Tuesday, November 27, 2007
A Fly Guy's Music Videos - "Mr. A&R"
This music video is from me and my rhyme partner. The Last American B-Boy. The record is called "Mr. A&R." Its about our trials and tribulations we have gone through and are going through breaking into the music business; and how we feel towards certain label people we have sat across from at dinner tables, and office desks, etc. Check it out. FYI- if you are an artist who needs a music video shot, leave me a comment, and I will put you in contact with The Last American B-Boy. He also directed this video.
"...F*ck you Mr. A&R! F*ck you Mr. President! You ain't gotta listen to my demo never ever again..." -Rahsaan
Rapper/ Model
"Rapper slash model, f*ck you is the motto..." -Rahsaan from the song "LITTLE GHETTO BOY"
My two favorite things have got to be music and fashion. This is probably because they already go hand in hand with one another. In my junior year in high school I started a clothing line; myself and a partner of mine, IILLESTR8. What up Str8? We called it K.U.E. Gear (KUE is an acronym that means Knowledge + Understanding = Experience). The guys' line was abbreviated G-KUE (GQ) and the girls' line was abbreviated KUE-T (Cutie). I was into gear from back then and was even able to gain a little notoriety during my freshman year at Florida A&M University. But after a year or so I fell back on concentrated solely on musical interests. Three years ago, I wasn't doing much day to day; just studying theater at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, NY. I got an opportunity to go help out a friend of mine who was the marketing director for Mecca clothing at the time. She was basically running the whole department without any assistance, so I said, why not? At best, I could get some free clothes. Honestly, I didn't even realize Mecca was still around. I remember it was one of the brands I wore back in the 90's. It wasn't until I began working there that I found out one of the premiere urban brands, Akademiks, was actually owned by the same parent company. So I began my internship at Mecca in March '04. On my third day the design director informed me that he liked the way I carried myself, and told me there was an opening on the design team for me if I was interested. I weighed my options at that point; continue interning for free and going to theater classes three times a week, or get paid to do one of the things I have always had a knack for. Obviously I chose the latter. During my short tenure at Mecca I was able to achieve a lot. I've had designs I created shipped and sold in various stores across the country. Pieces I've done have been worn by cast members on HBO's The Wire. I was also featured in two ad campaigns both centered around a hip hop concept, as you see pictured above. I've been photographed by famed video director and photographer Dave Meyers and had an opportunity to perform in Las Vegas at the annual MAGIC Fashion Convention. I was also the sole model featured in the Mecca Holiday Look Book, of which 5,000 copies were distributed and used as marketing tools to sell the brand to buyers and a variety of department stores. After a year and a half, the company and I started having creative differences and I chose to leave my position up there. But it was still a valuable learning experience for me. I acquired wealthy of knowledge about how the fashion industry works on a number of different levels. After I've established myself musically, and I venture back into the world of fashion with my own brand, I will be in a better position to access certain things that were unattainable to me at 17 years old trying to expand a company in between track practice, homework, and trying to graduate.
Do You Know Jim Jones?
Many of you are familiar with the gentleman pictured on the left side. He is Jim Jones, of the Dipset collective. Artist, entrepreneur, label executive, and the list goes on. Click here to get the full scoop on him. The image on the right is that of the Real Jim Jones [birth name]. What many people don't know about this man is that he was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and a cult leader that took many followers from the United States and brought them to a makeshift village called "Jonestown" in the counrtry where i was born, Guyana.
He was responsible for one the most tragic mass suicides of our time. 908 people were coerced into drinking Kool-Aid laced with cyanide. From old to young, no one survived. The atrocities that took place in Jonestown has even been documented in the motion picture titled The Guyana Tragedy. At the time, my stepfather was an army helicopter pilot for Guyana's Defense Force. When I was younger, I remember him telling me the story of being the first person to reach Jonestown after everyone was dead. Flying over the camp, he could see bodies of babies, men, women, old & young sprawled out on top of each other like they had been dumped there from out the back of a truck. It saddens me sometimes to know that this occurrence is probably the one thing my country is most know for. Click here for the full story on The Real Jim Jones.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Black Friday
Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, where it is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season. Since Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States, Black Friday may be as early as the 23rd and as late as the 29th day of November. Black Friday is not an official holiday, but many employers give the day off, allowing consumers to get a head start on their Christmas shopping. Retailers often decorate for the Christmas season weeks beforehand. Many retailers open very early (typically 5 A.M.) and offer doorbuster deals and loss leaders to draw people to their stores. Although Black Friday, as the first shopping day after Thanksgiving, has served as the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season at least since the start of the modern Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, the term "Black Friday" has been traced back only to the 1970s. "Black Friday" was originally so named because of the heavy traffic on that day, although most contemporary uses of the term refer instead to it as the beginning of the period in which retailers are in the black (i.e., turning a profit).
