As many of you know, I took a quick weekend trip out to Vancouver a couple of weekends ago with my homies Skam and Los, as well as the ladies from 88Back, Theressa and Lori, and Skam’s boy, John. It was a quick 3 day getaway that was full of dope conversations, drinks galore, fun-havery, great food, and wonderful hospitality.
The tickets only costed us $220 cdn, taxes included, which is like $45 American. lol.
I wanted to post the whole trip before the New Year, so here goes nothing.
I’ve known Dustin, aka DJ Mensa for about 20 years now. We went to grade school together, where we were always homies, either at a distance or walking home daily type shit. We went to the same high school, our parents were friends, he even lived on my street at one point.
As time passed, I got into b-boying, and I remember using old ass record players and 45’s in my basement trying to learn how to DJ with the rest of my crew. He and another friend of ours at the time, Jarett, picked up 1200’s and took their career choices from there. I couldn’t save a dime to get a set and kept dancing until my daughter was born and life really started to change.
I love that we’re both out here in Toronto doing our thing. We’ve reconnected as friends through our professions. He held us down week after week at Chinadoll during the early stages of TheLegendsLeague, and has been a real big brother figure to me through my troubles and struggles over the past couple years.
I’ve always wanted him to do a mixtape for TheLegendsLeague, and we had been meaning to drop one with a few other DJ’s almost a year ago. Most of them flopped, but Mensa gave me a short mix called, “The Layer Cake”. It was about 30 mins of tracks and interludes that got me on some real introspective shit about my life and my moves. To hear a mixtape like this from someone who has seen every aspect of me and knows me on a personal level, means a lot.
He put a lot into this and sent me a finalized version this morning. While listening to it, I did this cover art based on the line, “This is food for thought, you do the dishes”. The yellow is inspired by the film entitled, “Layer Cake”.
Here’s how Mensa broke it down:
This is the Layer Cake, a motivational mixtape. Over the years, hip-hop music has been able to communicate so much to me on so many levels, that it was only right for me to select the brightest gems out of the bunch and compile them for the masses.
I made this for every person who has fought with their parents, creditors, ex’s, teachers, bosses, and anyone else who said they couldn’t do what they wanted to do really do in life. This is for those brave enough to venture off away from the 9 to 5 paradigm, risk financial security, and hold off on the white picket fences a couple years for a shot at following their real dreams.
It reads like a book in three chapters: admission, advice, and actualization.
The first step to self-betterment is acknowledging your problem. The songs in this third of the tape are tales of struggle and despair, spoken from both a personal standpoint, or with regards to the social climate. Put together, the vibe of this section is gloomy, but every word is spoken with a glimmer of hope.
The next step to finding your way out of despair is to heed the advice of people who have been down a similar path. Naturally, the atmosphere in this part of the tape is more uplifting. Many of these songs I live by for affirmation of living this unorthodox lifestyle.
The final path of the tape is supposed to be the big breakthrough: taking the steps to achieving your goals. No more talk, just action. Here, songs of triumph against the odds and some final words of confidence are offered to toughen you up before finally stepping out into the world. My favorite Biggie Smalls quote of all time was saved just for this section.
Speaking of quotes, the title of the mixtape comes from this ill movie from 2004, and and is heard at the beginning and end of this tape. The notion of the Layer Cake is the inspiration for this tape. I hope it impacts you the way it did me.
For all my aspiring artists, regardless of your craft, this one is for you.
All the best in the ‘09 and beyond,
DJ Mensa
PLAYLIST:
Acknowledgement:
LAYER CAKE INTRO
LITTLE BROTHER - SPEED
GOAPELE - CHANGE IT ALL
BLU - SHOW ME THE GOOD LIFE
MISTA - BLACK BERRY MOLASSES
JAY-Z & SCARFACE - THIS CAN’T BE LIFE
SAUKRATES - MONEY OR LOVE
DE LA SOUL - TRYING PEOPLE
AKON - GHETTO
KANYE WEST - SPACESHIP
A TRIBE CALLED QUEST FT. FAITH EVANS - STRESSED OUT
Advice:
THE ROOTS - WHAT THEY DO
FOREIGN EXCHANGE - HUSTLE HUSTLE
MYSTIC - THE LIFE
MARY J. BLIGE - GOOD WOMAN DOWN
ERIC ROBERSON - FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME
CESAR COMANCHE FT. ETERNIA - UPS AND DOWNS
NOTORIOUS B.I.G. - EVERYDAY STRUGGLE
FREEWAY - ALRIGHT
J. DILLA - THE $$$
BRAND NUBIAN - DON’T LET IT GO TO YOUR HEAD
Actualization:
N*E*R*D - PROVIDER
SIZZLA - BE STRONG
COLLIE BUDDZ - BLIND TO YOU
2PAC - KEEP YOUR HEAD UP
JAY-Z - ANYTHING
KANYE WEST - LAST CALL
NOTORIOUS B.I.G. FT. 112 - SKY’S THE LIMIT
LUDACRIS FT. COMMON & SPIKE LEE - DO THE RIGHT THANG
Ever since I saw photographs of Stash and Futura taken by Kevin Marzo, I’ve been dying to do illustrations of both of them. The character that is captured in these simple portraits is brilliant and I couldn’t resist drawing them.
