GOOD GAME PT. 6 SEVEN WAYS TO WORK A FESTIVALAND GET SOME SHOWS

IM A RESIDENT OF AUSTIN TEXAS AND IF YOU ARE IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY YOU KNOW AUSTIN AS A LIVE MUSIC DESTINATION AND THE CITY OF THE WORLD FAMOUS SXSW FESTIVAL THAT ENGULFS MY FAIR CITY EVERY MARCH. IT IS VERY EASY TO GET CAUGHT UP IN THE HYPE AND THE FUN OF IT ALL BUT AS A ARTIST THIS IS THE TIME THAT YOU NEED TO "CLOCK IN FOR WORK" THERE ARE LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF CHANCES FOR YOU TO NETWORK AND FURTHER YOUR CAREER. HERE ARE 7 WAYS THAT YOU CAN MAXIMIZE YOUR EXPERIENCE AT ANY OF THE MAJOR FESTIVALS

Posted by Kosha Dillz ON AUDIBLEHYPE.COM

1. Fliers that are fly-er:

Be memorable and pass out a flyer that is awesome. If it does not look awesome at least make it look creative and memorable. Maybe you can’t afford to get flyers in advance, so at least go to Staples and buy your own fliers made from cardboard stock. You can get like 400 flyers for 30 bucks. There are thousands of people there, so make sure you save them for people you want to come to your show. If you want to give you fliers to chicks that listen to Mac Miller, they’ll probably look different than the chicks that listen to Psycho Realm. I’m just trying to be honest.

2. Shake Hands like a man, not a sham.

A good handshake goes longer than you think. I think there are about 20,000 people that are at a Guerilla Union event, and my goal is to always let them know that I am there in support of the festival. I support these festivals because they are the gateway to huge fan base of mine, and they are a homegrown effort just like my career is. Every ticket sale is earned genuinely from the work of real people. They are the banging on office keyboards and inviting things on Facebook just like we may be, except it has grown to more than a dozen kids in the office. What’s not to love about it. I am passing out my fliers and shaking hands with people that know me and selling a few cds as well. I am also thanking the volunteers and kicking it with the sound guys and shooting the shit with the security guards.

3. Did you rock yet?

This was the question Raekwon asked me.

I thought to myself “Damn, well Rza was gonna invite me out to do a verse but it didn’t happen. Last year it did, and did Peter Rosenberg invited me out too.”

“You in the mix. As long as you in the mix its all good. “- Raekwon

I thought to myself again…damn…I should listen to Rae. He knows about hustling, and I’m hustling to get to that next level.

Guys, you really can’t do anything else except that. I can’t stress enough that if you are at home, you are missing the single most important hip hop event of the year. You are fucking up. Sure you won’t be rocking the stage this year but you must be in attendance if you want to know what it is that you’ll be a part of. This is whether you make rap music, hip hop, trap music or whatever the fuck. Its a congregation of the biggest conglomerate of your potential fans. I bought my ticket to Paid Dues in 2011 because i knew I wanted to play the festival in 2012. I snuck into the festival because my intention was to rock that shit no matter what and I didn’t have money to get in.

As quoted by Raekwon this year, “Be you in the mix. As long as you in the mix its all good”

A lot of the rappers who know me haven’t ever seen me kill a show, but they see me so much they don’t even realize that. They’ll see me when the time is right. Until then I make sure I’m killing it.

A lot of other rappers I see that do the same are Verbs and Alpha…or Sav Killz and J Ronin and Poison Pen. People are always in the mix, but I haven’t got to see them perform either in who knows how long (or how little)

4, The most important Man is the Sound man

Still at any festival, or anywhere for that matter, the most important man is the Sound Man (Don’t tell the sound man that is paid thousands of dollars he is fucking up on stage. There would never be a sound guy who is fucking up on this level. Its the drunk n high artists that are, the DJs who don’t know how to plug shit up, and the requests of turning music down by headlining stage.) Mundy Sound (guerilla union sound for Paid Dues, RTB.Cypress HIll Smokeout) and I have linked over the past year and is genuinely a fan of mine.after SXSW (Supergoodmusic/ heard Ent. /Root Music HQ) and Paid Dues 2012. He was cool enough to take my iphone and play house sound and play my entire Gina and The Garage Sale album through out the day and before ICe Cube’s set with about 10,000 people in attendance. I also got to rock some songs of Homeboy Sandman’s album which was cool. So I didn’t get to play my own shit, but I got to play my songs over the most banging sound system, and I’m sure some people heard it.

