The Audacity of Dope

Grown up #hyphlife makes it tough to keep up with all the dope content I want to toss on the bloggy blogg, so I depend on the weekends to catch up. This video for Grynch and Sol’s “All I Wanna Do” dropped a few weeks ago, but if you’re not up on our burgeoning scene here in Seattle, you may not have seen it yet. Well, sleep no more…and relive your college days with a good ol’ fashioned Seattle style house party.

Generally speaking, we prefer to keep Sound Session focused upon what we’re here for: the music.  However, J. Moore and I have considerable interests in the non-hip-hop aspects of our community and we enjoy shining light on certain issues from time to time, particularly when we have the opportunity to bring in an expert in that field.  Along with all the great music on this week’s episode, we had the opportunity to chop it up with one such person, Nick Cain from a Seattle non-profit company called Vittana.

Without embarking on a long rant and getting too philosophical, I feel the two biggest issues negatively affecting the world are overpopulation and lack of education.  When you swim upstream from most other problems, they all seem to lead back to those two.

Seattle’s Vittana organization is a non-profit company that helps students around the world receive higher education for the first time, directly attacking the education issue and helping break the cycle.  For a more detailed explanation, please see their website here, but in short, the system depends on loans (not donations) from folks like you and me that go towards funding scholarships.  For a fraction of the cost of a college education in America, Vittana can help students attend school, graduate, secure a job, repay the loan, and begin providing a better future for themselves, their family, their country, and the world as a whole.

For more information, check out our interview with Nick Cain on this week’s show.  I’d also recommend you to look at their site for more information and even if their cause isn’t one that you choose to support, hopefully you remember the moral obligation you have to make the world a better place.  Give your time/attention/money to some sort of cause and you’ll be more fulfilled.

On a less serious note, we also welcomed the legendary Raphael Saadiq to Sound Session this past week.  We played a short snippet of our interview on the show, but you can download the entire discussion (or watch the video) through the links below and in this blog post.  Saadiq talked about everything from his new Stone Rollin’ album…to his days with Tony! Toni! Toné! and Lucy Pearl…to playing basketball with Prince.  Enjoy the interview and the show!

Show #307 (4-17-11)

1. Childish Gambino – “Freaks and Geeks”
2. Dom Kennedy – “Playa’s Punch”
3. Dyme Def – “Bring It In” (Local Music)
4. Kendrick Lamar – “Hiii Power”
5. Big K.R.I.T. – “King’s Blues”
6. Curren$y ft. Freddie Gibbs – “Scottie Pippen”
7. Sean Price ft. Mayhem Lauren & Roc Marciano – “How The Gods Chill (Remix)”
8. **INTERVIEW WITH NICK CAIN (of VITTANA), PT. 1**
9. Dice – “Things I Couldn’t Say” (Local Music)
10. Atmosphere – “Your Name Here”
11. MED ft. Blu – “This Is Your Life”
12. Soul Khan – “Soul Like Khan”
13. Busta Rhymes – “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See” (Throwback of the Week)
14. Luck-One – “Listening To The Rain” (Local Music)
15. Apollo Brown ft. Oddisee – “The Times”
16. **INTERVIEW WITH NICK CAIN (of VITTANA), PT. 1**
17. Sade ft. Jay-Z – “The Moon & The Sky (Remix)”
18. Frank Ocean – “Lovecrimes”
19. Little Dragon – “NightLight”
20. **INTERVIEW WITH RAPHAEL SAADIQ (SNIPPET)**
21. Raphael Saadiq ft. Little Dragon – “Just Don’t”
22. King – “Hey”
23. Wiz Khalifa ft. Curren$y – “Rooftops”
24. The Weeknd – “The Party & The After Party”

