NOW HEAR THIS

Spring Gathering Interviews

Alex — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:34:51 +0000

I had the pleasure of interviewing a whole bunch of folks at this year's Spring Gathering headlined by Snoop Dogg. The videos are for BigBudsMag.com so its a lot of weed talk, but perhaps the other stuff we rapped about will show up in more videos later on.

Errthang shot and edited by Daylan Williams

TOMMY CHONG

SEN DOG OF CYPRESS HILL

LOS RAKAS

Find the flame.

Alex — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 07:45:39 +0000

I've been plant sitting a money tree for the past couple weeks. Over the last few days, I've been trying to figure out why a select few leaves have been turning brown. I'm pretty good with plants and have been giving it the right about of water and sun. So what gives? Well, tonight I realized that my girl, who loves tea candles, sometimes puts one below the plant at night. Though the flame is tiny, apparently its enough to cook the leaf a lil. Problem was that I only noticed that the leaves where dying during the day...when there was no candle.

The point is that like growning a plant, building a career takes proper care and attention. Even when you think you are doing all the right things, there is always the possibility that actions that you or your team do, with the best intentions, could be burning things up a bit.

video | Iyeoka - Simply Falling

Alex — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 04:28:54 +0000

We've been workin on this for a minute and are psyched to release it.
Editing by Sal Fullmore.
Bass cameo by yours truly.

Best Quotes from NMS Day 2

Alex — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 04:53:18 +0000

Day 2 of the New Music Seminar LA was pretty solid. My hat is off to Tom Silverman and all of the staff who organized and ran it. In his closing remarks, Tom mentioned that not a single person who worked or spoke was paid, it was all volunteers. Not even he himself make money off of the event. Personally I think thats pretty remarkable.

Rather than run through a play by play of the talks and topics I thought a collection of quotes I jotted down could better serve as the highlights.

10 Take-aways from the New Music Seminar Day 1

Alex — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 03:30:16 +0000

Today was the first day of the 2011 New Music Seminar in LA. It was a packed house (hotel) full of peeps from just about every nook and cranny of the music biz. The heavy hitters on the stage were Tom Silverman (Tommy Boy & founder of NMS), Michael Doernberg (Reverbnation), Eric Garland (Big Champagne), Courtney Holt ( Pres., Myspace Music), Jay Frank (Sr. VP Music Strategies, CMT), Pete Edge (A&R Pres., J Records), Craig Kallman (Chair/CEO, Atlantic), Ron Fair (Chair., Geffen), James Diener (CEO, Octone/A&M) and Cal Nyantakyi (A&R, RocNation), among many other key industry players.

If you weren't able to attend and don't want to shell out the 50 bones for the video, here are my Top 10 Take-aways from the day:

video | A-Trak at the DJ Hero 2 Premier

Alex — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 20:50:03 +0000

Soren Baker and I caught up with A-Track at the premier of DJ Hero 2 to discuss what the game and the DJ means to Hip Hop.

Foundations & Idea Bricks

Alex — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 18:22:26 +0000

All successful businesses, products, projects and artists have a foundation.
Most unsuccessful ones think they have a foundation.
The problem with thinking that you have a foundation is that foundations aren't built with thoughts, they are obvious, concrete and can be ran into; figuratively or physically.

One of the major problems is that people often think they are building a foundation by having meetings, conference calls, spreadsheets and discussing "next steps." Those may be an important part of designing a foundation early on, but they certainly do not build it.

Foundations are built with things that have shipped, been done, and decisions that have been made.

If you are building the foundation for a house, you can't pour idea concrete or place idea bricks and expect anything solid to come out of it. Bricks aren't made of thoughts, discussions or ideas, they are made of clay (or ceramic or a number of other materials) which is then molded, dried and heated. All actions.

If you are currently building a company, a project or yourself as an artist, think about the things you are doing as they relate to actually building a foundation. If you spend more time talking about building then actually building, you are probably just avoiding the fears that come with action. Do that and your foundation will never get built.

Enough with the meetings, go build your dream house.

Made In Heights - Winter Pigeons

Alex — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:26:02 +0000

Check the new side project from Sabzi (Blue Scholars).
He's teamed up with a singer by the name of Kelsey to produce this beautiful sonic 4 track treat.

DOWNLOAD | Made In Heights

video | Nyiko Beguin "Off the Ground"

Alex — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:22:14 +0000

New video from my bro. Directed by Will Trowbridge

Nyiko Beguin - "Off The Ground" from William Trowbridge on Vimeo.

Download the whole Colchester album here.

Freestyle | CiHi Da Prynce

Alex — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:01:42 +0000

This dude is nice.

spotted at nahright