Whether you are playing a show or not, say what up to the sound man. You will see him/her around eventually. I said hello to him and next thing you know my music was playing all day, for both days of Rock the bells. Now that’s Guerilla Marketing!!

5. Vendor booths are your friends

That’s right guys. Go kick it with the vendors. Seriously kick it with them. You are trying to sell yourself and they are trying to sell things too. The difference is they paid a lot more to be there. For that reason, I went over there and said what’s up and realize I know tons of people in the vendor village and they have heard my music. They decided to give me free clothing and send me tweets/Facebook likes. They all hopped on my e-mail list and they should. This is the way to rock it for them. They all paid bucks to be in this Vendor situation for the biggest festival of the year and they want to make the most out of their experience. If they are willing to invest so much in this opportunity, maybe they would want to invest in me.

6. Finesse the Press (and make sure you’re on the list)

I decided to cut out from hustling in-doors, to kicking it by the trailers with artist friends while I had the chance. I said peace to Zumbi from ZIon I while he played with his kid, and even saw my friend Jaimie Adler who reps Bone Thugs and Harmony. A lot of these guys respect me for being a solo hustling maniac who is passionate about Hip Hop and representing my Jewish-ness to an absurd level. I stick in their brains. All you people who rap or rock need to remember how to stick to someones brains and not piss people off (a skill I am still working on, to an extent.)

This year I enjoyed this personal time. I really consider these people my friends and I ask them about their families. I genuinely care for their well - being. C Rayz Walz once told me that it not all about “wanting something.” People enjoy speaking with each other about things that have nothing to do with work. While press is backstage interviewing them (artist friends), they happen to notice I am everywhere and they ask me questions. If they don’t ask me questions, I ask them if anyone has kicked a freestyle yet, and mention to them that I played Paid Dues this year so I’m supposed to be here.

Oh yeah…what about being on the list? Make the effort to get on it. If you can’t be a guest of an artist or a member of the press list, get a writing job and make sure you create your own blog and leave yourself available to interview people. Volunteer to be part of the street team. I see artists do it all the time.

As a rapper, people wanna hear you rap, or hear about how you are selling a shit load of records. Since I didn’t play Rock The Bells and haven’t sold a shit load of records, I ask them if I can kick something on camera and I finesse the press that way.

7. Emails and details

I don’t give a flying fuck if you are not performing. You are performing! Make sue you have the ability to enter emails. Do it less conspicuously by entering it in the notepad. Next thing you know after all the fliers and handshakes you get 20 emails from each event. 40 emails can equal a lot more business . Get Emails and details from the guys you need it from. Sometimes a bigger connection will only want to give you an email, but knowing this beforehand is better. Make sure when you shake those hands, know your demand. If you have nothing to offer the other person yet, or they are genuinely busy, its better to go email. Drop a hello, and your name will come up in other conversations for sure.

Pretty Simple right?

Now go get booked!

GOOD GAME PT. 5 (DON'T PUT ALL YOUR PROMO EGGS IN ONE BASKET)

BY FUNKWORM ON INDIEHIPHOP.NET

Social networks like Facebook oftentimes switch shit up on you whenever they feel like it. And it sucks that you’re powerless to do anything about it. These changes can have huge effects on your marketing and promotional strategy. Recently, this is exactly what Facebook did with their Pages. Facebook is now restricting your posts from reaching the majority of your fans because they’d like you to pay for that reach.

