"money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference” – Barack Obama

"send me your money, do you hear what I said? Send me your money!" - Suicidal Tendencies


So we've joined this Sellaband thang and are now figuring out how to set up the page for mass viewing/supporting.... This here's an X-Vandals X-periment!!!!!

i grew up poor/impoverished on the mean streets of Nueva York (East Harlem and The South Bronx, to be exact), and have been makinge deliberately anti-music-industrial-complex (in other words, music that is NOT brought to you by the major/corporate record labels, who gobble up any/all underground counter/sub cultures and spit 'em back out at you as fast food for no thought) seditious sounds and sabotage sonics for the past ten years or so. Basically, this has meant years of begging, borrowing and (mostly) stealing to make my real(ity) music for real people who actually still like/crave/need/want real music.

This has also meant doing things OUTSIDE of, against (and despite) the music-industries strait-jacket co-optation/control/domination of (our) underground/sub/counter-

"We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centers of entertainment; a total war." - Che Guevara


X-Vandals is currently in the studio mixing our next/second record/album/cd/felony. The new wreck-cord is called GhettoBlaster and is currently being ricanstructed in the (in)famous Public Enemy's own Strong island studio, with our very own Terror Wrists, DJ Johnny Juice, once again (hue)manning the boards, dropping the bombs and bringing all the necessary Neo-Rican noise......

GhettoBlaster is going to be another classic hip-hop concept album (remember those) that is sure to smash the barriers, break down the borders, batter the barricades and expand the horizons of this so called hip-hop thang, if i do say so myself. And i do. So if you like real hardcore Hip hop spit that is political punk rock poetry that becomes barrio blues bombs that morphs into subversive street salsa and the kitchen sink in a south bronx squat, then open wide for some seditious genre-cide coming your way in the '09. Just like with the War of Art before it, X-vandals will once again be bringing it direct to theMasses with no major label middle man getting in the way of our art-i-facts......

In these changing times, as the Big four (Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music Group) culture vultures sue students (for "stealing songs"), scramble for sales, scatter their own ashes over the (wall) streets, and crumble under their own weight/wait, while the children of the slum (and the University too) download the whole damn motherload, your average artists (who ain't looking/seeking to be the next modern day music mogul or minstrel for da man) no longer needs to crawl/fall into the entrails of "the monster" corporate manufracturers or buy/sell the music of the motherland to any(the) other man.....

if you're an artists (or just wanna be one) then create your own independent label, make your own autonomous anti-corporate music/videos/art (or support those who do) and use the anarchy of the internet to digitally distribute all that art and agitation for free (or for a nominal fee).....

show em to the peeps, share em with the peers, Give it to the ghetto guerrillas who truly love music, play it for the slum survivors who really need musica...

now, more then ever.

jam it for the rioters, not the radio, bring it for the barrios, not the brokers. your reward will be a real(ity) revolution!

Look for X-vandals fire next time, GhettoBlaster, coming to you right after this (long hot) summer of 2009, and turn off the tv (and the radio too)..... and take it to the streets!

kick it over!

N4P

"We're not here to leave a mark, bro. Monuments, legacies, marks -
that's where we always go wrong. We're here to revel in the world, to
soak in the awesomeness of it, to enjoy the ride. The world's maximum
perfect as it is, beauty from horizon to horizon. Any mark any of us
tries to leave - hell, it's only graffitti. Any mark anyone leaves is
no better than vandalism." - Dean Koontz

Hip Hop may NOT be quite dead yet, but emptyV certainly is.... These
daze it's just a vault for the vanquished and tell-lie-vision is the
gate/crypt keeper for has-beens-and-wanna-be's to prance around and
em-bare-ass themselves on one (un)reality show or the other, and your
average video is really just a commercial to make you buy something
else that's even more useless then the music that (might be) in the
video.... emptyV (and tv in general) is for eva eva taking it's last
(bad) breath while flinging force fed fast food for the thoughtless,
aimed at the corporate pseudo-teens with dreams of living the
lifestyles of the bitching aimless.

