Thursday, December 31, 2009

Grand time


It was two years ago, January 2008, that Che Grand first came to Can You Dig It? to help spread the word about some of his great new music. Amid the glut of do-it-yourself, independent hip-hop hopefuls hocking their wares on the internet, Che Grand's music stood out for its cleverness, style and production quality.

Can You Dig It? became a big fan, and along with a legion of devoted supporters online, waited and waited for the release of his full-length debut, Everything's Good Ugly. We followed his blog, Zimbabwe For The People, and saw the ups and downs of an independent artist struggling to get his music out to the people. A target release date would come and go, he'd post about his frustration, threaten to give it all up, then come back rejuvenated with more music. One song collaboration, "Hagler" with super-it-artist-of-the-moment Jay Electronica, gave Che Grand a big boost in exposure and was highlighted on Kanye West's blog last January.

As for his own solo project, Grand took matters into his own hands, started his own label, ZFTP, and released Everything's Good Ugly via iTunes and Amazon on August 18. The full album proved pre-release jams "Swing" and "Crash" weren't flukes. EGU reveals an eclectic and talented MC who is comfortable working in a range of musical styles, successfully orchestrated by up-and-coming producers and musicians, including Aeon, Brian Brizzo, Von Pea, Wale Oyejide, Benny Sings and Colin Munroe.

The album is a must-listen for fans of the kind of fun, funky hip-hop that should be all the rage.

Che Grand was gracious enough to take break from his holiday revelry to pop some champagne and sit down for an interview with Can You Dig It? in celebration of his placement on our year-end top 10 list.

Can You Dig It?: 2009 was a big year for you with the long-awaited release of your true debut album, Everything’s Good Ugly. It seems like it took a lot of hard work and patience to get it released, so looking back now five months later, was it worth it? Would you consider it a success?

Che Grand: The month of the release was a beautiful and strange time, but definitely a success. I look at it as the end of one chapter and start of something new. Even though it got hectic towards the finish, it felt great to finally reach the point I could share the project with everyone and the response was uplifting. But as I was going through the crazy last minute promo process, I realized, "Oh shit, I'm going to be promoting this album forever!" That's a win though.

CYDI?: How have things changed for you since the release? Are you on the career path you imagined?

Che Grand: Everything's still good ugly. It's weird, even though it's available for purchase I haven't really stopped working on it. Physical copies and videos are on the way. I'm building a home for my releases (and hopefully some other artist's projects) with ZFTP Label and I've started to focus on various paths I can take in the future, all music related. I have some interesting ideas up my sleeve. Stewfuzz on steroids.

CYDI?: A lot of good hip-hop albums have a short shelf-life. They’re great for about two years, then get stale and sound dated pretty quickly. What impresses me about Everything's Good Ugly is that although the songs have been around for a while waiting for the release (we’ve been listening to “Swing” and “Crash” in my house for more than two years), they still sound fresh today. What do you attribute that to?

Che Grand: I think the good energy used in creating the album over the years made tracks come out the way they did. Plus, I had all the time in the world to work on it. I'm constantly training my ear, listening to great music of all genres. If it's dope it never gets old, soon it becomes timeless. I may have been a better songwriter when I wrote those joints (laughs). They had some "hit" qualities, now I only write raps bout drugs and prostitues (laughs).

CYDI?: Another quality of a great hip-hop album is that every time you listen you pick up a new line. Just right now I listened to “Chateau Gold” and heard “Got a Swisher, got a bowl, whatchu know, Scrapper? This Dominoes got me writing bangers on the crapper.” Do you have rhyme you’re particularly proud of on the album? What’s the last good line you heard from another MC?

Che Grand: Swisha Hause! Ha! I'm glad you dig that line. It was really just some random shit I was actually doing in real-time; writing raps on the toilet. I have a bunch on the album that I'll personally always love - "more than one or two screws loose in my brain, it looks like Home Depot got hit by a hurricane."

I've heard way too many crazy lines this year... Danny! Lupe Fiasco, Blu, Elzhi, just heard one from Phonte "Nigga I'm black, I was born in financial crisis!" The whole Lessondary has too many. And this one shook up the world: "Call me Jay Elec-Hanukkah, Jay Elec-Yamulke, Jay Elect-Ramadaan Muhammad Asalaamica RaSoulAllah Supana watallah through your monitor." WTF?