You’ve probably already noticed that lately the number of fans seeing your Facebook page updates has decreased tremendously. Now, depending on how much you’re willing to spend, you can reach a larger percentage of them. I have almost 6,700 fans on IndieHIpHop’s Facebook page. When I post an update, I’m lucky if it reaches 15% of them. It would cost me 20 bucks an update just to reach half of those people. I have no problem with paying for something that I feel is a valuable. But I question whether or not this kind of investment has any longterm benefits.

The folks at Facebook have the right to do whatever the hell they want to do with their platform, provided it’s legal. Those of us who have opted into their network, don’t pay for the basic service of it, so it’s useless to complain when they blindside you with changes. And they have a long history of doing that. Facebook has gradually made it more difficult to directly communicate the those who voluntarily become fans of your page. It must be very disappointing to those who have paid to increase their Facebook fan numbers only to have them become unreachable.

The way to avoid being negatively affected by these ever-changing social networks is to not put all of your eggs in one basket. Their popularity will come and go. If you’re using one that’s working for you at the moment, continue, but start thinking about how you’d connect with those fans if that social network were to suddenly shut down.

Right now, creating an email list of your most loyal fans seems to be the only way that you can be sure to stay connected with them when social networks become ineffective. So maybe all of the energy and effort artists spend asking people to “follow” them or “like” their page, should be replaced with asking them for their email addresses

9th Wonder Explains Black Colleges' Failure To Embrace Hip Hop History

by JUSTIN HUNTER

Exclusive: The Harvard Fellow readies the first New York City installment of 95 Live, a four hour dedication to music made before 1995.

Grammy-winning producer 9th Wonder brings his music and cultural celebration, 95 Live, to New York City’s MIST Harlem tonight (February 1). Featuring guests Statik Selektah and Hot 97’s Peter Rosenberg, 95 Live is a four-hour dedication to music made prior to 1995.

In describing the difference between music produced before and after 1995, 9th explained to HipHopDX that pre-1995 tracks prominently featured bass drums or a thick bass line—creating a sound that is often referred to as the “bottom.”

“Pre-1995, everything was all about the bottom; all about having the boom behind it,” said 9th. “It was more than just the 808s. Early 1980s and mid-1980s music was mastered way louder. If you listened to ‘It’s Like That’ by Run-DMC, the whole record is really turned up as opposed to how it’s mastered [now]. But it’s not as kicking and hitting as hard as those old Run-DMC breaks.”

9th Wonder was accepted into Harvard University’s prestigious Harvard Fellows program in March of 2012. The North Carolina-native will teach a class on the history of Hip Hop as well as complete a research project entitled “These Are The Breaks” where he will examine the original records sampled on his ten favorite albums, including Nas’ Illmatic, Jay-Z’s The Blueprint, and The Minstrel Show—which he produced as a member of Little Brother.

When asked if he is surprised by higher academia’s embrace of Hip Hop culture, 9th shared that he’s more surprised that historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have yet to show the same acceptance.

“It’s incredible to me that they don’t study [Hip Hop] at every Black college,” he said “I think that it’s just a sign of the times, man. It happened with Jazz. Jazz was studied somewhere else first. African-American studies was studied somewhere else first. At some point we have to break that cycle. There are some: Florida A&M, North Carolina A&T State University. And then you have some that don’t want that because they think that we’re gonna teach about what happened on BET last night.”

9th also believes a generational divide between staff and students is part of the reason there is a dearth of Hip Hop history courses on HBCU campuses. While he began his professorial career as an Artist-In-Residence teaching Hip Hop history at his alma mater North Carolina Central University—where Little Brother was founded—the program was cancelled after only three years.

“They felt like the budget [wasn’t there] or that [the course] didn’t serve a purpose or whatever it was, but they stopped it,” 9th tells DX. “After that I went to Duke [University]."

He continued: “We try at our historically Black colleges to make those strides and be first at things and be frontrunners but it’s tough because you’re dealing with three generations of people. You’re dealing with us: The 38-year olds. Then you’re dealing with the 18-year olds and then you’re dealing with the 60-year olds who run these colleges. All of that together is a tough communication to get going.”

