it was a great experience to perform on the stage for the first time with my group to do out presentations.
im realy proud of our group and excited for our presentation on april.
i think our skit is very well done, comedic, and was a great experience for me to try..
now its coming up to the duet that may even be a bigger show.
i was happy to see kashi satisfied with our class and i enjoy getting together tues and thurs to share some lyrical talents and acting skills.
the class is great and i cant wait for out final presentation for april..
we had an ATO dance competition and we had to try out and audition..
besides the fact that we are doing some other completely different dance, we had to come up with something more 'appropriate' so we all did a little clip of the stanky leg lol
Monday, April 6, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
group project
our group project is going well..
meeting together is a bit difficult since we all have own schedules, but i think our plans are giong very well.
i was really upset i couldn't make the show cuz i came a bit late.
on my way home, i saw two of the guys that was in the show and who came to our class walking neaer the gas station i was at.
i talked to them for a bit and learned that theyre really into their hip hop.
also..
ive been downloading some old schools
nas- i can, one of my favorites, is a hot song.
i never heard the song while actually listening to all the lyrics but after recently following the whole song, i really liked the song.
Be, B-Boys and girls, listen up
You can be anything in the world, in God we trust
An architect, doctor, maybe an actress
But nothing comes easy it takes much practice
Like, I met a woman who's becoming a star
She was very beautiful, leaving people in awe
Singing songs, Lina Horn, but the younger version
Hung with the wrong person
Gotta astrung when I heard when
Cocaine, sniffing up drugs, all in her nose
Coulda died, so young, no looks ugly and old
No fun cause when she reaches for hugs people hold they breath
Cause she smells of corrosion and death
Watch the company you keep and the crowd you bring
Cause they came to do drugs and you came to sing
So if you gonna be the best, I'ma tell you how
meeting together is a bit difficult since we all have own schedules, but i think our plans are giong very well.
i was really upset i couldn't make the show cuz i came a bit late.
on my way home, i saw two of the guys that was in the show and who came to our class walking neaer the gas station i was at.
i talked to them for a bit and learned that theyre really into their hip hop.
also..
ive been downloading some old schools
nas- i can, one of my favorites, is a hot song.
i never heard the song while actually listening to all the lyrics but after recently following the whole song, i really liked the song.
Be, B-Boys and girls, listen up
You can be anything in the world, in God we trust
An architect, doctor, maybe an actress
But nothing comes easy it takes much practice
Like, I met a woman who's becoming a star
She was very beautiful, leaving people in awe
Singing songs, Lina Horn, but the younger version
Hung with the wrong person
Gotta astrung when I heard when
Cocaine, sniffing up drugs, all in her nose
Coulda died, so young, no looks ugly and old
No fun cause when she reaches for hugs people hold they breath
Cause she smells of corrosion and death
Watch the company you keep and the crowd you bring
Cause they came to do drugs and you came to sing
So if you gonna be the best, I'ma tell you how
Sunday, March 15, 2009
rock 4 haiti
the charity going on now for my hip hop class is also assisted by my fraternity. i definitely want to go to the show or even perform, but all the stuff going on is too hectic for that right now.
not only do i have to write a few stuff down, but it's gonna be pretty nerve racking since i may be performing in front of everybody.
i read an article, sort of a comparison between haiti and america and i thought it was really interesting:
Is Starvation Contagious?
John Maxwell
Few people, much less their governments, appear to be concerned about what
is happening in Haiti, next to Cuba our nearest neighbour and, in historical
terms, the people who paved the way for our freedom from slavery and
implemented for the first time anywhere in the world, the idea of universal
human rights.
Yet, today, while Haiti suffocates in poverty, hunger and dirt, her
neighbours in the Caribbean, with the exception of Cuba, pass by on the other
side of the road where Haiti lies in pain and anguish, ignoring the
brutalisation of the poorest people in this hemisphere by the richest nations
in the world.