I’ve had a lot of people ask me how I do my illustrations, and a few have claimed that I use “Live Trace” or trace photographs. They can fuck off. Some have claimed that the fact that I use a stylus makes my job easier - this is true - but can they deny the work I did before I got carpal tunnel and was using a mouse just like everyone else? They too, can fuck off.
I decided that I would do something I haven’t done before in Illustrator, and I used the pen tool as I would a pencil, to sketch the image of Futura, which was placed next to my artboard on my screen. I took screen captures along the way to show the progress and to prove that I was in fact drawing every single aspect of this illustration and ZERO “tracing” was done.
It was a huge pleasure doing this illustration, and I look forward to starting on the Stash image.
Shout out to Kevin Marzo for the dope photographs.
Everyone else - “Come out with your skills up”.
I haven’t had a tree in my home in about a decade. This year, my girl thought it’d be nice to bring a small one by and decorate it. This here is a picture of what my “star” looks like.
“Die Enormous”.
For the most important lady in my life, from the other most important lady in my life.
It snowed like a mofro last night and I wanted to capture a shot that I saw from my bedroom window.
I failed… but I’m still learning.
Beaten but still trusty.
The ladies baking cookies.
Saren gets that dough.
(Like father like daughter).
She loves that I bought a camera - hates that I’m always trying to take photos. lol.
I told them I was going to Blockbuster and their conversation started going amazing. Maybe this is a bad sign. lol.
Tools of the Trade.
The third cookie from the bottom left is a cookie that they made “specially for me”. I thought it was the map of Chile. lol.
More.
Drain & Sprinkles.
<3
Finally, I get to try one of these things. It was delicious!
Good job, girls!
She was allowed to open her special gift and Stace’s gift to her.
Checking out her new crafts.
This is what happens when I try to help ladies in the kitchen. lmao!
We ended the day with Macauley Culkin in Home Alone 1…
A lot of family fun!
be.: There’s so much backwardness happening it’s crazy. It feels like it’s a test or it’s a testament to my loyal friends and acquaintances. I think it’s a bit of both.
cris: Could be. Things happen for a reason.
be.: I truthfully don’t believe that anymore. Because a lot of people close to me don’t heed the signs. I like to think that it’s more about reasoning with the things that happen than anything else, and living accordingly afterwards. But then again, I’m a bit of a loser.
cris: That term, ‘friends’, means nothing anymore.
be.: I know.
cris: I don’t gotta talk to my peoples everyday to know we good. The ones that matter know what’s up. I got mad love for you, be.
be.: I got love for you too, cris.
cris: Whatever it is you’re going through, or go through, I’m right by you, word up.
be.: Right back atchu. I’m gonna try to make sense of some things… I hope it all works out as planned. My smile is the smile of those close to me, and I want everyone to be happy in the most selfish way I can admit to.
cris: For real.
————————
So here I am in my living room, perusing facebook and wasting time - more of it. I’m wasting more of the time that I could and should be using to be a friend, if not just a face in places that are being populated by those who I call my ‘friends’. I have had a few conversations recently about that term, how it means so much to those who are aware that it really means so little these days. And if nothing else, I have come to a few conclusions.
I’ve been very sad lately, very depressed and depriving myself of various things that I know or have been known to cure these curses. These ‘things’ generally consist of one common denominator - the ones I love. You see, I have separation issues. And I have whatever the opposite of that is, is. I am always feeling like the people who ‘love’ me will somehow end up screwing me over and hurting me more than my enemies. Yes, this has been traced back to my father, my mother, my family basically. Shelter shelter, Helter Skelter - a scary place it was sometimes, I tell you. (But at least now things have improved). The opposite of this fear is that before someone can leave me, I tend to stray away out of a fear of our relationship/friendship/kinship going bad. Self destructive, right? Trust me, I know. It’s like I don’t want their last memories of me to be bad ones, so I let our relationships fade with good final thoughts. What really ends up happening is a sourness that is difficult to make sweet again.