95 Live was first created by one of 9th’s fellow Universal Zulu Nation members, Roman Castro. With Castro’s consent, 9th extended the brand into a bi-monthly party held in North Carolina. Previous special guests include DJ Premier, Erykah Badu, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, among others.

“For four hours we don’t play anything past 1995,” said the North Carolina-native. “We tried to go to 2000, but that’s just a little bit too far. It’s not only Hip Hop. It’s R&B, Reggae—just celebrating that time of culture of music.” Tonight is 95 Live’s first New York City installment and is presented in conjunction with The High End Agency and includes a visual presentation by UpNorthTrips.com. On Wednesday, February 6, 9th will present his research findings at Harvard University’s Barker Center at 12PM.

GOOD GAME PT. 4 MONITIZE YOUR MUSIC

WRITTEN AND POSTED TO RAPREHAB.COM BY Brianna DeMayo, Artist Development/Marketing

Monetize Your Movement

Remember, the ultimate goal is to be able to make a living by doing what you love. In order for that to happen you need to make sales. You have to earn an income. You have to be able to get people to buy into your product - whether it be through selling your music, booking shows, selling merchandise etc. And here’s the best part – you don’t need a label in order to do this! As a matter of fact, if you are already making money off of your music, shows, and merchandise, it will be much easier for you to get that record deal that you are longing for (and you will have much more of a say as to how that deal pans out).

There are a few basic concepts that drive a sale regardless of what you’re selling.

Below are some main things to remember when making music and coming up with your marketing plan and technique.

In order for someone to buy into a product/brand there are a few things that have to take place:

They must know the product exists. The product must spark their interest. Both the product and the presentation of the product must be quality. The product must be easily accessible. They must have a clear understanding as to WHY they should buy the product. Now how can you relate all of the above to your music?

Of course, in order for someone to purchase something they must be aware of it. The main way to accomplish this is by marketing and promotion. Your product, which in this case is your music, must be marketed properly in order to get it the exposure that it needs. How can anyone hear and buy your music if they don’t even know it exists?

A good way to spark interest is by putting out a quality product – and by this I mean that both the actual product AND the presentation of your product must be professional. If your music is presented in the right way you shouldn’t have a problem getting a good response from your marketing efforts. This is also the reason why it is so important to figure out your target market – it is much easier to spark someone’s interest if you can relate to them. If you already know a bit about the people that you’re offering your product to, it will be easier to make a sale. For instance, you’re not going to promote a rap record on a country music site (that wouldn’t spark the viewers interest), instead you would promote it on a site likewww.hiphopsince1987.com that targets the hip hop market.

You’re product (music) also needs to be easily accessible. You should have one website (www.yourartistname.com) that ties in all of your other websites (youtube, facebook, twitter, reverbnation etc) that your fans can go to to download your music, see where your next performance will be etc. You can also make it even easier by uploading your music to iTunes, Amazon, etc (I explained a little on how to do this in another recent blog here). You need to make it easy for someone to search for you. People shouldn’t have to take 10 minutes to find you. If you want a flat screen TV from best buy, when you search ‘best buy flat screen’ it will come up immediately. Your music/brand needs to be the same way.

Last but not least, the person needs to have a valid and clear understanding of why they should buy into your product. You need to learn how to seal the deal by taking away any doubts. Before you release anything, you should have already thought to yourself ‘why should someone buy this?’ Understand that this question doesn’t always have to be answered verbally. Part of the answers should be confirmed by both your actions and the product itself – Your great marketing skills, the dope sound of your music, the overall quality of your presentation will all speak for themselves.

In conclusion, it all starts with a quality product, then you seal the deal by presenting yourself properly (making a great first impression) and by building a strong brand. If your fans can see the product, if it is marketed to those that can relate to it, if your presentation is professional and can stand out among the others, you are on your way to making some great sales (if you aren’t already)!

