If you’ve been following any of my updates lately then you already know that I’ve been working on some new Greenhouse material with my Weightless compadre Illogic.  We released the song “Gettin There” last week as a free download, and will be releasing the EP (Electric Purgatory Party One) that this song is featured on in November; the  free version will be available on Nov 24th, the CD version will be in stores on Dec 1st.  But if you live in Columbus you dont have to wait that long.  We are throwing a CD release party on Saturday November 28th at Skullys in Columbus to celebrate this release.

The line-up is Greenhouse (Blueprint & Illogic), Kam Moye aka Supastition, Envelope, and special guest DJ J. Rawls. There are also going to be a couple more special guest appearances that will be on the official line-up, but this is an event that you don’t wanna miss if you live in the central ohio area, so mark your calendars!

Word is blog

My friends and former Columbus residents Edotkom will be having a CD release party this saturday in Cleveland @ the Grog Shop.  I will be performing as their special guest, along with my dude DJ Rare Groove.  I probably won’t be back in Cleveland until 2010 after the new album is out so if you live in the cleveland or akron area come check me out.  Doors are at 9pm and i think it’s 18+, so please come out and support.   Also performing are Edotkom, Rime Royal, Phatburner, & Mr 44.

Peep the flyer for full details after the jump>>

Word is Blog

I’m somewhat drunk so i don’t even know where to start this one, but I think i will start from last week. Last week Ron (Carabar owner) was like “Al, i dont ever tell you to come to specific shows, so take me seriously when i ask you to come to this show next week…tuesday. Faggot is playing.” So i remembered it but still forgot today until around 1130 or so. At any rate, I showed up and just missed Dead Sea play, who happen to be my favorite live act in Columbus. Matt Minor from Teeth Of The Hydra’s new band (whose name escapes me) played next, and since i was ordering drinks i can only claim to have heard about 75% if what they were doing, but it sounded good.

But its time to cut to the chase. Which is this band Faggot. Ron warned me about them but words cant really explain this kinda shit . you have to be there. Either way, this show tonight might have been the most amazing show i have seen in my entire life. This band Faggort kicked so much ass that it was worth being in the middle of the mosh pit just to fully understand what was going on.

For those that don’t know, Faggot is a metal band, and all their members are homosexual, i think. That needs to be established off top. So when you saw dudes walking around with FAGGOT on their jackets or ass, and with sequence tops on, it wasn’t a coincidence or for the shock-value, that’s just how these dudes roll. it was amazing so they start their set and its pandemonium off top. mosh pitts, crowd surfing, etc.

But as you wouldn’t expect, they had 2 different hype-men/dancers. one they referred to as “cum dumpster” and one whose name escapes me but it was either “jaime” or something like that and down for his crown. he wore nothing but some black briefs with white stripes the entire time. I’m faded but i’m confident it was jaime. So they introduce their hypmen/dancers and shit get live as fuck immediately. Dudes in the band Faggot were clearly not trying to stay in the closet, which may have been the coolest shit ever, but their dancers were off the hook. At many points you would see dudes who were butt ass naked crowd surfing, stage diving, or making out with the lead singer in betweeen his lyrics. It was crazy, to say the least. It was like having 2 flava flavs but they both got to make out with Chuck D in between songs. AND they were making out with other dudes in the crowd. One of them had on boxer-briefs, and the other one was naked at various points.

Now, off hand (judgingby the music) you just felt like you were at a metal show. But this was something extra. At one point the lead singer of Faggot said “we’ve got one more song left, but if yall wanna hear two then take off your clothes” and guess what happened? a gang of dudes took off their clothes and started moshing. At this point i might have seen a broad with her top off too. I’m talking half the dudes in the mosh pit were butt-ass naked with their balls out moshin with other dudes. there were also various chicks in the pitt mixing it up too. shit was that crazy. a butt-ass naked dude would hit the floor from the pitt, and another half-dressed dude would take his place and help him up, then get knocked down. It was truly amazing.

