Impatience

Pardon the temporary Stan-status, but the new Kanye jawn is jammin in my humble opinion... typically we'd wait for a nice crispy version to leak, let the rest of the blogosphere jock for a week or so, and then distribute as a footnote... but I'm a bit on thirstmode today. My only concern with this soon to be radio-killa (word to Dream) is that between this and TIP's Whatever You Like, an impending onslaught of rappers-turnt-sangas is soon to befall us at an ungodly rate. If the great vocoder crisis of 2008 is any example, I'm digging up my entire Jay & Nas catalogs and hibernating for the winter.

Kanye West - Love Lockdown (Live from VMA's)

Rave Rap Is Here To Stay

Still not sure on how I felt about the execution of the Sony Studios backlot performances at the VMA's last night, but TI's joint with Rihanna seems to be a banger on what seems to be a return to form with this month's Paper Trail...

Numa Numa Y'all.

(edit: RE-UP!!!)

This made my day

Well not really. School started today, so I have a new class of ruffians to tame. It was a great day, so you won't hear much about it, but I just read this article on Obama's response to Palin's attacks off Yahoo! News and thought David Axelrod's quote was nerd-hilarious.

"They're shedding an awfully lot of heat but no light," he said. "It almost defies the laws of physics."

BTW, watching an hour of the RNC did more to convince me to vote for Obama than the entire DNC. Mitt Romney's misleading and anachronous speech scared me cuz it was so smooth, most people prolly didn't realize how wrong it was. Huckabee was good though, even if I can honestly say I disagree profoundly with his political ideologies, dude's got swagger. Anyway, Axelrod's quote was friggin hilarious.

*Edit* blogger tells me that this is the 666th post (including the drafts that I never posted). EEK!

Barnum & Bailey Would Be Proud...

Hands down, the best video of the year. As long as rappers dont use this as an open invite to swagger jack...

Rebels with a cause?

Solange ft. Wale - #uck the Industry

Take It Or Leave It

New drops that I'm neither hating nor cosigning. Links are borrowed, click the album covers to download.







And I'm doing this jus cuz. Click the movie poster to download.

Don't even know if this is new or not

Keri Hilson - Do It
Keri Hilson - Return the Favor

Haven't listened to it yet, either. We're having a meeting at school and I'm bored. You get treats.

No Jacket Required

Tracks 1-9

Tracks 10-17

The long-awaited, much-anticipated complete release from The Paxtons. They just completed a successful promo tour in NYC this Labor Day Weekend and are poised to begin their world takeover. My unbiased review is that this is a monster of a mixtape, on par with that of any well-known rapper. Proof is in the fact that the whole mixtape takes two links. For more info (including promo tees!), be sure to check out www.paxtonavenue.com.

Take it and spread it.

In God We Trust

I respect Bill Maher cuz the dude's got balls to say what he feels to anybody. He's a fearless critic, and I agree with him on most things, but I definitely disagree with him on religion. A devout atheist, Maher made a documentary about the "phenomena" of belief in religion. It's sure to be an interesting, and perhaps painful, film to watch. Here's the trailer:



When I caught Maher's trailer, I was reminded of a movie I heard about several months ago in church. It's produced by Ben Stein, the guy from the Clear Eyes commercials and former Nixon speechwriter, about intelligent design. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Stein's film rejects the theory of evolution as one of the greatest scientific fallacies ever and advocates the idea of creationism.



It's heavy. I know.

Harlem on the Rise

Anyone within the radius of a Chinatown bus should be in Harlem this Sunday at The Paxton's mixtape release party. It's been a long time coming. Not too much blood and tears, but a lotta sweat has been put into this mixtape, and from the looks of things, it hasn't been for nothing. We're still releasing Members Only here on Tuesday, September 2nd, but you can catch the homies performing a number of tracks off the mixtape at the release party (and maybe even leave with a hard copy). It's Labor Day Weekend, no work on Monday, and New York City. It would only be better if I promised you Kate Moss was gonna be there doing blow off the clavicles of Jourdan Dunn. I won't promise you that, but I'm not gonna say it's not gonna happen either.

MEMBERS ONLY Listening Party @ MOCA Bar & Lounge
2210 8th Ave. (119th & Frederick Douglass Blvd.)
Harlem, NY
6-10PM

And to whet the palate, below are links to five tracks from the upcoming Members Only Mixtape. Some you've heard, some you haven't:

American Boy Remix
Bless U feat. A-Ko
U And Her
Be Right Back
Everything (You Are) feat. Jessica Neal

Dirty Pop

I'm not much for modern art, even less for popular modern art. Yeah, I heard all the brouhaha over Murakami this time last year when Kanye and Marc Jacobs put him in the minds of the proletariat, and I've seen much of his work, but I never really got it. Maybe I'm not metropolitan enough, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. That's not to say he sucks, cuz the cover art for Graduation was definitely dope, as were a lot of his other work, but maybe the inner revolutionary begged for more than naked men ejaculating and Louis Vuitton luggage.

Banksy, on the other hand, is a friggin G tho. If you're about the "scene," then you should have at least heard of dood and no, I'm not providing a bio for those who haven't. That's what google and wikipedia are for. Anyways, I respect the fact that Banksy is an iconoclast in the purest sense. Not only is his work subversive, he himself is subversive, maintaining anonymity when he could easily reveal himself and be an artistic megastar. He's the MF Doom of the art world, except Banksy would never show up in public, masked or not. Still, his work is far from anonymous and is irreverent and conscious in a way that makes you uncomfortable--and not in that Japanese porn-as-art kinda way--but in a way that forces you to confront the hypocrisy of the (post-)modern world. The cynicism draws upon what we've come to regard as familiar and then asks us why have we allowed ourselves to grow so numb as to call these things familiar. War, poverty, mass media, broken governments, big brother, capitalism, celebrity worship, obsessive consumerism... are you okay living like this?