GOOD GAME PT.3 LISTENERS vs FANS

Posted by Justin Boland on AUDIBLEHYPE.COM

It’s deeply stupid of me to admit this in public, but I give a lot of feedback to artists I don’t know. I run several blogs and work at a non-label “record label,” so I’ve got several inboxes worth of new music waiting for me. Always. It’s happening right now.

I try to listen and give detailed feedback to at least five of them, every day I’ve got time online. I’ve developed an acute allergy to computers lately, but they’re an unfortunate necessity. So in 2012, I’ve probably given well over 50 strangers blunt feedback they were not expecting.

What have I noticed? First off, cats are getting better at not throwing tantrums. Only a few of them have called me a hater. Nearly all of them, on the other hand, have added me to their email lists and asked me to get involved as a fan. This is an important point, because I see the same mistake when people reach out to World Around Records and try to wow us with their stats, usually plays and views: that’s transitory bullshit, rather then metrics that reflect real fan engagement.

Being the being I be, I listen to new hip hop all the time. I’m a fan of probably 5% of it. This is not about me, though — because 1) it doesn’t annoy me at all when artists put me on their promo lists, and 2) what the fuck would it actually matter if it did?

This is about you, about independent artists trying to get their numbers up. The message is simple: stop trying to get your numbers up. That was already a dead scene in 2007. You need to work on your product. You can just buy numbers once you’ve got a project great enough to really catch on, go viral, get noticed…you know, whatever version of the fairy tale you’re clinging to these days.

If I’m just a listener, you don’t want me on your email list.

You’re going to have a lot more listeners than fans. Fans buy your shit, fans talk about you to their friends, fans send you emails about how dope you are. It’s easy to get frustrated but remember, this is a slow process unless you’ve got money to burn. “Friends” are not fans. Other artists are definitely not fans.

Be patient, be realistic, and stop dicking around online.

GOOD GAME PT. 2 "HOW TO PLAN A HIP HOP ALBUM RELEASE ONLINE"

THIS IS AN ARTICLE TAKEN FROM A SITE CALLED AUDIBLEHYPE

In order to launch a project successfully, you want at least 4 months in advance. It’s perfectly acceptable to release an EP and wait over a year to release a follow-up, but as long as we’re planning in advance, you should plan on keeping your momentum and going big. Don’t allow the online conversation about your music to die down.


Managing Your Online Album Promotion.
If you don’t already have a Gmail account, now would be an ideal time to upgrade from whatever bullshit you settled for…your career depends on your tools. Set up Google Alerts immediately for your artist name and album name, and then set up a Tumblr account so you can post links to and snippets of every single review and mention of your project, including your own content.
Next, sit down and make a list of artists you like and think you sound similar to. (If you can’t think of any, take this as a reliable sign you have no future in this business.) The reason you’re making that short list? So you can look up which blogs are consistently talking about those groups. Start writing down domain names, because you’ll be taking that list over to Compete.com.

Heads-up: Compete is a useful tool but not the “real numbers” on visitors to a website. You should check out their explanation, and especially bear in mind that their numbers are only for US internet users. I definitely recommend signing up for their free membership, which allows you to search subdomains, such as specific blogger and wordpress hosted blogs. (My favorite is Poisonous Paragraphs…respect to Dart Adams.)

What you’re doing at Compete is checking up on who’s getting the most traffic on your list. Those are the blogs you want to be reaching out to. Here’s a really key point: your relationships are more important and more powerful than your tools.

Bloggers have needs and goals of their own. They’re looking to increase traffic and a surefire method for that is exclusive releases of new music. Give them exactly that: first dibs on your new singles. (Other blogs will re-post it after the fact—reach out to those sites, too.)

Remember the point of all this work: you want your album to be put in front of the audience that wants it. You need to do research in order to figure out where that audience is. Getting your name in front of 100,000 readers of The Source might be totally useless for you…seriously. You might be much better off getting rotation on a blog that reaches 6,000 people who are already into your style of hip hop, instead of 100,000 people who are not interested in you at all, and never will be.

