SOUL OFFERING: MIRAGE REFLECTS ON SXSW 2012

SXSW? in the words of Kanye & Jay is just "KRAY". Its 10 days of music, film and technology overload. As a native Austinite its almost unfathomable to see how much this thing has grown. I remember being in high school back in 1991 and going to the one day of shows that they had and if you narrow it down to hip hop shows it was about 1 maybe 2 hours of music. But now its a full week of just hip hop music along with every other genre of music you can possibly think of. Its very corporate now (and i don't say that in a negative way)again as a native Austinite I remember when it was no big corporations involved. Its great in the sense that EVERYBODY........ I mean EVERYBODY in the music industry was here in my town that gets some of the people that are outside of the industry the regular citizens involved in sxsw. On the flip-side I hope that the original intent of the festival will not be lost in all the hype. SXSW is meant to be a festival of up and coming artist that are on the verge of "stardom" or at least wide spread exposure and I always got a kick out of meeting cats at sxsw and showing them a great time in my city, then seeing them blow up and come back like "oh shit what up man thanks for helping me out last year"

I didn't do much performing this year for sxsw, I only did 2 shows which is a very slow sxsw for me.Ive done 9 SXSW and some years Ive done up to 8 shows in a 4 day period during a sxsw fest but I never got any solid networking or busines done. This year I really wanted to make sure that I did the things necessary to grow my business. I know there is a increased importance on media push, really there always has been but now it seems to move really fast with the internet and mobile devices, so i wanted to make sure that i connected with people i knew had media platforms and i think i did that. I met so many great people this year for sxsw and I started some new relationships that will hopefully prove to be valuable in the very near future.

I also hosted a few interviews for a new website that a comrade of mine started called WWW.YOURONESPOT.COM which I hope will become a great media outlet for up and coming artist in the future.

CHECK OUT MY PERFORMANCE AND SOME OF THE PHOTOS I TOOK AT THIS YEARS SXSW