go to www.hiphopdx.com

then go to media
then audio

its right there

about 1,000 plays in less than 24 hours.  good times

be sure to check out all the joints on the myspace player too

and also buy the album! it makes your brain bigger

-wrist

Hi to the weirdos who are actually reading this,
So since I've gotten my mixtape finished (it will be available for purchase through cdbaby/paypal very soon for those of you who don't wanna travel cross country and internationally to see me perform and get one at a show, lazy shits) I've been primarily focusing on the completion of my album "Recycling Sucks". I've been going through some Vanderslice bangers (hopefully this album will get him more of the credit that he deserves, his crates are deeper than Jiggaman's pockets), and a few Domingo joints, writing and what not....and I've been wondering, when this is all finished....where are the new 20th century, internets educated, ready to hate and nick pick, sub-genre inventing, half assed hobby rapping fan bases going to stick me? Frankly I have no idea.

I've been putting the album together with a pretty straight forward concept in mind, just to do what I wanna hear and rhyme about the things I think I should be rhyming about (I really don't think I'm inventing the wheel or anything, but I think my unique personality and uncompromising dedication to it is yielding some pretty unique and stand out results. ehh fuck it you don't care). The market is so frikkkin' over saturated at this point, that really, who gives a flying fuck? I'm not gonna try to cater myself to any individual subgerne's fan-base. Is there really a point in that anymore? When I hear a new artist nowadays, it almost always feels like they're being put out intentionally to snatch up another existing fan-base up as much as possible. When I actually have a promotional department working behind me, I don't think I'd even know to which sub-genre I'd recommend they try to force feed me into. I'm probably nowhere near arts-y enough or in left field enough to
snatch up most of the Def Jux fan clubs. While I think my album has some definite borderline-emo material and a profound honesty, as a whole there's no way its gonna jump out at Atmosphere's fan-base. A lot of people have inferred that I would fit snugly somewhere in between Non Phixion or Cage. I guess that sorta makes sense. I think my voice limits me to an audiance that can appreciate drugged out angry white dudes. Let's face it, I don't exactly convey the soul of CL Smooth.

I see constant labels being thrown around on blogs, messageboards, even seldomly in public hip hop debate and discussion. "Nerd Rap", "Emo Rap", "Whiteboy Rap", "Street Shit","Political Rap" , etc etc etc. Personally, I'd say there's at least one song in my catalogue to fit pretty much any closed minded label you can throw at me. I'm not saying this to brag at all (all right fuck it, I'm a tad happy I managed to work this into a mini celebration of my own versatility. I just used the word tad. Not very hip hop, Seth. Not very hip hop at all), because almost any artist I see receive these various labels, I can also pick apart their catalogue for specific songs to disprove you as well. So where are we going with this? I have no idea!!!! All the little filing systems todays un appreciative fan with too much information and exposure than he knows what to do with, are straight up, stupid. A better word might be, friggin' stupid. Thats 2 words. Word up. Word.

If my album drops and you hate it, cool. If it drops and you love it, well between me and you, I always knew you were smarter than the rest of your friends. Just please don't try to pigeonhole me. Actually do what you want.

One last thing. I'm tired of seeing so called Hip Hop heads praising the works of Justin Timberlake. Man, remember when Hip Hop scared people? That shit was ill. Auughhh , I'm sounding old now. Well also, if you think Kanye West doesn't have horrible cadence, your standards are really really low.

- (TERROR) Wrist

www.thewristhiphop.com

in philly...festival pier i believe the place is called? 50 bucks a ticket but.......well worth it...

before i go into this story....lemme just say, so you're not shocked, that while i'm a respectable friendly weirdo....i roll with some of the ruggest insane motherfuckers on earth......thats just a warning

anyway


so me, brad luck (my part time hypeman/group member) and Ed Threat (guy) get hammered then go to the show.....when we arrive Reef the lost cauze is about halfway thru his set.....but i've seen him twice in the last 3 weeks so.....i wasn't too upset...but brad left me at the will call booth getting my ticket and ran to the front with his little groupie ass...Reef bodies it as he always does....

so then we go get some (more) beer, 6 dollars for a fuckin plastic (important detail for later) bottle of miller lite, but....eh i already payed 50 bucks to get in here....might as well splurge to keep my buzz goin'....