It's been known for a long time that emptyV rarely (if ever) played any
video that had a budget that was less then a quarter of a million
dollars. i know people who could make 24 (or more) really good feature
length films for that amount of money (and throw in about 25 music videos
for the hell of it). So, for the past few years, for
anyone who wants to make (or watch) REAL music and images as art (or
political statements or just simple self expression), cyberspace has
been the place.... Currently, there are still no keepers-of-the-gate
who can stop you from X-pressing yo self on the cyber-subway line......

So, with that in mind and in our attempt to make no budget guerrilla
videos (that actually talk about our music and mess-age and other
things of relevance) while simultaneously putting a few more nails in
the empty-vision(s) coffin, X-vandals has made it's first video (with more to come)....

armageddon has been in effect.... go get a late pass

Check it out right here or on youtube now!!!

"The guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area. This is an indispensable condition" - Che Guevara

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas." - Joseph Stalin

"a sword is never a killer, it is a tool in the killer's hands" - Seneca quote

X-Vandals (War of Art) is an x-periment in sound and fury. An attempt to get a real(ity) message out to the masses/massive without sleeping with the (major/corporate) enemy, or pandering to anyone in any way. X-Vandals (and it's record label, Resister) is truly independent (in the way when that STILL meant something) and DIY (do it yourself) like that used to signify when you really did it yourself (without help or handouts) with your own two (or three) little hands (and feet) and imagination....

That's the way Hip Hop (and punk) USED to be, and that's the way it will be again.... But only if the people who (really) want it, need it, support it, in real, viable, honest, useful and revolutionary (yes, i used that word) ways......

Hip Hop ain't dead.... it's just been hijacked.... But we stealin' it back!

this a stick up MF,

N4P

Here's some more places where you can get X-vandals The War of Art (independent for real) debut release in ya clutches:

amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/The-War-Of-Art-Explicit/dp/B0019C1OGW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1215798580&sr=8-1

rhapsody:

http://www.rhapsody.com/xvandals/thewarofart

itunes:

http://www.apple.com/search/ipoditunes/?q=x-vandals+the+war+of+art

beyond.fm:

http://beyond.fm/band_music.asp?id=45


spread the (good) word!!!!!

If hip hop should die before I wake
I'll put an extended clip inside of my AK
Roll to every station, murder the DJ
Roll to every station, murder the DJ" - Nas

"Corporate Americas interest is to separate people
Turn people into product, consumers...
and have whatever package goes their way
You gotta remember as black folk we were all sold just like product too
So often there's gotta be some kind of separation
between what's business versus what kind of really keeps us going as family" - Chuck D


First off thanx and much respect to all the world-wide warriors and myspace-outs who've been giving us x-cellent feedback/words of encouragement and positively vandalous vibrations ref the X-Vandals and our war of art.....

In the spirit of snatching back the beat, we have now started a small INDEPENDENT DIY (Do It Yourself) D4S (Do For Self) record label to support our militant music/art/mess-age, so right now we are in the process of getting our thang together (ref web pages, itunes, paypal, videos/youtube, booking, etc, etc etc), so bare with us in terms of making our X-Vandalisms available to all of yall in a way that works world-wide..... There's just a few of us underground underlings tryna do it all our-selves (without the support of SONY or Mickey Mouses money either) so we don't/can't always meet even our own (self imposed) dead-lines.....

But we will post info up here (and elsewhere) soon as we got things poppin' (and lockin') in the right direction.....

We been building (and destroying) a lot lately, and we feel that (now, more then ever) with todays anarchic computer technology (finally) at the disposal of the dispossessed and entering more and more into the hands of the Hip Hop have-nots who are ready to swipe it, it's finally the perfect time to try to dispose of the bizness/as-usual and try to take Hip Hop back from the (currently crumbling) machine/bizness that has co-opted/controlled/con-tame-inated/capitalized on it for the last couple decades. X it out... for good.

