dame-

word dame dash and ill-literacy are redefining my vision for my career. They're giving voice to alot of the half formed ideas churning in my head. checc out this interview wit street level.

StreetLevel.com Presents: On The Level Ep. 6 with Damon Dash from streetxlevel on Vimeo.

lets not do this to eat lets do this to feed.

fresh espresso

what up rik!!

it's a northwest classic

BOOM Baby my next show is going down. i will be performing with be flat as part of the hi-life sound system get redu folk!!

making some filth part 1

decided to document the making of my next album. I'm calling it the filth right now but that is subject to change. here's the first installment of the series james lipton you have permission to love this now.

khingz-the filth part 1 from khalil equiano on Vimeo.

i make music, this is how.

maclemore bts for The Town

yea so Zia has a new blog called loveandshoestrings.com.
pretty cool huh?

guy marries game... foreal!!

That Nene Anegasaki, she's a charmer. She's also a video game character from extreme dating sim Love Plus, now wedded to a flesh and blood gamer.

The two were married when a man brought his DS along with a copy of Love Plus to a church in Guam. There's no word on honeymoon plans, but the two will be holding a small reception for family, close friends and the internet on November 22nd. (Seriously, there will be a webcam and stuff.)

It just goes to show, the power of Woman has no bounds. Stick her in a digital fortress, simplify her beauty to Nintendo DS rendering limits and give her a shrill, anime voice. Woman will triumph all the same. [Tiny Cartridge via technabob]

Send an email to Mark Wilson, the author of this post, at mark@gizmodo.com.

TOWN SHIT!!!!!!!!

Kam Moye speaks the truth

so this off of Kam moye's journal witch was on some hip hop game blah blah blah site here's the link.

thouth this was funny, well thought out, and witty so i repost here in its entirety enjoy.

Nowadays, the line between artists and fans are completely blurred. Fans and listeners now have a platform to voice their complaints and make as many demands directly to the artists. Sometimes it's a great idea but it also leaves room for some serious WTF moments. Imagine if you could've emailed Rakim back in the day and told him personally that 'Chinese Arithmetic' was the worst song on Paid In Full? Just imagine the emails that Big Daddy Kane would've received when 'Prince of Darkness' dropped. With that in mind, I decided to make a list of the 10 Things to Never Say to an Indie Artist. These are responses that your favorite indie artists wants to tell you but probably doesn't. This list was written from a sarcastic, humorous standpoint so PLEASE don't take offense. I know how sensitive and defensive people get about these type of things. There's just as much truth as there is humor in this list though.

1. How are the album sales so far?
We're INDIE! If the sales were worth raving about then we'd be sitting in Jimmy Iovine's office right now. Asking an indie artist how his/her album is selling is like asking someone with bad credit how much they are paying for their monthly car note. No matter how you answer it, it still sounds horrible to the average person.

2. I'm a big fan of your music. We need to do a collabo...
*pump the brakes* This is a very confusing moment for an artist because you have officially crossed into that Grey area between fan and businessman. Let me just break it down for you in Layman's terms. I am probably one of the biggest DJ Premier fans on the planet. Do you honestly think that because I bought every Gangstarr album that Primo will be that more interested in working with me? Trust me, if that method was effective then I'd be CCing Alchemist, Pete Rock, and Just Blaze the exact same message right now telling them how much I love their production. You can not be a fan and artist all in the SAME conversation. And for the record, you don't get discounts just because you're a fan. I have eaten at this one restaurant almost every week for the past 5 years and they have never once given me a discount on my bill....ever!

3. I like your new stuff but your first album is still your best work...
That's a backhanded compliment for someone who has multiple albums. Imagine your girlfriend telling you that you're good... just not as good as the first guy she slept with. Kind of stings the ego a lil' doesn't it?

