2011 Reflections, 2012 Priorities

"When I come back like Jordan, wearin the 4-5. It ain't to play games witchu..." -Jay-Z

Been a looooooooooooooooooooong time, M.A.L.E.Hood faithful. An unplanned hiatus, but probably much needed. We're refocused, reshuffled & ready to take it to the next level, that's our word. I wanna thank a friend of both myself & Clarence, Sorangi, for throwing some much needed encouragement our way. The things this blog contains may seem to be common sense or basic knowledge, but as we've said before, we all don't have the answers. Some of these things were not being taught when we men & people were around. There's no shame in ignorance, but when you have an opportunity to educate yourself & don't, you lose in the game called life EVERY single time.

W/ that said, I had the opportunity to rep for M.A.L.E.Hood in a major way. A dear friend of mine, Keisha, is the senior feature writer for Exist Media & was kind enough to invite me to be apart of an video interview, which you can watch here: 2011 Reflections, 2012 Priorities. I was 1 of 3 & we got to give our thoughts on the year 2011 & our hopes for 2012. I feel honored to be alongside others doing big things & to see the finished product was a huge motivator. I encourage you to view it, it's good stuff, & swing by Exist Media's way & be sure to let 'em know that that M.A.L.E.Hood life put you in the know. Later people, be well & stay well. -Donny

Break-Up Rules of Engagement: Family

Okay so we've been gone for a minute, but that's only because we're all out and about in the world trying to reach our goals in life.

I've been talking with several of my male and female friends and we've all come to the conclusion that there is a plethora of people that don't understand how break-ups work.  What I mean is: when our relationship ends, your relationship with my family should end as well.  RULE # 2 of my Break-Up Rules of Engagement: Cut the ties to your ex’s family.

Drake said it best, "I wish she'd stop checkin’ up on women I can't stand 'cause I got new girls I could use her opinion on."  It's incredibly annoying to have your mother or dad bring up that she/he recently spoke with your ex when you’re introducing or discussing someone new.  “Your mom started messaging me and I didn’t want to be rude,” says the ex.  While I do appreciate you not being rude to my mother I’d really like to know why you didn’t just delete her when you deleted me.  Don’t worry because my mother and everyone else in my family will get this same talk.  

Letting someone go but remaining attached to their family creates an unnecessary tension within a family and between the new and old partner.  Even if you were really meant to be together you’re not giving the person the opportunity to see they made a mistake you’re just proving why you’re an ex.  If I was to find out you had been discussing our relationship with one of my parents, you’d be dead to me.  Personally, if I had access to my mother’s Facebook account like I had to her MySpace I’d block my ex’s. 

Naturally, most kids do the opposite of what their parents advise, so having their family on your side could put the individual against you. - Clarence

What's Your Type?

A common question that you hear from guys to girls & girls to guys all the time, & even in conversation amongst the fellas or the chicas: what's your type? What kind of person grabs your interest? What's your wifey or hubby type? But I'm gonna break down for you why its important to ask YOURSELF what your type is.

I was having an interesting convo with a woman not too long ago about relationships, love, etc & eventually she asked me the question in question: what's your type? As I always do when asked this, I paused, because I never think about it unless I'm asked & I'm a broad guy. I personally don't have an exact type, I have types. I require the same things out of all my interest as far as personality, spirituality & intelligence goes, but physical (which the word "type" usually means) usually comes down to how she's proportioned, so it can really vary (FYI bottom heavy > top heavy LOL).

1 of the reasons I have no 1, ideal physical type is because I love the female species period, & they come in so many varieties, I'd be doing myself a disservice by only being interested in 1 tiny part of the population.

Most important to me however, & hopefully a lot of other fellas, is the internal over the external. I'm young, so don't get it twisted. I'm not saying I go for grandmas or women w/ handicaps, & I'm not advising anyone else to either. But I am saying if a woman has a sparkling personality, a heart of gold, loves God, intelligence, great conversation skills & crazy sex appeal, I'm not going to skip over her just because she's dark skinned & not light skinned. Or has a slightly above average figure & not a ::in my Frank Ocean voice:: stripper booty & a rack like woooooow.

