Unabashedly declaring Little Dragon as my favorite group out right now.
I haven’t really had a favorite group or a band or an artist for that matter that I have felt this much in a loooong while so it is a really big deal for me.
The homies and I went to the Little Dragon show this past Wednesday at The Independent over in Frisco and damn if it wasn’t the most spiritual experience I’ve had in a long while. It’s Friday now and I’m still on a high from the show.
Yukimi Nagano’s voice is so powerful and her stage presence and energy on the stage transforms you from spectator into participant. She jumped into the crowd and starting giggin in the middle of the audience space & got the docile folks in the middle more into it. From then it was on! At one point towards the very end of the show she damn near went horizontal in mid-air and landed face first onto the stage…and kept going! Yukimi was definitely a performer possesed on Wednesday night. I can’t say enough about the band of Erik, Frederick, and Hakan who provide a backdrop that never actually plays the background. Yukimi’s voice & all of their instrumentation together blend into an atmospheric evironment that completely envelopes the entire venue. I’m sorry, i’m not going to go back and edit, I’m just going to let myself ramble like a starstruck fan because honestly I can’t remember a time that I’ve been this excited about music or musicians, and for that I will allow myself to come across like a blabbering screaming TRL fan standing outside with a sign. I was extra juiced when somebody at the same show posted some videos of it on youtube, and that’s the reason for this post. My first post since August if anyone besides me is counting.
And the CROWD was dope as fuck as well! Easily twice as many people than the show in May. I think the band was definitely appreciative of the exuberant folks clapping, screaming, yelling, dancing, and smiling. I damn near drove down to Santa Cruz to see them at The Rio where they’re playing tonight.
Little Dragon GOES!
Test @ The Independent 11/4/09 -
After the Rain @ The Independent 11/4/09 -
Her screams hurt me soul so beautifully, ugh.
Jockin’ Hella Too Tough & Very Okay With That,
GMitch.
PS- Do people still write reviews of shows? Because this one definitely deserved a fuckin well thought out write up! Come on Colinrespose!…no pressure tho.
PPS- Shout out to komodoTV for posting these videos on youtube!
PPPS- Shout out to Adriel Luis for putting up Colin on this group who then put me up on them. Ugh, gotta love word of mouth.
I woke up with this song in my head, and this is the best I’ve felt waking up in forever so I’m posting this. The last song in one of my favorite movies (Top 5 comedies 4 me). [Skip the first 20 secs of vid, OR go ahead and watch the techno intro if you'd like]:
As I stand on the precipice of death
My perspective is enormous,
G.
PS – Just for the fuck of it -
Let’s Duet ft. Kristen Wiig
Hella Mad I missed the ‘Cox Around America Tour’ lol.
[Again man, try gettin the song for real, cuz youtube makes the shit sound not as good, and i aint computer saavy nor patient enough how to put on the song another way.]
I always wait for those songs where Jada can get on a beat and display his lyrical profenciency as “i” believe it was meant to be shown off (who am i of course, simply a fan of his skill). Not only does Jada rip this shit to shreds he just uplifted me for the day as i “keep tryin” to do my thang and stay motivated and inspired in life.
It’s funny, i feel like hella people think Avery Storm is a corny half talented hook singer, but i seem to keep hella feelin the hooks he lays down, so maybe (probly) i’m hella corny too or else people are just hatin’ and trippin’ a little too hard, which ain’t that unusual in this day and age. Too little time to hate is what i say.
Jada’s new album was originally titled “Kiss My Ass,” but the extra BEEZY ass record execs (“suspects”) made him rename it. Ass can even be said on t.v. now & an artist can’t use that word in an album title…bullshita. So, “The Last Kiss,” it is. This is not titled because this is Jada’s last album, but rather because as he tells it, the “Kiss” theme of all his previous solo album titles has run its course. I feel that. Good idea, time to start fresh doggie.
I like a bunch of the songs on the album, but there ARE some irkish ass tracks on that shit. Most obvious to me is (of couse) the track contributed by Swiss (cot-damn) Beatz, “Who’s Real.” Swizzy, who constantly gives people trash beats and even more terrible hooks keeps on going on this track. UGH. The Mary J. track sounded like the J.V. version of Nas & Keri Hilson “Hero.” But where those tracks and a few others slack off, songs like “Smoking Gun” with Jazmine Sullivan and “Cartel Gathering” with Ghostface & Raekwon are real dope. I hella like the “Rocking With The Best” with Pharrell song, but like i said before i sometimes fall hard for the cornball sounding ish. Jada still aint reached his peak, as he’ll tell you himself, but it’s another album that’s worth listening to. Alright let me stop frontin like i’ve actually reviewed an album before.
This is a tribute / dream feature post. This is one of my favortie youtube clips of all time. To me, it’s the shit like this that gets captured that makes youtube one of the tightest things ever. Enjoy!
Patrick Rizzo (Berkeley, CA) Smashin' Down Another Hill!
Lookin' Fly Noah. (couldn't find a picture of you skating, ha!)