4. Why don't you ever do shows here?
Indie artists don't pick where we choose to do shows. Hell If the money is right, we will perform in front of pack of hungry lions in the Sahara Desert. Don't get angry at the artist when your city is left out of the tour schedule. If an artist doesn't come to your city then your local promoters are responsible. If there is no demand for an artist in your city then you can forget about it. Showing up to perform for you and all 5 of your homies sounds like a good idea but does not warrant a show in your city. That's a loss that nobody is trying to take. How about you and all of the fans in the area put your money together and book the artist yourself? You'd probably do a better job then some promoters.

5. Do you want to come to the car/studio and listen to my beats/production?
NO....we don't. This is just a confidence booster used by people who need it. To see your favorite rapper nodding his head to your music might be a dream of yours but it's surely not one of his. DO NOT believe half of what people tell you when you meet them in person. Sometimes we say what you like to hear just to end the conversation quicker. This trick was invented and mastered by women who will take your number with no intentions on ever calling you. Give us a beat CD and keep it moving (make sure you put tags on them). Please do not send constant emails/messages/tweets asking if they have listened to your beats or not. I don't know of one artist who will like your beats and not contact you...well then again, unless they are going to ante up the beat for themselves. No pun intended.

6. So what REALLY happened between you and _____?
Asking about someone's personal differences or beefs is just in bad taste especially when you don't have anything to do with it. Just because there aren't thousands of people reading it on the Internet doesn't mean that it's going to be kept confidential. Fans will go home and post everything you tell them on a message board or blog. Cyber-snitching is reaching its peak! Contrary to popular belief, everything shouldn't be aired out publicly via CL Smooth-style. I know the Perez Hilton in you wants to know the real story but kill that TMZ shit, homie!

7. Your album was the album of the year next to _________.
Well go and swing your poms poms in front of that glorious dude! Nobody likes to be second best. The proper response from an artist should be..."You were almost the fan of the year... but the guy before you actually bought something before he talked my head off for 15 minutes".

8. What was it like working with _________?
It's 2009 and the chances of artists actually being in the studio together is very rare. I get asked what it was like working with KRS One or Stoupe all the time. It was wonderful....I recorded it at my studio, uploaded the files via Megaupload, and they downloaded them. I waited months (sometimes years) to hear the final version and then I bought a copy just like everyone else. Yep, it's definitely something to tell the kids about.....

9. Why do they always play bullshit like ______ on the radio?
There's no golden answer other than the simple fact that a lot of people like to buy that 'bullshit'. (Insert Hated Rapper here) fans don't sit around analyzing every kick and snare or expect every album to be a hip hop classic before they buy it. There's no measuring stick used to see if an album is too long, too short, or the next Illmatic. To some people, music is....just music. Plus, this is a business. The local pizza parlor is 10 times better than Domino's but Domino's still remains more popular (even though it's god awful). The commercials on the radio are what pays the bills so the music on the radio is just an interlude in between the next commercial. If given enough money and advertising dollars, a radio station would play a song about having wild sex on your birthday. Oh wait..... *LOL smiley face*

10. Track # ____ on your CD is AMAZING!
So amazing that you never even bothered to look at the credits and learn the name of that ONE song that you love so much? We don't recognize songs by track #'s or descriptions. “You know, the song about getting old...”. Imagine if we just got lazy and started naming our projects, Album #1 and Album #2. Oh yeah, Album #3 is in stores now BTW!!!

11. You should have _____ on your next album..
1) Whose to say that the artist you're recommending even likes our music or vice versa. 2) These things cost money and believe it or not, nobody successful truly does it 'for the love'. 3) It's your taste and opinion but it's not YOUR album. You can tell McDonald's to add extra pickles to your sandwich but do you really think they are going to change it permanently just because you like it? Not a chance. Sometimes music works the same way.

