Benz and a Backpack

I came across Dilla‘s solo album, The Shining as a freshman in college, but something about that title has always struck me. I remember hearing the line “…deep like The Shining/sparkle like a diamond...” from “It Ain’t Hard to Tell” and just being stuck. You know? The song goes on, but you still got that one line on your mind. It usually happens when I catch some clever wordplay, but this line in particular struck me for reasons I still can’t understand. The. Shining. Still gets to me.

Point is, that line was the reason I gave Dilla’s work a chance. iTunes suggested I listen to the album, but if it wasn’t for that title, I would have overlooked it. I had seen all the hype. Heard all the “R.I.P. Dilla” shout-outs from my favorite emcees, but I didn’t give any of his work a chance till I came across that album title (Turns out I had heard his work before then, I just didn’t know it). I didn’t give his work a chance because I just assumed he was the producer. Back then I wasn’t interested in instrumentals, beats, or production. Didn’t seem like there was that much to it.

Obviously I was wrong, the producer brings a lot to the table. Shit, the producer brings the table. He inspires the emcee. J. Dilla was the best at doing that. He brought out the best in every artist he ever worked with.

but I digress…

Today, as you may already know is James Yancey’s birthday. He passed away from Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura back in 2006. J. Dilla/Jay Dee will live on forever; if not for his music, then for the countless musicians he’s inspired and continues to inspire. I was scrolling through some youtube videos listening to some of his music (shoutout to @djdiz for his tweets this morning!), when I came across this documentary. There was that word again. Shining. I checked it out. Ended up skipping my class watching the whole thing.

I encourage you to check it out, whether you’re a fan of hip-hop or not. The dude is a inspiration. he’s more than that though. The dude shines. Brings light to everything he touches. I admire that. A lot of other people do to.

If you don’t know, now ya know. Hit the skip for part 2,3, and 4 of the documentary. Shoutout to Brian “@Bkyle_” Atkins for his directing. Check out giftedfilmsinc for more info on him. Read the rest of this entry →

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It’s hard to get excited for award shows nowadays. They are usually long and boring affairs that allow musicians, actors and creatives alike to fill their shelves with trophies like a little league baseball player and further validate what they charge for their time. While my friends and I weren’t exactly “hyped” to catch the VMA’s last night, we we left our friends cozy Murray Hill apartment surprised and satisfied.

Between making trashy yet engaging reality TV shows and some music-related content on the side, MTV’s greatest talent is the creation of cultural moments, and the VMA’s have become the prized asset in their production. Their pinnacle award show has broken new artists, appropriately tributed legends and showcased the best in made-for-TV performances. The archives are full of personal favorites, but in case you missed the show last night, here are some of the moments we will celebrate for weeks, months and possibly years from now:

The Performances:

Jay-Z and Kanye West perform “Otis” with a live performance inspired by Spike Jonze’s direction for the video.

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The big homie Ivan over at Hip Hop Is Read– who I tend to agree with but for his basketball allegiances– threw his intelligent voice into the discussion about Michael Rapaport’s documentary on Tribe:

“A couple of nights ago, I included Werner von Wallenrod’s review of Michael Rapaport’s ATCQ documentary, Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, on the latest installment of the Rap Round Table. Between then and now I’ve seen the documentary and thought I’d share my two cents. (I suggest you read Werner’s take on the film before proceeding further.)

Spanning just over an hour and a half, Beats Rhymes & Life begins with footage from Tribe’s 2008 concert in Seattle, followed shortly by the backstage scene of a visibly frustrated Q-Tip commenting on the end of the group. “It’s over.” Rapaport hits you with that initial sequence of conflict leaving the viewer asking him/herself “why is it over?” The film progresses with the story of Tribe being pieced together, recollecting a young Phife Dawg getting into emceeing and convincing his childhood best friend, Q-Tip, to follow suit. The film documents the rich legacy of artists hailing from Queens, New York, all the way up to hip hop pioneers Run-D.M.C. and LL Cool J – Tribe’s “idols.” In the words of Jarobi: “Queens puts out legends.” The film goes on to detail Tribe’s first encounter with the man who helped put them on, DJ Red Alert.

