One More Thing

Even though this is a new month, I couldn't resist posting what I discovered last night.

This is a hidden track on The Roots' first live album The Roots Come Alive. When I first heard it, my first thought almost exactly matched one of the actual comments under the video on Youtube.

Black Thought is simply scatting this stuff, and he's still more engaged than 90% of the emcees I hear!

Outstanding.

peace.

Time With Dilla

An interview with J Dilla while on tour in The Netherlands

It's in four parts, so make sure to check them all.

I've heard snippets of this interview here and there, and it's apparent that this conversation with J Dilla is of vast importance to the hip hop community. He speaks extensively about his relationship with Slum Village, his encounter and subsequent collaboration with Madlib, and the issues of intellectual and artistic ownership in hip hop.

I'm not writing much because I'm watching it myself! Check ya'll tomorrow...

peace

Emcee of the Month: Elzhi

Zhi channels Esco.

I've had a love/hate relationship with the current trajectory of hip hop music. Much of the recent work has placed an emphasis on lyrics that employ very few words but still communicate the emcee's wit and cleverness. It's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it challenges rappers to work within very narrow parameters while still practicing the age old ritual of artistic one-upmanship. However, it conversely acclimates the listeners to a much less syllabically rich lyrical tapestry. The audience is no longer able to process the same quantities of information.

I hope the efforts of emcees like Elzhi work to counteract this phenomenon. This type of ability should not go unnoticed. This is truly a dope track. I hope you enjoy.

peace.

Emcee of the Month: Elzhi

This is an interview of Elzhi by The Hip Hop Chronicle UK. Decent interviews of this cat are hard to find.

Why is the camera moving around so much!? Hold still!

What's best about this dude is his genuine sense of humility and gratitude. I don't think Elzhi ever really planned to be as much in the (relative) limelight as he finds himself now. He's a former member of one of hip hop's most legendary groups, consistently mentioned as one of the most gifted rap lyricists working in this era, and is part of a small number of very talented emcees who carry torches for Detroit hip hop. I think all he ever hoped was to be a dope emcee and give some hot live performances. I have an immense amount of respect for this cat's accomplishments so far, but most especially for not losing himself along the way.

In addition to this video, I've found this written interview of Elzhi by Kevin Nottingham. (See here.) This is a very smart interview and fills in a lot of information most of the videos don't capture. I encourage you to have a look.

peace.

Steve Jobs' iCity

He's not playing.

Not only is he building a city, but it's going to look like a friggin' UFO.

How many swaths of land in your town could use a revitalization like this? Think about it. How many empty parking lots and abandoned buildings with restricted access exist where you live? How many useless business parks with a bunch of off-white single story boxes occupied by very bored people do you pass everyday? Some of you may even work in them yourselves. How many out-of-date strip malls, or airports, or entire city blocks must we endure? How unimaginative have we been about reclaiming and re-purposing all this space we've misused?

Last year the city of Detroit began a project that I feel is very similar in scope and impact as the new Apple headquarters plan. Because of the cities decline in population and manufacturing during the past few decades, Detroit has begun reclaiming some of its abandoned sections of town and returning them to use for farming and agriculture. When I heard this I thought it was a magnificent idea. It requires an immense amount of grace and humility for a city to admit needing to take a step back to go forward. And really, that's only if one believes that creating farmland is a step back. (Personally, I don't.) It suggests an awareness and understanding of being flexible and responsive to not only the environmental but socioeconomic tides that greatly affect our world, especially in recent times.

Read more about Detroit's project here.

I think Apple's new headquarters is moving along the same path. Yes, the circumstances are much different. Detroit is a city looking to serve its residents, Apple is a corporation whose primary objective is to make profit. But I feel Steve Jobs' approach to building this new headquarters follows a philosophy of developing spaces for human occupancy that cooperate with the environment and the community. He talks about the desire to stay in Cupertino and continuing to pays taxes there. He highlights the fact the new headquarters will increase the amount of landscaping on the property by 350% and that it will have its own power station fueled by cleaner and cheaper means than the public grid. And more than anything, it seems he wants to build a campus that's truly a nice place to be for employees and visitors to Apple's headquarters. Aesthetic awareness seems to be a major emphasis of this project.

I hope one day I'll have an opportunity to actually see or visit this building. I think it will serve as a model of how we in America should begin thinking about the spaces in which we live. And keep in mind, these types of things have been going on in other parts of the world for sometime. I mean, Ferrari practically put a rain forest in their new factory for Christ's sake!

Now if he can just move the assembly of Apple's products back to the US, he might be on to something.

That's right. Look on the back of your iPhone/Pod/Pad/Book/Life. "Assembled in China" never looked so elegant.

peace.