Murs Administration Video

I realy hope this is gonna be a hot one - check the topless korean chick in the clip
Mursforpresident.com

The Great Firewall of China

I am in Beijing yet again, and I've only been here for like 48 hours and it's been an absolutely amazing so far. I'm actually really surprised blogspot works right now. I will try to post once I upload some pics.

Facebook isn't working and that is very depressing :-( I've been trying to stay away from technology on this trip, but that doesn't work well unless you have friends to hang with. I'm trying to see if some of my peeps from last time are still here. Internet censorship sucks a big fat chinese cock.

Also I despise the ringtone of my parent's phone. It's "Fur Lise" in the most annoying tone ever. That shit goes off like 3 times at my house at every hour.

GZA - "Pencil" (ft. Masta Killa and RZA)

New GZA
Album drops Aug 19th. Track is actually pretty good. From what I've heard so far I'm expecting/hoping for "Grandmasters" or better. Here.

I hate watching the GZA live cause he likes to forget his words and just isn't that interesting live, but he's got one of my favorite catalogues from everyone in the Wu.

"All In Together Now"
One of my favorite tracks off Grandmasters


"4th Chamber"
My all time favorite GZA track


"B.I.B.L.E. (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth)"
Another one... except this is all Killah Priest - no GZA, but off the legendary GZA album "Liquid Swords"

Rock the Bells 2008

Online Videos by Veoh.com
Originally I didn't plan on going, but then two nights before I met Julianne.

Overall
The show was pretty aite. Not the best line up by far, but to me and most other Southern California hip hop enthuseists it is the one jam to look forward to every summer - despite having become a million times more commercial w/ San Disk backing it and a proper ampatheater type venue.

Second Stage
As usual, we got there late so we missed anyone who was on the second stage: Cool Kids, Spank Rock, MFDOOM, Kids in the Hall... everyone. The one time we did check the stage, some wack DJ's were spinning some old school stuff. We just bounced. Seriously.... was afrika bambatta necessary on this tour? Esp 'cause he's just DJing. Who the fuck are delvin and darko? Tyga...hahahah 'put the lime in the coconut and twist it all up...' the Pack.... the onlytrack they even got was the vans one.

Second stage was not coming with it this year. Trying to go 'hipster' avoiding the predominately white backpacker Def Jux/Rhymesayers route this year. not a good look.

Main Stage
Got there and Rae and Ghost just ended. We heard "Ice Cream" in the parking lot.

Murs, Dead Prez, Rakim, De La, Jay Electronica... missed them all.

Lost some glassware on the way in and then compensated poorly by some stingy dirty looking Filipino dude. Not a great start of a day.

Method Man & Redman:
I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure they didn't do "How High" or "Broken Language". The didn't even mention Blackout Part 2. In true Wu fashion Meth was mad late coming out. I don't think Red did 'can't wait either'
- "da rotwiler"
- "i'll be dat"
- "bring the pain"
- "m.e.t.h.o.d. man"
- "you're all i need (original ver)"

Pharcyde:
Did all their hits. Nice to see the whole crew together. Last time I saw them it was only two preforming at UCI...sophmore year I believe. Ended it w/ "Passing me By". One of the dudes wore some crazy dayglow neon green pants. The Bobby Brown cover was prolly the biggest surprise of the evening.

Mos Def:
I mean... I honestly don't think dude is a good actor, and I think anything neo-soul related is weak and soft and all the OkayPlayer people are way over rated simply because they are not gangsta enough for my liking... also too many white people and girls love this guy. More importantly, his last two albums kinda on the shit side of the spectrum.

Either way, even with all that against him, he's still a great preformer and all round emcee. "Leaving on an Airplane" "Can't push me to the Edge" "Undeniable" "Umi Says" "Ms. Fat Booty"... he knew what he was doing and he rocked it.

Nas:
I don't like Esco as a preformer. His personality is pretty boring... I mean, even in interviews and such, he's such a laid back guy - very monotone, never really says anything too offensive, not that funny, etc. Don't get me wrong, he's still one of the best of all time - but on wax, the live part needs work. However, he did a really great job this year. I believe he didn't show up last year.

Played a majority of his joints off Illmatic: "Represent","One Love", "NY State of Mind", "Life's a Bitch", "The World is Yours" ... also and of course "Nas is Like", "One Mic", "Got Yourself a Gun", "Made You Look", "If I Ruled the World", "Hero", "Sly Fox"... maybe more, but again... even tho Rae and Ghost were in the house there was no "Verbal Intercourse".


