performing at the Little Templebar

DOWNLOAD my album “Mannequin People” along with your favorite major label artists for FREE. By joining RUCKUS, you will gain unlimited access to over 3 Million songs for FREE (as long as you're a college student with a valid .edu email address). Here’s the link: http://www. ruckus. com/ruckus/music/album. do?from=search&albumId=1512852 ALBUM ALSO AVAILABLE ON iTunes and CDbaby. com www. FreshCityMusic. comThe Introduction

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doXKBcdfa2Y

In celebration of a great American victory!

Hiphop critic Patrick Taylor of RapReviews.com says, "GaKnew's rapping style is a little Kanye, and a little Jay-Z at his most earnest and soul-bearing. Think "Moment of Clarity" but with more soulful production, and you are approaching where GaKnew is coming from"…

"He draws upon the mastery of language essential in good poetry to create rhymes that are layered, complex, and a step above your average rapper." …

"A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into making "Mannequin People," and it shows. GaKnew deals with the struggles of the inner city, as well as the challenges of relationships, being a musician, and trying to make a place for yourself in the world. GaKnew is an insightful and honest rapper, and his positive but real approach is a welcome contrast to rappers who glamorize life on the streets, either intentionally or unintentionally. There are a lot of rappers spitting tales from the hood, but not that many offering solutions or analysis of how to make things better. GaKnew does this without sounding preachy or corny, which is no small feat."

Don't just take RapReviews.com's word for it. Order your copy of the album at www.cdbaby.com/cd/gaknewroxwel and judge for yourself. The entire review can be read at http://www.rapreviews.com/archive/2008_10_mannequin.html
Though Patrick did mistake some facts as far as where GaKnew grew up and so forth, we appreciate the none-biased review. After you read the review, feel free to return to this blog and post your thoughts.
MOVE!

Come out and celebrate with me and the band, GaKnew Roxwel and the Bare Knuckles. We'll be performing the new album, Mannequin People, along with special guest - Roscoe Umali, Damani, Thea Monyee', Jimetta Rose, Stylistik Jones, Macho of the Tunnel Rats, Prolific Thought, Marc Payne, etc ... And if you're a Leo, SO AM I! We will be celebrating all night, so bring your party to the party. July 23rd @ the Zanzibar 1301 5th st., Santa Monica, Ca 90401. Admission $10 or e-mail guest@freshcitymusic.com to get on my FREE guest list.

Hope! - That's the new PEACE yall.

Starving artists crave attention in hopes to feel the fullness of success. Somewhere some one is sitting in front of a computer saying. "If only the world could see my talent". If it’s a guy, he’s probably looking at the female myspace music stars like, "I wish getting half naked made people add me as a friend". "Record labels would look at my page and say, wow, with a following like that we don’t have to do much marketing". Everybody just wants to be recognized for what they feel good at. Some are actually good. Most aren’t quite as good as they think. I know. That’s not a PC thing to say, but (I’m a Mac user lol) you know you think the same thing. That’s why band add requests irritate the crap out of you. The add requests are unfortunate byproducts of the Entertainment industry using myspace to reference how marketable an artist is. Business minded people see numbers over talent, and talent needs business to gain maximum visibility. Thus birth the popularity contest that’s hitting up your add box daily. It’s annoying, but you never know when one of us will be worth listening to. On behalf of every hustling artist pushing to be heard, I apologize for the unfavorable band adds that you receive. However, I am entering the contest today in hopes to make it worth your while. Stop by and say hi some times. We don’t have to be complete strangers. PEACE!

The Statement has been made. No matter how the media tries to spin the facts, the people of South Carolina have spoken. It is finally time to move on beyond RACE. Sadly there are people who will strongly disagree. There are also some that racism services more as a crutch than a hindrance. However, the ongoing results of the Democratic Primary Election say many Americans have already put race behind them. For too long RACE has been the power card. Throw race in the mix and everyone gets sidetracked. Shamelessly there was an attempt to play that card before the South Carolina Election. The only problem is that this isn't the 1970's, and people care more about having a unifying President than they do about his ethnicity. I am THANKFUL. Mostly because the amount of "White" votes that Obama has received screams to "Black" people, "not all White Americans think you're inferior". "There are many White Americans that will stand by you and believe in you when you seek solution".

Up until about a month ago, I didn't care if Hillary or Obama won. I thought they were both great candidates. However, in this short time the contrast between how they run their campaigns speaks volumes. Her campaign appears to be focused on dividing the people by waving the race card and suggesting that it would be the largest factor in South Carolina's Election. Obama never allows his campaign to publicly suggest Hillary being a woman will grant her Women's vote. The media, along with Bill Clinton, have constantly implied that Race should be accredited for Obama's landslide victory in South Carolina. Are there not more Women in South Carolina than there are "Black" people? It has been my experience that Women care as much about the strides of Women as "Black" people do about "Black" progress, if not more. Obama has already unified the people more than any other President has in the past 30 yrs. He speaks to the Republican Party as well as the Democratic Party, which is something that no other Candidate is doing. They all only speak on behalf of their half, Blue/Red. How is that any different than only speaking to your group/gang/Race? Maybe what we need is not a tenured politician. Maybe the more tenured just means the more tainted by corrupt politics. Let us not be mislead by the media, but lead by our desire for a people's President. The President of the Nation is supposed to represent the whole Nation. It is impossible for one person to represent a divided Nation equally. Thus it is the job of that one person to break down the divisions and unite the people through their commonalities. Let us not continue to let political parties, race, sex, etc… divide us. Let us unite for a Change.

Creative mode. I set a goal for myself to make 20 beats during the month of December. I spent the entire first week listening to about 7 or 8 crates worth of music, and picked out 100 songs that I deemed worth sampling. I then chopped each song into over 100 little measures, toyed around with them for a while, and pieced together what I could. Some songs served purely as inspiration to compose my own original pieces. I then picked out my favorite twenty, and let the songs come to me. As you could imagine, this is not a quick process, especially being that I pride myself on being a wordsmith. I'm not just looping oldies, and rapping over them. Sound manipulation is an art form.

I've seen stickers that read, "DRUM MACHINES HAVE NO SOUL". My reply, neither do the mass produced drum sets you beat on. What's the beef? It's all just sound manipulation. I AM THE SOUL OF THE DRUM MACHINE. A piano only has 12 notes. My point is that no one plays any new sequence of notes that has never been played on the planet. I have the utmost respect for musicians and the skill of playing an instrument. However, 99% of the times, the grooves that spontaneously come up are alterations of melodies that they heard before. How is that any different from being inspired by some old record, and recycling parts of it into your own creation? Music is about having an ear for what sounds good. You can master an instrument and still suck at coming up with melodies. It takes talent to ID a great sample, chop it up into little pieces, and make it sound totally different from the original, yet still GOOD. I can't speak for all hiphop producers. Some guys are like Puffy and Dre', they hear a great loop and run with it. Whatever. I'm speaking on behalf of cats like myself, Just Blaze, Kanye, Dilla, cats who offer sound collages composed of songs that have already served their time in rotation. It's like making a collage with magazine clippings from decades ago. Yet corporations want to chase cats down and charge for samples. The music that has grown to be known as hiphop was founded on sampling. It's an art form that electronic companies have made a fortune off of. Companies like Akai, Roland, Propeller Head, etc. have built their businesses off of catering to sampling. Every time some kid decides he wants to make beats and goes out to buy some $1000 piece of equipment, Hiphop feeds the economy. So tell the Supreme Court to FREE SAMPLES!