The Audacity of Dope

Interesting story from Million $ Mano about how his work ended up forming the backbone for Kanye’s “Lost In The World.”  Apparently he wasn’t credited on initial copies of the album but he’ll get his due in newer pressings.  Either way, it’s always cool to hear stories about how Kanye is down to work with lesser known, but always dope, artists and keep the cycle going.  It’s rather refreshing to see cats just excited about making dope music…

That said, producers: make sure you get your publishing in order.  Otherwise, when they ask “who will survive in America?”  It won’t be you.

Full interview over at Ruby Hornet.

If for some ungodly reason you don’t…peep this dope piece put together by the Ruby Hornet team for a nice recap.  Shout to the homies Buff, KT, and the whole Athletic Mic League.  They’re one of my favorite crews of all time and it’s great to see all the success that Drew/Haircut/Mayer is having these days.  Great music from great people!

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!

The homey RTC and the Ruby Hornet fam put together this recap of the Sneaker Pimps even in Chicago last week.  I highly recommend all the Seattle folks to come out to our stop on the tour on September 10th:

The Clipse + Slick Rick + some of our best local artists?  Whooooooo.  We’ll be interviewing the Clipse too, so if you have any questions for them, let me know.

Even though “Day N Nite” is about 2 years old now, the mainstream is still getting to know Cudi.  Further, even those in the know still aren’t that familiar with the track’s producer, Dot Da Genius.  The homies at Ruby Hornet put together this dope clip with Dot, shining some light on a producer that won’t be overlooked for much longer…

The homey Roosevelt Treasure Chest just dropped a new mixtape featuring production from one of the more slept on cats out there, SC.  Don’t be fooled by the generic title, the tape is dope.  Hosted by Just Blaze and featuring guests like Mikkey Halsted, Mobb Deep, Naledge, GLC, Game, Lupe Fiasco, and more, this is definitely something y’all should peep.  Tracklisting and download link below.

Download here.

Another day, another dope mixtape…this one from the homey Roosevelt Treasurechest, GLC, and the fine folks over at Ruby Hornet.  It featues a bunch of new tracks, unreleased joints, and live performances from GLC, which should get you ready for his upcoming G.O.O.D. Music project, Love, Life, and Loyalty, coming in 2009.  While you wait for that, bump this.

Download here.

The homies Naledge & Double O have been out on the road with Murs recently and it looks like they’ve begun to upload some stuff to their Kyte Channel.  Tour life definitely isn’t for me, but if I had to embark on one, I think those 3 dudes would be hilarious to kick it with.  We had some great conversations when they came through Seattle — i.e., Murs is super psyched for High School Musical 3 and prefers old No Limit to vintage Blackstar…wtf — and I’ll be posting up the interviews soon.

Along with the Kyte video, you can follow along with the fellas over at Naledge’s blog on Ruby Hornet.  Peep entry #15 for his recap of kicking it with your boy Hyph:

We went on DJ Hyphen’s show on KUBE.  We always go to Hyphen.  Hyphen was the first person to play a KITH record on Clear Channel, so we always remember that.  He was our first interview on a Clear Channel station.  We’ve always maintained a relationship.  We never even sent him the record, he pulled it off of iTunes and just rocked it that way.  That’s amazing to us.  He’s always rocked with us, so anytime we’re in Seattle we always hang with him.  We got a lot of love in Seattle, it’s one of our better markets and it’s always a great time when we go out here.  We know the lay of the land.  We went out there with Blue Scholars and did three shows in a row at the Showbox that were sold out, then we went back out there with Redman, and we went back there on our own and did a show.  We’ve been to Seattle enough times now that we kind of know the lay of the land out there.  But Hyphen is really good peoples.  He mentioned the website and the blog and he said he reads the blog and all of that stuff.  We had a nice long discussion.  He’s a music person too.  He really keeps up with what’s going on.  He knew about RubyHornet and Fakeshore.  He actually mentioned it during the interview.  He’s a big supporter.  He plays pretty much anything we do.  We send him a new record, he’s always playing it.  It could be a freestyle. That’s one thing about his show and the way he does things.  He plays what he wants, and just so happens to be a supporter of ours and has always been there as an outlet for us to get our music heard.  He’s always reached out to us, and we always do an interview when we’re in town.  We’ve done call-ins, about four interviews.  It’s almost like checking in, he’s a homie so we always get down with him.

Word up, Naledge is that dude.  It’s so dope to watch great artists and awesome people achieve success doing what they love.  The Kidz are only beginning…shout to the whole fam, Naledge, O, Matty, and DSolo…what up!

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t particularly enjoy acapella “freestyles,” but the homey Alex over at Ruby Hornet always picks dope MC to kick verses for his videos.  In this edition, Blu recites another crazy verse and Chicago’s own Astonish joins in at the end.  If you don’t know, Astonish dropped a great project last year that a lot of you slept on.  Check him out here and get familiar.

Whoo, this is super fresh.  Plus, since I’m working 3 jobs at the moment (“3 jobs mon!” – In Living Color skit), I definitely appreciate when people send me dope stuff along with a great description.  Naledge, take it away:

“Welcome To Brainiac Society is a compilation or collection of music that I like, and that I might have made or contributed to.  There’s no real rhyme or reason to it.  I think a lot of people got confused when I started repping Brainiac Society as my crew or my label cause I think a lot of people took it as a separation from Kidz In The Hall, which is not what it is.  It’s just me giving a platform to people that I like, and I want it to be looked at moreso as a Native Tongues type of thing than as a Bad Boy type of thing.  It’s just a group of people that make dope music and appreciate the artistry of Hip Hop and doesn’t have to necessarily mean they are rappers.  They can sing, they can make beats, DJ, whatever.  It’s about the creative renaissance that’s going on within Hip Hop all over the nation. These are people that I met in my travels who I feel are dope and they inspire me.  We just get together and we collectively make art…It’s also a platform for me to put out Fooch who is my artist.  It’s no departure from Kidz In The Hall.  Me and Double O are such creative beings in general, that we don’t know how to operate without 30 things going on at once.  We’re very much multi-taskers and we’ve always been that way.  We try to have our hands in everything.

RTC mixed it, it’s got new freestyles, some exclusive stuff, some stuff that’s been leaked on the internet, stuff that you might have forgot existed or never had or never downloaded on a a CD.  My hope with this is that people will download it, burn it to a CD, and just play it, or add it as a playlist to their ipod.  That’s really what it is, just a dope mix, a dope collection of music.  Talented individuals on all fronts, and I’m really excited about it.”

Featuring artists like Pacific Division, Fooch, Tanya Morgan, The Cool Kids, Skyzoo, 6th Sense, Wale, Naledge himself, and more, you know this is dope.  Back cover and download link after the jump.  Huge shout to Alex over at Ruby Hornet for putting this together!

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