’s New York origins and its second life in Los Angeles. The only thing in between is a brief stop in Detroit to pay homage to Eminem. This leaves some glaring omissions, most notably from the South; such figures as Ludacris, TI, Lil Wayne, and Andre 3000 and Big Boi from Outkast are left unrecognized. Perhaps this doesn’t concern the film and it is simply content to present the huge sample that it does. From my point of view, though, that sample would have been better if fully representative of hip-hop’s stylistic diversity.

Feb 12

Wilson and Nico here. It is our pleasure to announce the recipient of The Mr. Struggan Foundation’s February loan, powered by Kiva.org

This month’s Mr. Struggan Foundation loan recipient is Sarah, a 32 year-old mother of two who works for her local town council in Uganda as a health inspector. A loan of $450 dollars will help pay for the construction of rental homes she is building.

Please consider helping Sarah out; she is only $425 dollars away from getting her loan fully funded. For lenders new to Kiva, use this invite link to sign up, and The Mr. Struggan Foundation will receive an additional $25 for our endowment. Once you sign up, you can become a Foundation Member by joining our Lending Team, where you can track the Foundation’s progress and attribute your own lending activity to the fund. After two months of progress, our endowment currently sits at $50.