I have a many many gigabytes of this stuff. Somebody should add a bassline and rap on top of this maybe.
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questions! with answers!
http://www.examiner.com/rap-music-in-riverside/artist-spotlight-open-mike-eagle
East coast secret rap mission news coming soon
Hi all, its been too long. You’ve missed me. I can feel it.
Two things this week you really have to read about right now and memorize:
1: My mid-west rap compatriot and close human friend Psalm One are rocking the Elbo Room in San Francisco this Tuesday 8.24.10. We’ll be rocking alongside the Bay Area’s own League510
all of this information is stated again in the memory aid below:
2: This Sunday back in Los Angeles, I’m humbled to be performing at the world famous Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. I’ll be apart of their ASSSCAT improv show where they’ve invited me to do a couple of songs and interact with the comedians. I’m a big fan of UCB so I kind of all the way a little nervous about it.
This is their logo and website:
http://losangeles.ucbtheatre.com/shows/741
Its free and fills up fast every week, so get there early! I dont want you to have to try to watch me through the walls.
8.29.10
Mike
This friday me and my old pal Psalm One from Rhymesayers Entertainment embark on a three date jaunt around the country as the At Work and Unapologetic Tour. We’re in our hometown of Chicago at the historic Flatiron Building on Friday. In Minneapolis at 7th St. Entry on Saturday and in San Francisco at the Elbo Room on Monday.
Support independent rap initiatives!
Im especially looking forward to the Chicago show…Minneap and SF have always treated me well..but i never get enough of rapping at home:
19 shows in 19 days…from Seattle to Los Angeles via large loop routing.
This was the Fake Four Summer Tour
Grandmaster Moka Only, Superproducer Factor and Ceschi aka Thor
We had a hell of a time.
These are some of the times that I remembered I was supposed to be documenting things:
This is us at Starbucks. We went to Starbucks everyday. Sometimes twice. It was home base.
I think this was in Eureka…this is how I knew I was far from any place I call home
This was the poster for the Yuma show..which was the awesomes. Whomever designed it was well aware of Factor’s effect on the ladies.
In the bathroom of Access Hip Hop in San Diego…I peed on my shoes a little bit when I saw it.
Asa looking at his daddy in LA Weekly..this like many cool things…happened while I was gone
Hey, I know this guy…(Eugene, OR)
Got to hang out with Sole in Denver…talked to him about the state of the indie union, Philaflava, and his nifty new eco-bags.
I dont remember where this was…but it could be Anytown, USA
Chopping it up with my rap-brother Computer Chip post-show in San Francisco.
Drinking Colt 45 in LA…why? cause it was free.
All the fun begins this Wednesday in Seattle
A Fake Four Summer Tour 2010
07.07 | Seattle, WA | Nectar
07.08 | Olympia, WA | The Royal Lounge
07.09 | Portland, OR | Ash St. Saloon
07.10 | Eugene,OR | John Henry’s
07.11 | Eureka, CA | Red Fox Tavern
07.12 | San Francisco, CA | Elbo Room
07.13 | Palm Springs, CA | J-Dee’s Landing
07.14 | Los Angeles, CA | The Low End Theory @ The Airliner
07.15 | Oceanside, CA | The Royal Dive
07.16 | Yuma, AZ | Dune’s Bar (presented by Open Aired)
07.17 | Las Vegas, NV | Boomer’s
07.18 | Phoenix, AZ | Hidden House
07.19 | Santa Fe, NM | Corazon
07.20 | Albuquerque, NM | Tree House on Coal (1323 Coal SE.)
07.21 | Denver, CO | Larimer Lounge
07.22 | Ft Collins, CO | Hodi’s Half Note
07.23 | Salt Lake City, UT | Bar Deluxe
07.24 | Fresno, CA | Cot Onna Web (1040 n fulton st)
07.25 | Los Angeles, CA | Hipsters Who Heart Hip Hop present @ Silver Echo Gallery
R.I.P. Rammellzee
Quite often people ask me how I feel about a particular artist and I answer that I haven’t heard their stuff but I could tell by the way people talked about him/her that they were good.
