The good folks over at Honey Magazine asked me to write about my experiences at this years South by Southwest Music Festival and of course I accepted. Check HoneyMag.com over the next week for the entries. Shouts to Shanel, Erika, Nicole and the rest of the Honey staff
(and yeah I couldn’t resist the opportunity to use the Nicki Minaj screenshot LOL)
ENTRIES:
When I first heard about what happened with the Earthquake in Haiti, I was pretty desensitized honestly. Being from New York, its so easy for us to not feel any personal involvement with things that go on around us, because its a part of our every day way we operate. I had family that suffered in Hurricane Katrina, so that was very personal for me. My father was supposed to be in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and I was in DC at the time, so those events were pretty personal also. The tragedy in Haiti wasn’t personal for me, until I realized that I had a friend there.
I’ve known Martine Cauthen through friends, and then through events that her and her business partners would throw that I attended. A Few months ago, Martine had a going away party; she was going to teach for a year at a school in Haiti. None of us knew at the time that Martine would become an eyewitness and personal news anchor to all who know her whenwe celebrated her going away. Martine survived the earthquake, and has since joined in the efforts in Haiti as a nurse. Her courage should be an inspiration to us all. I donated to Wyclef’s “Yele” foundation in hopes of contributing somehow to help Haiti get back on its feet, but my contributions are superficial compared to the true heroes of this story who are on the ground in Haiti as we speak dealing with the crisis that most of us are priviliged enough to only experience on CNN. I cant wait to see Martine on Thursday at her fundraiser and give her a huge hug. I know I may not be able to do much, but I’ll do whatever I can.
E
[Hit the jump for some of the pictures that Martine has posted post-Earthquake via Twitter]
Happy New Year! So New Years Eve has come and gone, Times Square has been cleaned up, and now everyone has to deal with the reality of the fact that the year that they could predict so easily before midnight on 12/31/09 is actually upon us. I brought in New Years with my family as always, and then headed out after midnight to a nice calm evening. What better way to bring the new year in than with the people that you care about.
Anyway, I jsut wanted to take a second to let you all know that I appreciate each and every one of you for your support, love, hate, misunderstanding, understanding and whatever other interaction we may have had through my music in the past 12 months. As you probably already know last year was pretty interesting for me and the whole Y&I team as we set out to make our mark on this thing that we call society. An EP and one unpredictably eerily timed mixtape later and here we are in 2010 with a chance to build on everything that we accomplished in the past year.
I have a lot planned for the new year but in reality planning is nothing without execution, so I’d like to thank everyone that made last year possible: Tory, Renny, Woody, Puma, Olivia, Paul, Denitria, Chase and all of the Y&I extended family circle as well. 2010 is here, and now we all have to continue pushing to accomplish our goals and finally come face to face with our dreams…
Cheers to progress…
E
Any of you who follow me on Twitter on Saturdays should already know why. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that Tate Forcier is the real deal…so for those of you who may not be UM Alum, or fans of the Wolverines, or plan on converting soon, here are the words to a little song we’d like you to start getting used to hearing again…It’s called “The Victors” Oh yea, it’s been called the greatest fight song ever written…
Woody and I caught up with MADonly.com outside of XV’s party last week at Glass lounge to talk about Off the Wall and a bunch of other things, check it out:
Read full interview via HoneyMag.com
Shouts to Courtney and Shanel for coming through to the listening party last night also!
Sat down with Emilio Sparks last month after shooting the “Don’t Stop” video with Puma to talk about Lifestyles of the Young & Ignorant and the upcoming Off The Wall project. Check it out
Sat down with the homie Meka up at the Digiwaxx offices on Thursday to talk about the Off The Wall project as we get closer to its release next Monday. Via Digiwaxx
I remember having a conversation with my dude Mickey Factz last year and saying that my 2009 needs to look like his 2008 did. Then I remember in the very beginning of the year I wrote a letter to the year called “Dear 2009″ saying just how much I needed this year to be mine. In May I dropped the Lifestyles of the Young & Ignorant EP which was the beginning of what I’ve been calling The Evolution Process which is basically the evolution of my music in front of your eyes, and then I started working on Off The Wall in April with Woody as the second piece of my evolution process then everything changed on June 25th when Michael Jackson died.
This article is so crazy because I was in the XXL offices on Tuesday June 23rd playing the finished Off The Wall project for Rob Markman (Music Editor) and then 2 days later Mike was gone. Even further than that, I’ve deadass been trying to get in XXL since ESSOcentric dropped in 2006. I’m actually really glad that things worked out the way they did because I’ve really found myself as an artist more over these 3 years and I think the timing of this couldnt be any better with Off The Wall coming out on the 30th Anniversary of its original release and EVOLVED in progress…I gotta put this on here, even if its not the full scan of the article (which I’ll have soon) but until then go cop the magazine!!! VICTORY!!
I aint gonna lie, I check comments on blogs sometimes, and more often than not, I feel like the motives behind certain things that I may do get misunderstood. I even saw something said about this track that said that this isnt a race to be the first person to record over this track…
Nah you’re right, it’s not about that at all, but I’ve had a lot of things goin on around me recently that have kinda made me feel like I’m the bad guy no matter how good my intentions may be. So when I heard the track that Pharrell did for the soundtrack to the movie, it kinda perfectly matched how I was feeling at the time.
From the impending controversy with my Off The Wall project to the fact that I’m not trying to follow the mold of a “traditional” New York artist, to the fact that tryin to be successful takes me away from my family all the time…all of these things were on my mind, and I tried to put that all together in a way that was pretty easily digestible but still has some gems in there for those of you who like your verses to have some shit tucked away like easter eggs.
Do I apologize for it? NOPE. Do I give a fuck if it’s misunderstood? NOPE. Despicable Me. Fuck it.
E
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