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So, it appears that you don’t need tons o’ booty on southern mixtape covers to be recognized! (or maybe you do?) Recently the mixtape cover I designed for The League of Extraordinary Gz debut was nominated for a Southern Entertainment Award. Looking at the competition, I’m not sure how to feel, but I gotta say that the design for Concealed Weapons stands out and as the sole Texas based competitor in the category I’m pretty sure we can get the whole state behind us and win the award. What yall think?

Follow the Southern Entertainment Award Voting link and scroll down to “BEST ART/GRAPHICS ON A MIXTAPE” and vote for league of extraordinary gz – concealed weapons.

Truthfully, looking at some of the other nominees I can pretty much point out each and every thing I find wrong with design in hip hop music right now. (I would post pictures, but most are NSFW) No offense to other artists or designers, but I’m personally tired of the pen & pixel derived design for rap music. I understand influence and current trends, but when everything starts looking the same I personally think it’s time to switch it up a bit. Anyone agree with me?…maybe I’m the only one. I’ve worked with a few independent artists in hip hop in the past and anyone I work with in the future will have to agree with me. (That is unless you have a huge budget and want to give me a lot of $$$$$$)

Either way, I’m happy to be nominated because my competition consists of Usher, Trey Songz, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj and others so if I lose maybe I can have a dance off with Usher, challenge Ricky Rosé to a hot dog eating contest and take Nicki Minaj out for ice cream or something. Now that’s BAWSE!

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J Dilla – Donut Shop

As part of promoting their double vinyl + slip mat collaboration with the J Dilla Estate and Serato, Stones Throw has released the digital versions of  Donut Shop tracks. Best of all, they are free! This fresh set of donuts from the legendary J Dilla includes instrumental version of Mos Def’s “History” and Q Tip’s “Move”.

Yo! Check out the sugar coated Studio No. 1 (Shepard Fairey and co.) designed packaging for the double vinyl + slipmat version of Donut Shop! It includes the six J Dilla tracks, 2 sides Serato Control Tone (for use with Serato Scratch Live DJ software), and 2 donut slipmats. Looking at these, I see I could have probably added some sprinkles to a donuts inspired design a did a few years ago. Blast!

Yo!!!! I will be participating in a live design pong contest tonight, June 18 at a warehouse in Adams Morgan, DC as part of Digital Capital Week. Overall it’s going to be overstimulation of art, music and design! Come party with The Ape! Check out the event on Eventbrite, and buy tickets ahead of time, because they are so much cheaper!

I was down in Austin for SXSW this past March and was kicking it with The LOEGz, who I’ve been doing some work for. The group was one of the openers on the Best in Texas Showcase, which had a Paul Wall and Chamillionaire reunion as the headliner. Somewhere between acts, Houston hip-hop legend Michael 5000 Watts threw on one of the Concealed Weapons t shirts that I designed, which had a bunch of people running to the merch table to buy them up.

At this point, I had left the backstage area and had gone off to trying to get into another showcase, so I never saw this happen. I did look up some video of it…pretty crazy feeling to see one of my designs on a legend. Dope stuff!

Dj Nick Nack has released a limited edition full digipack of his latest album, Dearly Departed. Only having 100 printed up, it is a “high quality matte lamination with spot UV and includes real vintage photos.” Each album also comes with a download coupon. The album is a dedication to Nick’s sister, who was killed in a car accident in 2004.

Correction: 1000 of the CDs pictured here. The “limited edition” copies are the same + signed + hand numbered + include Nick Nack’s previous release “Improving Silence”.

From CrowdControlRecords.com

Dearly Departed” is the follow up full length album to Nick’s highly successful “Improving Silence”. This new album can best be described as a combination of psych rock and funk. The result is a sultry, soulful downtempo instrumental sound that is sure to move you whether you like hip hop, soul, rock or downtempo electronica. DJ Ayres summarizes best by saying, “I would put this album in the same category as DJ Shadow – Endtroducing and RJD2 – Dead Ringer.”

The Check out pictures of the actual packaging designed by Dj Nick Nack after the jump and peep the video promo created by Nick Nack.
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“American Dream” by Checho

Sale of the 11×17 screenprint of “American Dream” go on sale today! The prints will all be shipping mid June, and I am only printing 100 at this size. This is marks my first screenprints that I have offered for sale online, scoop them up quick!

They are only $20 + shipping and handling. You can buy them through our Bandcamp page.

Truly amazing live light design by Joakim Faxvaag, who has been on tour with the band Phoenix for the past year. Check out his site for some photos as well. The DC Phoenix show is sold out but I might have to get one of my girlfriends to spring for  some tickets on Craigslist after seeing this…

To most of my readers, I don’t even know what to tell y’all about J-Dilla that you may not already know. Personally he’s one of the biggest influences and even though my taste in music keep changing, there’s nothing like putting on some headphones and listening to Welcome 2 Detroit while I go off on a digital canvas.

I created this wallpaper back in 2006, which evolved into a tee shirt mock up which I never got printed up. Truth be told I posted the design up somewhere and got a cease and desist order from Stones Throw in 2007…but that’s another story for another day. RIP J-Dilla.

From the Haiti Poster Project Website:

“A collaboration of artists and designers from around the world, benefiting victims of the earthquake in Haiti. Moxie Sozo, the organizer of the 2005 HURRICANE POSTER PROJECT, is teaming up with Josh Higgins, the organizer of the 2007 SO-CAL FIRE POSTER PROJECT to produce the 2010 HAITI PROJECT.”

The deadline for entries is March 17th, with the goal being to raise $1 million dollars for Doctors without Borders. Check the Haiti Poster Project website for more information.

If I can get some time, I’ll try to put something together for this and see if I can get the printing donated. Looks pretty cool, if any of my readers submit anything, put a link in the comments section.

Yo!!! I know that we try to provide yall with some dope downloads and looking back at the few years I’ve been running the site, I figured it would be cool to have a page where you can look through all the downloads and quickly preview and/or download something. For those projects that were hosted on Bandcamp, it was simple to post up a streaming link, which is one of the many reasons I’ve been recommending the site to anyone sending music out to blogs. I’m still working on a convenient way to display stream links for the other projects.

I decided I was going to use excerpts to serve as the content so I used Excerpt Editor to be able to quickly chop up the entries. I created a page template that would query only the excerpts of the “Downloads” Category, then used CSS to display them. Props to this post on Perishable Press, which has some good information on how to do a simple display of posts in columns.

Alright yall, I’ll be updating some of the dead/old links as I can, again, if you’re an artist that sends your music to blogs, providing a permanent, streamable link can only help you out. Peace