As a result of these things, many of my actual friends have been shorted by me.
I don’t answer my phone.
I don’t make any calls.
I don’t respond to messages, texts, and emails.
I wouldn’t respond to my fucking name if you weren’t right in front of me staring me in the face, for god’s sake.
I know this is wrong. I know this is not how friends treat one another. But I also know that this, really and truly, is a result of how I’ve been feeling for the past 2 or 3 months.
Most days I’m on the streetcar home as soon as I get out of the office. I make a stop off at LiveStock to see my peoples and check the sales, and then head back to the west, back to the apartment, and back to this eerie silence that makes me cringe when it is broken. Here, I sit around watching my laptop screen - waiting for art to come to mind, designs to unfold in my face, and listening for a chirp on my blackberry.
I still check my statcounter to see how many hits my sites have.
- they’re declining.
I still check my facebook to see if I have add requests or new messages from real friends.
- I usually don’t.
And I still don’t respond to the phone when it rings and says “Royalz” or “Brock” or “Drex” or “Mikey” or “TT”, etc, etc, etc.
Why?
Because I need some silence.
(bullshit)
I need some time to reassess the statement that I made earlier.
“One grey hair can make you forget a full head of black”.
Someone sent me a message on facebook today saying something like, “Wait til you have 20 grey hairs”. Even Andy commented on the blog saying, “Getting some snow on the roof, oldman?” or something like that.
Point missed.
Quite honestly, in the hubbub of numbers and friend requests, add requests, hook up requests and my hatred for all-request video music shows, I have lost site of my great relationships. And they are plenty.
So I am requesting my life back. How’s that for something to accept?
I realize that we’re in the 21st century. (It just sounds uber futuristic, right?) But just because time passes, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t great things about the past that will just be the best ways to do things. It’s like the idea that no idea’s original. Look, no matter how you spice it up, the best way to make a wheel is to make sure it’s round. There’s a caveman somewhere in neanderthal heaven grunting his cheekbone hairs off at anyone trying to do otherwise. And while we do our damnedest to have the best online relationships and pay the most attention to each others profiles and updates and mini-feeds and pokes at the convenient lengths of the interweb and it’s ease, there’s one harsh truth that is glaring - we are all alone in our own personal spaces being friends at a distance that doesn’t even allow for words and sounds to be exchanged, let alone physical interaction - just voyeuristic big brothery and cyber fuckery.
I want human connections back. Anyone?
There are so many names in my Blackberry that I don’t recognize. There are so many “friends” on my facebook page that I’ve never actually met. And most importantly, there are so many actual friends of mine that have disappeared in the mirage of that title - “Friends”. I am guilty of letting this happen, and guilty of not regulating when I needed to. But in the midst of understanding my wrongdoings I am prepared to serve this sentence -
“The word ‘friend’ is a title that comes around after friendships are built”.
(quote me on that one)
We have grown so accustomed to seeing the word, “Friends”, that somehow having 1546 of them on facebook is some measure of popularity. Really, all this amounts to is you, or me, having the most people in our rooms.
Have you ever gone to a huge wedding reception and only knew a few people at your table? A couple of people mingle, some fuck in the bathroom, others get drunk at the open bar, and the majority just sit at their own tables conversing with the small group of people that they actually do know. At the end of the night, everyone parts ways and they never speak to one another again, until the next enormous wedding where they may or may not cross paths. This is what has become of the online haberdashery known as facebook. I really and truly do not need your trinkets and toys for sale. I need sustainable, respectable, enjoyable people to warm my soul with something hearty. It usually starts with a heart, and ends with a hug.
Sappy right? Well I’m a fucking Maple tree of emotions, so fuck off.
Don’t get me wrong now, if we slapped hands at a bar through a friend, talked business at Remix, or on the street, or at LiveStock, or laughed at the same joke at a friends party, go ahead and add me, because I’ll probably add you too. But if you’re gonna use me as a means to tag your photos, videos, products and notes to get exposure for the bullshit that you’re doing, then please lay off and find someone else to wipe your turd on.
And maybe this is where my frustration comes from. (epiphany anyone?)