The film’s got plenty of great footage that a rap nerd would enjoy. One key segment shows Q-Tip waxing nostalgic over a record, Lonnie Smith’s 1970 LP Drives, sampled on Tribe’s debut album and third official single, “Can I Kick It?” Tip wistfully recollects snagging the record for five bucks at a shop on W. 26th St. called Jazz Record Center. Other insightful moments include a portion from an interview with producer Pharrell Williams, who discusses the impact “Bonita Applebum” had on him, commenting: “I was obsessed with it. I had never heard nothing like that in my whole life. And that’s where I changed.” The breakdown of Phife’s “Seaman’s Furniture” line on “Electric Relaxation” provides plenty of laughs as does his support for the L.A. Lakers in lieu of the N.Y. Knicks. Tip jokingly chides in “a lot of New Yorkers can take this as an offense”, to which Phife responds “that’s ’cause we’ve been losing for quite a long time.”

Read the rest at HHIR.

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MainGreen.TV is a student-speared production headed by Alicia Maule, a fellow member of Brown University’s class of 2011.  In a sentence, its a new media machine that aims to cultivate and highlight the creative works of the Brown community.  Like it’s cousins Massive.TV (Northwestern) and Kuumba.TV (Washington University-St. Louis), the MainGreen.TV staff takes advantage of the low up-front costs and availability of today’s technology.  The stories are triangulated through various methods, meaning biographies, interviews, photos, and videos work together to create a cohesive piece of journalism highlighting student works on campus. Its a model that our school papers, or any publication for that matter, will need to aspire to if they hope to provide an equally well rounded experience.

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A Brief History of the Gramophone is a short video I put together on a stimulant induced two day stint, spending most of my time figuring out how to get all these got’ damn files into the right format.  Why would they have Final Cut Pro 7 in one library and 3.5 in another?

Anyways, it’s the first video project I’ve ever attempted, and it uses strictly footage found on Youtube and other video archives.  Simply put, it highlights the distant but meaningful connection between the early inventors of sonic recording and contemporary users/abusers of vinyl.  With DMC announcing that this year they will be allowing the use of DVS programs such as Serato in the competition, even vinyl purists are acknowledging the trajectory of DJ technology.  I hope this video honors the enclosing legacy of this mystical musical medium.

Hit the skip for my full artistic statement, and while your at it, check out an earlier collage I made earlier in the semester, dedicated to Lil’ B the Based God.

Thank You Based God.

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From our good friend and Chicago-native Miss Maule:
In the upcoming primary elections in the City of Chicago, one race sticks out to me like “a bullet and target.” A hometown favorite of mine, Grammy Award-winning rapper Che “Rhymefest” Smith is running for Alderman of the 20th Ward. Representing the Englewood and Woodlawn neighborhood (just bordering my hood of Kenwood/Hyde Park) Rhymefest is making a natural move from his poetic activism to the realm of local political activism. I believe a true leader finds multiple platforms to execute his/her vision and that is exactly the path he is blazing.

I first learned about Rhymefest from a local Chicago magazine when he released his debut album Blue Collar in the summer of 2006. From the title of the album alone it was clear that he was representing himself as an ordinary man, straying from the glitzy and glammor-fied ways of a lot of hip hop, with expressed profound lyricism. After hearing the album I instantly connected to the authentically Chi-Town tracks like “Chicago-Rillas” and “Brand New.” However, it was the songs like “Bullet” with folk singer Citizen Cope and “Sister” (Eddie Kendricks’ “Intimate Friends” is one of mine/hop hop’s favorite samples) that convinced me of his artistic dynamism. He worked with a range of musical talents including Q-Tip, Kanye West, Bump J, Mario, Malik Yusef, No I.D., O.D.B, Citizen Cope, and Mark Ronson.
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*Dutch Master Design is a design collective loosely based in NYC and is currently aiding us in front and back-end web development and brand extension.  For inquires, please contact inquiries {at} dutchmasterdesign.com

For college age kids today, the age of information dawned upon us around the 5th grade. Windows 95, dial-up connections, and AOL Instant Messenger changed the way we socialized after school and collaborated on homework.  As we grew, so did the internet, and we gradually graduated to broadband connections, Sidekicks sporting AIM, and social networks like Live Journal and Xanga.  Things have simplified over the past few years, as Apple and Facebook products encompass the instant accessibility we dreamed of in middle school. Struggling through the growth of the internet through childhood gifted us with a unique appreciation of the power of technology older generations don’t quite understand and younger ones will inevitably take for granted. Most importantly, we realize that the age of information is actually the age of ideas, of vision, a historical turning-point that has afforded us infinite opportunity to sculpt the culture and commerce of tomorrow.