RAHSAAN - GOD'S GIFT MIXTAPE
As part of my new blog launch, I've made my new mixtape GOD'S GIFT available for FREE download from zshare. With the exception of one freestyle over an industry beat (track #5 "Dear Rapper"), everything else on the mixtape is all original material. Each time i do a mixtape, I go into the project treating it as if I were recording a real album, so that you, the listener, can recognize the quality and caliber of the material. On this mixtape I have production from a handful of accomplished producers from The Marksmen, like NEEDLZ (50 Cent, Fabolous, The Game); He produced tracks 10, 15, 17. Track #3 was produced by Baby Grand (Jadakiss, LLoyd Banks), and Calvo the Gr8 (Ciara) produced tracks 2 & 13. I also have a couple up & coming producers supplying some heat, like my homey Melo-X from Flatbush, Brooklyn (track #21 - Gotta Luv It). As far as artist features, I kept that to a minimum this go around, only recording with my older brother Sim-E, and my partner in rhyme, The Last American B-Boy. I titled this mixtape GOD'S GIFT, not because I feel like I am God's gift to Hip Hop, rather the music that I'm able to create, and the emotion my records evoke from an audience, is definitely a gift that God gave me. So why not share it? Hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed creating it. Feel free to leave comments.
Why [The F*ck] Did I Get Married?
Yeah, I went to see this movie. Two reasons: 1. To support another achievement in African-American filmmaking where none of the characters are portrayed as a drug dealer, a gangster, a dopefiend, uneducated, whorish, or any other forms of negative imagery that plagues the plethora of talent in our community; and 2. To possibly find my own answer to the question I, along with everyone else in my immediate family was asking me, “Why did I get married?”
Let me start with a brief synopsis of the movie. If you have yet to see it for yourself, it’s a story about four married couples having difficulty maintaining their relationships in today’s times. Over the course of a weekend getaway, secrets begin to unravel among the couples and each start to question the authenticity of their marriages. They all struggle with issues of commitment and questions of infidelity while dealing with betrayal and searching for forgiveness.
Now, here’s a little background on me. I used to be married. Yup, You read that correctly. MARRIED; with a ring and everything. I was engaged at 24, to my girlfriend of four years, married at 25 for five solid months, and then came the separation for a year and a half.; then recently, the DIVORCE. May 28th, 2005 was the day I got married. I have had the past two and a half years to reflect on exactly what went wrong with my marriage, and at 24, why the hell did I decide to want to get married in the first place.
In a nutshell, I am typically a difficult man to be with (so I’ve been told). I’m an artist (rapper). I’m moody. As stubborn as a true Taurus can be. I also have a tendency to become overly defensive when I feel I am being spoken to condescendingly. I often have difficulty putting forth the same kind of effort I put into my music, into anything else. I’ve sacrificed many things for the focus I put into my craft (i.e. college, jobs, my marriage). But it’s not all bad things. I’m a great listener. I’m big on the importance of family. I’m kind-hearted deep down and respectful when talking to others. But around this time last year I started to ask myself if the flaws I possess were serious enough for my wife to not want to stay married to me. Nobody’s perfect; furthermore, it’s not like we got married and I changed into this person she never met before. I was the same way prior to she and I ever getting involved. So what was it, I ask myself. Did I spend too many hours in the studio and not enough time at home? Did I perform in too many shows around New York City. She was working 12 hour days herself so it’s not like she was around the crib anyway. I’m trying to be very calculated in the things I put in this write-up. I’m just letting the words flow. And once I finish I do not plan on going back to edit. So I may say things that a person may feel should have been left out, but f*ck it. This is me. Part of my artistry is this level of openness and freedom I have.
That same talent might have played a detriment to my marriage in retrospect. I remember we were in the height of our separation. Sleeping in different rooms in the house, her in the bedroom, me in the basement; passing each other like strangers in the hallway. It was unfathomable how we had gotten to this point. So one day I did what I do best I wrote a song about it. I titled it Out of My Life. In the record I mention topics of her cheating on me, on how fortunate we were that we had yet to have children before sh*t got fu*ked up. I spoke on the disdain I felt she had towards my older brothers and mother, and how she viewed me with the same lack of respect she viewed her father. I remember the night I sat her down in the studio and played the record for her. I gave her forewarning that she was going to hear things that may upset her. It wasn’t my intention to be malicious with it. But she knew that when it came to writing music, or anything for that matter, I seldom hold back. Needless to say, her reaction was less than pleased. And I think that must have been one of the deciding factors in her not wanting to work things out with me (fyi, I opted of the separation to give ourselves time to figure out if we made the proper decision and if we should stay married. Her position was always that of, I don’t believe in separations. We either stay married or get divorced. That was the ultimatum). I moved out for about three months because living like mere ‘roommates’ was driving us both up the stress-wall. In that time she felt, I deserted her. I remember one day she told me, while asking for the address to send the divorce papers to, that she was more prepared to deal with me cheating on her, than me moving out and leaving her to deal with house issues. The latter was irreconcilable.
So there I am seated in this dark theatre with an acquaintance watching this movie I had promised to watch but had successfully dodged for 3 straight weeks. And as I sit there staring at these couples arguing back and forth I can’t help but zone out and reflect on the bullshit I went through. Various times I wanted to get up and walk the f*ck out. Not because it wasn’t a great movie. Tyler Perry did his thing, once again. But because I sit there thinking to myself, how could this female that I came with not understand why I told her I did not want to see this movie. Already being privy to the history of my marriage and all I dealt with, I assumed she would have been a little more conscious of what a movie like this would do to me, psychologically. But sometimes, people are just oblivious to certain things. What can you do?