12. Could you please upload the ________ song to your Myspace/Reverb Nation/etc...? It's my favorite song.

Listen here, buddy. It's good to know that it's your favorite song but we are not your personal Hibachi chefs! We do not do whatever you like, whenever you like. We do not function at the push of a button or at the request of everyone. Life just doesn't work that way. This is the false hope/friendship that social networks have built up between artists and fans (I'll speak on that on my next blog). And secondly, do you really think that someone will go through the trouble of uploading a song on a website just for ONE person... other than themselves???? Here's an option, play the CD or iTunes player while you're on the Internet. It has the same effect *ba dum TSSSSSH*

-KM

go head moye!!! his new joint splitting image is out now buy here

and here's a video off that very joint please support smart black people!!!

army suicides

well joining the army is kinda an act of suicide if your dad isn'ta millionaire but shiiiit. shout to the homie adrian for hippin me to this. Just anopther reason to end war.
from yahoo news.

By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 3 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Soldier suicides this year are almost sure to top last year's grim totals, but a recent decline in the pace of such incidents could mean the Army is starting to make progress in stemming them, officials said Tuesday.

Army Vice Chief of Staff General Peter Chiarelli said that as of Monday, 140 active duty soldiers were believed to have died of self-inflicted wounds so far in 2009. That's the same as were confirmed for all of 2008.

"We are almost certainly going to end the year higher than last year ... this is horrible, and I do not want to downplay the significance of these numbers in any way," he said.

But Chiarelli said there has been a tapering off in recent months from large surges in suspected suicides in January and February.

"Our goal since the beginning has been to reduce the overall incidence of suicide and I do believe we are finally beginning to see progress being made," Chiarelli told a Pentagon press conference.

He attributed those hints of a turning to some unprecedented efforts the Army has made since February to educate soldiers and leaders about the issue.

Officials are still stumped about what is driving the historically high rates across the military force. When asked whether the rates reflect unprecedented high stress from long and repeated deployments to provide manpower for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Chiarelli said he didn't know.

"The reality is there is no simple answer," he said. "Each suicide is as unique as the individuals themselves."

The rising suicide rate is not unique to the Army. Marine Corps suicides also are higher again this year — there were 42 reported as of Oct. 31 compared with 42 for all of 2008, 33 in 2007 and 25 in 2006.

Though the two ground forces have borne most of the fighting in the two current wars, both the Army and Marines have found that about a third of the self-inflicted deaths were among troops that had never deployed to the battles.

Chiarelli said that on top of the 140 suicides reported from the active duty Army force, there were another 71 suicides by troops in the National Guard and Reserve.

All of the numbers are preliminary in that investigations into some of the deaths are still ongoing. Of the 140 so far this year among active duty troops, 90 have been confirmed as suicides and 50 are suspected but the probes are not yet finished.

Each year, nearly all suspected suicides are eventually confirmed. For instance in 2008, there were 143 suspected and 140 were eventually confirmed.

Chiarelli said officials will continue to focus on things that are symptoms of high-risk individuals such as undiagnosed brain injuries like concussions; on Post-Traumatic Stress, and on risky behavior such as poor diet and sleep habits as well as more serious behaviors such as drug and alcohol abuse.

The Army widened its suicide prevention in March in an attempt to make rapid improvements. In October, the service introduced its Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, which Chiarelli called "the biggest step ... taken to enhance wellness in the entire force through prevention rather than treatment."

The program aims to put the same emphasis on mental and emotion strength as the military traditionally has on physical strength. Basic training now includes anti-stress programs as part of a broader effort to help soldiers deal with the aftereffects of combat and prevent suicides.

Also last month, the Army started using a new screening questionnaire to try to determine preexisting or current mental health issues among troops as part of the enlistment process.

Despite those campaigns, another jump in suicide figures for 2009 would make it the fifth straight year that such deaths have set a record within the military. Last year's 140 record erased a high 115 in 2007 and 102 in 2006.

Chiarelli said officials are concerned with increases this year at Fort Campbell, Fort Stewart and Schofield Barracks and are trying to learn why suicides rates are down at Fort Hood, Fort Bragg and Fort Drum.

At Fort Campbell in Kentucky there were 18, while at Fort Bragg, N.C., which has almost double the population, there have been six all year.

Using some bases as examples of the trend downward, Chiarelli said that of the 18 suicides reported this year at Fort Campbell, 11 of those were in the first four months of the year. At Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, there were seven all year so far — five in the first five months of the year and only two since.

