Time Capsule

@ The Barbecue

2009-07-16T23:19:00.000-07:00

Just a little something I compiled for a barbecue bidding my peoples farewell. 3+ hours of summertime treats for you and yours. This is a pretty large file so if you don't want to wait the download time feel free to just play it here.

May this music soothe the soul.

Download (right click + save link as)

US ship, choppers, shadow hostage captain, pirates

2009-04-12T10:08:00.000-07:00

"US ship, choppers, shadow hostage captain, pirates".

This is the headline to today's Huffington Post top article...

Excuse me but what the fuck does that mean? Is it even english? I'm not meaning to tear down the publication in any way, I'm just using this as an example. To be honest, I actually don't read the Huffington Post unless I get a link to one of their articles, but I know people who swear by it.

But I digress.

What has happened to our language? We get smaller and smaller sound bytes and sentence fragments that are supposed to resemble a language in a computer age. There is a scene in the book 1984 where the characters are discussing a fictional language called newspeak. It is described as the only language in the world whose vocabulary is decreased every year.

I see examples of this kind of thing everywhere. There is a line in Kanye West's lead single off the Graduation album, "Can't Tell Me Nothing" has a line that goes,

don't ever fix yo lips like collagen/ to say something where you gon' end up apolloging.

What?! Apolloging?! That shit is unnacceptable. We can't fall for the okey-doke folks. Don't believe the hype! Reading IS Fundamental.

Wait til I get my money right...

Rarity Revisited

2009-03-03T08:29:00.000-08:00

This video is so damn funky... The group Stark Reality performing "Acting, Thinking, Feeling" on the Say Brother public television program from the late 1960s. This clip was released on Stones Throw's "Stones Throw 101" DVD.

Sometimes when I stumble across music like this being performed on public access television, it makes me wonder about a time in the future when record collectors will make it a point to go back and recover all of the lost hip-hop recordings that we put out. Will there be an increased value placed on home videos of Redman freestyling in his cousin's backyard? or even this?

Who knows? But its fun to dream...

Hip Hop and the Oral Tradition

2009-02-18T23:42:00.000-08:00

First Broadcast - 3/13/2008

A proven cultural tradition of diasporic cultures, We take a look at how the hip-hop music's foundation on the sample continues to carry the torch. Includes a personal retelling, of a classic story.

Hip Hop and the Black Experience

2009-02-18T23:40:00.001-08:00

First Broadcast 12/28/08

A conversation with a white co-worker begs the question "Is there a common Black Experience?" This show takes a look at the idea of identity concerning a group of people portrayed as monolithic in Hip-Hop.