next up...out comes. Boot camp click!!!!!! everyone was there...minus evil dee......they came out like one at a time...first smiff n wesson....then sean p comes out, does some solo joints, then rock joins him and they run into some heltah skeltah classics.......next OGC....then eventually, buckshot comes out and rolls thru some blackmoon classics........they didnt do ANY new material which shocked and pleased me.....they were great.....

lemme throw in here...Monie Love was hosting...which was a surprise...but to NO suprise, the philly crowd boo'd the living shit out of her....ahhh philly....only there would this happen....in NYC, there's an arrogance where like, if jesus showed up on stage, cats would nod they're head a little and be like...yea whatever...in philly they'd boo the living shit out of him unless he started an Eagles chant..anyway moving on

next up...phillys own, jedi mind tricks! i've never seen them live, despite once bringing jus allah out as a suprise guest at one of my shows, i met him after the breakup so...i never had the chance to check vinnie's stage show out...he fuckin killed it.....did varioius jedi minds classics closing the night out with Heavenly Divine....also brought Sean P back on stage to do the song they have together from violent by design that i cant remember the title of but they killed it......fuckin dope...

in between this.....i went looking for some folks with Ed.....and i saw Reef...i've known reef for a minute and gave him a pound and bullshitted with him for a few minutes.....then Ed went to give him a pound or something and sends my beer FLYING out of my hand.....somehow Reef used his philly quickness to dodge it all...and laughed it off and was a really good sport about it....to which i just said "uhh hahhh...yea this is my friend Ed"


next up..was a little someone called...oooooooooh i dunno fuck docta spot REDMAN! comes out doin' Diggy Doc, then goes into Time 4 some aksion.....blow your mind.....pick it up.....the joint from muddy waters that goes if you aint smokin get the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck out that i forget the name of....and some others.....then midway thru his set...he stops and says "yo....i got a group backstage with me....i aint gonna say who it is...ya'll already know who it is" and this point me and Ed turn to each other like....noooooooooo way it couldn't be.....

sure enough...in drops the bassline everyone loves (the very one jaz-o looped up for jay z years later and acts like he's a genius for doing in the XXL with the resonable doubt recap story..ugh..but thats another story) its my thang! and out walks eric and parish makin dollers!!! EPMD! i was wilin'....they ran thru a few songs...then Red came out to do a few more joints...closing with React with eric sermon...i was yelling DO HEADBANGER ALREADY! but they didnt seem to care...and left without doing it..perhaps to spite me...

next up....out comes...oh nobody important...only RAKIM ALLAH!!!!!!!!!! he ran thru pretty much every classic you could think of.....and did some new song which was suprisingly tolerable......he killed it.....i cant describe it any better than that

now in between rakim and the headliner.....which was the wu tang clan...u mighta heard of em......there's a lot of time to kill.......and these chicks are on dudes shoulders flashing people here and there......we're laughing...but they were terrible at it...so ed and brad pick me up and i flash the crowd..to very little response....me and ed then picked up brad so he could do the same which was tricky being he's a fat.....and we all kinda fell over.....after this ed and brad decide its a good idea to start chuckin bottles at chicks......i did not partake but agreed it was probably the best course of action....

so then this one chick to the left of us...is like......yelling at us...telling us to calm the fuck down and how we're bein jerks ..and then pulls out the big guns, with, and i quote "you guys are the reason white people arn't allowed at hip hop shows anymore!!!!!!!" ...and she was WHITE!!!! i was just shocked and confused...Brad's all yellin "have u been to a show in the last 5 years?" and Ed's getting in her grill askin her and her man what they're gonna do about it and they need to shut the fuck up yadda yadda yadda....i'm like....ok listen.....i dont wanna get kicked out before wu tang comes out...lets fight em afterwards....then i lost ed and brad somehow......to which i found out later they were plottin on how we were gonna choke her man out from behind but either those people left or realized who they were dealing with and moved...no clue which...so anyway...

