The Audacity of Dope

It’s so dope to see the homey Shad blowing up all over the world these days.  Right after Yeezy, SK is my second favorite artist out these days, and above all, him and his team are just good, cool folks.  Peep the video above to see clips from his recent performance in Cologne plus some interesting interview excerpts.

I’ve been watching Hov make the rounds to damn near every media outlet in NYC over the past week, but I wasn’t really sold that I wanted to check out Decoded until this interview at the New York Public Library.  It’s almost 2 hours, so it’s certainly long, but if you can watch it, I highly recommend it.  There’s really good, insightful commentary from Jay, Cornel West, and Paul Holdengraber throughout.

Shout to Shad’s manager, G, who sent it over and summed it up nicely:

There is a video link below.  It’s not short.  But it’s great.

It reminded me about how important the work that we do is.  We are quite literally changing the future.

For the remaining history of this world, people who love really good food, will undoubtedly stumble upon the creative output of our friends.  I think that’s f*cking incredible, and I often forget…to remember it.

It was great to revisit Jay-Z as an artist…and it was great to see Cornel West attempt to evoke just a bit more enlightenment in a person who he clearly has a ton of respect for already.

This video also made me realize how important it is to have a Cornel West Uncle at the dinner table.

Anyways, here she is.  Dig in someday.

Now…who’s gonna cop Decoded for me for Christmas?

Just like C-Sick last year, the winner of the last Red Bull Big Tune beat battle got to choose a legendary MC to get in the studio with and Frank Dukes chose Ghostface.  I heard some hilarious stories about this trip to L.A. from behind the scenes, but peep the beginning of part 2 for a brief example.  Ghost is crazy.

Yessir!  It’s been a long time coming, but Shad and crew are bringing one of the best albums of the year, TSOL, to the US for an official release on Decon Media on October 5th.  Here’s a little video they shot to introduce SK to the US, but I mean, if you’re on TAOD, you’ve been up on him…right?

Support real art and good people!

Greatness.

On last week’s SNSS, we started talking about our favorite MC’s of all time and my answer for the last decade plus has always been the late, great Big L.  I did mention that there might be another artist overtaking L in my personal list, and I think it’s actually already happened.  Kanye is hands down my favorite artist of all time, throughout any genre.  The music has been dope from day one and the man is absolutely hilarious with everything he does.  If you haven’t seen Aziz Ansari’s bit about ‘Ye, he nails it perfectly.  Dude is just so excited about everything, it’s comedy.

With the new album finished (and no longer called Good Ass Job), ‘Ye has started making the rounds to media outlets to get the buzz going.  While the above trip to the Rolling Stone office was great, the highlight of the week has clearly been his entry to the Twitterverse.  You have to follow this dude…it’s incredible.  Peep it – @kanyewest.

Be prepared for a lot of Kanye talk on TAOD.  You’ve been warned.

ManifestoTV caught up with Shad for his recent Toronto performance and also shot a quick interview with the dopest MC out right now.  Stop sleepin’!

If you’re like me, you’ve been listening to Drake’s Thank Me Later album quite heavily the past few weeks, so you’ll probably also enjoy this interview with Semtex.  While they don’t break down every song on the album (I would have been particularly interested to hear the story behind “Karaoke”), there’s a lot of good info in here.  I did laugh at the “sounds like your parents played a big role in your life” question though.  Generally speaking, that’s pretty much what they tend to do.

You can also check out footage of Drake murdering our Summer Jam last night over on the KUBE site.  It was impressive to watch, thinking back to when we played him over 3 years ago on Sound Session.  I never would have anticipated his success to be this great, but it’s really ill to have the hottest rapper of the moment actually be dope.  Novel concept, I know.

My nerd crush on Ms. Pilloton aside (smart women FTW), this is awesome.

In short, she graduated from Berkeley trained as an architect, but after working a few years in “the real world” making conventional goods, she realized she wanted to do more.  At 26, she founded Project H Design, a non-profit created to put design innovation to better use.  Rather than focus on making money, Project H seeks “the triple bottom line: planet, people, & profit.”

As a post grad that’s been disillusioned with the rat race from time to time myself, I love that she took a chance and put her ideals first.  It’s actually not that different from our mindset with Sound Session…well, in terms of doing work you believe in, rather than “selling out” if you well.  Kudos to Emily and if you’d like to read more or become involved, check out their site.

Here’s a great presentation of hers from last year that explains things a little further:

Seattle people: it looks like they have a chapter here in the 206, so if you’re looking for some direction in life and have extra time on your hands, you know what to do.

Aw man…