Sunday, February 27, 2011

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Jay-Z & LeBron James - Gym Groundbreaking; Boys & Girls Club Of L.A.



Two black men doing good for the community.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Kanye West Performing at Kobe Bryants Party at the W Hotel



Kanye was killing em in LA this weekend!!

B.o.B & J. Cole in the studio



Yes this is going to be some dope shit!!! Classic music in the making.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Jay-Z Wins 3 Grammys



Even though he didn't show up e still snatched them up. I'm still salty they didn't nominate Nas and Damian.

Nas & Damian Marley Perform In Australia

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Friday, February 4, 2011

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Nas Interview: The Vine Australia



Few in the rap diaspora can even come close to approaching the oeuvre of Nasir Jones [above, left next to Damian Marley]. His now legendary debut Illmatic (1994) not only brought together New York’s finest production talents on the one record – think Premier, Large Professor, Pete Rock, Q-Tip and L.E.S. – its unfettered rendering of a young man growing up in the Queensbridge projects set lyrical benchmarks that, arguably, have yet to be surpassed. Almost two decades on, those 39 minutes are still considered amongst the genre’s defining releases.

But Nas has never been one to dwell on past successes. His game has always been that of quiet but steady accumulation and development – of which seven further solo albums and his recent collaboration with Damian Marley Distant Relatives (2010) have evidenced – and while many of his contemporaries have blissfully soaked up the limelight, Nas has remained an intensely private, relatively media shy individual.

Well, after three aborted attempts and numerous voicemail messages, we eventually tracked down a surprisingly affable Nas on the eve of his Good Vibrations performances. Here he chats history, Damian Marley, Africa, the place of politics in hip-hop and his need to always move forward.

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When I think of your career, there has always been an almost educatory aspect to your music; the idea that you use your position in music and culture to not just express yourself but to pass on knowledge.


Yeah.

I’d love you to expand on that. What do you think instilled that in you as a kid coming up? Who were some of your teachers?

Um, just growing up in New York City, it’s just the way. I guess the law of the land was each one teach one, and what we didn’t learn in school, someone else would teach on the street, on the block. Whether it was just survival or small lessons in history or what have you. Just being a New Yorker gives you a certain drive to want to learn and talk about what you’ve learned.

It’s interesting you mention that, because to an outsider at least, you’ve always been someone who stays very quiet and seems quite introverted off the mic.


Yeah, you know, music is what people know me for. And yeah, personally, I’m kind of private I think. So music is the only real way I get things off my chest.


So many MCs and performers feel the need to maintain a public presence and persona when not working on their art. By comparison to so many of your generation, you’ve really steered clear of the limelight. Would you say that fame doesn’t sit comfortably with you?


It’s just a different thing that I don’t really care for. I’m not really going to make enough of an effort to be there at the right places all the time. You know, to be the biggest celebrity. But I do care for making music and I do love making music, you know? That’s the difference.

I’d love to hear a little about the record the Damian and what brought you guys together. Did the concept for Distant Relatives come before you had hooked up, or was it something that kind of unravelled once you’d spent time in the studio?

You know, it was something that just happened when we starting recording together. We had recorded together before and we really respect each other’s music and had been talking about doing some more records. So we starting doing more records and soon realised that one of the things we have in common is just our love for history. You know, world history and especially history about Africa.

What made it an important time to drop a record about Africa and about the African lineage?

There’s never a better time than the now, you know? It was just what we wanted to do right then. We started having conversations about Africa and we just knew, right then and there, you know.

The issues surrounding Africa – from poverty, to AIDS, to the diamond trade – are so often neglected or forgotten about in the West. Did you see one of the record’s main roles as attempting to keep Africa in the public discourse, even if it was via a different medium?

Yeah, definitely. When people care about people and use their influence to do that, it’s a good thing, you know. I get inspired when I see what Alicia Keys is doing for AIDS and HIV. She inspires me and she’s inspiring to a lot of people, and it’s just good to see people who care about other people. You know, it just felt good and right for us to do this.