Four years ago the Americans and Canadians with the backing of the French,
decapitated Haitian human rights, kidnapping her President and instituting
fascist rule by a combination of some of the greediest businessmen in the world
and the murderous thugs they hired in an attempt to depose the overwhelmingly
popular president of the Haitians, Jean Bertrand Aristide.
Mr Bush and Mr Colin Powell and a mixed gaggle of French and Canadian
politicians had decided that freedom and independence were too good for the
black people of Haiti. Lest you think I am being racist there is abundant
evidence that the conspiracy against Haiti was inspired by racial hatred and
prejudice.
I have gone into this before and I will not return to it today. Suffice it
to say that the US, Canada and France, acting on behalf of the so-called
‘civilised world’, decided on the basis of lies that, as in the case of
Iraq, a free and independent people had no business being free and independent
when their freedom and independence was seen to threaten the economic interest
of the richest people in Haiti and, by extension, the wealthiest countries in
the world.
Today, and especially for the last few weeks, the starving people in Haiti
have been trying to get the world to listen to their anguish and misery. Along
with some other poor people in other countries the Haitians have been driven to
desperation and the edge of starvation by the rapidly increasing price of food.
Unlike all the others the Haitians are over the edge, they are starving,
refugees in their own proud country, many forced to eat dirt to survive,
however tenuously.
Only the Cubans, the Venezuelans and the Vietnamese appear to care about
what is happening in Haiti. The rest of us are too concerned with ‘wealth
management’ and the prospects of foreign investors with bursting wallets
floating down from the sky to make us all rich.
But if one listens to people on the Jamaican street it is obvious that we
too are in the early stages of the same curse of the globalisation which makes
Haitians expendable and assesses their value at well under the price of one
Jamaican patty per day.
So, the Haitians have taken to the streets and more than half a dozen
starvelings have already been shot dead by the armed forces of civilisation, by
the satraps and surrogates of George Bush and his Canadian and French
accomplices.
The World Food Programme has appealed to the world for help for the
Haitians. So has the Vietnamese representative on the UN Security Council.
Venezuela has given Haiti money and supplied them with cheap oil. Cuba, among
other things, is training nearly 500 Haitians to be doctors, about half in Cuba
and the rest in Haiti.
The Golding government, like its predecessors, pays no attention to our
suffering neighbour languishing and dying because of the explicit actions and
strategies of the United States of America and its President, George Bush.
Which is why after Aristide, Haitians died like flies because of hurricanes
and rainstorms: their local democracy and their early warning systems had been
destroyed by the criminal gangsters who Bush put in charge of 8 million
Haitians. And when the situation became too noisome even for Bush and the
Republican party, Haitians were allowed to vote but not allowed to vote for the
man they wanted, so they voted for a surrogate. This meant that the Haitian
elite friends of Bush, the Chalabis of our hemisphere, were back in charge and
the primacy of the light-skinned minority re-established, just as it was in the
eighteenth century, before the American, French and Haitian revolutions.
It is possible that Haiti may not even be Bush's worst crime. In Haiti he
destroyed nearly 300 years of History and the Rights of Man. In Iraq he
obliterated much of the record of the last 8,000 years of civilisation and set
the people at each other’s throats
Many Haitians were killed by the American-paid assassins who inherited
military power from the American and Canadian Marines. More were murdered
because they were community leaders and allies of Aristide. Even more died from
unnatural disasters precipitated by the decapitation of democracy. And many,
many more will die from the effects of eating dirt for the greater glory of
George Bush and because they have had enough of Bush’s modern version of
slavery.
I told you so
Just to be tiresome I want to remind you of a column published in this paper
on Sunday, December 10, 2000, my 240th column for this paper. It was published
just as the Republican party was prepping the US Supreme Court to appoint
George Bush President of the US.