Q-Tip and Tribe:
Tip came out alone and did some solo joints and Tribe songs by hisself... I think he threw in a new one off the upcoming album. Sounded pretty typical neo soul... nothing to write home about and I think he lost the crowd during it's performance. Then the rest of the crew came out, minus Consequence. Not my first time seeing these guys, so it wasn't really that big a deal - the last time i saw them was in 04 on the day of Ol' Dirty's death. They did a bunch of their hits including "Electric Relaxation", "Scenerio", "Check the Rhyme", "Lyrics to Go", "Can I Kick It"... I know it is a hip hop blastphemy, but I am not all that big into these guys. They shouted out Dilla... and had the best visuals - Actually they were the only group that even used the screen in the back. Unfortunately, they didn't play my favorite Tribe song "Stressed Out". No encore, ended exactly on time: 11pm. Had a good parking spot and no traffic on the way home.


Conclusion
I think i go to this every summer in hopes to relive the first one. Seeing ALL 10 members of the Clan on stage, the unruly crowd taking advantage of shitty security, people raiding the merch booths, the Wu being on stage doing ALLLL their hits for over 2 hrs... I know it is foolish to think something like that could happen again,but this is the one day of the year when everything is dedicated to golden age hip hop. Because of that, 50/50 chance I'll be there next year.

Surprise Guests?
No surprise guests this year. I guess that's one of the things I miss too. The casualty of being organized. Last year there was a little of that on the indie stage. A lot of the dudes got down on a huge freestyle session before DOOM came on (late). Rage Against the Machine rocked it in 2007.

Lauryn Hill came on before Wu in 2006. Talib came out during Mos' set.... I think there was more...oh yeah Steve-O almost got his ass beat by Raekwon during the Ol' Dirty tribute part of the set.

Krs-One, Immortal Technique and some others came on before Rae and Ghost in 2005. RZA was supposed to be the headliner, but did not preform... however he was present during Rae and Ghost's set.

Mos def and X clan made appearances during Tribe's set in fall of 2004.

Summer 2004.... the whole Wu actually showed up. A surprise in itself!

New Cure single

The Cure - "The Perfect Boy"

Third single in their "one single a month" series.

Found over at Pitchfork.

Weezy & Jay Electronica?!?!

Man, I just FLIPPED when I saw this.

Two of the illest and freshest emcees in the game right now from Louisiana over a Bayou classic?!?! Damn, I wish I caught Jay Electronica yesterday.

Found at Nahright.

RIP Issac Hayes

I was in a cafe today eating some wonton noodles w/ my roommate and bam... during an NBC Olympic news segment, they announced Ike was indeed gone forever. We couldn't really understand what the announcer was saying (the chinese waiters said they'd turn the hearing impaired subtitles on, but 30 minutes later still no dice), but just going thru the photo/video montage of Hayes from the 60's to the South Park era of his role as Chef it was pretty sad. Rest in peace. Check out that album art tho!

His hits included "Soul Man", "Shaft (Theme Song)", "Walk on By" and later "Chocolate Salty Balls".

Dude even had a track w/ the Wu Tang Clan - "I Can't Go to Sleep"


With most famous people, I don't really have a story to go along with their passing. About 5 years ago I had the oppertunity to see Mr. Hayes preform live at the Sunset Junction street festival in Silverlake. I posted the original 2003 story here, back when I still used my Xanga account.

Here's a more updated account of that same story:

In the summer of 2003, my dating career was pretty alright for someone living in an apartment living room for the summer with 5 other roommates in a two-bedroom. I mean, it sucked ass, but this was only to last until the school year started up again. The fragrence of marijuana was seeping in from everywhere at all hours of the day and the Playstation 2 was always on with somebody playing Marvel vs Capcom 2. Not being much of a gamer myself it was annoying - yes, but aside from the mass amounts of trash everywhere and cigarette smoke in the air; beer and our supply of herbals were always fully stocked.

So being in this kind of environment with zero privacy and being an incredibly horny 20 year old college student with his own car - you seem to try to find any oppertunity to go on dates or meet up with girls you sorta know/want to date and hopefully get laid.

Aside from the underage chubby high school emo girl I met ouside a Del Taco one Taco Tuesday of a night, I ended up meeting an Asian chick outside of a club party through a friend. In a drunken haze numbers were exchanged danced the night away together. She was super intelligent, loved the work Wes Anderson, the writings of Amy Tan, a funky/sceney style, glasses, petit, from a broken home and sorta into dudes like me... but I later began to understand she was pretty hung up on an ex boyfriend. An Asian musician type and I think he played in some ska band at Disneyland like every summer or something... but anyway back to the story.

