Xzibit

Alvin Nathaniel Joiner (born September 18, 1974), better known by his alias Xzibit (pronounced "exhibit"), is an American rapper, actor, television host and record producer. He is known as the host of the MTV show Pimp My Ride, which brought him mainstream success. Before hosting the show, he achieved fame in the West Coast hip-hop scene as a rapper, debuting with his acclaimed At the Speed of Life and gathering chart success with his follow-up albums Restless, Man vs. Machine and Weapons of Mass Destruction, working with high-profile artists such as Eminem, Cypress Hill, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Knoc-turn'al, Timbaland, Limp Bizkit, Alice Cooper, Game, 50 Cent and Within Temptation, as well as being one of the first rappers to work internationally, collaborating with overseas acts such as Russian rapper Timati, Raptile from Germany, Bliss N Eso from Australia and Adil Omar from Pakistan.

Early life

Born as Alvin Nathaniel Joiner on September 18, 1974 in Detroit, Michigan, Xzibit grew up with a single mother. His father left the family early to pursue a career as a preacher, forcing his mother to raise a young Alvin and his four siblings (an older sister and brother as well as a little brother and younger sister) alone. After her death he had to move in with his father. His father remarried and relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Joiner lived in Albuquerque from age 10 to 17, and began writing rhymes. However, he had numerous run-ins with the law and ultimately ended up moving to California to live with his sister. It was here where he first began to rap and pursue a music career. He later reconciled with his father, who can be heard on his second studio album.

Black operation

A black operation or black op is a covert operation by a government, a government agency, or a military organization. This can include activities by private companies or groups. Key features of a black operation are that it is secret and it is not attributable to the organization carrying it out. The main difference between a black operation and one that is merely secret is that a black operation involves a significant degree of deception, to conceal who is behind it or to make it appear that some other entity is responsible ("false flag" operations).

A single such activity may be called a "black bag operation"; that term is primarily used for covert or clandestine surreptitious entries into structures to obtain information for human intelligence operations. Such operations are known to have been carried out by the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency,Mossad, MI6, ISI (Pakistan), RAW, MSS, and the intelligence services of other nations.

Etymology

"Black" may be used as a generic term for any government activity that is hidden or secret. For example, some activities by military and intel agencies are funded by a classified "black budget," of which the details, and sometimes even the total, are hidden from the public and from most congressional oversight.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Call of Duty: Black Ops II is a first-person shooter video game, developed by Treyarch and published by Activision (Square Enix for Japan). It was released on November 13, 2012 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 and on November 18, 2012 in North America, November 30, 2012 in Europe and Australia for the Wii U.Black Ops II is the ninth game in the Call of Duty franchise of video games and a sequel to the 2010 game Call of Duty: Black Ops. The game was launched at 16,000 stores worldwide at midnight on November 13, 2012.

Black Ops II is the first game in the Call of Duty franchise to feature future warfare technology and the first to present branching storylines driven by player choice as well as selecting weapons before starting story mode missions. It also offers a 3D display option. A corresponding game, Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified, was released simultaneously on the PlayStation Vita. Within 24 hours of going on sale, the game grossed over $500 million. It had remained the largest entertainment launch of all time until September 2013, when Take-Two announced that Grand Theft Auto V had grossed $800 million in its first day of release. It went on to sell 7.5 million copies in the U.S. in November 2012, making it the highest grossing game of the month.

Strong Arm Steady

Strong Arm Steady, often referred to as SAS, is a hip hop group in California's underground hip hop scene. As of December 2009, the act consists of members Mitchy Slick of San Diego, California, and (both of Los Angeles) Phil Da Agony and probably the most visually distinct member, Krondon, who is albinistic. Originally an amorphous collective of at least eight, formed as an alternative to the gang-focused productions of West Coast rap's then-dominant Death Row Records, SAS pared down to four members for recording in the studio and performing live, with Xzibit as the frontman. Since he left the group in 2006, the three remaining members have been a stable trio.

Over the years they have recorded many mixtapes and have distributed them all over the world. "Speaking directly to their fans," they were West Coast pioneers in the use of mixtapes as a group's principal method of distribution and marketing, a model necessitated by their neither being DJs nor closely affiliated with a DJ, and a method already proven on the East Coast by 50 Cent and others in the early 2000s.