I watched a video the other day with this girl talking about everyone becoming a rapper, a photographer, a this or that. It got boring rather quickly, but it held a trunksworth of truth in it. There are too many empty seats in the stands to have everyone up on stage, in my opinion. I heard 50 cent once say something to the effect of, “Everyone talks with a mouth of a critic rather than admiring with the eyes of a fan”. This, he says, is a result of everybody swearing they’re a rapper. And if they’re not a rapper, their man is nice on the mic. I nod my head in whole to this quote.
It seems like everyone on my fucking friends list claims to be involved in one of the following fields of work:
Rappers
Designers
DJs
Clothing Line’rs
Barbers
Promoters
Photographers
and worst worst worst of all,
Bloggers whose content is driven by the blogs of others.
ie. stealing content from Inqmnd, Kanye, NahRight, OVO, HypeBeast, etc, etc.
CHECK YOURSELVES!
But let’s set something straight very quickly. If you are NOT getting paid doing any of the above mentioned things, you fall under ONE category in my eyes:
Hobbyists.
You do those things as a HOBBY, and not as a career. So stop fooling yourself, your friends, and throwing your hobby on unsuspecting facebookers. It’s disturbing, and in short, quite annoying.
I am not trying to categorize myself in the field of “HATERS” by any means. I understand the premise of “doing you”, and letting people “do them”. But it’s hard for me to “do my work” when I get 100 bullshit messages a day from people who are “doing bullshit”.
It is very possible to be doing these things on a hobby level to get yourselves up to a professional level. We all go through it, and I’m not trying to bash a person’s hustle. I mentor young artists and designers, so slow yourselves down on trying to call me out. Hell, I just bought a camera that I don’t know how to use, in hopes of learning to be as sick with it as some of my peers. But I will never claim the ranks of a photographer until my work puts me in a place where the photographers that I respect within my circle of acquaintances and friends consider me as such. And I will definitely not let that title precede my talents.
But I digress.
It seems that the people who have flooded the pools water with piss have spoiled my afternoon hopes of letting my feet soak.
All I really need from this point forward is honesty, loyalty, integrity, and genuine people in my life. I am closing in on a few years to 30, and I have admitted to the feeling of getting old. But I will not succumb to the feeling of becoming irrelevant. The work that I do to express myself has thankfully turned into a sustainable way for me to make a living. I am a designer, an artist, and I write my heart out on my blog. But before all of this, I was a friend to many who have waited for me to continue to pursue this career and taken a back burner to my hustle.
While climbing my personal and professional ladders I have met a large number of snakes, whose venom is both non-toxic and barely worth me wiping the surface off with. I see them, I acknowledge them, and I let their skin shed accordingly. But I haven’t the time to slay a serpent with a staff that I could use for standing. There is an importance that I place in friendships that goes beyond popularity and posing. It’s about caring for one another, the enjoyment of shared company, and knowing when there is a greater gratification in watching your people eat in full than satisfying your own hunger.
I am thankful for those who have decided that I am worth splitting the ration.
“The percentage that don’t understand is higher than the percentage that do.
Check yourself, what percentage is you?”
On Friday morning, me, Los, Skam and his homey John took off to Vancouver to catch up with the Vancity LiveStock staff, talk a little business, check out the new store on W 4th, have some fun, and take a short weekend getaway. It was chock full of adventures, wizardry, blue seduction, booze, red light specials, and long time no sees.
There’s a lot for me to post, so while setting everything up, I thought I’d hold you guys down with my favorite pics from our 4 days out in Vancouver.
It’s nice to finally have a point and shoot camera back in my possession after breaking my old one. Getting into photography is something that I’m really serious about doing and I can’t wait to learn the craft to the level of some of my peers that I greatly admire - ie. Che Kothari, Greg Washington, Sean Getti, Matt Barnes, and yes, even my boy William Nguyen. To set the record straight, yes - I bought a digital SLR finally. But because I knew there was gonna be some partying going down out west, I wasn’t ready to run the risk of bringing it with me. So the following photos were taken on my point and shoot Sony Cybershot joint.
I did retouch most of these slightly. But I only changed the levels and the saturation, making sure to not fuck with filters, blurs, and any textural brushes. Something that my boy Che told me once will always stick in my head, and that’s that you need to capture as much as you can using the camera. Anyone can fuck around in Photoshop. I wanna be like the above mentioned dudes and know how to take a good photo when I see one.
I hope you guys like these. The full post is coming soon.
My favorite shots from Day 1 in Vancouver
My favorite shots from Day 2 in Vancouver
My favorite shots from Day 3 in Vancouver
My favorite shots from Day 4 in Vancouver
Stay tuned for the full story one our mission out in Vancouver.
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