I've been doing defiantly anti-corporate DIY music for the last ten years (I wasn't just raging AGAINST the machine, but also outside of it and in spite of it), but only now (with the advent of this inter-net thang) and the accompanying dissent/down fall of the major (players) have we been able to create X-Vandals and reach people everywhere from South Africa, to Northern Ireland, Basque to Paris, Havana to Venezuela to the Philippines to Puerto Rico and anywhere/everywhere else that is "at war" in their own way and/or is looking for real(ity) Hip Hop MUSIC (but not muse-sick) that is not an employee of the machine, working in the fascist factory, afraid to talk back to the fore-man...... or afraid to fight!

We on a mission, ya'll......

Yeah, X-vandals is not only X-perminetal (hip hop) music, but also an X-periment in how/if we can further destroy the already burning/condemned carcass/building known as "the hustle" by hitting it with a vandalizing wrecking ball called Real(ity) rebel music......

If "hip Hop" is a "hustle" (and to many of us it is/has become JUST that), where there are no (real) artists (and no real artistry), but only bizness men/hustlas/playas/pimps tryna figure out how to best "work" Hip Hop culture (and specifically rap music) like you would any other ho/prostitute, to get paid in dead presidents/pesos/yen/euros, then we say, yeah, if it ain't dead yet, then it's most certainly dying.... strapped to it's death bed only waiting to be trans-de-formed into todays stocks and blonds, (blood) diamonds and pearls, plati-numb (slave) chains down to our ankles, and big old (fools) gold crucifixes around our necks (that look oddly like the lynching rope of old). Why make music at all when you can just strap rap right to the banks umbilical chord and be fed intravenously? Right?....

But, if that is the case, then yeah, every-body say "let it die/let it burn, baby, burn!!!"......

But Hip Hop wasn't always a "hustle" though (some of us already know this and some don't seem to or don't want to know, you know).... But, once upon upon a time it was a really rather radical reaction, a rebel resistance, a counter (and sub) culture move-ment coming from/by a people in a little place called the Boogie Down Bronx who had nada and nuthin' besides their will to live/survive, and the ingenuity/genius to create something from all that that whole lot of nothing...... It's very x-sistence was an act of revolution, ya'll, because the nationless nation of (poor) people who/that created it were not supposed to have anything..... besides the mind numbing misery of the desolate and destitute ghetto(s) they was placed/dropped in to live and die... quietly

Don't get it twisted, the creators of Hip Hop culture were NOT the suns and dawters of the ones who created this corporate/capitalist mess that we been living (or surviving) in and under for the past few centuries. The originators of this Hip Hop thang were the ones who Frantz fanon referred to as "the wretched of the earth" and the bible called the meek. Hip Hop really WAS "ghetto" when that meant something.... politically.... But, of course, wherever their is need/want, there will be a culture vulture capitalist-in-waiting or in-the-making just a waitin' to pounce..... So, it didn't take long before Hip Hoppers were taught to sell their blood for bounty, they muse for milk, and they culture for cream (and an ikea catalogue)......

and that's where we been for eva eva since.....

So, if Hip Hop is just one more capitalist venture, then X-Vandals says, every-body.... "let it burn with blood and fire!".... and let it die like a dirty (under)dog in the very shitty streets and ghetto gutters where it was born (and razed)..... But also, let it be cleansed in that same furnace, with the fire and the fury.... and, let us all remember not to forget, that where there is fire, there is the possibility/myth/reality of a phoenix that can rise (from the projects) again and again.....

and for those sort a spiritual folks among us..... always re-member that what dies CAN (and will) be resurrected......

