I made some cool connections this morning. Not business connections but more like connect the dot connections, on the internet.
I stumbled upon this new song coming out of Atlanta called Poppin Off by What the Duck. (some cursing in the video viewer warning).
While watching I noticed that one of the dancers looked familiar. I looked at the comments and saw the group dancing was called Dragon House and Remote Kontrol. I did a youtube search and saw they they tried out for So You Think You Can Dance Season 9. (Search it on youtube... lots of dope footage from their try outs.)
The guys I recognized was indeed the guy from another viral dancing video called Pumped up Kicks Dubstep. You may have seen it before.
These guys are doing some really unique moves and adding a great element of soul and kick back to their steps. I was excited to find out about all this out.
Lastly one of the guys in the Poppin Off video is wearing a FIVE shirt. I noticed the shirt because I djed at this event called CHIC 2012 and this was the event Tshirt.
Im currently on the hunt to find out who this guy is and how he got the shirt lol!
Definitely a good week in Cali this past January. One of Odd Thomas' good friends caught some iPhone footage of our sound check so we had to post it up! Got a few more Cali blogs to post so stay tuned.
The other night I admitted... "I suck at picking out Christmas music!" My friends gave me some positive feedback but I reassured them, they did not want me djing their Christmas parties! The same thing I tell people when they ask me to dj their weddings. I just never feel confident about what Im playing and then I get nervous and its all downhill from there lol. This year I also learned that Im not much of a Christmas enthusiasts as lets say... MY WIFE! She loves Christmas and everything that goes with it. Shopping with lots of people, baking cookies, putting up decorations and yes, especially Christmas music!
So to get on top of my Christmas game I started looking for some "good" Christmas tunes. My ears were open and eager for something other than The Chipmunks and Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire. I had heard a few Christmas hiop-hop albums but I really just wanted something nice and traditional sounding. Wasn't really sure what I wanted but I just knew my collection needed help! So, while shopping with my wife in Forever21 there it was... GOOD Christmas Music! (I know weird right?)
The very first song I heard was tribal drum sounding and almost moombah-ish (side note: Moombah is a new form of music where you slow down House music to sound like Reggaeton and it usually has a little bit of hip-hop element to it). The next song had a similar "hippster" type feel (another word you should google). My cell service (AT&T) was tripping so I couldnt Shazam anything! (ok sorry last weird word - older generation readers, Shazam is an app that finds songs by hearing them, get it!).
When we got home that night my wife, a detective and google expert, helped me find exactly what we heard in the store. It was remixed Christmas music, and it was really good! I guess they found a variety of remixers to help produce tracks and its actually pretty dope stuff. Ive downloaded both albums, part 1 & 2 and even noticed the homie Ohmega Watts is featured on it. I will say after listening Volume 1 is wayyy better than Volume 2.
So in the joyous spirit of the traditional American Christmas I wanted to say, "Feliz Navidad" and here is some music that might help you with your Scroogeness and brighten up almost any light tour.
This month we have been working on a lot of upcoming events and bookings. The 2012 calendar is filling up fast and we (my wife and I) will be hitting a lot of cities.
Speaking of my wife she decided to bake some cookies so if you see me looking chubby you know why. We couldn't eat them all so we took them to Moses Uvere's music video shoot last night... we didn't even bring the leftovers back so I hope everyone enjoyed them.
Moses's video shoot was for Word to Your Mother and it was a house party theme. I got to dj some and was super glad to be part of it. We finally got to meet Dj Knucklehead, who produced the track for Word to Your Mother and is also in the band Forever the Sickest Kids. Hopefully we can hang with him soon and catch one of his dj sets.
Moses (in the middle), his little brother and sister and Dj Knucklehead on the right
Now the night before the video shoot we got to hang with my wife's family at the Dallas Cowboy Stadium for some 4A High School Football Championships. Really cool cause we're with the winning team (Lake Travis Cavaliers). It was our first time in the stadium and even driving around that part of Dallas. Good to know whats around the area and see inside the big dome!
I guess I kind of started this blog post backwards, but Thursday night I went out to the Rio Room to see Dj Craze and Codes perform. I had to roll solo but if you know who Dj Craze is it was mad worth it.
Im new to Codes but he is also on Craze's Slow Roast label. Dude is clean on the cuts and plays some great house music. I don't have any footage but look up Codes House EP and as you already know CRAZE TORE IT UP!!! I even got a tweet back... Made my solo night out even better lol
Anyways I should probably stop now. I will save all this content I got laying around for the next post. Let me get back to work...