With this added layer of album planning, now our 4 month template is looking more complete.
1. What about reviews? Most reviewers are happy with a link to a digital copy of the album, some of them insist on CDs. Like all other human behavior, I can’t give you a single answer. What I can tell you is that you want to get all your review copies out more than a month in advance. This gives everyone breathing room to get their reviews done in time for your release…and yes, you run the risk of getting leaked beforehand.

2. So really, what about reviews? Personally, I think you should let bloggers review your album after it drops. Having reviews come out later, even months after the fact, is actually a good thing because it extends the “tail” of your online buzz. The exceptions should probably be the blogs you’re giving exclusives to—let them have get the first review out, too. It’s easier to trust a single source because they know it’ll be obvious where the leak came from. Overall, though: let blogs review your singles and your EP/mixtape. If that content is strong enough it will build your buzz without risking leaks.

3. When should the tracks be done? You really should not be starting this 4 month process without having your tracks completed. I know that’s unrealistic, but then again, your goals of making a living off music in a genre as over-crowded as hip hop? That’s pretty unrealistic, too. This whole process will run more smoothly if the project is finished, instead of trying to finish an album at the same time you’re promoting it. The outcome is almost always the same: missed deadlines and lost credibility.

4. But what about…? “The Template” is going to be an ongoing series. I’m not gonna pretend I know everything—or even enough to call myself an expert. I’m wide open to suggestions, refinements, and most insults. The next installment will look at several case studies of how successful indie labels break an album, so we’ll be seeing many variations on the chart you see above. If you’ve got experience and you’d like to be interviewed, hit me up: powerweirdo at gmail dot com.

Until then, I want to leave you with two outside perspectives—one from independent powerhouse Godamus Rhyme, and the other from the genius behind Duck Down Records known as Dru Ha.

JB: Now that you’ve got a few finished projects under your belt, what are the biggest lessons you’ve learned about planning an album or EP?

#1. There is no one way to make an album.

#2. Mastering engineers are your best friend, but a shitty mix is a shitty mix. If your mixing engineer is retarded, get a new one. I don’t care if he’s free and your best friend. Your record will sound like shit and no one will listen.

#3. Quality is way more important than quantity in a tracklisting.

#4. I make better music when I have a definate goal in mind.

#5. Every artist works differently. As an engineer and producer, you have to adapt and be flexible.

FROM A SITE CALLED MAKING A MOGUL

I think that we’ve done some of that some over the years, and we continue to do it. Twitter being the newest craze, we haven’t really set that up too tough yet. Some of the guys here are setting that up and are showing it to Sean [Price] and other members of Bootcamp who would do it.

We keep music out there though; we’ve used the internet to document the process of putting out a new record. We post new music early ““ we like to put our music up first on our site before people hear it anywhere else so that we can drive more traffic to duckdown.com, where you can hear new music, and like you said, be part of the process…

The majority of our staff are all internet people. People like Franz, Othella and Mazza from our staff and a couple other behind-the-scenes people that we have, they help the artists with that. Sometimes they’re creating the artist’s pages for them and even maintaining them…

What it’s done now, is that you create such a following online, that even before an artist is signed, you know whether or not that artist has a fanbase, and approval form the general public, not just a group of industry insiders. You’re able to see real feedback in real-time.

It’s definitely changed the game. Most artists can’t come to labels anymore and ask to make a demo or just spit 16 bars. Now the labels ask how many friends you have on MySpace and Facebook, what are your total views on YouTube. We want to see a following…

GOOD GAME PT. 1 "TAGGING AND GOOGLING"