I would be lying if i said I’ve ever seen such a thing in Columbus, ever. I could go on about the amazing moments that i saw tonight because there are a ton, but i do want to touch on the fact that tonights show was liberating as fuck. This band has some serious balls to do what they do, and it was so amazing to see a pitt full of dudes, who may not even have been gay (but obviously secure with their sexuality), get down with them. That’s a good move. Nobody gave a fuck tonight. And if i can deal with that then i know you can.

i kept seeing dudes who were headbanging to the earlier bands take off more and more clothes, until they were down to their boxer briefs, and the music came on. At that point they started wildin out like very body else,; moshin, crowdsurfin, singling alongs, etc. shit was amazing and i’m glad i was there to witness it. So while, i still don’t feel comfortable enough to stay the word faggot in a song or in conversation, I want yall to know that this band was the shit. They didn’t give a fuck. The hypeman would make out with a dude in the crowd, then turn around and make out with the leadsinger, then stage dive two seconds later. It was so amazing that i cant even really give you a complete summary of what went on tonight because you really had to see it to get it. And being a tuesday night made it all the more awesome. So i’m gonna pass out. and try to do some diligence on this band, then try to edit this drunk ass post tomorrow. Good night

Word is blog.

Photos by Matthew Woellert (aka “chubbs”).

Note: No, these are NOT safe for work and YES they do look really gay.  But this show was one of the wildest shows I’ve seen in my life so i might as well just post all the pics.

If you’re a sports fan you’ll dig this. Hell, if you’re not a sports fan you’ll probably still find it entertaining. It’s just too funny to not post:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exOxUAntx8

Word is blog.

This is a post I made on weightless.net last week with an updated status of my album. I figured I would repost it here for those interested:

Truthfully, my record not dropping yet is more a decision of mine than theirs. I had a release date that i decided i was a little too rushed to do everything I wanted to do, so i let it go. After that, I took a step back and we decided to just make the album as good as possible and not stress release dates.

but there have been some issues along the way:

1. the dude who did my artwork (and tons of artwork for me over the years) retired. this may not seem to have much impact since the art was done, but it could pose a real problem when you want to get adjustments made or when you want to adapt that design to fit other mediums like web, print, advertisements. so i had to get my artwork totally redone.

2. hard drive crash – everybody around me knows i had a major hd crash around march that had the lab closed for a couple months. i just got everything back up and running, and actually i think my setup is better now because everything is mobile, so i can do beats anywhere now, which is what i’ve always wanted to do but never quite could.

3. sample clearance issues – there’s a couple things on my album that rse is concerned about, and would like to pull off the album because of samples. obviously i want to keep the songs, but to do so i need to find a creative way to get rid of the samples in question w/o ruining the essence of the song. this is something i havent really had to deal with before because i was “under the radar” so to speak. on 1988 i was able to do whatever i wanted to do and i didn’t think twice about samples. however, there is a feeling that this record will get more exposure and because of that it will also become more of a target for lawsuits for uncleared samples. i kind of knew this going in so i kept the blatant samples to a minimum, but there are still some things that i need to be cautious about and fix. so between having certain things replayed and reevaluating the tracklisting i’m trying to resolve these issues.

4. the edit – i’m trying to cut the album down time wise and song wise. it is a very dense listen and i dont want to make it any more challenging of a listen than it needs to be. plus i’m a fan of short albums with little filler.

at any rate, its really in my court at this point, and my goal is to have all this stuff wrapped up soon…like within 2 weeks, especially since my lab is back up. i came back from soundset very motivated. i was honestly very shocked that so many people were asking me about new music and still responded to 1988 and Things Go Better, and it encouraged me to get back n the lab and fix all this shit asap. sometimes its good to me reminded that people enjoy what you do and want you to continue doing it.

Raquel Welch

d

Lena Horn

Pam Grier

Word is Blog

On June 25th, 2009 I have been asked to participate in the Content Under Pressure event going down in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Red Bull Music Academy has been putting together some cool events where they bring together producers from all over the globe to exchange ideas and celebrate hip-hop production. I’ve noticed these events for a while, and finally i got asked to do one, which will take place at the end of this month. I’ve heard rumors that they will have a live stream of the producers in action, and the songs coming together, which would be pretty cool.

(please read the above flyer for details of the event)

At any rate, I’m pretty excited to be participating. Wish me luck!

Word is Blog.