I wrote, inter alia
"The approaching triumph of Greenspan/Ayn Rand capitalism may just be slowed
down by the latest developments in the US economy, but that is not cooling down
the ardour of the “Cognitive Elite” to gain a handle on the whole business
of corporate control of the economies and governance of the world. The
Americans a few days ago, chastised Haiti for electoral defects which, compared
to Florida, were child’s play and did not really affect anything very much
more than the letter of the law.
“… George Bush, if he is appointed President, will use his time to
destroy the integrity of the country he rules, starting with the Supreme Court.
Then he can start on dealing with the rest of us. That’s his job, and as the
American Press has made plain, nothing needs to be known about him and his
multifarious incapacities because Big Brother in the giant corporations will
tell him what to do.
We are all in a for a very rough ride."
That was published before Bush became president, before Enron, before 9/1,
before the invasion of Iraq and before the rape of Haiti.
Today when the world faces climatic, ecological and economic meltdown we in
Jamaica are as far away from reality as ever.
We persist in our suicidal pursuit of unsustainable development-by-gimmick,
heading for disaster like the Haitians but of our own free will, unlike the
powerless Haitians. We are determined to grow sugar cane until it destroys our
society, watching helplessly and cluelessly as food prices rise out of our
reach and unwilling to even try to save ourselves by growing more food and
putting idle hands and idle lands to work, and unwilling to face the elemental
truths about this slave society.
We can’t afford rice or cooking oil, or bread or Lexuses.
Where, one wonders, is our Marie Antoinette to advise us to eat Johnnycake?
More than sixty years ago when we were faced with the (for us) less dire
crisis of the Second World War our British governors forced all landowners to
plant at least ten percent of their land in food crops. Sugar estates began to
produce food for the first time in 300 years and our unemployment and
malnutrition rates plummeted.
Today we face our unreality bravely, encouraging the most backward among us
to sing songs of hate against homosexuals, denying Amnesty’s findings about
our internecine violence although they are merely echoing what people like me
were writing forty years ago. We are going to grow food for cars while our
people starve
We know what’s wrong but resolutely refuse to face reality. In the
struggle for survival we say, along with George Bush, every man for himself and
let the devil take the hindmost.
The title of my 2000 column I quoted earlier could serve as our epitaph.
It was:
“Democracy? Enough already!”
and a really inciteful video..
not only do i have to write a few stuff down, but it's gonna be pretty nerve racking since i may be performing in front of everybody.
i read an article, sort of a comparison between haiti and america and i thought it was really interesting:
Is Starvation Contagious?
John Maxwell
Few people, much less their governments, appear to be concerned about what
is happening in Haiti, next to Cuba our nearest neighbour and, in historical
terms, the people who paved the way for our freedom from slavery and
implemented for the first time anywhere in the world, the idea of universal
human rights.
Yet, today, while Haiti suffocates in poverty, hunger and dirt, her
neighbours in the Caribbean, with the exception of Cuba, pass by on the other
side of the road where Haiti lies in pain and anguish, ignoring the
brutalisation of the poorest people in this hemisphere by the richest nations
in the world.
Four years ago the Americans and Canadians with the backing of the French,
decapitated Haitian human rights, kidnapping her President and instituting
fascist rule by a combination of some of the greediest businessmen in the world
and the murderous thugs they hired in an attempt to depose the overwhelmingly
popular president of the Haitians, Jean Bertrand Aristide.
Mr Bush and Mr Colin Powell and a mixed gaggle of French and Canadian
politicians had decided that freedom and independence were too good for the
black people of Haiti. Lest you think I am being racist there is abundant
evidence that the conspiracy against Haiti was inspired by racial hatred and
prejudice.
I have gone into this before and I will not return to it today. Suffice it
to say that the US, Canada and France, acting on behalf of the so-called
‘civilised world’, decided on the basis of lies that, as in the case of
Iraq, a free and independent people had no business being free and independent
when their freedom and independence was seen to threaten the economic interest
of the richest people in Haiti and, by extension, the wealthiest countries in
the world.