JM Duran in a Fly ass speed suit. Flowers GO!
All I really know about downhill skateboarding is that it’s some of the hardest badass shit that i’ve seen with my own eyes. My homies Patrick Rizzo & J.M. Duran have been doing this professionally for a bunch of years now, travelling internationally to race competitavely while being sponsered by different skateboard companies like Sector 9. I am always in awe anytime I get the chance to do their thang, and it is just as inspirational to watch homies get to do what they love for a living.
I just wanted to shout out the homies Patrick & J.M. (and the homie Noah Sakamoto whom I just met over the summer who is also incredibly dope and raw at this shit!) for holding it down like GRAVITY on these steep ass muhfuckin’ hills. Here is some of the latest AMAZING footage of Patrick & Noah bombing down Claremont from the Grizzly Peak area in the Berkeley hills! Got Damn, peep the fuckin’ camera work, I’d of fallin’ off before I even started.
Invincible gracing the cover of Metro Times (Detroit’s weekly alternative for news, arts, culture, music, film, food, fashion and more).
I can’t claim to know a lot about Oakland Unity High School or Invincible, but I did come across this video on youtube while I was trying to find songs from Invincible.
Invincible at Oakland Unity High School:
Invincible is a rapper from DETROIT, Michigan and like so many other incredible emcees that come outta the city made famous by their automotive factories, Eminem and J Dilla (whom I share a birthday with Feb. 7, holla), she puts words together in an incredibly beastly way. She’s also ’bout something, as she couples her emceeing with her activism. Listing, “Audre Lorde, Nina Simone, MC Lyte, Gil Scott-Heron, James Baldwin, Paulo Freire and the Detroit Summer Yoot” as some of her influences on her Myspace music page. It’s pretty inspirational to see aritists of her caliber putting their time and energy doing good work, like coming all the way out here to Oakland and leading workshops in schools, where she is also spittin’ fire about the Prison Industrial Complex as an incredibly destructive, corrupt, and inhumane institution and how it fucks up individuals as well as communities. I’ll let you decide what you think, I just wanna hear her album hella bad now. Here’s a video that displays how ridiculous she rips it.
Invincible: “Sledgehammer!” Official Video:
That shit’s DOPE.
Here’s to Hip Hop & Activism & 2008 bringing some Cold-Hearted Hot Stueyness,
G. Mitch
P.S. Shout to Paula for waking me up from napping (cuz i aint never sleepin) on Invincible!
P.S. Coming Soon… Senbei & Slavename Present: The Mitchell Report…dun dun dun…
Back up in this muhfucka like whoa! Got my car stolen, lost my phone, cable wasn’t working, but after two long months wit no internet in my new spot I finally hit up comcast and am currently online officially now…legally. To be honest, it’s been so long since i been on wordpress.com, the website went and changed on me and now i’m all confused and gotta relearn how to put pictures on and everything. But hey, since it’s only Colin, D. Scott, and maybe still Korillation that check up on this blog, i’m sure ya’ll love me enough to keep on reading despite the lack of media and flashy things that make blogs so cool in the first place. HA.
Now…With the monumental, life altering, brain bursting, organ churning, world on the edge of it’s collective seats election just hours away…what better time to be back up in here postin like this, am i right? HELL YEAH. That was a rhetorical question.
But I am posting NOT about the day that may or may not change my outlook on life forever (too dramatic?), but about something that i just saw on HipHopDX that just made me incredibly giddy. I am just waaay too much of a hip hop nerd i think, but i like that kind of nerdiness though, but it was a video featuring one of my favorite rappers in the “game”: Lupe Fiasco. I would just come out and tell you what the video is about, but it’s just so much more exciting letting him tell it for himself. So here goes the link, I hope the video works. HOLLER!!!
Usain Bolt is a new hero of mine. He just smashed his own world record in the 100m last night in Beijing. While the Olympics takes nationalism & patriotism and injects them with BALCO, the beauty of watching athletes accomplish impossible feats, shatter world records, and obtain titles like the “fastest person the world has ever seen,” is some pretty dope ass shit.
Usain Bolt not only put it down by running the 100m in 9.69 seconds, the first human to ever crack the 9.7 second mark, he also did it with an awe inspiring amount of swag. He was so far ahead of the rest of the field halfway through the race that he looked to the right and proceeded to turn his palms toward the sky and then pound his chest triumphantly. That was a classic moment in the long history of Swagger. In a moment of swag that would make even Jay-Z seem regular, Bolt was dancing before during and after the race. His exuberance and excitement in the moment probably even cost him hundreds of a second, but that type of shit is an afterthought when you see someone loving the moment the way Bolt was.
There is something really empowering and uplifting (and this could just be me, but I doubt it) to watch when someone coming from a country with such rich history and culture and becomes the representative hero of the day like Bolt just did in Beijing. Usain Bolt is the most famous Olympic athlete out of Jamaica since Malik Yoba, Doug E. Doug, Leon, and that other dude bobsledded to gold medals in Cool Runnings! “Jamaica, we got a bobsled team!”
