"These Are the Times" is the second single released from Dru Hill's second album, Enter the Dru. The single reached number 21 on the Hot 100 and number 5 on the R&B chart, staying on the chart for 21 weeks. The music video directed by Bille Woodruff was inspired by the film The Man in the Iron Mask. Sisqó played both the good twin and the evil twin and Jazz, Woody and Nokio played the Musketeers. Actress Lark Voorhies appears in the video as Sisqó's love interest.
The Times is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register and became The Times on 1 January 1788. The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times (founded in 1821) are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, itself wholly owned by the News Corp group headed by Rupert Murdoch. The Times and The Sunday Times do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have only had common ownership since 1967.
In 1959, historian of journalism Allan Nevins analysed the importance of The Times in shaping the views of events of London's elite:
The Times is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, including The Times of India (founded in 1838), The Straits Times (Singapore) (1845), The New York Times (1851), The Irish Times (1859), Le Temps (France) (1861-1942), the Cape Times (South Africa) (1872), the Los Angeles Times (1881), The Seattle Times (1891), The Manila Times (1898), The Daily Times (Malawi) (1900), El Tiempo (Colombia) (1911), The Canberra Times (1926), and The Times (Malta) (1935). In these countries, the newspaper is often referred to as The London Times or The Times of London.
The San Mateo County Times is a daily newspaper published by the MediaNews Group. The paper is distributed throughout San Mateo County, Monday through Saturday. Before being sold in 1996, it had been published for over 100 years as the San Mateo Times, originally published by Amphlett Publishing
Amphlett also published a weekly "shopping" newspaper, The San Mateo Post, on Wednesday mornings. The Times provided extensive coverage of San Mateo County news and sports (sometimes using high school or college correspondents).
It had one of the first television columnists in the San Francisco Bay Area, Bob Foster, who covered the birth of KPIX, San Francisco's first television station, in December 1948. Foster remained on the staff for many years, covering Bay Area television and radio. He was an occasional guest on KGO Radio talk shows.
In 1968, Amphlett acquired several weekly newspapers in San Bruno, South San Francisco, Pacifica, and Daly City. All operations for these papers were moved to a central facility in South San Francisco.
Lerner Newspapers was a chain of weekly newspapers. Founded by Leo Lerner, the chain was a force in community journalism in Chicago from 1926 to 2005, and called itself "the world's largest newspaper group".
In its heyday, Lerner published 54 weekly and semi-weekly editions on the North and Northwest sides of Chicago and in suburban Cook, Lake and DuPage counties, with a circulation of some 300,000. Editions included the Booster, Citizen, Life, News, News-Star, Skyline, Star, Times and Voice.
The Lerner papers focused on community news and local issues, including a widely read police blotter, but also featured localized sections devoted to arts and entertainment, food, lifestyles and high-school and neighborhood sports, like "hyper-local" versions of daily newspapers.
At one time, the chain had its own printing plant at its headquarters in the Rogers Park, Chicago, neighborhood and a network of satellite offices across the city and its suburbs.
Journalists who got their start at Lerner include the late Mike Royko, the Crain's Chicago Business columnist Greg Hinz, the Chicago Sun-Times columnists Bill Zwecker and Robert Feder, the sportscaster Bruce Wolf, the novelist Bill Brashler, the syndicated columnist Robert C. Koehler and Ted Allen, host of Food Network's "Chopped" and "All-Star Academy," and former cast member of the Bravo hit Queer Eye.
[Verse 1]
The televisions have eyes
Your modern religion is live
Plotting a collision world wide
Watch the hour glass, the power class
Showing currency for world supremacy
Burroughs is burned down deliberately, son
We ain't about whats devil level
Smell the gun metal
King to mo' man
I read Mao Tse-Tung
Feel the foul taste that run on my tongue
Burn a L for everyone of my sons
There so much more than just herb in my lungs
Similar to spilt Mercury,
With enough force
They could've killed Hercules
This whole nation was built
Virtually, from capital to captivity
The earth could be the modest ??
You not listening
It's cold outside
They got the whole South side
Using bar codes,
Military blocks on all the state roads
And worse, somebody's chold got hung
They took his pants off,
Covered his whole body with ants, and cut his hands off
The type of shit that have your brain bleedin'
They about to start scanning the back of niggas hands
And get your vein readin'
They call it New World Order
But, son, this game is in the fourth quarter
World War 3, don't drink the water
Because...
[Chorus: repeat 2X]
These are the times that try a nigga soul
Population control, we wasting time chasing gold
They after more than your mind
They want your nation as a whole
It's time to take off the blindfold (I know)
(A thousand men, a thousand sorrows)
[Verse 2]
These are the times that try my thug sole
White collar crime
Deaf tones, gold, and drug sold
The truth is never told
I call it black Holocaust
Some say all is lost
But in the end
Your life is all it costs
Pronounce counter ??
Global 2000 ??, what they plan to do
In case of emergency
They building mad prisons with urgency
Son, I solemnly swear
They keep them slugs in the air
Until they murder me
Shut down the government
Revelutionaries be lovin' it
Clinton flee the country in a bubblejet
Trouble is yet to come,
For each crime, they tryin' niggas three times
Then probably prosecute me for this rhyme
International nickel and dime hustlers
Move weight and muscle us around
But my army bustin' rounds
Shells covered the ground for miles
Street ?? from here to Capitol Hill
And you can read it on a dollar bill
[Chorus]
[Chorus 2: repeat 2X]
I know (I know)
The time (the time)
They trying to take this world (world)
Of mine (Yeah)
[Verse 3]
They breakin' windows out with canisters of tear gas
Put out the cannabis
We fighting canibals with silver badges
I feel the madness in the wind
Like a premonition
Dee got the ammunition
Puffin' reefer while we cleaning pieces
None of my niggas don't believe in Jesus
We fight a war against the ?? Chevrolet Caprices
Whatever way we find feasible
Sometime shit be unbelievable
I'm seeing skeletons in parked vehicles
Put all the terrible types behind sandbags
My philosophy is much more than snatch your handbag
I'm talkin' shit like hand-to-hand,
Man-to-man, clan-for-clan
What side you stand?
Some of us will breakdown mentally
Some of us will pass away
Overwhelmed by injuries
But our victory is meant to be
I studied the signs for twenty-two years
And this is what it meant to me
[Chorus]