next up...WU TANG! but at this point i'm tired...wu was real dope but was lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggggg...at one point they brought like 20 chicks from the crowd on stage and made em dance to Got Ya Money..then ghost did back like that and i wanted to puke into my shoes......at one point they did Triumph and we all assumed this was the end of the show.....so we go over to the exit and watch....then they start doing even more songs after triumph...so we were like...eh lets just go...cuz we were all hammered and tired and didnt wanna push our luck on our peacefull evening

all in all..probably the best concert i've ever been to

the end

hi there,
so my birthday weekend was fun, but i did a lot of yelling evidently and have lost my voice to a slight degree.  I'm hoping its all better by a week from today when I have the show out in Louisville.  I'm drinking tea and not smoking like a sissy trying to make it come back.  Stupid yelling.  I blame the good people at qn5 since they're show was so long and loud and rather than watch it I wanted to yell over it for 6 hours straight being a drunk loudmouth.

I won the public enemy record i mentioned in the last blog....told you......I had my max bid set up to 30 dollars.  I won it for 12.  I'm hardcore.

Rocksteady weekend was THE best in YEARS.  Possibly the best I've been to personally.  Big Daddy Kane, Freddie Foxxx, DJ FUCKIN PREMIER, fuckin q tip outta nowhere? Lord Jamar, Craig G...I can't even make a whole list...shit was crazy tho, made me wish my voice had the ability to yell for everyone. 

Now, next big summer festival is comming up. Scribblejam! I love scribblejam for some reason. I HATE the process of getting there though.  This brings me to my next point, GIVE ME MONEY! No, but seriously.....everyone knows I do beats...everyone knows I'm stingy as hell with lowering my beat prices.  I'm willing to make some CRAZY deals right now.  Hit me on AIM for details, there's a link on my page.  I neeeeeeeeeeed some extra cash right now, for reals for reals reals really really reals.....

allright i'm done writing.....more later...


wrist

whats up folks,

Let me start by saying I just found a rare Public Enemy 12".  Its the origional release of "Hazey Shade Of Criminal" which was recalled because of the controversal cover with a picture of a lynching on it.  Don't bother bidding on it on ebay because I WILL be winning it.  This was one of the songs that made me want to be what I currently am.  Its part of my current ebay spending sprees where I try to buy all the songs that changed my life on vinyl.  I only have about 3,000 to go.  Public Enemy - greatest group of all time, any genre, period.

So, if you look at my show listings, you'll see I have the QN5 Megashow from rocksteady weekend listed.  Let me make this clear to avoid any confusion, I am NOT performing at the QN5 Megashow at CBGB's, but, this guy Okwerdz is.  This guy Okwerdz who I have to pick up from the airport tommorrow night at 12:30 at night at JFK which I've never been to and my older brother says is way more confusing than Newark, which had me nice and scatterbrained wondering why they just don't drop everyone off from the plane in the parking lot where I was to make my life easier. 

But anyway, I'm going to be Okwerdz's hypeman at the show, cuz thats my homeskillet.  So, its pretty awesome that I'm going to get to be on stage at the world famous CBGB's Lounge in NYC before it closes this fall.  Here's the thing, I know I'm excited to be able to do that, but I don't know why.  I know CBGB's is all important and famous, but ask me a damn thing about the history of the place, why its famous, or why I should be excited? Its incredible how you can look like you know whats going on with very little information. Word up.

But, what makes this show EXTRA cool is that, at midnight of said show, it will be my birthday! So now I get to perform at the world famous place thats going to close soon before it closes AND get older at the same time!!!! Those that know me personally know how old I'm going to be, for those that don't know me personally that are for some reason reading this (I could just be more concise and say "fans", but..c'mon..who am I kidding? Isn't it neat how my massive ego is self abusive at the same time?), I will tell you this, in hip hop terms, I'm older than Lil Bow Wow, but younger than Rappin Granny from the Howard Stern show.

Hmmm, what else........oh, the new installment of the No Subways In Jersey series is complete and has been sent off for pressing. The cover is my main picture there...fancy eh? Insomnia's Cool! DON'T SLEEP!!!

 

 

-wristomatic

 

(PS, I tried to find a Public Enemy album to put in "the now listening to" part of the blog, and when I did the little search thing nothing came up. THE FUCK? NO public enemy in that database? You gotta be kidding me.  My childhood just became meaningless, thanks myspace! You fuckin chud)

Hello to all,

So I've been pondering some things about the Hip Hop portion of the major label record industry of present day.  A & R's if you read this, really think about it.  Artists, if you read this, yea, I'm as frustrated as you are. Those who don't give a shit and read this, why'd you read this???