Today, and especially for the last few weeks, the starving people in Haiti
have been trying to get the world to listen to their anguish and misery. Along
with some other poor people in other countries the Haitians have been driven to
desperation and the edge of starvation by the rapidly increasing price of food.
Unlike all the others the Haitians are over the edge, they are starving,
refugees in their own proud country, many forced to eat dirt to survive,
however tenuously.
Only the Cubans, the Venezuelans and the Vietnamese appear to care about
what is happening in Haiti. The rest of us are too concerned with ‘wealth
management’ and the prospects of foreign investors with bursting wallets
floating down from the sky to make us all rich.
But if one listens to people on the Jamaican street it is obvious that we
too are in the early stages of the same curse of the globalisation which makes
Haitians expendable and assesses their value at well under the price of one
Jamaican patty per day.
So, the Haitians have taken to the streets and more than half a dozen
starvelings have already been shot dead by the armed forces of civilisation, by
the satraps and surrogates of George Bush and his Canadian and French
accomplices.
The World Food Programme has appealed to the world for help for the
Haitians. So has the Vietnamese representative on the UN Security Council.
Venezuela has given Haiti money and supplied them with cheap oil. Cuba, among
other things, is training nearly 500 Haitians to be doctors, about half in Cuba
and the rest in Haiti.
The Golding government, like its predecessors, pays no attention to our
suffering neighbour languishing and dying because of the explicit actions and
strategies of the United States of America and its President, George Bush.
Which is why after Aristide, Haitians died like flies because of hurricanes
and rainstorms: their local democracy and their early warning systems had been
destroyed by the criminal gangsters who Bush put in charge of 8 million
Haitians. And when the situation became too noisome even for Bush and the
Republican party, Haitians were allowed to vote but not allowed to vote for the
man they wanted, so they voted for a surrogate. This meant that the Haitian
elite friends of Bush, the Chalabis of our hemisphere, were back in charge and
the primacy of the light-skinned minority re-established, just as it was in the
eighteenth century, before the American, French and Haitian revolutions.
It is possible that Haiti may not even be Bush's worst crime. In Haiti he
destroyed nearly 300 years of History and the Rights of Man. In Iraq he
obliterated much of the record of the last 8,000 years of civilisation and set
the people at each other’s throats
Many Haitians were killed by the American-paid assassins who inherited
military power from the American and Canadian Marines. More were murdered
because they were community leaders and allies of Aristide. Even more died from
unnatural disasters precipitated by the decapitation of democracy. And many,
many more will die from the effects of eating dirt for the greater glory of
George Bush and because they have had enough of Bush’s modern version of
slavery.
I told you so
Just to be tiresome I want to remind you of a column published in this paper
on Sunday, December 10, 2000, my 240th column for this paper. It was published
just as the Republican party was prepping the US Supreme Court to appoint
George Bush President of the US.
I wrote, inter alia
"The approaching triumph of Greenspan/Ayn Rand capitalism may just be slowed
down by the latest developments in the US economy, but that is not cooling down
the ardour of the “Cognitive Elite” to gain a handle on the whole business
of corporate control of the economies and governance of the world. The
Americans a few days ago, chastised Haiti for electoral defects which, compared
to Florida, were child’s play and did not really affect anything very much
more than the letter of the law.
“… George Bush, if he is appointed President, will use his time to
destroy the integrity of the country he rules, starting with the Supreme Court.
Then he can start on dealing with the rest of us. That’s his job, and as the
American Press has made plain, nothing needs to be known about him and his
multifarious incapacities because Big Brother in the giant corporations will
tell him what to do.
We are all in a for a very rough ride."
That was published before Bush became president, before Enron, before 9/1,
before the invasion of Iraq and before the rape of Haiti.
Today when the world faces climatic, ecological and economic meltdown we in
Jamaica are as far away from reality as ever.