No this is not Sawyer... its Daisy.... our other Bangel (ask me about it later)
The last few months have been relatively slow for us. Which is good and bad. Its good cause we don't have to travel and get to do a lot of cool local things and bad because if we don't have shows we don't have #mula #cheddar #dinero #lol
As stuff starts to pick up I need to try and post more often. I do great with Twitter and Facebook but blogging means I have to stop, type and upload... hard when you want to work on mixes and other musical stuff. But never the less I know this content needs to stop filling up my iPhone and makes it way to the light of day! Let the blogging begin!
Wow its already been 5 months that my wife and I have been in Dallas, Texas. (It feels like 2 months.) So much has happened in the time that we have been here. The transition to Dallas has definitely kept us busy and God has opened up so many new doors. Our first month here we connected with tons of people and got use to driving around as well as our area near the airport. I have collected tons of footage on my phone from the last 5 months and keep wanting to post it, but its just SOOO BUSY!!! The winter months should give us some time to decompress and maybe I can post up some of the cool things that have gone on. When God sends you somewhere JUST GO! You dont have to have it all figured out, just be obedient and he will provide. Thanks to everyone who has kept up with our move and been apart of this step in our lives. Hopefully I will get some time to share with you soon.
Today I learned that my boy Kenneth Hunn (22) was found dead in Lake Nasworthy in San Angelo Texas (my hometown). I remembered I took him with me to a youth event one time and let him rap.... So I found the audio and posted it up here on youtube - http://youtu.be/ZGNmM8-yurk
Kenneth always walked every where, from the time I knew him till he passed away. He was hilarious, shy and a great kid... I pray he's still walking, but now with The Lord and that is life is a reminder of how temporary our time on Earth is. If you knew Kenneth post this up and download the track to bump as we remember him and reflect on our own lives. - IN MEMORY OF KENNETH HUNN -
If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you might have noticed I hit up SXSW this year. After helping with DaSouth's SXSW Showcase last year, I had decided I wanted to go back, but this time catch as many shows as I could.
Luckily Jimmie at Much Luvv contacted me about going to help again which meant SXSW ARTIST BADGE!!!
ARTIST WRISTBAND!!!
For those of you who dont know about SXSW, its a yearly music and film festival held in Austin, TX. Thousands of people come out to see a wide spectrum of artists, indie bands, rappers and electronic showcases. They perform and guest appear on stages from Wednesday - Saturday. You can catch tons of mainstream artists like Kanye West, Ice Cube and even bands like Duran Duran. I think this year I even saw that Hanson and Wu Tang were showcasing!
About 20,000 people attended this year's events and there were more showcases than ever. The trick at SXSW is to get a wristband or a badge and follow artists on Twitter for FREE SHOWS and last minute type events. Thankfully we had an artist badge and a book of sanctioned SXSW events to hit up. Our goal: to catch as many dj/producer events as possible. Luckily I had a partner... Swiftstyle!!! He's an Austin native and a dj so we had a place to stay and like minds... WHERE'S THE DJS???
You can now cop this full album for FREE at AMAZON.COM!!! So cool to see me face mean muggin on AMAZON... My first "hosted" mixtape from Syntax Records. So glad I had the opportunity to work with them on this.
One morning at a "walk-in" event I decided to play Propaganda's - "Beautiful Pain" spoken word piece over Eminem's new song "Not Afraid". Prop had done this piece the night before so I thought it would work well to revisit it in the AM. Well I was right... lots of people wanted to know, "Where can I get that remix?" So here you go... The Not Afraid of Pain Mashup and Extended Remix... Enjoy!
Just picked up a new device called the Traktor S4. Its manufactured by Native Instruments and allows you to control a program called Traktor Scratch. Its very similar to Serato Scratch Live but has a ton of new features. This program is really big overseas and is gaining popularity with djs here in the states. This device is a portable unit that allows you to control 4 tracks at once as well as switching to a beat machine with 4 sample banks. Hopefully I can post my thoughts on it soon, but for now check out all the videos we've made!
This summer we took a trip with Impilo leader Ndumiso Mafu to South Africa during the World Cup Finals. He documented the trip and highlighted our time there in this video. If you enjoy it please support Impilo by visiting http://www.impilomedia.org/involve.php and signing up for their newsletter as well as following the ministry on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/impilo
A few months ago I was talking with my long time homie KJ-52. I was asking him if there was any way to get some tracks to put into a mixtape. He told me NO! BUT!!! There was a possibility of doing a mixtape with freestyles and unreleased rhymes. Cool... but now what to do?