And, oh yeah being that kind of straight up "vandal" that we be, we are quite down with the idea of bootlegs, black markets, bombing the boosting back of beats, and basically any and all avenues that beat back the shitstem-status-quo, yo.... all in the name of this new/old revolution that's just begun, but was always here. So, yeah, illegalize it, every-body.....

but we also advocate a greater consciousness/overstanding (in this day of defiance) of the difference between robin hood and just plain ol' robbin' the hood..... The difference between SONY and sheer survival, the difference between EMI and i and i, the difference between Warner bros and the Ghetto brothas...... if you gonna rob a bank, you rip the register, not the teller, and if you gonna hit mcdonalds, you rip off ol' Ronald himself, not the kid who works the french fry machine...... There IS a difference. For real.

So, effective today, all we who be B-Boys/girls, bombers, and (ghetto) bastards of young (and old), will be boycotting bizness as usual.... Hip Hop is more then just words (as weapons), but if words is all we got (for now), then the word for today is WAR!.....

In other words..... This means WAR!!!.....

Yeah, WAR!!!!!

Hip Hop is dead.... Que viva Hip Hop!!!!!

N4P

"If art like this is a crime let god forgive me!" - LEE

"You have no idea what a blow graffiti was to us," - Mayor Lindsey of New York City

Graffiti is illegal just about everywhere that you can shake a spray
can. In New York Shitty a writer can be fined
up to $350 per piece and even jailed for repeat offenses, yet the CEOs
of major marketing companies repeatedly and blatantly break the
anti-vandalism/graffiti law(s) to promote their high-priced clients and
never spend a second (thought) on Rikers island. A couple of years ago
a $50 fine was given to Microsoft Corp. for putting butterfly stickers
on New York City sidewalks, and last year NYC branches of Chase Bank
were merely threatened with a $50 fine per violation for two dozen
projections of the Chase logo on the sidewalk, but meanwhile these
corporations (and others) make tens of thousands of dollars utilizing
this kind of illegal "street promotion". Advertising Age magazine
estimates that illegal ads can bring in "$40,000 to $50,000 dollars a
month."

A single billboard on the streets of Manhattan can run you up to
$100,000 a month, and one wall of a bus stop will cost you $1,000 -
$5,000 per month to (legally) place your advertisement/poster on it.
Meanwhile, the mega-Corp called Clear Channel has (outdoor) advertising
space in 25 different countries and also owns Yellow Checker Star Cab
Displays, Taxi Tops, Donrey Media, and Ackerley Media, as well as
ownership of an outdoor advertising company in Switzerland and Poland
and a major outdoor advertising firm in Chile.

in New York City there is a group of firms called outdoor Advertising
Companies who broker outdoor ad space. OACs basically serve as real
estate agencies for outdoor ad space, bringing brands and landlords
together to make deals to put up ads on walls/scaffolding/etc. A
company called NPA Wildposting that is affiliated with the OAC (and is
said to be responsible for 90 percent of the posters that you see on NY
streets) specializes in the "faux-guerilla advertising" technique known
as "sniping", which is a tactic of advertising/promotion usually used
by Punk bands (and culture jammers), where poster-advertisements and
billboards of major corporations are "hijacked" thru the use of
stickers or other DIY posters placed on top of them. In 2003 when the
(formally) outlaw(ed) Napster sold itself to the German media giant
Bertelsmann for eight million dollars, it used a tactic of fake
sniping/advertising to announce it's relaunching as a "legal" music
service by posting real stickers (that they made) with their Napster
logo on it over parody-posters (that they ALSO made themselves) for non
existing businesses or products . In the past few years Microsoft,
Nissan and other major corporations have also employed this form of
pseudo "street" advertising to get their message to the masses. Even
the major corporate rock band, Radio Head, effected this technique a
few years ago when they made a "DIY" photocopied (looking) flier that
had tear off tabs at the bottom with a phone number that actually
played recorded songs from their latest (at the time) release/CD that
was put out on the mega-music label/corp, EMI Group.