Lately a very popular technique that major labels have been using to sign artists, is to find artists that have already managed to move units on their own independently, hand to hand or otherwise.  Normally if an artist is breaking 6 digits in sales in hand to hand, this is somebody a major label is gonna come snatch up.  Why? I guess under the premise that if that many people are buying it already, imagine what we can do if we shove it down peoples throats!!! There is no more evidence of this than of how southern hip hop has managed to, for all intensive purposes, completely take over the mainstream hip hop world right now.  These artists have been hustling and on their grind for YEARS and through years of hard work, have gotten people up at corporate to take notice.  Good for them.  But this might be the dumbest pratice the industry has used ever.  I'll elaborate.

When artists on their own get on their grind and sell thousands upon thousands of units, this does NOT neccessarily equate to high quality music. I've seen some of these artists at work first hand.  I've seen people with boxes of CD's hassling every person walk by to cop that hot new shit, even if it means dropping the price down to as low as a dollar.  Do this for a few years, you're going to have quite the inflated number of sales.  Also I've seen artists just pester people at shows to buy their shit, again dropping the price extremely low in most cases, and the people will buy the CD just to get this artist out of their face.  In many of these cases people don't even listen to the music.  I've witnessed people first hand, buy a CD from an indie artist when they were drunk at a show, due to the artists salesmenship, harassement, persistance, whatever..only to wake up the next morning and say "what the fuck is this?".  Later they may even listen to it and say "holy shit I wasted 4 dollars on THIS?" and usher it into the trash as soon as possible.  You get the picture.  Do any of these practices long enough and you'll have moved thousands upon thousands of units.  I respect the effort, even if the music is garbage.

Now, employees of major record labels go out, find the people moving the most units independently, have gotten their name out the most, or perhaps even created themselves a huge local buzz with this practice, and go out and sign that artist.  I'm willing to bet sometimes they don't even listen to the music, just like a good portion of the initial customers.  How many of these artists actually make it big once they get to the majors? Very few. Why? Because in most cases, the music just isn't very good to be honest with you.  This is where labels are really dropping the ball.

Just because someone had the initiative to press up their own CDs and bother enough people into purchasing them doesn't make their music good, obviously.  But think about it Record Execs.  The artists that get on through this practice that DO succeed, are normally because by sheer luck (in most cases) they came up with something catchy, and it was shoved down the masses throats enough to the point where teeny boppers can't get it out of their head. 

Now here's my question.  If efforts were made to find HIGH QUALITY music, instead of a product that someone had the know how to move a lot of units locally, and then shoved the GOOD music down peoples throats, don't you think that would sell even BETTER??????

Major labels, listen, you are the machine.  You have the resources to push someone as far as you'd like to. So why on earth do you need to find artists that are already pushing themselves to begin with? YOU are the difference maker here, major label, YOU! Not them.  Any mediocre, slightly dancable, remotely catchy, artist thats catching on in the mainstream is a product of the machine pushing it.  Without that machine, they'd still be in the same local spot you found them in.  Its in your OWN interests to concentrate on finding higher quality music than music that was pushed on a lot of people.

Let me make an analogy that might help.  Lets say you as a corporate company are presented with 2 different Automobiles to market.  One is neat looking, but doens't function what so ever, and is put together horribly, however, due to the efforts of its designer, has already sold well to a local region (yea the analogy is already falling apart but bear with me).  The other, is equally neat looking, but actually drives, has a rediculously long lasting engine life, and is fantastic on gas.  Lets say company a markets the first car. Kids love it, it sells well, but when it breaks down within the first year of ownership, its forgotten quickly and dismissed, and a year later its the laughing stock of the industry and looked back at like, haha people actually drove that.  The second car, sells equally well due to having the corporate monster behind it, but has people comming back to buy its newer models over and over due to the high performance and quality.

Do you see what I'm getting at? I dont' know I may be dumb.  But I'd like input...any thoughts?

