Bieber Fever

I've had this song on replay for a while. And I wish I could make it stop :'(

Also posting the new Maxwell vid to even things out.

I love me a good mashup.

I know some people who absolutely hate mashups but for the most part I LOVE them. Mashups, random mixtapes, remixes, fusions of different genres, I eat up anything that fucks with the familiar. I'm not as forgiving with covers that are too faithful to the original version though, not that you can totally discern a cover from a remix sometimes. That probably doesn't make any sense but I'm just gonna run with it.

I'm a little late with this one (it came out around January), but I've been listening to it lately so I thought I'd share.

“Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers” by Wu Tang Vs The Beatles, produced by Tom Caruana featuring Wu-Tang acapella tracks mixed with samples from Beatles songs.

I'm sure a lot of people think messing with Wu-Tang's music is sacrilegious. And of course, you can say the same thing about die-hard Beatles fans . I myself must admit that I love The Beatles' songs but I prefer when they're performed by other artists /unpopular opinion. But what I like about this mix is that the sampling is done very subtly, which works well for me. I don't know if you can compare this to the execution of The Grey Album but for some cruising-in-the-beautiful-SD music? This will do just fine.

Download the .rar file here or you can hit me up for it

And for a little taste of it -

On Repeat

For the jazz-meets-hip-hop lovers

You likey? Well here ya go. (I suggest you check out more of okayplayer.com for more good ish)

Chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool

If you just want to listen to something super chill & easy on the ears, this might be for you.

Another OkayRoots production with The Apple Juice Kid. This time he brings along his band The Remix Project for their brand new album Mixtape. They did live instrumental interpretations of your favorite hip-hop tracks along with some of their favorites. The artwork was done by Dallas’ own Objektiv One so be looking out for much more from this dope designer as he is now illRoots Familia. Some brand new Freebass 808 (Apple Juice Kid x Suede) is on the way as their first single ‘Rewind’ featuring Jovi Rockwell of Major Lazer will be dropping soon.

Tracklist:
1.Tribe Called Quest- Electric Relaxation
2. Snoop Dogg- Drop It Like It’s Hot
3. Scarface- On My Block
4. Nore- Nothin
5. Jay Z- I Just Wanna Luv U
6. Punjabi MC- Beware of the Boys
7. Soho- Hot Music
8. Ol’ Dirty Bastard- Got your Money
9. Talib Kweli- Get By
10. Outkast- Spottieottiedopalicious
11. Big Boi- The Way You Move
12. Ol Dirty Bastard- Shimmy Shimmy Ya
13. Black Sheep- Choice is Yours
14. Digable Planets- Rebirth of Slick
15. The Foreign Exchange- Sincere
16. Destiny’s Child- Girl
17. Elton John- Benny and the Jets
18. Outkast- Prototype
19. Missy Elliot- Get your Freak On
20. Missy Elliot- Work it
21. Amerie- One Thing
22. Beyonce- Crazy in Love

Download here!

Pandora Radio

I wouldn't know anything about this website if my brother hadn't told me, so kudos to Jay.

Even though I'm not particularly savvy regarding technology and tons of people might know about this already, I thought this was cool so I thought I'd share.  Usually when I'm at work, I settle for listening to some San Diego radio station online because 1) I don't have iTunes on my computer at work, and 2) I just can't browse through Myspace and Youtube endlessly to play music that I like. But even doing the online radio thing I endure way more commercial breaks than I'd like, so it's so much nicer to be able customize your own radio station depending on your mood. Or even 10 stations at a time if you'd like. 

For Pandora Radio all you need to do to create a station is type in an artist, song, or composer and it will generate your own station by selecting music with similar qualities. For example, type in "Queen" and you get:

-Electric rock instrumentation

-A subtle use of paired vocal harmony

-Repetitive melodic phrasing

-Extensive vamping

-Paired vocal harmony

Or if you're feeling some "Cool Kids" it comes up songs that have these characteristics:

-East Coast rap influences

-Electronica influences

-A knack for catchy hooks

-Sparse beats

-Use of call-and-response vocals

If you like the songs that the station generates, you can give it a thumbs up and it'll be repeated sometime in the future. You can also give a song a thumbs down if you don't care for it too much, then it won't be played on that station anymore. 

I think the Pandora application is available for the iPhone and is available for downloading to Windows as well. Happy listening!

No air-uh air-uh

I swear this week is the slowest ever at work and I must have heard that song about 7 times, no joke. That and "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis ,which I can't stand anymore and never really liked in the first place. At least with "No Air" I can listen to the sweetness of my boy Chris Brown. I've said some funny things about CB (my roommates think so at least) but I don't feel like disclosing them right now to save myself the embarrassment.

Since the last time I blogged I really have nothing to talk about. No new discoveries, life-changing epiphanies, just blah. Maybe if I had some actual drama in my life I could tell cool stories about things like how my best friend stabbed me in the back, or how I went out of my way just to spite an ex, exciting stuff like that.

I think a part of it is also how I refrain from going in depth about specific issues i.e. some relationship stuff or sex because I don't have the luxury of anonymity in these cases. I tend to talk about that stuff in general because if I say something like "Don't you fcking hate it when your boyfriend _______", everyone would just think "Damn Raf what did you do" haha. Who knows, maybe I do mean it, maybe I don't, but I just avoid that situation in general cuz people be too assuming nowadays. Sometimes it's hard to discern what people are really trying to say when it's on paper, nawmean.

Anyways, one thing I do look forward to is Culture Clash at House of Blues tomorrow, it feels like it's been forever since I've gone to an event like this or anything remotely close to the club scene. I know a lot of SD people that I haven't seen in a while are going, so it'll be good to see some familiar faces up here. Also, I'll probably have more to talk about after making some observations of club rats & manwhores in their natural setting tomorrow, so that means more posts along the lines of "'Bout to roll up in this club" or the Ladies Night part of "What a Week" .

Exciting stuff coming up hopefully, time to study...