Jay Electronica was a good recent example of this before I actually dug into his stuff. I hadnt paid him any attention mostly because his name threw me off. I know that may seem ironic coming from someone whose name is made up of three words that dont go together at all. But thats what it was…In my mind, a Jay Electronica sounded like a guy that used to DJ gay clubs and decided to rap. I couldnt have been more wrong, but I guess its a lesson in nomenclature (and assumptions). I finally began to check for his music when I read the specific praise words being thrown his way by people who’s opinions I respect.
A similar thing is happening now that Rammellzee has passed on.
In this case, though, it isnt that I made any attempt at avoiding his music. Its more to do with the era in which he exists in the history of our genre. I really didnt become a student of rap until 1994. And as ravenous as my appetite for rap consumption was, I quickly found that most of the music that was to my liking was created after 1988. My unsophisticated ears found most of the songs that I heard that were created before that time to be indistinguishable from one another. Aside from Jimmy Spicer’s Superrhymes, or Shawn Brown’s Rappin Duke it seemed to me that most of it consisted of coked out guys rambling over the same disco breaks over and over again.
“They use the simple back and forth, the same old rhythm/ that a baby could pick up and join right with em”
I can remember suffering through a particular phase of my rap stupidity where I actually told somebody that I didnt need to know about old school, cause Nice & Smooth, Big Daddy Kane, and Biz Markie were old school to me. And while there was some truth to that statement, I was pretty dumb to lump everything earlier together as useless to my hip-hop knowledge.
Its only as an adult that I can appreciate how incredible some of that era’s emcees were. Especially now that I can put some historical context around things. When I can appreciate how young it was as an art form, I can see how advanced dudes like Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee, and Grandmaster Caz were at the time, even though their patterns and cadences seem basic in this era.
But after all this time, and though all this learning…I dont think I’d ever heard a Rammellzee rap. I was familiar with the name, but in my mind he stood alongside rappers like Superlover Cee, Cowboy, and Spoonie Gee in that even now Im somewhat nervous to admit that Im not all that familiar with their impact.
Death has a funny way of underscoring the contributions of an emcee.
Ive actually written a song about this recently…It seems that we never truly celebrate a rapper until he or she is dead. Maybe its because we dont have the wealth or the media influence to properly document and canonize the seminal works of our own culture, so we have to wait until the mainstream media wants to know who “rapper x” was before we’re given the platform to give out our awards.
When I read of Rammellzee’s contributions, I feel like I’m being told of a recent ancestor, like a grandfather that died before I was born. I feel like I owe him something more than a couple of youtube views and an empty RIP. At first it feels like I owe it to him and a few more of those who have come before to be more brave in my art..but thats not quite it…bravery is the overcoming of fear…but there really inst anything to be afraid of to begin with:
Yes…you’re absolutely right. My album came out May 11th, and I’m just now having my release party.
This is 85% intentional. I had initially planned for something a bit earlier but I definitely wanted to have the album good and out before I put my self in a position to celebrate. And celebrate is exactly what we intend to do. I’d like a gathering of like-minded folks to come out and enjoy themselves at a grown-folks party where the rap angst is kept to a minimum. If all goes as intended, people will have ample opportunity to enjoy each other’s company and feel like they were a part of something stimulating. There will be art, there will be games, there will be surprises…and there’ll be lots of booze. And not only will I be performing material from the album that I never plan to perform again, we’ll experience the incredible sounds of E. Super and the Blaque Whole Suns. If I’m fortunate, it will feel like these used to feel:
If you’re reading this, the chances are pretty good that you’re the sort of person I need to make this thing do what its supposed to do. So I humbly invite you to participate in my Art Rap Party this Friday evening at the 21st St. Art Gallery:
In addition to this, I’ll be performing at two other daytime shows this upcoming weekend. Both of these events are firsts of their kind and feature artists that I’m proud to be playing alongside:
