Merc80.com

I subscribe to a great guy named Bob Lefsetz.  He sends emails just about everyday talking about the state of the entertainment industry, most especially music.  The beginning of his “Quote of Day” email really struck a chord that I think others should read…

“‘Going viral is diametrically opposed to building that trust and relationship between a media property and an audience,’ Mr. Louderback said. ‘Brands spend all this time thinking about how to make something go viral when they ought to think about how to create a meaningful relationship.’”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/media/27adco.html?src=busln

THIS is what it’s all about.

What fun is it if you come to something already done for you, where there is no chance for change or growth?  Nothing for you to really actively engage in?

Just about everything is ready made.  Because we live in a society that wants everything immediately.  But what if you got what you wanted, and slowly but surely, you got a little bit more, and some little different things, bit by bit?

You get to see it start in one place and grow to another place.

Bob points out in his email that Lady Gaga is now on Last.fm’s most unwanted list.  Meaning that a large amount of users have deleted her from their play-lists.  Of course there was a huge number of people that must have downloaded her initially.  But for someone of her stature, it would seem odd that she would top an unwanted list since she was so hot of a sensation.  But the problem is just that, when something is a sensation.  It doesn’t build slowly over time, creating more and more authenticity.  Of course she honed her skills for years, but it seemed pretty overnight that she became a huge pop artist.  Even calling herself the Fame Monster.  She was everywhere at once.  What about Drake?  The day his album dropped he was on the face of a Virgin airplane.  It took about 3 months for him to go platinum.  Going platinum at any rate is a feat these days, but I don’t hear much of him anywhere else.

The information age has made things hot immediately, then disappear out of people’s minds a few weeks later, especially if it has no lasting appeal.  The kind of artists I feature here are people who’s aim is to last.  To make art that stands the test of time.  I can download any album or movie I want right now, and the very fact that a production from 30 years ago could still affect me today means it was made with some kind of special quality.  If I hear something now, and forget about it tomorrow, then what is it worth in the long run?  Nothing.  It has no growth.  It was made to be a hit.  To soar.  But anything that rises that quickly is hardly ever worth truly staying there, sadly enough.

Even this very site is a display of growth.  It has changed over time.  I have changed formats.  Experimented with things.  But, those who believe in it’s inner core and potential watch it grow.  I have to give big thanks to you reading this.  I have seen consistent numbers for those who have visited this site, which lets me know I am doing something worthy of people’s attention.  And even though it may have started out fairly nice, it continues to grow so that it becomes better and better.

Remember when artists were good on their first album, but GREAT on their second one?  It gave you even more of a reason to be a fan.  Deep inside you could tell they were dedicated to not only them being better, but to also give YOU a better experience.

So after tomorrow folks, I can tell you you’re gonna see lots of changes at Merc80.com.  All for you to enjoy the experience more, and to get more for the time you spend here.  Even though the site started in January this year, tomorrow is the real launch to propel forward!

If you’re in LA, come on down!

After tomorrow, get ready.

I’ve got lots of surprises in store!

It’s really true.  You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone, and I was too young to really understand just how impacting Tupac was and would be after his death.

I know we already talked about remembering and pining over fallen legends, but today, I was particularly struck to write about Pac on his day of passing.  In an industry so inundated with characters and untrue artists, it really is something to note about someone who was so real with the world.  So complex and layered, that 14 years after his death you still uncover aspects of his character that make you wonder if he was hiding them on purpose.

I wish I had an actual deeper interaction with Tupac than what I did.  I was between 8th/9th grade, driving in the car with my mom.  Another Toyota Camry pulled up next to the driver’s side where my mom was, and I was reclined passenger side, taking my usual nap in the car whenever she was driving.  She tapped me on the leg and said “Yogi (my nickname)…is that Tupac?”

I rose up, and looked over, halfway interested, and nodded, yeah.  That’s him.  He was riding shotgun in the car.  2 homies in the back, another guy driving.  They all seemed rather quiet and in their own world, not talking to one another.  My mom rolled down the window and asked…

“Hey, are you Tupac?”