The corporations have also begun to use the new "peoples technologies"
to force feed their mass-marketing on the massive. On Myspace, for
instance, corporations can pay to create personal pages for their
products, making their brands part of the myspace "community". Toyota
actually introduced their Yaris subcompact model vehicle on myspace and
it became "friends" with more than 74,000 MySpacers. The big
corporations have also tapped into youtube, which often features films
made by youtube members to promote products to the on-line video
viewer-ship. Pepsi, Heinz and Chrysler have also launched contests on
youtube encouraging user-generated advertising of their products.
Corporations also use "stealth emails" and chat room 'bots'
masquerading as personal real buddies to distribute computer messages
out to the masses to promote their products 24 hours a day, day after
day.

Meanwhile, in Chicago the mayor would like to start fining parents for
their children's pieces, in Peoria, Ariz., surveillance cameras have
been placed on poles in high-graffiti areas and many communities have
passed local laws limiting minors' access to spray paint and
wide-tipped markers. In NYC arrest for vandalism rose 14 percent last
year and are up as much as 44 percent so far this year according to
police and their "Vandal Squad" has an intelligence database of more
than 2,000 names/tags that allows them to spot graffiti "hot spots."
The unit also doles out reward dollars for graffiti information
provided by city citizens. .

And while billion dollar corporations rule and run wild in the streets,
real guerrilla writers such as KET (see www.supportket.org) are chased
down, raided, arrested, fined and/or jailed for sharing their art on
walls (and trains) for FREE(!), and graffiti writers have even been
shot and/or killed by police simply for tryna get free....

welcome to the war of art,

N4P


and.... in a (somewhat) related (bronx) tale, X-Vandals' debut
release, The War of Art, will be coming to a ghetto (not so) near you
in December 2007, and we could use any/all press/promotion we can get.
Our music is being put out by i and i (and not EMI), so if any
X-Spacers out there have connections (or knows anyone who does) to any
magazines/news papers/zines/i-zines/blogs and would like to write an
article or do an interview with X-Vandals, or if you (or anyone you
know) books shows at their school/university (or forward thinking
venues) and would like to see the vicious X-Vandals grace your stage,
please contact us here:

informant@X-Vandals.com

We also have X-Vandals stickers available if there are any snipers out
there in the cyber-hood who wanna get up with the X......

"Contemporary life invites the vandalistic act. The media play so
endlessly on themes of violence and aggression that they become, to the
young at least, an accepted part of life." – Time Magazine

"Art, I like. But this is not art; this is vandalism" - Peter Vallone
Jr., New York City Council Member

So here we be, exiles on myspace.... i don't think that this is quite
the placespace that Sun Ra was talkin' bout when he declared "this IS
the sp a c e a g e... Prepare for the journey!" But, none the (more
or) less, X-Vandals has hereby and buy entered into the myspace age of
(t)reason.....

For those who don't know, myspace is about 4 years old now and it was
sold to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for $580 million two years ago.
Since then, traffic on myspace has more than doubled, the site has
become the sixth-most popular in the world and has over 78 million
registered accounts. i recently read somewhere that "most American
teenagers have accounts on MySpace", which is kinda a scary thought
when ya stop and consider what that means when myspace is actually
owned by the same guy who owns Fox news and the New York Post; and it's
pretty certain that these daze people (teens and not) spend more time
checking their "space" than talking cara a cara with their real(ity)
"friends"....

But i can (sort of) overstand the phenomenon. Most of us (especially
the youth) are controlled by one authority or another (from parents to
police to governments) and are not allowed to have control over our
physical space/lives in one way or (many) others.... And in these times
of police-state-terror, it's only getting worse. So something like
myspace (seems to) allow for people to map out/create a personal/public
cyber-physical "space" that one can call their own where you can say
whatcha want, do whatcha want, be who ya want, beyond the prying eye
(and gun) of authority.... or so it seems.