There is nothing wrong with being picky, young sirs. We are fly, young gentlemen building ourselves into better people & better men. & that alone makes us valuable & deserving of having a selective choice about who we give our affections to. However, if you're going to be picky, be picky about the right things. It might be too soon for you to think long term, but an ass shrinks (or slumps), boobs sag, & looks fade. Sometimes much sooner than you expect. I always say that looks are the audition but its what's on the inside that gets you the role. If you're going to be picky, be picky about her personality, her smarts, her spirituality (if that's important to you) & other things on the inside that will ALWAYS be there. Don't pass up your perfect gift over some wrapping paper.

So ask yourself: WHAT'S YOUR TYPE? -Donny

Sensitive Side

"I was taught the true definition of a man was to never cry, work til you tired, got to provide. Always be the rock for my fam, protect them by all means, and give you the things that you need." - Musiq Soulchild, TeachMe

As boys we were taught or we deduced that being a man meant showing no fear, keeping our emotions hidden, and never admitting you're wrong. I’m here to tell you those were probably the most counterproductive lies we were told, and in this day and age those beliefs can keep many males from reaching MANhood.

If you’re going for the heartless mysterious bad boy then first off you’re on the wrong blog. Secondly, that only last for so long. Finally, you’re going to be one lonely old man, IF you survive that long because real street dudes kill pretenders. Let me get back to the MESSAGE I’m trying to send to you. We’re only human, we all experience fear and sadness at some point. Hiding what you feel adversely affects your relationships. Why would she turn to you when she’s vulnerable if she doesn’t believe you can empathize with and comfort her?

I’m not saying you had to break down and cry when the Heat didn’t win (even though it was a traumatic experience and worth a tear or two), but I am saying that taking the emotionless route will fail you more often than not.  I guarantee that if you took at least 5 minutes to open up to your chick about you, your past, or your feelings the dynamic of your relationship would change for the better. -Clarence

Mentoring 4 Dummies

~Been a small while, family. We haven't los tour energy or slowed down, e've just been adjusting to new paces. All part of growth, so its a sign of good things. Hope everybody had a great 4th of July. I kno I did...kind of LOL. Anyway, on to the business at hand~


Its important to be mentored by a person w/ more experience than you. This is tru in life in all aspects, spiritually, professionally & personally. Its only important tho if you're actually serious about life.

The reason its important is because, as I've told many people before, it absolutely SUCKS how every year we get a little bit older, yet on our birthday nobody gives us an instruction manual on what the hell we're supposed to do for the next 365-&-a-quarter days. Depending on who you are, where you are & where your trying to go in life, your path may be more complicated. A good mentor can school you on life in general & in the area you've chosen to receive guidance in. They may or may not have had 1 (you are NEVER too old or too young to be mentored, not possible), but they can tell you how big a difference 1 can have. There are a LOT of people I kno that could benefit or could have benefited from a mentor. They've made choices & decisions & missed out on platinum opportunities that they didn't have to simply because they had no experience to guide them.

Let's use reason. Hard work pays off & short cuts very often cut US off. But if you could achieve your goals & get to where you're trying to be without taking as long, paying as many dues & with much less screw ups, wouldn't you go for it? Why touch the stove to see if its hot when you could just ask the person who's used or is using it?

In order to find a good & a suitable mentor, you have to do a few things.

•First off, you must be prepared to look outside of your surroundings. Odds are if you already knew somebody that has had success in the area(s) your looking to, you would have been on the phone or at their door by now. Ask your friends or loved ones if they kno anybody. If not, look in your community, Google your area & see who pops up, get looking.

•Second, develop a friendship with this person. That doesn't mean you have to be buddy-buddy with them, but attempt to AT LEAST have a business-type relationship. Trust has to exist like in any other relationship because you will be making important changes, decisions & taking on challenges & opportunities based on this person's advice & input.