 

- wristocrat

Allright listen,

My normal approach to the commercial hip hop artists and songs that I don't really dig is to just ignore them and go about my business.  But I gotta take a stance here.  There's a new Snicker's add running.  It opens with some kinda shit about how Hip Hop is under attack by materialism and violence, at which point I'm sittin there nodding my head like, word! After 30 seconds of this buildup or whatever, the fucking BLACK EYED PEAS come out!!!! The frig? The guys who wrote the lyric "whatchyou gon' do with all that breasts?" are gonna save Hip Hop for me? THANKS SNICKERS!!! Seriously this irks me to no end, let me get into a history of my personal distaste for BEP and what they've stood for.

The first time I heard the Black Eyed Peas was around, by my estimate 1998 (I could go look it up but whatever) on the High School High soundtrack.  They had a little diddy on there called Joints And Jams.  Cool little song, not real annoying, no real lyrical merit, but, it had a good little groove to it.  Later I found out this was also a song on their debut album which was out at the time.  The title escapes me (again, the looking up thing, eh) but I heard a few other songs from that album, never in its entirety because, really they just didn't do it for me.

At the time Fergie was not in the group yet and it was just the 3 dudes.  None of them were particularly beasts on the mic.  Lyrically, delivery wise, presence wise, flow wise, style wise, etc...all was painfully mediocre, and really the MCing has to be above average in some way for me to personally get into an artist or group, so I just kinda wrote them off as average.  Some of the beats were a little catchy but, nothing really mind blowing. 

Around the time they were promoting their 1st or possibly 2nd (my memory is a bit fuzzy, because as I said, I wasn't really into them so I didnt really pay them any mind, so the details on when this was are sketchy for me) album.  One day I caught them on Rap City, and they were doing something I'd never seen any artist do on this particular show.  One of them was beatboxing, the other freestyling, while the 3rd breakdanced.  I think at one point they switched who was breakdancing and everything.  It wasn't stellar beatboxing, or breaking, or freestyling, but I took a step back like, hey, I don't really care for these guys's music, but at least they're taking a stand on this true hip hop kinda tip.  I've never seen any rappers bust into breakdancing on rap city ever, so I thought it was pretty cool they were on some true to roots shit on a nationally broadcast TV show, since they really weren't on a lot of them at the time.

Sometime after this, WILL.I.AM (the main producer for the group) for reasons I never fully understood, was given an instrumental project on BBE records when BBE was releaseing great instrumental albums, i.e. Pete Rock's "Petestrumentals".  ALL of the instrumental projects BBE headed up in that series were heavily critically accalimed, except for Will.I.Am's.  I wasn't too suprised.  I remember reading an in depth critique of that project and thinking to myself, well yea this guy's really not that good a producer, why would that be any good?

Fast forward to whenever that Get Retarded shit came out. What the heck happened?  I remember the first time I caught the video or heard the song played on the radio, I thought to myself, haha, those guys never really went anywhere with the underground thing and now they're doing this poppy rap bullshit? HAHA and oh wow they added a white chick to the group? HA! Thats funny.

Fast forward to a few months past that.  That song's everywhere and BEP is HUGE!! WOA.  Didn't see that comming.  Why does this bother me? Because going from a true hip hop grassroots group, to adding a mickey mouse club bitch number 234234234666667u78u to the group is just the DEFINITIVE sellout move.  Do you really think BEP sat down like "Listen guys, we're really not blowing up like I thought we could have.  Maybe its our lack of musical ability to make hip hop as good we'd like to on the b boying beatboxing vibe we live daily.  Maybe we need to add a white chick with a lot of junk, a lot of junk inside her trunk,  who can margionally sing???"  "Hey!! Yea you're right! Kool Herc will love it!"?

I don't know what caused they're change in style.  I'm sure an A & R somewhere realized they're ability to sort of rap on beat with crap lyrics weren't gonna work for the audiance they were seeking so far, but would fly over well with the commercial crowd if they could add a little sex appeal.  But c'mon guys.  They managed to go from a group no one was really bumping, struggling to get exposure in industry, to a pop giant with cheesey hooks, catchy yet simplistic beats, and a fuckin white chick who they even let on the mic on occasion.  As an artist it just drives me nuts.  This total disrespect to one's own artistic integrity is a soul selling act that goes on way too often. 