Dutch Master Design is a web development and design startup that hopes to capitalize on their vision.  Started by current students and recent grads Shoma Nishikawa (Brown), John Verdery (RISD), and Cristin Joshua (RISD), this collective provides front and back-end web development and branding services.  Given the low entry barrier web related firms face, young entrepreneurs who hope to solve the residual problems left behind by established social, commercial, and government institutions have the chance to execute. Nishikawa explains how problem solving and brand creation are inextricably linked:

In this day and age, I think the best way to go about starting a company or brand is to make sure that you’re truly addressing something.  The design and media industries are starting to widen their scopes.  Every clothing brand is also a blog/record label/weekly party in Williamsburg.  This is the norm and while I don’t think it’s a necessarily bad thing, I think its important to have a solid brand foundation before extending yourself in that way. There needs to be a core to everything you do that can explain why you decided to do it. And I think the best kind of core ideology you can have is one that is an answer to a question – just as it is in design.  Because brands have the ability to horizontally extend themselves to great degrees nowadays, I think the questions are getting broader and more cultural (more philosophical even). Whereas before you could start a brand that answered questions like “how do you make a skate shoe company that is stylish enough to be worn by non skaters”, nowadays you have to answer questions like “how do you create a brand that combines the edginess of skateboard culture with haute fashion?”

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These were the free releases that stayed in our collective rotation the longest. 2010 was kind to many artists for wholly different reasons: Apollo’s knocking on the proverbial door, DZA’s got his foot in it, Freddie’s got the door halfway open, Cole’s got it open all the way, Das Racist is opening several doors at once, and Wiz is about to tear the door of its facken hinges. Enough with the door metaphors, hit the skip already!

Honorable Mention: Nipsey Hussle – The Marathon

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As I went back through my iTunes, these are the albums I found myself listening to the most, and generally from top to bottom. You’ll notice KanYe’s album is missing from my list. While I absolutely love (and have dissected) a lot of the music from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, I find myself too often having to tune out the lyrics in order to focus on the music. As such, the album has very little replay value for me. By contrast, Doss & Hir-O (who recently got a nod from K-Nott) crafted, to me, one of the most sonically innovative and timely albums in recent memory. If you don’t already have Computer B!ue, make sure you grab it (for free) right here.

Honorable Mention: Freeway & Jake One – Stimulus Package (Rhymesayers)

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We’ve had these last couple best-of lists waiting in the wings for a while, but major events have gotten in the way of us finishing them up. Here they go, starting with Clutch’s Top 10 Albums, and if you haven’t heard some of these make sure you listen pronto.

10. Aloe Blacc – Good Things (Stones Throw)

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Suicide victims often think that their demons are put to rest with their bodies. This is false. In fact, those demons remain above ground, and the burden of confronting them shifts from the victim to the people who survive the victim: immediate family, relatives, close friends. It becomes their obligation to contend with inherited evils, evils that can fester and breed even more dangerous offspring. Deliverance from these cosmically insidious forces can only occur if family and friends are able and willing to beat them back into submission.

To me, suicide seems to be onset by an ultimate and improperly treated dis-ease with living, either manifested through or caused by destruction of one’s own body and mind. Cause and effect are moot. The two co-exist in a state of destructive symbiosis, feeding off one another and fencing their victim in the domed circularity of their minds. They coerce their victims to forget their connections to other people and the investments others have made in them.
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In The Heights is one of the most pleasurably stimulating contemporary musicals, seamlessly fusing elements of spoken word, hip-hop, modern dance, and Latin American culture. It provides a very real depiction of New York City, specifically Manhattan’s northernmost neighborhood Washington Heights, in the throes of the summer’s hottest days. The star of In The Heights is the multi-talented Lin-Manuel Miranda, who not only directed, produced, and played the lead character Usnavi, but also penned the play during his sophomore year at Wesleyan University.

Sara Krulwich NYTimes

I saw this play when it was first in previews and again three years later on its third-to-last day, and it did not feel even remotely stale. The awesome musical and dance numbers, sophisticated but accessible language, and inspired performances of every member in the cast make In The Heights a continually fresh experience. In 2008, the highly-lauded musical won four Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Choreography, Best Orchestrations and Best Original Score. The music was so good that In The Heights also grabbed the 2008 Grammy for Best Musical Show Album.

In The Heights performance at the 2008 Tony Awards

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