The numbers kept by the service branches don't show the whole picture of war-related suicides because they don't include deaths after people have left the military. The Department of Veterans Affairs tracks those numbers and says there were 144 suicides among the nearly 500,000 service members who left the military from 2002-2005 after fighting in at least one of the wars.

The true incidence of suicide among military veterans is not known, according to a report last year by the Congressional Research Service. Based on numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the VA estimates that 18 veterans a day — or 6,500 a year — take their lives, but that number includes vets from all previous wars.

IB4the1.1

Here's a lil the Ill-literacy album IB4the1. i been bumpin it all morning. Kool-Aid!! Shout out to my west brethren livin in the belly of the east love ya'll!!


get it herrr

Little dragon

they recently came to the northwest (or southwest for those of us in VAN) and i missed them. i knew that there would be to many hipsters at this show and i can't live my life around them but here's a video for me to pretend i was there (tho not sure where this video was shot.)

mad to live - little dragon (episode 1) from DGinandTonic on Vimeo.

NO man's land - bobby ray

no shit talk just video.

what i like too do all day

I wish I had more homies who where in to this stuff. I am nowhere as dope as this kid but i get inspired by this shit. It's why I ride bmx. You can do trix on street bike (or fixie to those who think it's a bike frame) or a mountain bike but you look retarded. I also like black folks with old english sounding names SUP NIGEL!!!

Escape From Tomorrow (A Day In the Life With Nigel Sylvester) from 13thWitness™ on Vimeo.

aboveground shows some love

I'm highly ignorant as to the nature of this magazine (my friend thinks i was in it too haha ) but they throwin love to 8 rymers from my city that people mite not be up on. If you from Seattle and don't know these cats YOUR TRIPPIN. If from other parts well checc em out!!




Eight Seattle MCs You Might Be Sleeping On

from @6fingers

These are a couple songs I got off this cat @6fingers twitter from my homie @bambudepistola and one of my favorite emcees Hopie Spitshard (who i saw rocc in the bay onetime SHE KILLED IT!). enjoy.

Hopie Spitshard


Bambu

Zia is a genius.

no lie i once got 165 butterfingers off this guy that he won in a video contest and i sold each for like 2 bux. made a lil profit, but fucc nestle. He is also being recognized by the stranger as a genuius checc it out!!



Has made music videos for:

Blue Scholars, Gabriel Teodros, Jake One, Common Market, and Macklemore.

Wants to make:

A short film about Yesler Terrace (before it gets torn down).

Is the first genius award winner who:

Is a practicing Baha'i.

Filmmaking is almost never an exciting process. In fact, the more boring the shoot is, the higher the chances that the director is doing respectable work. Actors waiting and waiting, producers fretting about the schedule, the director ignoring the pressure as he or she slowly searches for the best possible image, pulling only a few shots at a time—these are all good signs. Great film is not the product of luck. It is the product of patience and persistence and boredom.

It is boring up on the roof of the Kawabe Memorial House (the K building), where Zia Mohajerjasbi is on the set for his music video of "The Town," a new tune by local hiphop star Macklemore. (The video will premiere on November 13, the day of the Genius Awards party.) Mohajerjasbi is absorbed by his camera, checking and rechecking the image on the miniscreen for the exact point to place Macklemore. The rapper is waiting and waiting, talking to DJ DV One, who had arrived only to learn he would not be needed until the next day. Mohajerjasbi's producer, Sam Toloui, is fretting about the schedule: Dusk is quickly approaching, the city is under heavy clouds, and the shoot is three hours behind.

His shoots may be boring, but Mohajerjasbi's music videos and short films are the opposite of his slow and dull process. More than anyone else, his images have captured the new energies of Seattle's emerging hiphop scene and the vibrant colors of its 21st- century cosmopolitanism. Mohajerjasbi is only 24 years old, and he is already redefining not only filmmaking in Seattle, but the image of Seattle itself.