He looked over, and seemed to analyze the car and who was speaking to him first before answering.  You could tell he was on alert.  He nodded yes.

“I really like your music!” my mom said.

He said a respectful “Thank you.”   I’m sure he figured that my mom wasn’t his normal demographic, and he appreciated the words.  The light turned green and they went off.

Another friend of mine’s brother didn’t have such a nice encounter with Tupac.  His brother was in a store buying some CDs.  Apparently Pac took whatever album was in his hand while he was in line, bought it himself along with some other stuff, and kept on walking.  But what do you expect from a fearless 20 year old who’s famous, has a lot of money, and grew up like he did?  He could really care less.

When Pac just got out of jail, my mom bought two of his albums.  I knew she liked Keep Ya Head Up, Dear Mama, and maybe a few others, but she never was known to really play his stuff THAT much.  All of sudden while driving to school, she’s bumpin “Wonder Why They Call ya Bitch”.  And singing along with “I wanna be ya N.i.g.g.a…” Slightly traumatizing for a 13year old like me who was all into his “conscious” underground stuff like The Roots, Ras Kass, and stuff…but hey…what can ya do?  For surely I had some respect for him though.  So Many Tears was my favorite song by him.  Anytime Dear Mama came on television I would change the channel.  It was too emotional for me to stand hearing too often.

When I heard Hit Em Up, I knew there was about to be a problem.  To me, that actually was the day Hip Hop died.  I mean that. I seriously sat in my bed, worried, like someone I knew had been put in the hospital.  I don’t know if it was a premonition, but there are certain things that were understood in Hip Hop.  And it was almost immediate to me that this was going to turn ugly.   See, when you made a diss record then (dating myself, right?), there was a certain line you didn’t cross, especially when dealing with street mentality.  You cross that line too far, someone is gonna get hurt.  That was just an understood fact.  You diss on wax, keep it lyrical, don’t involve women and children, and don’t get TOO personal.  Pac not only crossed the line, he walked all the way over it, planted a  flag, set up a chair and kicked his feet up, invited friends over, had a BBQ  and an orgy,  left trash all around, and then kept on walking further into that territory that was labeled “DO NOT CROSS”.    Once I heard Hit Em Up I already knew repercussions were gonna come.  It was during that whole East vs West nonsense.  This was just going to make it worse and someone was gonna get caught up if no peace was kept.  So when I heard he got shot, it wasn’t surprising.  I already felt the death coming before it happened.

The day he died, my mother walked in, looking distraught.  We had our conversations before about Tupac being contradictory to me and what he stood for in comparison to everything that he spoke and his music.  It didn’t make sense to me how you could do Keep Ya Head Up, and Dear Mama, then do How Do You Want it, Hit Em Up, So Many Tearz, and stuff like that.  Part of it didn’t sit well with me.  Some of it still doesn’t.  But I didn’t really know what Tupac was about til years later.  When I read his poetry I felt like there was  apart of him that was pretending almost.  Like there was a side of him that he knew people wouldn’t understand so he kept it tucked away.  And once I saw that otherside, then I got it.  Then it all made sense.

Every song was him being himself, but different perspectives of himself,  in the fullest sense of expression possible.

I wasn’t really interested in seeing documentaries on him.  Partially because I felt like it was eulogizing too much, partially because I didn’t feel like they were going to tell me anything I didn’t already know, and partially because there was so many of them coming at one time that it felt like they were exploiting his death for money.  It seemed like all kinds of Tupac documentaries and albums were all coming out at once to the point where it never really felt like he died at all.  Every other day I was hearing his voice or seeing his image.

He was a  Gemini, just like me.  We’re hard to understand to others, but I get it.  He saw and felt things that were hard to put into words.  He studied great literature.  Had he grown up upper  class who knows what he would have ended up doing.  But he was also too rebellious to be caged in and would have refused to walk a path he didn’t set for himself.

Aside from Me Against the World I never got that deep into his music, but lately I have studied his flow and his lyrics much more.  That, combined with his explosive delivery, and you can’t get much iller.  I guess I was spoiled by all the great stuff I had around when I was younger.