That said, Banksy recently left his home in the UK to travel to New Orleans. But before he left America's modern-day Pompeii he left his own mark in signature fashion. Enjoy:









The first one with the girl and the umbrella is my favorite. He provides commentary on some of these on his website (along with a catalog of his work). And because a few of our readers are artists, (and since I'm a fan of Mad Men), I'll let Banksy get the last word:

For the 215er, Mazeltov.

Click the cover to download.

Asher Roth's breakout mixtape was released back in June after a surprising rise in popularity thanks a lot to his impressive version of "A Milli" and his unabashedly white, jewish, suburban flava. Add to that the cosign from two of hip hop's biggest men on campus, DJ's Cannon and Drama, and you have the guy everybody can't help but compare to Slim Shady. No, I didn't put you onto this dude first, mostly cuz I knew I didn't need to when he was immediately getting play on the big blogs and such, but that didn't mean I neglected to notice his talent. Still, hype kills, so take the time to come to your own conclusions. He's a good rapper, a solid talent, and one who seems to take the art seriously, which is not always true of suburban white kids. Click the cover to download the mixtape and below are a couple other joints I scratched up.

Asher Roth - I Love College
Asher Roth - Swing Your Rag Radio Freestyle

This is Philly

In other news, I'll be back and forth betwixt NYC and Philly the next few days, setting up my classroom and hollering at the homies. The Paxtons release party's in Harlem on Sunday. I'll try to post specifics sometime within the next 24 hours but now it's back to the grind. Adieu.

P.S. It's a Wale vid I neglected to post after this joint.

Veritas

Supreme's fall preview is available here. Only tee worth copping is the JFK one so expect ebay prices by next week. Outside of that, I'm happy cuz I needed a new pair of jeans. A lotta ppl love Supreme, a lotta ppl don't. Hype has a lot to do with both groups. Regardless, they have some great pieces at times. My regular fit 'preme jeans are my favorite jeans in my closet so I'll prolly jus cop those as long as inflation and hype haven't upped the price too much. Other than that, I'm broke, so anybody interested in copping me those oxfords and chinos, get at me.

Boobies

Some of you may have missed out on some of the media attention given to this new film starring Penelope Cruz and Ben Kingsley. While in the Bay Area, I got a chance to catch this joint. Here are a few reasons why you should do yourself a favor and do the same:

• Penelope Cruz
• Penelope Cruz's eyes
• Penelope Cruz's accent
• Penelope Cruz's acting
  
• Penelope Cruz's breasts
• Penelope Cruz's breasts
• Penelope Cruz's breasts

Ok, so maybe I've done a disservice in reducing a great film to the physical beauty of it's main actress, but after you see it, you may understand there was a deeper reason in my doing so. The movie is great--the dialogue leaves something to be desired at times though. It's based off a novel and the images used as metaphors carry this film, along with the emotional quality of Penelope Cruz's performance. Many people write off Penelope as just another Hollywood pretty face. However, Cruz is one hell of an actress. Her performance in Volver was outstanding and the subtlety of her performance in Elegy carries this film from start to finish. Yeah, it's got Dennis Hopper and Ben Kingsley, who happens to be a British knight, and they do good jobs, but Cruz is really the reason to watch this. And did I mention you see her boobs?

The movie is a limited release so it may not be showing near you--I had to go to the left coast to catch it--but if it's showing in your city, or you catch a bootleg on one of the internets, watch it.

Change We Can Believe In

John Legend ft. The Agape Choir - If You're Out There

Still playing catch up with ish that dropped over the past few days. Most stuff I'm not gonna post jus cuz, but joints like this deserve a post. Enjoy.

The Patriot

Download

The retail of that new Jeezy. Even though things tend to be left of center here, I will be the first to tell you that Jeezy's consistency is reason enough to be a fan. Who cares that his first two albums sounded the same? We knew it and still bumped it. Hard. Plus, his entrance onto the national scene was probably one of the first hints that darker days were ahead. The soundscapes are depressing, the lyrics stark--if Marvel Comics ever made a soundtrack to their Age of Apocalypse series, it'd be a full Jeezy album. As has become more frequent, this link is stolen, so it might be down already. If it's effed up, lemme know and I'll try to fix it, but since school's starting back up, I won't make any promises. Enjoy.

Blow it out your ass

Pepsi's the new generation? So I guess Bill O'Reily or the rest of Fox News aren't gonna make the hubbub about Daddy Yankee's endorsement as they did for Luda's. I'm back from the Wild Wild West Coast. Ya miss me?

Robot Frog Killa

Random as it may be, this might be the silliest ish I've seen this week... next to Ceasealeo's Ruff Ryders Workout tapes

Word to Garrett A. Morgan

Hopefully thanks to YH!SN... you've been jamming off this joint all summer. Video just dropped, much to my dismay since September is all but upon us but I really cant trip thanks to Mr. Stephens love interest in the clip.


Did I forget to mention that this masterpiece of video was directed by lil known Alan Ferguson, once responsible for lensing this classic by the senior Mr. Carter.