By/Buy now, it's assumed that EVERY BODY knows who Rupert Murdoch is,
right? But just in case ya ain't been watching tv, reading they papers
or checking the net lately, he owns (among much other ish):

Fox Broadcasting Co. (Fox News, Fox Network, Fox Family, Fox Sports),
Twentieth Century-Fox TV, Fox Filmed Entertainment movie studio, over
twenty Fox-owned TV stations, FX Cable TV Network, Channel 10 in
Sydney, Australia (and Channel 10 in Melbourne, Australia), News Group
Productions and Skyband in the US, Satellite Television PLC in England,
BSkyB, UK (cable and satellite station that reaches all of Britain),
Star TV, Asia (and JSkyB, Japan), SkyLatin America....

and.....

The New York Post, Village Voice (yup!!!), Boston Herald, Chicago
Sun-Times, San Antonio Express-News, Times, Sunday Times, The News Of
The World And Today, UK Australian, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph,
Daily Mirror, Sunday Sun, News and Sunday Mail, and Sunday Times in
Australia....

and....

TV Guide, TV Week, and the Star Trader, among other magazines.

Since the News Corp. purchased MySpace, itsnet worth has nearly
tripled to $1.5 billion, according to Soleil-Media Metrix, and every
body who's anybody (and everyone who's nobody) has gotta have it... and
those who don't are cast out from the herd and into the abyss to never
be heard from again, amen.... These daze every major/corporate record
label has got a Myspace page too for all THEIR "artists" in an attempt
to create the appearance of underground keep-it-real status of the rich
and aimless. What started out as a place for independent artists (and
free radicals) to build and meet outside the shitstem has now become a
"must have" for anyone who's (wants to be) anybody, in terms of
competing with the big hot (100) shots..... So Myspace is just one of
the latest tech-no-logical toy for the big boyz...

Myspace-R-us....

Yeah, it's the nature of the beast (of babylon) to devour all that's in
its path and control the "supply" of all things that could potential
give us sustenance. Myspace, itunes, youtube.... if ya can' beat em,
buy em..... And, while you're at it, sue the hell out of every "soccer
mom" and college kid who dares to even download the latest corporate
"offering" and toss every teenage anarcho-compusino in the brig too
while ya at it....

So yeah, it's a strange sensation to be here/hear now, in this
space/place where all things seem to be (un)real with a bunch of (new)
"friends" that you can't really feel; and where (once again) the
corporate vampiros have taken another big bite out of it....
Especially for us X-Vandals, who be a (very) real and radical
anti-corporation army and a militant mirror of the reality of our
surroundings, streets, barrios, ghettos, gutters and grime....

But, of course, what STILL makes the net a threat and potentially
dangerous to the powers that be, even in it's computer-co-opted
condition, is the still anarchic (somewhat) uncontrollable aspect of
the super subway..... Computer-culture-chaos still has many/more
possibilities to be seized besides attacking each other!!! Yeah, you
can post political rants and rebel rhetoric with (near) anonymity, and
learn everything from making artifacts to the facts on who really "blew
up the projects" right at your fingertips with nothing but (somebody
elses) cheap computer and a phone line, and attack the other man
instead of your brother, man..... Yeah, sure, they can still cut cha
down/delete as they please (if they perceive that you have gotten
"outta line"), but it's like that in the real world too, ain't it?
Don't believe me, ask Malcolm or Filiberto.....

So all hope ain't lost...least not yet. While Audre Lorde may have
said "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house,"
someone else once said that "art Is not a mirror to reflect reality,
but a hammer to shape It." So with that in mind, myspace becomes a
protected (by the landlords) pris-teen public space worthy of being
tagged on by every/any self respecting/reflecting vandal who's proud of
his name and purpose. Yeah, we may not be able to dismantle the masters
casa, but we can (sure as there's a hell below) tear the roof off the
mutha sucka.... And the great(est) thing about public "private
property" is that whatever (any)one tags in that space is seen by all,
and all who agree can join in the artistic acts of vandalism and become
an army of some..... So that kid you see on the street checkin' in with
his "friends" on his (borrowed or boosted) blackberry or (store bought
or stolen ) cell phone today, just may be a militant member of mananas
X-vandal Squad.....

So, X-Space is the place.... for now,

N4P