One cousin of mine came to stay with me.  He was 16.  I asked him who his favorite rapper was, and he said Tupac.  Pac had been dead at least a good 11 years already.  He had some of the more recent releases of Tupac.  Compilations and the more “recommended” albums.  I gave him all of Tupac’s albums.  I told him, “Whenever an artist has a lot of albums, be sure to get ALL of them, not just the ones people tell you to get.  You see how they have grown and changed.”

I asked another girl I was tutoring a year ago who she liked Hip Hop wise.  She said Tupac.  That’s it.  She was probably a toddler when he died, and has no context within her own life per se, but he resonates with her.  That’s sure is something, isn’t it?

I listen to Tupac now, and wonder what things might be like.  So many talk about about Tupac vs Biggie, but no one really asks if they would have ever squashed their beef.  I think if Biggie had been able to withstand Pac’s onslaught of disses, whether by responding or ignoring him, they would have settled it.  Pac’s aim at one point was to be the greatest and to take out competition.  But knowing the righteous side of Pac, once he started to see the amount of wars and battles started all around him, he would have called for peace.  Hopefully he’d still have his respect amongst the streets.  Who knows anymore.  Once you get a certain level of fame anyway, people can’t wait to tear you down.

People talk about Emo rappers today, but Pac was about the most emotional rapper there was.  Speaking on his paranoia, fears, fearlessness, women, love, revolution, and all those things that we all think about but dare not admit in public.  Along with the fact that he could hang with the likes of Madonna, Mike Tyson, Jada Pinkett, all the way down to the homies in Watts.

There will only be one.

I leave this with one of my most favorite interviews of Tupac.  In 6 minutes you see his his intelligence, defiance, and heart all at once.  You see just how serious he was about his craft.  This is the side of Tupac, the artist, that I wish people talked about more often.

He was 25 years old when he died.

Back in June I was hosting The Silverlake Jubilee and who do I run into?  No other than Montage One.  You might recognize him from the interview I did a while back.  We chatted it up throughout the day and he told me just two days later he’d be leaving overseas.

“I’m going to Russia, then Amsterdam and Barcelona” he said.

He was making serious moves.  He told me about finishing his solo album and all the work he put in on it.  Not once did he mention Little Brother was on it.  He casually mentioned his track with Planet Asia.  Didn’t name drop any producers.  He talked the longest about the mixing and mastering of it.  If any of you have ever made an album, you know that mixing and mastering is the most technical part.  How the sounds resonate with your ears.  The colors that are added to give it the right feel.  He told me “I mastered it so that it can be on the louder side.  I’d rather you turn me down cause it’s bangin so hard, than you have to turn me up cause it’s too soft.”

Montage is one of the cats that has been lost in the shuffle of an industry that has constantly gone through changes.  Starting in the mid 90s where the West Coast and music industry where at an all time high.  Up through the transitions of 2000′s where technology and pop music began to reign.  As he states in an interview with the lovely Ms Pay of Payology, he was laid off from a 80k a year job and used his unemployment money to create this album.  Montage is clearly one of those people who can’t help but to do music when the opportunity presents itself.

He emailed me the finished product to hear, and this album KNOCKS.  It took me back to the 90s type sound with the warmth of the tracks.  He rhymes straightforward.  It’s a direct approach of Montage One being himself.  He brings Defari on a track, who I was happy to hear from again.  He gets the Original Black Eyed Peas singer Kim Hill on a great track.  He never told me who did the beats for the album, but I was excited to see tracks done by Evidence, Jake One, DJ Babu, Dae One, and Khrysis, with even some beats being produced by Montage himself .  Even with this array of production, the beats are very consistent and all keep a steady feel through the album.  They have a cool and clean West Coast flavor on some, and then that gritty underground feel on others.  The very last track on the  album is an all out lyrical posse cut with Montage One, Planet Asia, Rakaa from Dilated Peoples, E-Swift and others.  The Liquid Gold Gang as Montage once put it, the combination of the legendary Likwit Crew and Gold Chain Music.