In a more general sense, what do you feel the place for social issues and politics is in hip-hop? Do you feel that there’s a responsibility to carry on the work of artists from your era like the late Guru and Tribe and KRS? A responsibility to be politically and socially aware?

For some artists, but not for all. I don’t think the world of hip-hop has a responsibility to concern itself with politics. I think hip-hop needs to be concerned with hip-hop, with art, with expressing itself. There’s a young hip-hop artist born everyday with something new to express about the world that someone my age can’t see from where he’s standing. It’s important for him to express his art and that’s what the music is really about.

I love art and, you know, I’ve been fortunate to have a voice that has been able to be heard by a lot of people. And some things within politics concern me and I have the opportunity, thank god, to talk about it through music.

Do you think hip-hop has struggled to break free from its foundational principles, or are they still what define the art form? Is it time to let go a little now and allow the younger generation to draw their own definitions?

Yeah, yeah, but unlike any other art form, hip-hop artists tend to stay fresh and move on. The hip-hop genre’s mentality has changed. The business is a beast, so it definitely pushes you away from feeding the music business the longer you’re in it. But with hip-hop artists the whole thing is competitiveness and staying fresh. So that competitiveness makes an artist want to continue to prove that he’s number one, no matter how old he gets, until that time comes when it’s obvious that it’s time to stop.

I was lucky enough to speak to Phife when A Tribe Called Quest came out here late last year and he was kind of talking about the role the industry model and its income streams were having in raising young hip-hop artists; that now, with syncing and licensing being one of the main income streams, rather than albums, young artists weren’t being encouraged to develop…

Yeah…

He kind of likened it to how some NBA teams are drafting kids straight out of high school instead of allowing them to learn the game on the college circuit, which I thought was a kind of cool analogy.

It’s the problem with the music business as a whole. It’s not just a hip-hop thing. It was happening before there were any hip-hop records around; it’s just more obvious now. Once a record company is done with you, they’re done with you. They don’t care about letting a new artist create their own identity, they’d rather to make a new artist exactly like what’s already out there and what’s already hot.

So it’s a business and it’s unfortunate that it is that way because there are so many talented artists who don’t have careers anymore or who’ve been pushed out of the business by greedy businessmen. The difference with hip-hop artists today is they’re thinking like businessmen and it’s important they do that. It’s important that hip-hop artists own their own record companies and someone like Phife can own their own radio station. It takes a lot of work and it ain’t easy, but we have to grow our business minds now because we know what happens to artists in this shady business.

When you look back to Illmatic – this 39-minute joint from when you were barely in your twenties – do you see the enduring response to that record as a blessing or a curse? There’s that phenomenon in music that when someone creates an incredible debut, everyone just wants you to make the same record over and over again. How do you get your head around that record and the response to it all these years later?

I’m very proud of that record. I mean, it’s my first record and it made an incredible impact on hip-hop, the hip-hop game and myself, and I appreciate all the love I got from that album. But the answer is no, no I don’t think about anything that is still said about that album or about what I do now. Because in five minutes that album will just be an old album to a new generation of people in the world.

There’ll be new Illmatics, they’ll be new… I’m not saying there’ll be new Illmatics, let me take that back, but there’ll be records that make you forget the significance of Illmatic. So if you’re one who gets caught up in what people are saying, time will pass you by and before you know it, you’ll be forgotten. You’ve got to keep growing because it makes no sense to get caught up thinking about something that, in five years from now, only a select few people will remember anyway. Because there are thousands of new things happening in the world.

So I have to grow. Every artist has to grow, and I pay attention to those artists who do grow and do move on.

Dan Rule

Via The Vine

Jay-Z Signs DJ/Model Harley Viera-Newton to Roc Nation


Jay-Z is a smart dude by signing Harley Viera-Newton as she can double as model and a Dj. Interesting