I told him my desire to do a 90's mix with different artist remixes and he was feeling it. Especially since he just did alot of 80's and Michael Jackson type "mixtape songs" that bled into the 90's era.
For about a month we went through tracks and he began rhyming over instrumentals. The first chance I had at home I started working on it. I ended up with a folder of over 600 possible tracks. I thought I would get to use most of them, but 100 songs (and one week) later you have the Official YO! KJ Raps "Stuck in the 90's Mixtape".
We played of the latest KJ CAN'T RAP Mixtape theme as well as 1990's TV show "YO MTV RAPS", and came up with a way to feature our own individual talents in a return to the Golden Era of Hip-Hop.
Earlier this year rap artist Propaganda and I went to South Africa with a group called Impilo. Their objective is to reach out to communities with relevant media and urban culture. This fall the will release a small documentary on our week long visit... For now check out this amazing teaser video from Impilo by Ndumiso
All morning Ive been watching TV while trying to figure out how to word my Tweet. I keep re-wording and re-wording, but its almost impossible due to the 140 character limit, which actually changes what I want to say. So, I was reminded that I have a blog!!! Good thing He did cause that's what I was trying to Tweet about anyways... That God speaks to us, but so do other things...
I had heard this before but never found it out to be true for myself. No, not that God speaks to us, but something very similar. I had heard that Stephenie Meyer, who wrote the Twilight Book Series, was visited in the nights and instructed on how to write her books. So this morning as the MTV Movie Awards where playing (and Twilight was winning everything) I decided to find out a little more. It some digging but I eventually found the articles.
"Stephenie Meyer's life changed dramatically on June 2, 2003. The stay-at-home mother of three young sons woke up from a dream featuring seemingly real characters that she could not get out of her head."
and then a little more in her explanation about the Twilight Series
I woke up (on that June 2nd) from a very vivid dream. In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately. For what is essentially a transcript of my dream, please see Chapter 13 ("Confessions") of the book.
Now the craziest part is not that she dreamed this stuff, but what happens afterward. In another interview Stephenie Meyers states that "Edward" actually visits her and tells her she got the story wrong. This was the part I had not found on my own but had just overheard in conversation. So, I went looking and sure enough she says that "Edward" did in fact visit her and it was pretty terrifying.
I know that there has been alot of controversy over this book. Some of you love it and others burn them, lol. But the main issue to me is where did this story come from? Yes, Stephenie Meyer wrote these books, but you can also see that she wasn't a writer before and that the Twilight Series was given to her in dreams. Also they were so vivid that all she had to do was just write them down on paper. Not only that, but again, after she is done writing "Edward" comes to visit her and tell her she got it wrong.
If this does not disturb you than maybe you are ok with "other things" speaking to you or maybe you do not believe something like this is really possible. I know there may be a number of reasons why it wouldn't bother you, but here is my plea, or Tweet...
If you believe in God, then you believe in a spiritual being. So then, you might also believe in good and evil, such as Satan and "demons". When voices in your head (or in your dreams) speak to you, this is obviously coming from somewhere. And to say that you just made it up is relevant too. But in this case, the story wasn't just made up, it was given to the author.
This book might contain sweeter or kinder characters than other vampire stories or plots but who gave her these ideas... who gave her this story? Does evil always have to look "bad" or "scary" Where did it come from? Better yet, who is entertaining you in these stories. Was it God given and full of his likeness or did it come from someone else? Sometimes there is so much "bad stuff" going on around us we can become used to it. A death or brutal murder isn't as crazy anymore because we see it all the time. It becomes "life". Someone saying that God told them go to Africa and share the gospel even starts to seem "normal". So what do you think about a book written like this? Should we just read it and enjoy it?
I urge you to think about the way this book was written. The draw to this book, the appeal it has to young women. We definitely have to file this one under a "supernatural" experience. Even more than that we have to discern where did it come from and is this thing something I should take part in. Know that if "Edward" wants to speak to someone and give them a popular book series, God definitely wants to do something more in your life! Speak with Him today, I believe he wants to share some things with us. And it might even be in His book ;) (sorry couldn't resist)
What do you think about entertainment? Are there good and bad forms of entertainment? Is there a way to determine what is good for one person or bad for another? Do you believe God can speak to people, as well as Satan? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!