The album drops officially next week, 9/14/10.

So if you like what you hear, save up ya duckets and cop it.  You won’t be disappointed.

Here are a few of personal favorite tracks off the album…

Likwit Army-

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Lost Myself-

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Mic Acrobats (feat Little Brother)-

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If you wanna get it direct from the source, holler at him

Email- me@montageone.com or montageone@mac.com

Website- http://www.montageone.com/

Twitter- http://twitter.com/MontageOne

I support my local hardworking artist.  You should too!

Check out the EPK

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m real cynical when it comes to commercial music, especially Hip Hop.  So much so, that I don’t even know whether to believe anything any single rapper says.  It’s one thing if your lyrics exaggerate.  But in interviews…pictures…so called “beefs”…they all seem fake to me now.

I think everyone who enters the entertainment realm should have to take some kind of oath, or adhere to some kind of ethics and standards like journalists.

A Hip-Hopcratic oath. Something that doesn’t constantly warp our sense of what’s real or not outside of the intended medium.  I ask for my mind to be taken away when I listen to an album, or read a book, or watch TV.  I don’t need all of that bleeding over into actual REAL life all the time.

If we should have learned from anyone in this whole game, it should have been Rick Ross.  Entirely exposed to have been a corrections officer, all he did was deny, deny, deny until the truth became a lie.

At this point I bet everyone (including me actually) kinda wonders “Damn…maybe he wasn’t a correctional officer after all.”  I mean, in the picture that they show “him” in, he doesn’t have a beard!

Now we’ve even got people turning themselves into a reality show spectacle.  It’s hardly seems to make sense.

Kat Stacks.  Groupie numero uno.  Well…not as much a groupie…some kind of groupie, escort hybrid.  She’s a new breed of prostitute.

But she stepped on the scene openly admitting to have sex with all of Young Money and even giving out their phone numbers.  Seeing that video seemed odd to me.  How is she still able to go out in public?  Many of you may have seen the video where she got slapped silly.  I don’t condone that.  But it seems odd that a person who gave out someone’s phone numbers, groups of artists who have LAWYERS, have not put her in her place more than that.  Some of these people she exposed have families.  She could have destroyed entire households with what she was saying.

Well strangely enough, this started circulating on the net…

You really do have to ask yourself how she never got in trouble, and how her “celebrity status” got so big so quickly.  Or how someone like Soulja Boy could even mess with her when clearly she could cause the downfall of your entire career.

And speaking of which… Kat Stacks showin Soulja Boy doin cocaine.  Wow, cocaine was just out like that huh?  Real convenient.

Oh and now Soulja Boy is beefing with Fabolous over Twitter.  And Kat Stacks is in Soulja Boy’s corner…oh but wait…guess who has albums coming out in November…You guessed it… Soulja Boy AND Fabolous.  Publicity stunt maybe?

I find it real interesting how rappers never seem to beef during the off season.  They stay beefing when their album is hanging in the balance.

Is all of this a beast that we need to feed?  Have we somehow all played right into all this PR bullshit just so that we can keep the cycle going?

I’m sure by writing about all this all I’m doing is giving them more space to exists in other people’s minds anyway.

Oh well…cue music.

UPDATE:

I got a tweet from Mr Floz on twitter…see the night before I posted this I had a back and forth with him about this very topic before I wrote it.  He sent me this just now…

“This video and song was all your doing. I hold you responsible…”                   I’ll accept that. 

This is another throwback interview I did with the trusty Flip Mino camera.

I got a call from a friend from High school.

She was telling me about her job as an occupational therapist and wanted me to meet with her music therapy group.

I met up with her in Santa Monica, and she began telling me about her experiences as an artist and working in a gallery, and I had to record it.

This is definitely one of my favorite interviews.  This is your essential conversation between creative people and the dilemma’s they face pushing forward.

Pt 1

- Art galleries and how shady the art world can be.

- What occupational therapy is.

Part 2
-What is therapy and what things can be used for therapy

-The struggle for art and to be an artist

To see her art, email: cozycozybird@yahoo.com