There’s much more detail to this story; but I just can’t bring myself to write about it anymore tonight. It’s starting to hurt. Maybe I will make this a journal-themed entry and come back with more details another day. Who knows?
G4 Scott - The Real Esquire
This is my dude Scottie, aka G4 Scott, aka Fashion 101. We go back since high school days. He and I, along with Max-A-Mill and C-Gran, comprise the G4 Crew. We throw the most fashionable and creatively themed parties in Washington D.C. Just ask anyone in the DC metro area if they have ever been to the FASHION MONSTER parties at Mai Thai. More on that later though. What I really want to do is send congratulations to Scottie for passing the NEW YORK STATE BAR EXAM and officially becoming an attorney. Research will tell you that the NY BAR EXAM is one of, if not the hardest exam a law school student can take. Congratulations Scottie. Quite an accomplishment. 40/40 was crazy! Popping champagne, spitting corks at the waiters; the [G4] Fly Boys were in the building that night.
American Gangster x 4
by: A Fly Guy
The first time was for the opening day experience. The second time was to catch what I missed the first time. The third & fourth were the litmus tests to reassure myself that I wasn’t just an overzealous Denzel Washington fan. But was this movie really that incredible? Yes, all two hours and forty minutes of it. Six bullets let loose from the barrel before the title American Gangster finds itself rested on the widescreen, and I am completely drawn in. There was a plethora of superb screen actors that all played their roles to a “T”; the most powerful of course being Denzel Washington [Frank Lucas] and Russell Crowe [Ritchie Roberts]. You can almost smell the stench of un-bathed bodies lining the halls of dope houses, and Harlem street corners, succumbing to their desires for “Blue Magic.” The blaring horns of passing cabbies, and call outs of heroin-addicted females cat-walking down the avenues, boom back and forth across the theatre room; making you feel as though you have been jolted back to 1968. These young women go searching for someone, anyone who could come to their aid and supply them with that “fix.” These young mothers, sisters, daughters, finding themselves lost in their own addictions. Young black men who signed up to fight for a country where Civil Rights leaders were being assassinated, also found themselves victims of heroin addictions as a means of coping with the physical and psychological ailments of the Vietnam war. And here comes Frank Lucas; so unapologetic about his chosen profession. I was once heard Styles P, of the hip-hop group the LOX, describe himself as “a gangster and a gentleman.” I don’t think I have ever seen that ambiguity any more personified than in the performance Washington gives. Respectable to his mother; calculated with his speech; affirmative when talking business, these are the qualities Washington captures on screen. I almost forget at times that Frank Lucas was perhaps the most notorious heroin dealer this country may have ever birthed. Early on I find myself rooting for his character’s continued prosperity; ignoring his violent side; pushing the images of overdosing addicts to the back of my mind. I startle myself when I realize I am silently congratulatory as I watch images of his wedding. But without giving away too many details of the story, I will say, that success truly doesn’t last forever when your chosen career path is that of a criminal one. Overall, I give this movie the "FLY GUY CO-SIGN." It was brilliantly shot with 1970’s New York City as its backdrop. I wouldn’t be surprised at Academy Award nominations for both Washington and Russell Crowe for the work they did in this film; however, it would be nice to see an actor of Denzel’s caliber be awarded ‘best actor’ for roles such as “Hurricane” Carter, or Malcolm X. It seems the motion picture association finds the roles where he is depicted as a detriment to society, his most critically acclaimed performances. Why is that?
That aint’ ‘Gangster!’
Do You Know Oliver North?
"...blame Oliver North and I ran CONTRA, I ran contraband that they sponsored..." - Jay-Z on "Blue Magic"
If you pay attention to lyrics you may have heard Jay-Z place blame on Oliver North for certain decisions he made. Click here to find out exactly why.
"...do you fools listen to music, or do you just skim through it..." - Jay-Z on "People Talkin"
Poppin' Tags
The Poppin' Tags portion of my blog is dedicated to spotlighting any particular item I feel meets the requirements of being categorized as FRESH. Whether its clothing, footwear, or accessories, if its in this section, I've either copped it, rocked it, or have been so busy getting fresh in some other sh*t, that I haven't had the opportunity to get to it...yet! This week's Poppin' Tags spotlight shines on Real Real Genuine
Real Real Genuine is a new project, a purveyor of fine apparel and accessories. As a brand it acts as an umbrella for collaborative projects with respected individuals and brands. As a business it gives a platform for emerging talent and is a destination for truly limited and exclusive denim & tees, sweats & jackets, shoes and sneakers, watches, leather goods and scents.
Real Real Genuine is a new project, a purveyor of fine apparel and accessories. As a brand it acts as an umbrella for collaborative projects with respected individuals and brands. As a business it gives a platform for emerging talent and is a destination for truly limited and exclusive denim & tees, sweats & jackets, shoes and sneakers, watches, leather goods and scents.
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