Last night we were supposed to play a show in Cincinnati at the Gypsy Hut. The lineup was myself, illogic, dj rare groove, and mr. dibbs. Needless to say the show didn’t happen, but it wasn’t for the lack of trying. I will rewind a few days and bring everybody up to speed.

Earlier this month i started hearing rumors about the female owner of this club doing shiesty shit with peoples money; changing the bar total numbers to that they wouldn’t have to pay people what they earned from the bar, lying about the total number of people that came thru the door and decreasing the numbers, as well as actually trying to run off with bands money from the door and not pay them.

Now, the obvious question becomes why would a bar like gypsy hut do this to people? Well its not the bartenders or soundmen or staff their, but their owner, who is apparently a coke-head. Cocaine is a powerful drug. It apparently causes you to steal money from your own bar to support your habit instead of paying people properly.

But despite this situation my friends and I had a plan, and felt like despite the bullshit that was going on we should still do our show there. We made sure we had our own people who were going to work the door, and we were going to make sure that none of that funny-business was going to happen.

We were partially right because none of that bullshit happened, but other bullshit happened. We showed up at the venue at 7pm, and as we waited to load-in we found out that the owner had lost their liquor license from not paying the renewal fees, and that she had fired ALL her employees last night.

Our people get in touch with one of the people who booked the last show they had there and he said that he got fired two nights ago because the owner tried to get him to give her the cash from the door instead of paying the bands guarantee and he refused. He paid the band, and she fired him.

So we are in front of the club at 730 with no venue and nowhere to do the show.

We try to find another venue, but nothing is going right. Two of our female friends went to a spot called Blue Moon and the owner told them he wanted to do it and he was down, but he had 3 punk bands that were playing until midnight. When i went back there with the girls again to get the details he said that he didn’t think it could work and got real shiesty all the sudden. He then said if we were willing to do it for no money he would be down because he didn’t wanna confuse things with the bands he already had. He also claimed that punk kids hated hip-hop, and that he had tried to do several cross-genre shows and they failed so ours would as well. He asked us how many people we expected and we said about 200 and he was like “see..I’m not even staffed to handle that”. I looked at him and said “hey man its only money, right?” We gave up and left.

Long story short, nothing came together, which is a shame because there were definitely a good 150 plus people who would’ve came to this show or came, saw the place was locked up and went back home.

Now, I had an interesting thought this morning about it and why it went down this way. I believe that this kind of stuff happens because our generation isn’t stepping the fuck up. I thought about what would happen if this happened in Columbus, and the biggest difference would be that the people we would have been speaking to about moving our event would have been a LOT younger and more in touch, but that wasn’t the case there. It was pretty frustrating and insulting to hear a bunch of old people tell you what your crowd looks like, or how they act, or what DJs are like, or what kind of rap you do, when you know full well their some out-of-touch old fart who’s really just trying to get some pussy and not make money. There’s something really fucked up about a business person who doesn’t even want to make money. They can’t be reasoned with.

But the key thing to notice about this entire thing is that all the decisions that led to this show being fucked up and later on not saved were put in the hands of 50-60 year old people and not us.

So i ask you all, what are we doing to ensure that our generation gets to make decisions that impact us? Why are we sitting on our asses, not owning shit, not running shit, not organizing shit?

Why don’t we have shit of our own?

That’s the question people. I’m sure every town would be a hell of a lot cooler if we had people running things that actually represented us, right?

Are yall seeing the parallels yet? This isn’t just about a music venue either.

Feel me?

Word is Blog.

I was gonna write about how my attempt at not drinking went, with details about how each day with or without drinking went, but it seemed to be pretty boring as I was writing it, so i deleted it. Instead I’m going to simplify it like this:

Everybody has things they do that they wish they didn’t do so much; whether that be shopping too much, smoking weed, drinking, cigarettes, driving fast, sex, whatever. We all have struggles and none of us are perfect. But I truly believe that only when we take these things out of our lives for an extended amount of time can we actually see and ad
mit what it was that caused us to become so dependent on them in the first place.

That’s what I gained last week.

Word is blog.

As many of you know last Wednesday was the final night of our weekly event So What Wednesday. Here are some pictures taken by Columbus resident and excellent photographer Ed Luna. He posted these on his facebook page and since they’re really good I figured I would repost them here. Enjoy!

Word is blog.