We persist in our suicidal pursuit of unsustainable development-by-gimmick,
heading for disaster like the Haitians but of our own free will, unlike the
powerless Haitians. We are determined to grow sugar cane until it destroys our
society, watching helplessly and cluelessly as food prices rise out of our
reach and unwilling to even try to save ourselves by growing more food and
putting idle hands and idle lands to work, and unwilling to face the elemental
truths about this slave society.
We can’t afford rice or cooking oil, or bread or Lexuses.
Where, one wonders, is our Marie Antoinette to advise us to eat Johnnycake?
More than sixty years ago when we were faced with the (for us) less dire
crisis of the Second World War our British governors forced all landowners to
plant at least ten percent of their land in food crops. Sugar estates began to
produce food for the first time in 300 years and our unemployment and
malnutrition rates plummeted.
Today we face our unreality bravely, encouraging the most backward among us
to sing songs of hate against homosexuals, denying Amnesty’s findings about
our internecine violence although they are merely echoing what people like me
were writing forty years ago. We are going to grow food for cars while our
people starve
We know what’s wrong but resolutely refuse to face reality. In the
struggle for survival we say, along with George Bush, every man for himself and
let the devil take the hindmost.
The title of my 2000 column I quoted earlier could serve as our epitaph.
It was:
“Democracy? Enough already!”
and a really inciteful video..
Monday, March 9, 2009
its been a short break.
spring break was really fast....
really enjoyed it til i had to come back to school...fk
havent been to hip hop class in a while..but i remember kashi telling us how its gonna be all about performances after break..
this shits wat im talking about..
cant wait for class to start really stepping up with what we got..
havent really rhymed or written during break..but have to get the mind ready lol
recently been trying to rap over r&b songs like 'how do i breathe' by mario..
realized it was pretty hard..
hope this class goes well and i start to really step up.
heres a new song that's pretty hott
really enjoyed it til i had to come back to school...fk
havent been to hip hop class in a while..but i remember kashi telling us how its gonna be all about performances after break..
this shits wat im talking about..
cant wait for class to start really stepping up with what we got..
havent really rhymed or written during break..but have to get the mind ready lol
recently been trying to rap over r&b songs like 'how do i breathe' by mario..
realized it was pretty hard..
hope this class goes well and i start to really step up.
heres a new song that's pretty hott
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Mid Term Assignment: What I Am
Going beyond the limits was never so hard for this new face. Abe Yi, a student from Lehigh University, serves as a stepping stone for minorities who has a burning passion for their hip hop. Growing up in Central New Jersey, Abe lived in an urban environment surrounded by the white and black population. Being different as a Korean-American, Abe grew up to be amused by the art of ‘freestyling’ that was commonly practiced by his friends. As this young prodigy started to write and freestyle at the age of 12, he started to expose himself more and more to hip hop and lyrics. Knowing little as a child, his game started to shine when he came out with his first single in this first year of high school. With an amateur recording program and a cheap karaoke microphone, he spent time just spitting whatever was in his head every day after school. Gaining praises and encouragement from people who heard his ‘on-the-spot endless sessions,’ Abe continued to motivate himself to use this talent as a way to express himself and to continue what he enjoyed. Once he attended Lehigh, he met other artists, recording artists, and DJ’s that continued to support him to break the boundaries as a Korean-American rapper. Taking over mics at big parties in Lehigh and Rutgers University, Abe continues to unintentionally spread his name out to the youth by doing what he enjoys: freestyling.
This piece called What I Am is a strong self-expression for the new generations of hip hop. He starts his piece off by introducing what hip hop is to him. By getting personal from the start, he finds a way to connect with the viewers and listeners, allowing them to be in his shoes. He gradually talks from what hip hop is to him, to talking about the oppositions the hip hop generation faces in the society. From explicit lyrics to obscene lifestyles, Abe tries to say how these two small factors don’t make up hip hop. By introducing the antagonism in his piece, he alerts and informs the viewers how the generation faces oppositions and threats in the music and non-music society. Then, by shifting to encouraging the audience to take actions, Abe is able to fully gather his audience and motivate them to represent our generation of hip hop. In his final closing, he once again expresses what hip hop is to him and the significance of music in his life. In his last rhyme, he comes out strongly how he will face any obstacles in his way. The power, feeling, and the passion he puts in his performances only feeds the power in his presentation. His ability to capture himself in his own performance allures the audience to ‘feel’ his lyrics. He speaks with power and from his heart and is able to move the audience.