CYDI?: Let’s just clear this up right now. In your first verse for “Walking Under Ladders,” you say, “For anonymous fans of mine, you aint got hide, you aint got to buy, you aint got to lie,” and then either “Greg” or “Craig.” If it’s “Greg,” I just want to confirm that it's some other dude, because I’m not an anonymous fan and I did buy, albeit on Amazon cause it was a little cheaper than iTunes. If it’s “Craig,” then that guy’s a jerk.

Che Grand: "For anonymous fans of mine you aint got to hide. You aint got it, you aint got to buy. You aint got to lie, Craig"
If you've ever seen the movie Friday (I assumed everyone on the planet had as I wrote the verse) you might know the line "you aint got to lie, Craig" The scene where Ice Cube is talking to his extra hood ex-girl on the phone while Luke blasts in the background. I always thought it was hilarious. From a fan aspect, what "Craig" reps in the line isn't a jerk. I'm not calling him (or her) out, they may not have funds to buy, but with that said they shouldn't be anonymous. It's good to put others onto music you enjoy, especially if it's an artist without much exposure that you feel people should hear (or see for all my visual brethren...).

As for you, Greg, thanks for copping. I never had a doubt. And I couldn't diss you, I hear you got battle raps for whole crews!

CYDI?: “Gold Chains (Part Deux)” is a great statement of independence, as well as a fantastic car sing-along song because they do “be wanting me to stay in my lane” and yet I also “swerve on them non-stop.” Who is it that’s holding you back?

Che Grand: I don't think anyone can hold you back more than yourself, but there's always other forces out there working together to hold all of us back. Certain douchebags in high positions. Just keep switching lanes, think with your own mind.

By the way, EGU is for big speakers and car stereos only.

I'm going to encourage my mom to play this when she's driving, I just noticed over the holidays she has road rage.

CYDI?: My research says that super-cool DJ/producer Mark Ronson shouted you out and said he was going to start spinning “Too Much Too Soon.” What does that kind of exposure do for you? Are there any other big-hitters on the Che Grand team?

Che Grand: He shouted me out via Twitter. Diplo did, too. I've had a few nice co-signs on the innanets. Oh and Kanye put me on his blog. So that's my team right there, along with Oprah, Quincy Jones and Russell Simmons' nieces.

CYDI?: Are you plotting your next release?

Che Grand: The Fixtape Two: "I'm Only In It For The Drink Ticket" with DJ Low Key will be available before winter is over. And I've started planning out the sophomore album, but that probably won't drop until 2011. You can expect a bunch of ZFTP side projects: EPs, podcasts and mixes on the way as usual.

CYDI?: Any New Year’s resolutions?

Che Grand: Top 5 in no order: Learn how to play piano. Learn how to DJ. Record a new album. Read. Tour.

CYDI?: I’ll turn 34 in a few weeks and I’ve been thinking a lot about this myself, but what do you not want to be doing when you’re 40?

Che Grand: I don't want to be worrying.

CYDI?: As the father of a toddler daughter who I also called “So-So,” I’m not ashamed to say that “Soraya’s Jam” makes me a little emotional. It’s a beautiful song. So, let me tap into Che Grand’s inner Bill Cosby and get your thoughts on how we can prevent our daughters from wanting to be a princesses and start wanting to be presidents? Or at least maybe a Queen Latifah.

Che Grand: Shouts to "So-So!" I don't think there is anything wrong with being a princess, she has to understand that she already is one. As long as they continue to also be geniuses, value their minds. In the end, princesses become queens. A smart and brilliant queen is a powerful one.

CYDI?: Have you seen Avatar, yet? I’m a little obsessed with the similarities between it and the James Cameron-produced surfing bank robbers movie “Point Break.” What did you think?