•Third, seek somebody older than you. They DON'T have to be elderly like Dumbledore in Harry Potter or Gandalf in Lord of The Rings, but you want somebody with EXPERIENCE. & more often than not, that comes with age. There are people that are young with lots of experience. Every older person was young once. But you're looking for a sure thing, so unless you kno that person is a prodigy in the area you're looking into, go older.

•Fourth, make sure they take you seriously. 1 of the downsides of looking to a relative or friend can be that they don't see you as you want to become or can't take you seriously because they still see you the way they always knew you. This goes back to an EARLIER blog where I briefly shared how powerful a first impression is. Look for someone who you can have a clean, fresh slate with, if you can.

•Fifth, don't trip about the difficulty. A mentor isn't going to magically unlock doors for you. You're still going to have to bust your ass to get to where you want to be. However, a mentor will help you bust it the SMART way & show you in which DIRECTION you should be busting it.

•Last up, you don't have to have just 1 mentor. You can have a few. They can be for different areas in your life or all for the same thing. Different perspectives add more color to the painting. You can see common themes & increase the odds of great opportunities that can result from a mentor putting you on.


Now for those that have the resources & the experience necessary but are just sleeping on it, let me school YOU on something. Its a lot easier for women to mentor each other than it is for men because, face it, we got issues. We struggle enough with communicating with the women in our lives, let alone other men. We let our pride & insecurity make fools of us just because we don't want to come off as inferior to another male. & this is why it takes us years & decades to accomplish what could only take months & years. Sharing information with each other is NOT going to shortchange you. You will not get your riches taken if you tell somebody else how you got them. Your riches are just that: YOURS. If anything, you'll add more wealth just by sharing yours. Chris Rock said during a recent interview with Oprah that "wealth isn't about having money, its about having opportunities." Networking, mentoring, doing favors for others, all of that creates opportunities. There have been stories about people who inherited FORTUNES just because they gave of their time or good advice to others. Somebody spent some time with a little, old lady or helped clean up around a handicapped guy's home, or treated somebody's relative like family. Can you imagine how you might have benefited (besides financially) if you had the ability to mentor Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Barack Obama or LeBron James before they reached their success? You never kno who is just a few grains of wisdom away from being a success story. You have a chance of writing history as a mentor because you can say I helped Gates become a software tycoon, I advised Obama on how to run a campaign, I showed LeBron how to improve his game.

No man is an island, we're all we got. Crabs in a bucket can't even LOOK for a way out because they're too busy keeping the others down. But if they would focus on helping 1 get out, they could all escape from Red Lobster. Never be afraid to ask for help or say "I don't kno", because that's how you get to the next level. Be TERRIFIED of not seeking it, because you will stay at the bottom all your life. -Donny

Break-Up Rules of Engagement: Venting

So this is something I’m guilty of and it JUST went down in the nastiest of ways.  An important step in moving up from being a MALE to a MAN is maturity.  Since the rise of social media sites began relationships have gone South in the grimiest of ways, but it’s not necessarily because of cheating or flirting.  The main problem people seem to face is knowing when and when not to vent.

I recently took the childish route and did some venting on Twitter after receiving information I wasn’t particularly fond of.  I laughed at some real creep shit my friends said and ended up costing myself a great friend.  She’s heartbroken and so thrown by what took place that she fled the city.  There’s no telling what kind of psychological damage I did, and now this chick will forever resent and hate me.

Alright, I said all that just to give you RULE # 1 of my Break-Up Rules of Engagement (R.o.E): Never vent on ANY social media site about your EX or soon to be EX, ESPECIALLY if your privacy settings don’t restrict who sees it.  It honestly makes you look like an idiot and if you have any kind of conscience you’ll most likely feel like crap if you get the pleasure of listening to her burst into tears on the phone.  The mature thing to do would be to take what you hear or whatever’s bothering you to her and discuss it like a grown MAN should do.

Life is easier when you eliminate the childish options from your thought process. I'll let you in on some of my other rules of engagement later.- Clarence

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GABE!

Happy Belated Birthday to 1 of our own, Gabe! 23 years old, & you haven't turned out too bad, old man LOL. June 23rd became meaningful once you wrecked your mother & blessed us w/ your presence.