What I Am is a strong connection to modern hip hop. Back in the time, hip hop and rap was new and popular and praised. As it grew and gained popularity as time passed, hip hop was a genre that was unique and rhythmic. However, nowadays this genre faces many threats and obstacles as more and more people find hip hop to be too explicit. Abe sets the differences apart and tries to explain what hip hop means to him. He tries to explain how it is a genre of self-expression and words of power. His lyrical style follows after modern artists like Lupe Fiasco.
Abe went through a lot growing up as a lyricist. Encountering racial barriers, misjudgments, and false misconceptions, Abe had a lot on his shoulders. However, instead of being discouraged by all the hindrance he stumbled upon, he looked at it from a different perspective. He couldn’t wait to see the faces of any audience once he spit the first bar. Abe’s motivation, support, drive, and his talents define the potential in this young emcee. Setting himself apart from most Korean-Americans, he found what he is passionate for and no one is stopping him. We all wait to see what he has for us (our generation) as this upcoming artist in 2009.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Hip Hop Collective
it sucks how i'm still not sure if i can go to the collective..
been really busy but i was definitely excited to take the mic.
class is good, but the after class is geting better..
just a few sessions here and there..
for a short freewrite now..
a simply put prodigy,
u can be a part of me,
as i cap leaves like im in botany
leaves, grass, and roots
greens, hats, and boots
and this kids ready to shoot
not bullets but bars to ears
and i just wanna make this clear
how i stand out above the rest
not clearly saying im the best
but u can put me to the test
how i stand strong with the mic
so fluent,
that i ride the rhymes like a bike
like liquid..and then bake it to assets
bakin competition leavin em in caskets
another inspiration
been really busy but i was definitely excited to take the mic.
class is good, but the after class is geting better..
just a few sessions here and there..
for a short freewrite now..
a simply put prodigy,
u can be a part of me,
as i cap leaves like im in botany
leaves, grass, and roots
greens, hats, and boots
and this kids ready to shoot
not bullets but bars to ears
and i just wanna make this clear
how i stand out above the rest
not clearly saying im the best
but u can put me to the test
how i stand strong with the mic
so fluent,
that i ride the rhymes like a bike
like liquid..and then bake it to assets
bakin competition leavin em in caskets
another inspiration
Saturday, February 14, 2009
life
i definitely want to go see wintertime..
but time is really an issue.
tryin really hard to make it though.
also, i dont know what im gonna do with the off campus hip hop theatre shows
anybody hve a list of nearby shows?
ive been listening to biggie recently esp. aftr his movie..
the movie was ok, but i def respect the life he lived.
his shits hot and he definitely knows how to flow..\
It was all a dream
I used to read Word Up magazine
Salt'n'Pepa and Heavy D up in the limousine
Hangin' pictures on my wall
Every Saturday Rap Attack, Mr. Magic, Marley Marl
I let my tape rock 'til my tape popped
Smokin' weed and bamboo, sippin' on private stock
Way back, when I had the red and black lumberjack
With the hat to match
Remember Rappin' Duke, duh-ha, duh-ha
You never thought that hip hop would take it this far
Now I'm in the limelight 'cause I rhyme tight
Time to get paid, blow up like the World Trade
Born sinner, the opposite of a winner
Remember when I used to eat sardines for dinner
Peace to Ron G, Brucey B, Kid Capri
Funkmaster Flex, Lovebug Starsky
I'm blowin' up like you thought I would
Call the crib, same number same hood
It's all good
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