“I’m feeling very Olympic today” ~Cool Runnings
The saddest part about the whole feat is that it was not even televised in the U.S. NBC’s coverage has been pretty racist, patriotic (of course), and terribly announced. Bob Costas and others have been constantly belittling and demeaning of countries around the world and simultaneously deepening my understanding of why the world hates Amerika in all of it’s arrogance. Had an American had a fighting chance at all, the 100m sprint, likely would have been one of THE most watched events of the olympics. But alas the hometown favorite, Tyson Gay, was unable to qualify for the finals, due in large part to an injured hamstring. Thus, as a consequence, NBC refused to televise the 100m sprint, one of the events known for creating heroes and putting people onto Wheaties boxes.
None of this takes away from Bolts brilliance. In 9.69 seconds Usain Bolt, a 22 year old sprinter out of Jamaica, was able to inspire me and uplift me through watching what he accomplished in individual sport. This is why I love sports (and hate how they are used for propaganda). Congratulations and thanks to Usain.
Swag Hall of Fame inductee, I’m nominating Usain Bolt.
peace.
*PS- Drea, if you read this, you gotta let us know how Bolt is being talked about in Jamrock and if the homie got a billboard or something!*
I ain’t posted in an extended amount of time, but on the bright side I got a B in statistics at Berkeley City College and so that means that I am almost through with this bachelor’s degree in American Studies from UCSC so I’m pretty damn juiced.
Anywho, I figured the next post I would do would actually have NOTHING to do with statistics and everything to do with posting my first segment of “Dream Features.” Sir Mix-a-Lot is the first to receive this illustrious honor of musicians whom, if I was able to ask politely for anyone to be on a song with, I would definitely have to pick them.
Sir Mix-a-Lot is a multi-platinum recording artist who was most prominent in the late 80s and early 90s. Everyone knows Mix-a-Lot from the classic “Baby Got Back” cut that dropped way back in 1992 off his album Mack Daddy. An ode to the female posterior, “Baby Got Back” is still spun in clubs around the country. It’s one of those songs that got picked up by pop culture and they kind of just beat it into the ground with redundancy to the point of making it kind of a joke and a song that frat boys nationwide I’m sure get a kick out of. In all seriousness though the video was pretty damn funny with the mountain booties and all that ish. The song itself while certainly rooted in misogyny and patriarchy actually did address certain pressing issues within mass media, hip hop and rap vs. rock & roll, such as voyeurism (“Oh my god! Becky look at her butt. It is soooo big!”/ “Even white boys got to shout!”), and standards of beauty (“So Cosmo says your fat/Well I ain’t down wit that!”).
Sir Mix-a-Lot though I think deserves an incredible amount of respect. For one, he was able to establish himself as a platinum artist in the late 1980s and early 1990s while being from the relatively obscure hip hop region (at the time) of Seattle, Washington. Those were the times when if you were a rapper on the West Coast then you HAD to be from either Los Angeles or The Yay. AND, 4 years previous to the international ubiquity of “Baby Got Back,” his dropped his classic slumper, “Posse On Broadway” on his album Swass (what a dope album title). Posse On Broadway has to be one of the most famous (at least within a hip hop historian frame of mind) songs in the history of hip hop. It’s pioneering sounds was part of the revolutionary impact of the 808 drum machine and the west coast influence on hip hop culture and rap music.
The slappin’ ass 808!
Mr. Mix-a-Lot was RAW as fuck, and going back and listening to them joints like Posse on Broadway make me wish that it was hella easy to just call a person up and ask them to hop on a song. If that was at all possible I would with the swiftness for sure be hollerin’ at Sir Mix-a-Lot. He brought to his music an INCREDIBLE amount of energy, swagg, intellect, understanding of music, lyrics, and honesty. He is definitely an All-Star Legend in my book, and if there was a rap video game he would definitely be one of those secret legendary characters you unlock and can play as once you beat the game!
(Sidenote: Me and Chris were just talking the other day and this brilliant question came up, “Why doesn’t Hip Hop have a hall of fame???” Jay-Z, Russell Simmons, Diddy, and some other people need to get their acts together and front the necessary funds to make that shit happen!).
But like Colin says, “Like Snoop says…” Back to the lecture at hand…
**Sir Mix-a-Lot if you by chance come across this post my email address is getatmefolks@gmail.com and my name is Greg!!!
When you take your next shot of whatever you’re taking a shot of make sure you cheers at least one of those shots to SIR MIX-A-LOT!
This is one of my favorite songs ever and i just found out that there was a video for it. We knocked this song, DJ DMD – “Go Back Home,” and Devin – “See What I Can Pull,” everyday of the 2001 summer…ON AN ACTUAL MIXTAPE THAT I MADE! Remember mixtapes! That’s what’s up. Be prepared for lengthy misogyny on the latter two.
We fucks with that Screwed Up Click, Devin, and H-Town in general, indeed.
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