There are three reasons why Zia Mohajerjasbi won this year's Genius Award in the film category. The first and leading reason: Through a technical knowledge of film production and sharp artistic instincts, he has been able to democratize "the beautiful image" (described by Roland Barthes in his essay on Greta Garbo's face) and make it accessible to the people. The second reason: He is developing a new cinematic language for the city. The third: He is the first filmmaker in Seattle with a cosmopolitan project that's authentic rather than superficial, realistic rather than ideological.

Mohajerjasbi's career began three years ago with a music video for Gabriel Teodros's classic "No Label." In that video, we find all of the elements that have come to define his work: the democratization (or distribution) of the beautiful image with a focus on neighborhoods, locations, and buildings that have not been a part of the city's dominant visual vocabulary. Forget the Space Needle, the Pike Place Market, and so on—"No Label" is set on and around the Dr. Jose Rizal Bridge, a fresh and cinematically unfamiliar view of the Seattle skyline—not from a ferry in the middle of Puget Sound or the heights of Queen Anne hill, but from the city's working-class and immigrant neighborhoods. "No Label" also inaugurated Mohajerjasbi's visual affair with South Seattle's thriving cosmopolitanism—African immigrants, black and white Americans, and Asian Americans, unified by the beat.

So far, Mohajerjasbi has made three local masterpieces. The first is the video for Jake One's "Home" (2009), which begins on Broadway, at Dick's Drive-In, as an homage to Sir Mix-A-Lot's "My Posse's on Broadway." (Mix-A-Lot has a cameo, playfully and contemptuously flicking a $20 bill at the new generation of Seattle rappers.) The camera then gets in a van to explore the post-gentrified Central District. No other director has filmed this area with so much affection and emotion—its homes, streets, corner shops, and young rappers hanging out together at barbecues. His second masterpiece is "Joe Metro" (a 2008 collaboration with Marty Martin), which is set on a Metro bus running northward from Beacon Hill to the financial district. Mohajerjasbi arranges images of Beacon Avenue South, the storefronts of the International District, the civic brick buildings of Yesler Way, and the glass towers of corporate prosperity into a new logic of power and counterpower, moving from the outside to the inside, a germ of musical resistance slipping into the center of domination. His third, the short film Manoj (2007), is a parody of racism in standup comedy starring comic Hari K. Kondabolu and the natural light of Seattle, which slants sharply in autumn.

Mohajerjasbi is a former student of English and architecture at UW, an Iranian American, and the brother of Sabzi, the producer behind Blue Scholars and Common Market, two of Seattle's biggest hiphop acts. Blue Scholars have a growing national reputation and sell out shows at A-list venues. In the way Sabzi has built a new sound for the current decade of hiphop, Zia has built a new visual vocabulary for that scene. But whereas Sabzi built the new sound on a long and rich history of underground local hiphop (Vitamin D, Jake One, BeanOne), Zia's videos were made on (or even from) pure air. Zia has invented a local hiphop film tradition.

Mohajerjasbi's work also aligns with the emerging independent Seattle cinema whose leading representative is Lynn Shelton, last year's Stranger Film Genius and the maker of Humpday, which won a jury prize at Sundance. This film movement is characterized by Seattle's growing recognition of itself. Before this decade, Seattle did not exist in any real way in independent cinema. For example: Gregg Lachow's film Money Buys Happiness, which was completely shot in Seattle and completed in 1999, is not set here but in a generic city.

"You know, the people in this building have an average age of 72," Mohajerjasbi says as he prepares to shoot Macklemore's video on the roof of Kawabe Memorial House. Mohajerjasbi picked the location because it has yet another view of downtown that had never been filmed before. "And they throw a barbecue on the roof when the Blue Angels are in town. The jets fly right over the building, and you can see the pilots in the cockpits. I had no idea that old people are that courageous. You'd expect them to be timid and worried about their hearts." Kawabe, a 10-story building, dominates a neighborhood that has its roots in the Japanese-American experience. Not far away is a park with a stoic statue of the 13th-century Buddhist monk Shinran Shonin, a Buddhist temple, and a Japanese-Christian church. Many of the elderly in Kawabe are immigrants: So we have the pleasing situation of the son of immigrants making a hiphop video on a building that houses aging, Blue Angel–loving immigrants.

