While the clouds grow ever darker above a cowering newspaper industry and we await word of our fate, we'll keep mailing in these blog posts as inspiration permits.

Thanks to News Tribune staffer Brent Champaco for turning us on to Charles Hamilton, a 21-year-old Harlem-based rapper who has an affinity for Brooklyn Girls and, inexplicably, Shawn Kemp.

Not only does Hamilton represent Seattle by wearing a T-shirt festooned with the image of Shawn Kemp in the video for "Brooklyn Girls," but he goes so far as to allude to the Reign Man in another song. The line "Sonic, my team is where the good Shawn Kemp is" comes up in "Truth Kills Opposition (Love TKO).

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As far as the video below goes ... if you somehow stumbled upon this blog post by accident, please understand that it is unedited and surely includes colorful material that may be objectionable to some. Use your discretion, please, and admire the T-shirt.

We haven't quite ascertained how Hamilton, whose mother was a Cleveland journalist, came upon his Shawn Kemp thing. One thing's for sure: The folks over at Slam Online are hip to him, and they can rap about Charles Hamilton all night long.

The only clue to his strange Reign Man fetish? His favorite video game character, says unimpeachable Wikipedia, is Sonic the Hedgehog.

If you have time, please catch me up on the latest exploits of Sonic the Hedgehog. I don't know much, but I do know you don't have to be Isaiah Berlin or an long-dead Greek poet to know that while a fox knows many things, a a hedgehog knows one big thing.