So why does the commercial piss me off? Because if Hip Hop is gonna be saved (not that I believe its in desire need of saving, if you really wanna save or preserve the artform, you just have to get it out of the hands of corporate big wigs that turn all art into crap for the sake of the all ighty ollar, but thats another story) by anyone, I HIGHLY doubt its going to be the group that fits the description of a sellout more than ANY GROUP IN THE HISTORY OF HIP HOP.  Hopefully Just Blaze and Saigon will pave that road later this year.  And really, don't you think if BEP had the ability to "save" hip hop, their immense popularity and money and record sales and airplay would have already done that by now? What are you shitting me?

So to conclude (if you read this far, god bless), I'm starting a boycott of Snickers for blatently disrespecting the art form that SOME OF US hold sacred, also as soon as I figure out which major conglomorate of corporate America owns Snickers, I plan to boycott all those products as well.  FUCK Snickers AND the Black Eyed Peas for using this whole save hip hop bullshit as a marketing tool.  I know some of you coudln't give a fuck, but for some of us, this is all we really got.

 

- Wrist

"I came down to this earth, to rid you of the black eyed peas, say what say whaaaaaaaaaaat" (sung to parody wack mc's by pumpkinhead, haha, chea)

Wattap,
So today was the infamous triple 6 date that I've been slightly pondering in the back of my mind since the turn of the new year.  Sadly to say, the apacolypse did NOT happen today.  *sigh* I was kinda banking on that.  Oh well, back to the grind.

So my Suns lost to the Mavs in 6 games.  Hell of a close series tho.  What can I say tho, a series that close without ANY big men but Tim Thomas who just shoots 3's anyway, against one of the most well put together teams I've ever seen, isn't a bad loss.  Suns are close to being a championship team, who knows where we woulda been if we had Amare AND Kurt Thomas? Forget it. But, I'll be pulling for the Heat in the finals. I'd like to see Payton and Zo get rings.  That'd be neat.  Plus Mark Cuban irritates me.  I like the fact he gets all into the games, and is WAAAY into his franchise, but he goes overboard I think.  I'm too stoned to care to elaborate.

When I get time I'm gonna put up a blog about my opinion on this gay marriage amendment issue.  Its real fuckin weird and dumb.

I won the crustified dibbs record and marbury jersey on ebay by the way....congradulate me on spending too much money. Word.

-Hip Hop's Handsome Andy Milinokis aka Seth

Whats up whoever's reading this,

I decided I need to blog more on my music page now that i got like over 800 friends and stuff.  Even if only 2 of my real friends read and it and like 4 "fans" or whatever, it could be fun, and i got time to kill at the "day" job, so why not...

The Suns are killin me here.  Tonight looked like shit but Nowisky had 50 points so I mean, its hard to be that upset at the Suns. For those unaware I'm a huge Suns fan for reasons that aren't anything but lame and unexplainable.  But, its been an exciting season.  This is easily their best shot at a title since 1993, even tho I dont see them getting past dallas realisticly, but they're an insanely resilient team. On top of that , to quote Bill Walton - "Raja Bell is becomming my favorite player in the league!"

Speaking of my Suns-fanism, I just bid on a Stephon Marbury jersey from his Phoenix days on ebay.  I'm sure I'll win it.  One of the cool things about being me is when you want stuff, 95% of the time its not the same shit that anyone else wants.  Here's to being a weirdo.  I recently got my first ever "positive feedback" on ebay for being the middleman in a record purchase for my ace Mr.Vanderslice. Getting that got me into looking at ebay tonight and aside from bidding on that jersey, bidding on a rare 1994 Jive Records 12" by Crustified Dibbs (currently known as RA The Ruggedman). The A side is "Bloodshed Hua Hoo", I'm not sure if there even is a b side song, but as a Ruggedman fanatic I have to have this.  There's 2 days left on the auction, if I loose I may cry.  You ever see a guy in a Suns jersey with a beard cry? Its horrible.

Lets see, anything else to share? My fuckin home internet connection has been on the fritz for no good reason at all.  I hate it.  Apparently I dont know how to reset a router properly either because everytime the shit dies when I try to fix it things get worse somehow.  I work with computers.  I can show you the in and outs of almost any piece of software if you give me access to it for a few hours, but hardware and networking? Psh.  I know less about that then Swizz Beatz knows about sample chopping (oh what now).

Also, I really need a Fila sponsorship.

- Setherwrist