Kosha Dillz remix contest winner

The homeboy Kosha Dillz (a/k/a the flyest guy to the goyim), who I linked up with when I interviewed him for Nomadic Wax, had a contest co-sponsored by lifestyle heavyweight DQM and the Diamond Music Group to remix the last single from his album Beverly Dillz.

"Cellular Phone" has been getting some good buzz around indie circles, and now GMJ's remix won the Kosha X DQM X DMG remix contest. Big ups to the winner - I just listened to the track, and I gotta say that its pretty fly. As much as the original production fit smoothly into the aesthetic of the whole album, the remix is a great standalone track. Check it out.

And the Cellular Phone music vid:



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popularity

There are two contrasting - though perhaps not mutually exclusive - arguments for the usefulness of popularity of X (X here can be anything - food, media, game, meme, etc. - consumed by an audience) as a metric of X's quality to which I subscribe:

I) In order for X to appeal to a sufficiently large population (arbitrarily, say n+1, where n is the size of the largest identifiable subcultural group), certain characteristics of X that would make it appealing to a certain subcultural group, but not to others, must be removed - it must be "watered down". Therefore, the more popular X is, the more watered-down it must be: the most popular rap music is going to be less edgy and authentic than more niche-targeted rap music, more popular movies are generally going to be more blandly generic than movies which were produced with no popular success in mind, etc. This is the broad appeal effect.

II) In order for X to achieve mass popularity, there must be some factor present within X that appeals to a broad population. The fact that it is so universally accepted means that the producers of X did something right - hit on some key factor, some deeply satisfying foundation of human experience - that allows it to have such broad-spectrum appeal. My friend Jason Latshaw argues as such in his blog, It's Show Business, Not Show Preference on Avatar's success amidst in-group disapproval. This is the universal factor argument.

In short: the broad appeal effect drives down the quality of any product X which is targeted to appeal to the largest audience possible, while the universal factor argument claims that any X which appeals to a sufficiently large audience has inherent in that appeal some factor of great value/quality.

I don't know how to resolve these - but I think they do go hand-in-hand in the wild. After all, while a case might be made for Soulja Boy as aesthetically transcendent auteur, those who can subscribe to such an argument without a wink and a nod are arrestingly few, as they ought to be. But at the same time, most of what captures the attention of so many must have some sort of genuine appeal; and one hopes that the universal skein threading together the thoughts of so many is not the superficial, but rather the deep, genuine, true.

Perhaps the two can be reconciled according to lines similar to these: authenticity must be paramount. That is to say: appealing broadly and seeking to appeal broadly are two separate beasts. To appeal broadly, one must strike an authentic chord with the audience - but authenticity, as with happiness and passion, is best sought by not setting out to seek it, but instead losing oneself in the pursuit of something noble. The broad appeal effect applies to media produced in a conscious effort to find broad appeal; but the universal factor argument obtains for media that finds that universal element - a key foundation of which is that it is produced genuinely, and not self-consciously ("self-conscious" here meaning created to serve a second-level aim ["to be popular"] rather than a first-level aim ["to be funny/amusing/moving/well-produced"]).

Visions of New Haven II

[print/paint on cardboard, bus stop, Whalley Avenue.]


Photoblog making its reappearance soon.

All around the world...

...same song

An index of recent work gathered from around the net.

• Murders for Gold in El Salvador - protest leaders killed on behalf of an American mining company
• Hip-hop Is Saving Asian-American People... - Asian-Americans find a voice through hip-hop (later reposted on Yale's AASA Blog)
• Flex Mathews: Making Music, Having Fun. - profile of DC hip-hop artist Flex Mathews for NomadicWax.com
• To the Rulers - a reflection on Psalm 58's prophecy of vengeance on the unjust
• The Responsibility of Christians in Art. - transcript of a talk originally given in April 2009 on Christians called to art

Thoughts on a wintry night

This city... I have great love for this city.

I remember one of the first thoughts that I had, upon arriving here. It was a stroke of uncharacteristic humility amidst the self-promoting, slyly arrogant chatter of Camp Yale: This is going to be home for the next four years.

I had, of course, no idea of how right I would be. For the next four years - and then another one and a half, and counting - this city has been my birthplace. Every year, every semester - even monthly, weekly - I've been renewed, reborn, found myself weaker and more capable than I'd dreamt (in nightmare or ecstatic reverie).

Now I'm taking steps - concrete steps - toward finally bidding farewell to New Haven.

That name, so fitting: a new haven. New - budding, bidding me forward. It's been a cold wind on my face as I bustle down the sidewalk, invigorating my strides. A warm breeze on my back - Oh, I'll see it at least once more! - lying out, out in the sun, conversing with people who are long since departed from here.

Haven - a place of rest and peace. I have fallen ill here, I have been healed. I have left it, but always only for a time, and then returned; and, far more tellingly, my heart has always returned with me (if, that is, it ever even left at all).

Of course, it is not now the time to leave - but it is drawing up. I found my haven, of course, or perhaps it found me. But the Spirit calls, and I think the Spirit calls me away.

I remember standing at the crest of East Rock last Fall, when the wind was biting but still an embrace, and looking out over its streets and valleys. From the summit, you can see the terrain: New Haven lies cupped in a shoreline valley, surrounded - by friendly hills beaming benevolent? Or towering giants glowering down? - and I could see all the paths of this city that I have walked, run, biked. Sometimes I walked hand-in-hand, or in comfortable chattiness; a few times, awkwardly, neurotically, all too self-aware.

This is, I guess, a salute

BACK IN THE STUDIO!

Parental Advisory - PG13 vocabulary (i.e., I say bulls**t in the chorus... my bad. dont listen if this will cause you to stumble; or talk to me about it first thats good too)

BUT GRAND MASTER IS BACK IN THE STUDIO!
WRITING UP HOOKS!
AND VERSES!

WE BACK UP IN HERE MAN!!

dropping that hot, hot, fire (as opposed to the cold fire) that you have been missing.

but you already know that! you are the ones what done been missing it!

NEW INTERNETS SINGLE: HUSTLE & GRIND

Also streaming at the Grand Master - 108 Tongues/BUSTOUT - myspace page.

Original collabo version with Macken' available too....!

1

More brothers ballin it up

Congratulations to the homies (and my ex-housemates) Yier and Nate for balling out on the electrical engineering circuit (pun always intended, you know that).

Yale is not a school to which honors often go, but I guess these guys were able to rise above the vapid sea of mediocrity surrounding them and overcome the odds... who knows, "that school in New Haven" just might become a credible academic institution (nah) with guys like this around.