Link to download the mp3 of the show – http://www.mediafire.com/?3sase6eu4esb2m1
(back up / streaming link – http://www.zshare.net/audio/89167291a9e97cf6/)
(2nd back up – http://www.usershare.net/u3wgilk183iv/DJ Hyphen and J. Moore – Sunday Night Sound Session, Show 307, 4-17-11.mp3)

Link to download the full interview with Raphael Saadiq – http://www.mediafire.com/?97cxf19frx4o7r7
(back up / streaming link – http://www.zshare.net/audio/891679810db2ee03/)
(2nd back up – http://www.usershare.net/ryo63hezh7xk/DJ Hyphen and J. Moore – Interview With Raphael Saadiq, 4-13-11.mp3)

Link to watch the full interview with Raphael Saadiq – http://www.vimeo.com/22587703

If there are any problems with the links or if you’d like to be added to our weekly email list to receive the playlist and download links after every show, just shoot me an email, DJHyphen@gmail.com.

These two kids from the town are dope.  Learn more about and download their new EP over at their site.  SNSS listeners will recognize the records with Vitamin D, Sol, and JusMoni that we played on the air.  Cop that!

So west coast.  How come every video these days makes me remember college?  I guess college is just the rap life…plus essays (no pun).

Seeing this clip of Kanye and John Legend Stephens performing in Amsterdam around the release of The College Dropout reminds me of my 2nd semester of senior year down in Cali.  The homey Tunji and I had been steadily following ‘Ye’s burgeoning rap career, ever since we heard the first couple of freestyles that he put on the net, and we were lucky enough to see him perform 2 shows in LA around the NBA All-Star Weekend in ’04 (right around my birthday too).  Shout to DJ Off Beat, aka Don C, for hooking it up.  Kanye even filmed the “All Falls Down” video at our local airport in Ontario, CA that week too…if only we had known Stacey Dash was in our neighborhood…

Anyway, I’ll never forget chopping it up with ‘Ye in the back of House Of Blues Anaheim and him being so happy that random dudes like Tunj and I knew all his freestyles.  He was so geeked that he started rhyming new verses a capella to a couple of college kids, just to prove that the best was yet to come.  Hanging out with one of my best friends while Kanye excitedly rapped what would become a verse on “Gold Digger” (“18 YEARS…18 YEARS!”) is one of my favorite music memories ever.

The College Dropout changed my life, real talk.

Why the hell was this never released?  A few things could be tightened up, but the video is cool and the song was an insta-classic as soon as that first College Dropout advance leaked.  Ah…those were the days.  Senior year of college…the memories!

Wow, it’s been a minute since I did a Throwback post.  I’ve been meaning to toss up this gem from the homey K. Slack for weeks and I finally got a free minute so here goes.

You may remember Slack from his work alongside J. Gunn and Killa K as part of TheThyrDay, a really dope group from North Carolina.  While they did release one (classic) album, Perfection Xperiment 2, unfortunately they broke up shortly afterwards and moved on to solo projects.  Slack and Gunn have actually linked up recently for a few tracks, so I’m hoping we’ll get to see some sort of 3D reunion, at least between those two.

Before their album came out, Slack posted up a few of his solo tracks on Okayplayer and I remember stumbling upon that post and being blown away.  I think this was fall of 2002 and I was in my first semester of junior year at college.  This track, “broKen AnJel,” was produced by 9th Wonder and Khrysis (the beat is split in two) and it has that vintage Justus League sound.  The market has been flooded with those kind of beats since Little Brother blew up, but I’ll always look back fondly on 9th and Khrysis’ early work.  They definitely inspired a million copycats.

If I remember correctly, Slack wrote this track to his girl at the time and all the lyrics were heartfelt and truthful to the situation he was in.  Part of the reason why I fell in love with the track is that I could apply almost the entire thing to the relationship I was in as well.  “Seasons change, mad things rearrange,” and my girl and I broke up after a few years but I think we always hold on to certain songs because of the memories we attach to ’em.  This is definitely one of those joints for me.

K. Slack – “broKen AnJel”