I WANT TO GIVE A LIL GAME TO ALL MY FELLOW ARTIST. GOT 2 POINTS: (1) ALWAYS TAG ANYTHING YOU POST ONLINE (VIDEO, SONG, BLOG POST, ETC), YOU WANT TO TAG IT WITH ANY WAY THAT SOMEONE MAY GO AND SEARCH FOR YOUR ART. FOR INSTANCE WHEN I TAG MY STUFF I DO IT WITH MIRAGE512 OR MIRAGE 512 (WITH OR WITHOUT SPACE) I ALSO TAG WITH AUSTIN, AUSTIN TEXAS, ATX, ATX HIP HOP ATX HIPHOP AND A LOT OF OTHER STUFF. WHEN YOU TAG YOUR STUFF, ITS MUCH EASIER FOR PEOPLE TO FIND YOU ONLINE AT GOOGLE, BING ETC. IT WILL ALSO ALLOW YOU TO GIVE A SIMPLER WAY FOR FOLKS TO FIND YOU, YOU JUST TELL EM GOOGLE ME........ (2) GOOGLE YOURSELF, FIND OUT WHERE YOUR STUFF IS (VIDEOS, MP3's ETC). IT IS IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO KNOW WHAT FOLK SEE WHEN THEY SEARCH FOR YOU. CAN THEY FIND YOU? ALSO YOU WANT TO MAKE SURE PEOPLE CAN SPELL YOUR NAME IF YOU HAVE A TITILE THAT IS UNCOMMON (SPELL IT A COUPLE OF TIMES FOR THEM). YOU WILL BE SURPRISED AT WHERE YOUR STUFF IS. IVE FOUND MY VIDEOS IN PLACES THAT I DIDNT SUBMIT IT TO, ESPECIALLY OVERSEAS. I FOUND THE CONTACT PORTION OF THE WEBSITE AND SENT A EMAIL THANKING THEM FOR POSTING MY MATERIAL I INCLUDED LINKS TO MY OTHER PRODUCT, AND I SAVED THE EMAIL ADDRESS FOR FUTURE SUBMISSIONS HOPEFULLY YALL WILL FIND THIS TO BE USEFUL INFO TO HELP YOU PUSH YOUR ART. HAPPY GRINDING

NEW VIDEO AND SINGLE BY THE FLY & ROOSTER - CPMB Official Video

MY DUDES FLY AND ROOSTER GET FREAKY ON THIS ONE TALKING BOUT THEM CROTCHLESS PANTIES AND MATCHING BRA's (DONT WATCH THIS ONE AT WORK, LOL) DOING IT HOUSTON TX STYLE

PETE ROCK & CL SMOOTH: 25th ANNIVERSARY SHOW FOR MECCA AND THE SOUL BROTHER ALBUM

As one of Hip-Hop’s greatest musical partnerships, Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth hold a place not only in the rap history books, but also in the hearts of loyal fans worldwide. The Money Earnin’ Mount Vernon duo’s output in the early-to-mid-90s consisted of nothing but back-to-back classic material, from their debut 1991 EP “All Souled Out” through to the remix singles that came off their brilliant 1994 sophomore album “The Main Ingredient”. Whilst Pete Rock also blessed the likes of Public Enemy, Das EFX and Nas with his trademark horn-driven production, it can’t be denied that few sounded as comfortable on a Chocolate Boy Wonder track as the Mecca Don, C.L. Smooth, who wrapped up street knowledge, social commentary and self-reflection in his instantly recognisable, warm, buttery flow. Since that initial golden-era run, Pete and C.L.’s relationship has been rocky to say the least, both musically and personally. With promises of reunion projects amounting to little more than the odd single here and there, the pair’s on-off status has kept supporters guessing for years, surrounded by a dark cloud of supposed unresolved differences

But the pair came together and made magic this particular night in London England. Thankfully, if the childhood friends do still have any unsettled issues, they didn’t allow them to spill over and negatively impact what, essentially, was a great performance of a classic album. So, after this successful live reunion, the question that now needs to be asked, to paraphrase Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth themselves, is what’s next on the menu for the iconic duo



Venue: Jazz Cafe, London Date: 29 October 2012

NEW MIXTAPE BY DIRTY POLITICS ENT "THE ELECTION:

NEW MIXTAPE BY THE HOMIES OVER @ DIRTY POLITIC ENT. FEATURES YOUNG NICK, CRENSHAW, ARSON OPTICS, KAZANOVA THE GREAT, MR. C's AND MIRAGE512.

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