Oh yes, and let me not forget to thank the lovely peeple at Upper Playground for welcoming us to Austin with a fantastic package filled with tasty shirts and stickers!  You can find us engaging in our shenanigans as official Upper Playground correspondents all this week, and a shiny lil short film about the whole extravaganza right after.  Yeeee!

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Still one of my favorite emcees out, Denizen Kane sits down with Visual Crunch to discuss his new album, Brother Jin’s Journey to the West.  Okay, back to work.

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How ironic is it that the homie Bambu is putting out a video for a song called “Slow Down,” after clearly establishing that he can put out shit much faster than I’ve been able to blog them?  Alas, the man is prolific beyond words.  This time your boy Prometheus Brown from Blue Scholars joins him which, all in all, creates a whooooole lot of FUNipino goodness!  Yes. Everything is about race.

Via Phatty

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one day, i’m a be like, “yeah, i use to live with Nobel Prize winning Chinaka Hodge.” and then i’m gonna be like, “she obviously drew inspiration from me living on her couch and eating her food and whoopin her ass in bones”…….too far??? too far. jk…about the bones. feels like that day is coming soon. as my former roomie, and all-time intellectual muse, i had the privilege to witness (no pun intended) some of the creation of Mirrors In Every Corner, and i must say, if you’re in the bay between Feb 25th and Mar 21st and have any free time…actually, even if you don’t have any free time, GO support iLL-homie Naka and mind expansion in general. directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, the new play will run at Intersection for the Arts starting tomorrow and be the shit forever. i’m so excited.

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Hellllllll yeah!  You know how long I’ve been waiting to use one of those upside down exclamation marks?¡?¡?¡!¡?!¡??¡¡¡¡!

Now first of all, I bet you didn’t expect to listen to an emcee from Milwaukee today.  Second, I bet you wouldn’t have expected one to be as raw as ¡Oye!, who recently dropped the free EP In My Mind (ah yes, we do love FREE).  Fantastic delivery on the mic, dope storytelling…I love it.  And to top it all off, it features our iLL-homie Rafael Casal!  Here’s the title track:

¡Oye! “In My Mind”

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the muzaks coming out of our homie circle lately!  I hope you do too.  Make room in your hard drive, here it comes:

Click HERE to download

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The people of Boston’s Sonnymoon are sweet, down to earth, and possess that rare spark that can only be described as genius undiscovered.  To catch an act in this moment, where the balance between amazing and personable is reached, is great to see.  I co-sign this bunch all the way.  If you haven’t copped their album Golden Age, do so NOW.

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It’s no secret that I’m quite into this Janelle Monáe lady.  Back in ‘07 it was her EP Metropolis: The Chase that soundtracked iLL-Lit’s first “tour” (which consisted of like 4 dates in a row in Southern California so we were like “6 hours away for more than one night? TOUR!” And besides her music displaying a sound that was fresh and much-needed, I was quickly drawn in by the philosophy held by her and her crew, the Wondaland Arts Society. “Imagination Inspires Nations,” read the hundreds of campaign posters wildly waved around at her first shows.  And like a good campaign, the word spread and two years later she returns with Metropolis: The ArchAngel, now armed with a Grammy nomination, major label support, a much richer live show, and an exponentially larger fanbase. Even still, what I admire most is her steadfast commitment to her message, in spite of the dramatic changes that have occurred around her.  Shortly after she was signed to Bad Boy, her Wondaland colleague Mitchell A. Martian told me that it was only after being sure that she maintained full creative control over her work that she agreed to the record deal – Wondaland takes care of virtually everything artistic, even down to the mastering and marketing ideas.  And so last week with the release of not one but two new tracks, I was pleased to be greeted by my inbox with a familiar piece from Wondaland that serves more as a call to action than a commercial:

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http://www.vimeo.com/7317193

During one of my last days in the Bay, I had the pleasure of appearing in Hopie Spitshard’s video for her single “Yummy.” Laced in a full getup complete with goggles, I was sure I would be the weirdest looking dude there…and then Del the Funky Homosapien showed up.  Now, I’m not going to be so quick to acknowledge that this guy is stranger than me, but I will admit that never in my right mind would I come up with Hopie’s twisted idea of turning a rapper into a cake and eating it alive…I HATE CAKE!  Yes, it’s true.  If I were a fat kid and 50 Cent tried to compare his love for you to my love for cake, you could quite confidently conclude that he’ll pass you off at the end of weddings and birthday parties.  Anyway, check out my split second cameo.  HOPIE SPITSHARD!!

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http://www.vimeo.com/9434728

Oh shit I want one of those shaker thingies!  And even though I’ve probably insulted entire civilizations by calling that shaky thingie a shaky thingie, you know exactly what I’m talking about and that’s all that matters.  So head on over to the Elbo Room tonight where Blitz the Ambassador, Martin Luther, and the Park will perform that one thing where you sing and rap and bang on stuff that makes noise and then people go buck wild!!

Hit the jump for details.

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And nary other earthly maiden shall I hanker after.

Janelle Monáe ft. Big Boi “Tightrope”

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