"When I asked the managers of the building if we could shoot on their roof, they did not even think twice. They gave us complete access. I mean, it is a hiphop video and they had no problem with that." Mohajerjasbi operates with a small crew, four to six people, and does everything he can to keep costs low, but not at the expense of the beauty. He only shoots in digital, but does everything he can to reduce the sharpness of digital reproduction. "I really strive for a dirty image," he says. "Sharp images are just not emotional enough for me." He loads his digital cameras with all sorts of lenses, adjustments, and attachments to produce the kinds of images that would usually cost an arm and a leg. In this way, Mohajerjasbi fulfills the founding promise of digital filmmaking: to liberate the beautiful image from the confines of big budgets.

Many filmmakers are happy with the cheap look of digital reproduction because it helps to shorten the distance between the content and the viewer. The photography in Shelton's Humpday has few enhancements or manipulations and prefers to maintain the directness and sharpness of the digital image. The camera is to a viewer what the eye is to a person. Mohajerjasbi goes in the opposite direction; he wants the dreaminess of film, and he enhances and manipulates his cameras to achieve his dusky worlds.

"I may one day shoot with film," Mohajerjasbi says, looking into his camera, downtown behind him. "But right now it's all digital. Which is fine because there is lots to learn about digital. And that's important to remember. I'm still learning. Learning lighting—that's another monster—learning new things about cameras, like the Red. One day I will get to where I want to be, but I'm not there right now."

Where he is now, what he has made, has pioneered a new direction and discourse for Seattle cinema. Zia Mohajerjasbi has already come so far.

courtesy of the mutha fuccin stranger

T3am Av3ng3rs go hard!!!

I like TA cuz they be at my shows killin the floor hard all the "hip hop" muhfuccaz be holdin up the wall cuz they dance like white people.. when did it become un hip hop to dance. whatever to the lame watch my lil homies tho! They go IN!!

Jerkin from Mike Kane on Vimeo.

more ill-lit!!

here's my guys EPK checc it out and book them for shows and book me to open!!

iLL-Literacy Experience: The Live Show from ill-literacy on Vimeo.

Toggling between daydream and full-blown hallucination, iLL-Literacy is a music and performance collective that fuses elements of funk, hip-hop, spoken word, and interactive theatre for a sound and live experience that draws as much from the rich artistic and political history of its Oakland hometown as it does from the experimental and imaginative inclinations of its current Brooklyn base. In their recorded debut "iB4the1" members Dahlak, N.i.C, and Drizzletron work everything from the ground up – from in-house production, to self-directed music videos, to the development of a new approach to musical interaction that intimately involves the listener throughout the inception, production, and promotion of the final product.

Although 2009 marks iLL-Literacy's first studio release, the group has been touring globally since 2006. With contributing efforts of live digital producer Ada Clock, this year's live production – directed by Kamilah Forbes (director of "Def Poetry Jam on Broadway" and internationally-acclaimed play "Scourge") – assertively invites the audience not only to participate in the experience, but to shift the process and outcome of each show through an "open-sourced" exchange of sound and motion that the group has dubbed "digit.iLL.Funk."

The first chapter of iB4the1 releases November 2009, with subsequent chapters unveiling in the spring and fall of 2010.

rose city homies!!

I been away for a minute trying to figure out my life and my next couple of moves. I'm making my plans to move bacc into the city that raised me so if you know about apartmenets and shit holler at me!!
but this post ain't about me its about a couple of my fam bams from south of Van WA (waaay diffrent then where I'm at). Sleep been a freind of mine for a minute since the mid 90's (damn i still feel like that just happened) and Tony Hill is related to me at ths point this video is off my guy's latest record called "Hesitation Wounds" get it now!!!!