The Audacity of Dope

Aloe Blacc visited us last week and while here, he blessed us with a live performance of “Politician,” singing soulfully and eloquently about our government officials. The full interview is coming soon, but I wanted y’all to see this video ASAP.  Nailed it in one take…

Be sure to cop Aloe’s Good Things album on Stones Throw, coming out September 28th.  Support good music!

“My purpose for music is positive social change…” – Aloe Blacc

I’ve been meaning to post up this footage for…well…almost a whole year.  Damn.  Eh well, better late than never!

I shot some visuals for De La’s performance at Bumbershoot last year and the homey mind of i edited it together nicely.  Enjoy and be sure to come to the festival this year.  Drake, J. Cole, and Jay Electronica alone should demand your presence.

I’ve been meeting cats in the industry for a decade now and I don’t think there’s anyone funnier than the homey Phonte.  His 90’s reggae impression is on poooooooint.

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.

If you’re like me, you’ve been listening to Drake’s Thank Me Later album quite heavily the past few weeks, so you’ll probably also enjoy this interview with Semtex.  While they don’t break down every song on the album (I would have been particularly interested to hear the story behind “Karaoke”), there’s a lot of good info in here.  I did laugh at the “sounds like your parents played a big role in your life” question though.  Generally speaking, that’s pretty much what they tend to do.

You can also check out footage of Drake murdering our Summer Jam last night over on the KUBE site.  It was impressive to watch, thinking back to when we played him over 3 years ago on Sound Session.  I never would have anticipated his success to be this great, but it’s really ill to have the hottest rapper of the moment actually be dope.  Novel concept, I know.

Dope visuals put together for an in-studio live performance of Donwill’s “Love Junkie (Wallpaper Remix).”  Doesn’t it just make you want to move?  Shout to Yours Truly.

“Close The Door” live from 1979.  He will be missed.

There were a bunch of things that I wanted to post while my computer issues knocked me out of commission, and this video from Louwop is one of ’em.  Rather than do a traditional music video, he invited Shad and Zaki Ibrahim to perform live versions of two tracks off his The Great Escape album.  I could vibe to this all day.

Dope video from CL’s performance at the 2009 QN5 Megashow from NYC a few weeks back.  Deacon, Natti, and Kno performed their entire A Piece of Strange album (which is a certified hip-hop classic) with Club Dub backing them up.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe the band will be joining them on their upcoming tour, but regardless, you won’t want to miss this show when it rolls through your town.

Seattle folks: you can catch CL performing with Looptroop Rockers, the homey Tunji, and some of our hometown heroes, Grieves & Budo, on November 25th at Neumos.  Be there.

RTC at Ruby Hornet grabbed some great footage of 2009’s breakthrough artist, Mayer Hawthorne, performing live at the Dark Room.  Peep part of “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out” above, then a little reggae flip of the single below.

Head on over to Ruby Hornet for more clips and be sure to catch this tour when it hits your town!