So I call her up and she tells me about some music festival called Sunset Junction where Phantom Planet was playing and admission was a steep $7.00. Being the lagger that I still am, I didn't get there till about 30 minutes after the band had finished their set. I get the call at this point that she'd already left.

After making the trip all the way from Irvine to East LA, parking and picking up my boy A$ I wasn't gonna drive back. Like true middle school G's we just snuck into the festival under the guise of pretending to admire some crappy boho glass sculptures. While walking around for about 5 minutes into the place I had this moment of realization similar to the one in Chasing Amy: the scene where Banky's at a party and looks around at gay couples kissing and realizes he's actually at a gay bar.

My first tip was the unusal amount of topless and sculpted men walking around in large packs, talking in lispy voices and constantly giving each other group hugs. The second was the unusual amount of cardboard trashcans loacated all over sponsored by the Wet Lubrication company with the tagline "Supporting our Community". Thirdly, I noticed the abundance of rainbowed objects and men holding onto each other... but don't get me wrong. I have nothing against gay people - especially those buff guys who where there that day. In a brawl - sign me up on their squad.

Anyway, walking further through the street festival and coping with the mass influx of homosexuality, I finally found a schedule of preformances and up next: ISSAC HAYES and the SUPREMES!

I wasn't really jumping for joy when I saw this, but I figured it'd a good way to up my indie cred to say I've seen some soul legends in concert. Caught the end of the Supremes set and Issac Hayes was next. Ike came out with a 12 piece band and dressed in a daisheki (a colorful african robe with matching hat), sun glasses, beard and all. They started the set preforming hits such as "Soul Man" and "Walk on By". During the entire set I couldn't help from constantly yelling "play the South Park song!" - being "Chocolate Salty Balls"

Mp3: Chef - "Chocolate Salty Balls"(PS: I Love You) (download)

After the first three songs and an nice bass solo me and A$ decided to leave* 'cause we figured he wouldn't play the Shaft theme song till the end of the set. Suddenly on our way out I heard the bass go, the lyrics "...half a stick of butter melted/stick it all in a bowl baby..." and the crowd went nuts! If there's anything I can say from my personal encounter with Ike, the man had a sense of humor: playing a song about tea bagging in front of a crowd that consisted of of primarily gay men. Fabulous.

*On a side note: I remember clearly the main reason me and A$ wanted to bounce was because directly behind us in the crowd there were two chubby computer programmer-by-day/mega-perverts-by-night looking German dudes in glasses, combat boots, silver speedos, bondage gear and incredibly obvious hard-ons... one was even wearing a leash.

Mid Summer Night's Jam Setlist

Under the monkier of DJ THUG KILLAH C*, I will be putting together a mix for the upcoming end of term party.
Here is the playlist...

A MID SUMMER NIGHT'S JAM
1. Common - Be (intro)
2. DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince - Summertime
3. Jimi Hendrix - All Along the Watchtower
4. Santogold - Shove it
5. Biz Markie - Just a Friend
6. Outkast - Player's Ball
7. Jackson 5 - ABC
8. Coolio - Fantastic Voyage
9. Raekwon - Ice Cream
10.The Outfield - Your Love
11.Ice Cube - You Know How We Do It
12.J Dilla/JayDee - Time The Donut of the Heart
13.Eleven Five - Garcia Vegas
14.DJ Quik - Pitch in on a Party
15.The Dove Shack - Summertime in the LBC
16.Kermit the Frog - Rainbow Connection

Total Time: 1hr.
Download it here.

Enjoy!

I'm contemplating actually mixing this together in cool edit or something. Who knows.

The songs were chosen because I'm pretty sure all the other DJ's that night are house guys. I wanted to just put some summertime vibes that other DJ's wouldn't pick. Granted these songs are kinda old - but fuck it. TKC's iPod runs shit. Unfortunately I will be in China on the day of the event.

* THUG KILLAH C is my rockband drummer's name.

EER Max 90 INFA RED - REISSUE

So, I love these sneakers. Prolly my top 5 of all time. I got a pair and royally fucked them up. Prolly my first 'collectable' sneaker i bought back in 2006. I'm still rocking em, here's a pic.

so I need me a new pair, when I realized i shoulda just bought a few more pairs at the footlocker on credit, shits was sold out. I didn't even know a retro of these were coming out until a homie I met over at dodgeball mentioned it to me.

Check the hypebeast post.

To JonJon over at the Treeson, johnny at verum... I hate reading your blogs and/or hanging out with you assholes. I thought I could quit retail, but damn. I was good off these hypebeast blogs for like 8 months not spending shit... unemployment is a gift and mostly a curse.