Guru rushed to hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest.

Prayers to Guru, Chile, and everyone suffering right now.

-Ninoy Brown

Last week, Mos Def dropped the music video for “Supermagic.”  This is the type of video that comes from inspiration by way of ingesting psilocybe.  Being a biased consumer of Hip-Hop, the immediate video that I referenced as a comparison was the intentional digital glitch effects found in Kanye’s video for “Welcome to Heartbreak” [1].

Because, lately, little of my time can be allotted to watching music videos [2], my scope for music videos has been limiting, not just in terms of musical genres.  Randomly, I happened upon a music video from a group that might best be remembered for their quirky video incorporating choreography with treadmills. After just coming across OK Go’s video for “WTF?”, released two months ago, I began to wonder about the technique and which artist might have been the first to use similar effects.

OK Go and Mos’ videos are different on several levels: color, lighting, mood, etc.  The similarity is in the image trail/afterimage technique both use.  But it’s always fun to pick stuff like this apart.  I’m sure comparisons have already been made.

Mos Def - Super Magic:

OK Go - WTF?:

Also, check out the making of video for “WTF?” at Evil Monito.

What other videos are out there like these?

[1] Yeezy, even had his own dilemma with this video when Chairlift’s video for “Evident Utensil” was released, using the same pixelation effects.  He ended up releasing his video ahead of schedule.

[2] Copious amounts of my time is already spent, irresponsibly, downloading music. Irresponsible because academics should trump hearing the latest Jeezy and Lil Wayne collaboration.

-Ninoy Brown

About a month ago, the homie, Zo’, told was telling me about a short Big Daddy Kane documentary that was showing during SF Independent Artists’ Week.  I was buggin’, wanting to check it out, but my schedule prevented me from catching the screening.

Fortunately a lot of filmmakers, like Ant Marshall, are utilizing new media to distribute their crafts:

King Asiatic Nobody’s Equal.  Most overlooked/underrated lyricist/entertainer in Hip-Hop.

-Ninoy Brown

PeliKULa! Pin@y Film Series
First Sundays of the Month
Dim the lights, silence your cell phones, butter your popcorn, sit back and relax as Kularts presents its first Pin@y Film series featuring works by today’s leaders in cutting-edge Pin@y cinema.

Bayanihan Community Center 1010 Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94103
5pm, Sun OCT 4
Art for Social Change (Documentaries)
Admission: $7
Tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/79743

*Add $3 to your admission at the door, and we will donate that $3 directly to relief efforts in the Philippines*

(more…)

The illustrious Eyesage, aka Krish, unleashed a little teaser for her upcoming project, Rocky Riviera, via a music video for her track, “MRSHMLO”.

Fresh.

-Ninoy Brown

Composed and created by Mark Villegas, a scholar with his own blog covering the gamut of Filipino-American Hip-Hop and ABDC, Hip Hop Mestizaje: Racialization, Resonance, and Filipino American Knowledge of Self, is a short documentary on the topic we love to cover on FOBBDeep: the intersection of Hip-Hop and Filipino American identity.

While sharing the stories of several Filipino voices who have been embedded within the Hip-Hop scene, Mark highlights a community that has been well represented in the scene for quite some time.  Featuring interviews with individuals such as Kuttin Kandi, Geologic, Paulskee, Basic, and Alfie Numeric, a non-West Coast-centric viewpoint that showcases a varied yet collective experience.

Peep:

-Ninoy Brown

B-Boys, B-Girls, B-People.  Those of us who came up on the West-Coast scene have known about one of the rawest Hip-Hop events: Freestyle Session.

The first FSS I attended was in 2003 for the 7th edition and it was wild seeing all these cats I was used to watching in videos wrecking cyphers.

Each year brings its own elements and freshness, but watching the Freestyle Session 5 VHS my senior year of high school bugged me the f*ck out.  Reveal and the rest of Rock Force/Rhythm Bugz were just nasty.

-Ninoy Brown

As a former member of the legendary Boogie Down Productions, D-Nice eventually made his own lightweight solo mark with an album and song entitled, They Call Me D-Nice.  His follow up album, To tha Rescue, didn’t get as much shine, and for two decades, not much was heard from the guy… until about two years ago when the Hip-Hop blog networks began its exponential growth.

With the muck and oversaturation of blogs, you had to do as much work finding a good blog to read as starting your own.  Rather than just dorm room college Hip-Hop nerds along with a few notable journalists and academics, artists began opening their own Blogger and WordPress accounts to speak their piece and even document their own experiences.

One particular blog post that grabbed attention was entitled, “My Run-In with the Infamous Larry Davis” by the man they call D-Nice [1].  This was an example of the possibility of the blog age: the ability for untold social accounts to be told [2].

On his blog, D-Nice began showcasing his new passion, photography.  During times where we see various legends struggling to connect to the newer generation and simply to make ends meet, it’s great to see someone like D-Nice re-imagining his work through a different artistic medium.  His style is social documentation, taking  influence from his and one of my own heroes, Gordon Parks.

When D-Nice began dropping his “True Hip-Hop Stories” series a natural progression was seen in how he captured, on video, the voices of stories untold: from Masta Ace, Monie Love, Buckshot, Dana Dane to Sadat X [3].  One of the more captivating THHS was “The Homeless Emcee”, telling a man’s bleak and painful story.  If you haven’t seen any of these videos, do yourself a favor and watch them.

The D-Nice Blog

[1] You know Larry Davis from various rap verses such as Kid Hood’s (RIP) “I’m wild like Larry Davis”.  For some word’s on Hood, listen to J Period’s social documentary epic “The (Abstract) Best” Q-Tip mix.

[2] And the ability for those musically obsessed with liner notes and behind the scenes accounts to cram more (trivial) information into their brains.

[3] While he talks a lot about “Punks Jump Up to Get Beat Down”, the homoephobic hate crime suggestive lyrics unfortunately don’t get touched.

-Ninoy Brown

By now most have seen the Lonely Island video for “Jizz in my Pants”.

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to like Andy Samberg [1], but he is kinda killing it with that video and the Ras Trent joint he did a few weeks ago.

It’s a good thing I have been giving him a chance, otherwise I wouldn’t have been wasting time spent to study watching random old Lonely Island videos, which means I wouldn’t have found a song that would be on my 2007 short list had I known about it earlier:

The track, from the Hot Rod soundtrack, features non other than the overlooked and underrated cousin of Earl Stevens: B Legit.

The collaboration doesn’t come as a surprise when one finds out that Samberg and crew are Berkely natives.  I think they need to do enlist the assistance of Bay Life.

Lonely Island is set to drop an album in February that features an E-40 appearance and, for the backpackers that care, production by J-Zone and DJ Numark.

[1] Call it reverse racism, but we all know that reverse racism is a farce.

Video courtesy of Eamon aka the master cleansing, vegan eating, Living Legends weed carrier.

*If anybody has “Cool Beans” on mp3, please send it my direction.

-Ninoy Brown

The Real can be hit or miss, but this video hit pretty well.

Give me a tardy pass on this one.

If you weren’t aware of The Real before, they are not part of the Stallionaires, but rather, they are self-described as a “Hip-Hop sketch comedy crew”.  What exactly is “Hip-Hop sketch comedy”?  I’m not entirely sure.  I’m as lost on that label as I am on the label of “Lit-Hop” (word to Mansbach).

The video was dropped on Dec. 7, and the track leaked just a few days before.  Interesting how fast ideas and products travel in this day and age.  Example: remixes to Bush’s shoe dodging incident.

Previously: Jay Channeling His Inner Blipster

-Ninoy Brown