Che Grand: I watched it twice. On Christmas day my sister's friend came by with a bootleg. I was way too drunk off egg nog to pay attention to the plot, but the blue folk riding around duck/dragon mash-ups looked cool enough for me to catch it again in 3D. Then I realized them big blue mofos were supposed to represent Africans. Huh? Disney's take on colonialism....the main Avatar chic got me aroused a bit I guess, yay for special effects.

CYDI?: Who will you be rooting for at the Grammys?

Che Grand: Anyone that's dope and deserves the award. I don't know all the nominees, but I heard Foreign Exchange is nominated, which is awesome. I love that album. It got me some.

CYDI?: What’s the best thing you heard in 2009?

Che Grand: "Che, I've finished mastering your album" - optix

CYDI?: Isn’t it a huge honor to be on my 2009 10-best list?

Che Grand: Bigger than a Grammy. I truly feel honored. Thank you, Greg!

Resolution: Launching SmokingPriests.com

I'm finally going to cash in on this internet thing.

There's a fortune being made out there right now with all of these user-submission focused sites:
awkwardfamilyphotos
Peopleofwalmart
Sexypeople
WeHaveLasers!
Failblog
Cakewrecks

The list goes on and on, covering everything from grammar ("blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks) to failures in conflict resolution (passiveaggressivenotes.com), but the best I can tell, the formula goes something like this:

Very Specfic Imagery (Mostly photos, but some video as well) + Quick and Easy Witty Commentary = Internet Gold!

So, starting in 2010, my million dollar venture is SmokingPriests.com -- a Web site devoted entirely to photos, videos, art and any other form of digitized multimedia featuring men (and potentially women) of God smoking cigarettes, cigars, peace pipes, bongs, joints, etc. If you've got a picture of someone wearing a robe, a collar or some other vestment while puffing on some smokeable material, we want to see it. Submit now!

I've gotten us started with Two Greek Orthodox priests, but remember, the key is you've got to do all the searching for me.

Can You Dig It?'s year-end top 10 lists

Any blogger worth his or her bandwith posts a year-end top 10 list about something, so here's mine.

10 Favorite Albums of 2009

10. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros/Self-titled



Their weird hippie vibe really got in my brain. Not every song on the album is listenable, but the unbelievable opener "40 Day Dream" and the amazingly catchy "Home" make up for the clunkers.

Sample lyric: "She got jumper cable lips/She's got sunset on her breath/I inhaled just a little bit/Now I got no fear of death."

9. Mos Def/The Ecstatic



I guess if you're a white guy who listens to hip-hop and writes a blog, it's required you make some reference to Mos Def, but even so, The Ecstatic is more than deserving of placement here. "Casa Bey," "Quiet Dog" and "Life in Marvelous Times" are just great songs.

8. Monsters of Folk/Self-Titled



An indie folk supergroup doesn't sound like my sort of thing, but I like this one.


7. Coconut Records/Davy



Jason Schwartzman released his second album as Coconut Records way back in January. It's one of those records that gets more enjoyable with every listen. You should check it out.

6. Little Dragon/Machine Dreams



When are you going start listening to me about Little Dragon? It's nasty, new wavey Swedish electro-funk with sweet singing by half Swedish American, half Japanese frontwoman Yukimi Nagano. They really turn up the Prince influences on this one and it works. You must check out "Feather" and "Looking Glass."

5. Bob Dylan/Together Through Life



It wasn't the greatest Bob Dylan album, but it's Bob Dylan.

4. Norah Jones/The Fall

Your mama likes Norah Jones and so do I. The Fall was a free listen on NPR's music site for a couple of weeks and I got hooked. Don't front and you'll like it, too.

Chasing Pirates video

3. Tanya Morgan/Brooklynati



Von Pea, Donwill and Ilyas managed to improve upon their debut, Moonlighting, with more polished productions on this concept album that takes place in the fictional city of Brooklynati. It's Fresh! with an exclamation point.


2.Che Grand/Everything's Good Ugly



Fans of Can You Dig It? have been hearing about Che Grand for a long time and this year we finally got to hear his debut album, Everything's Good Ugly. It was worth waiting for these 18 songs, but if you've only got a couple of bucks left on your iTunes/Amazon gift cards, get yourself a taste with "Swing," "Gold Chains: Part Deux," "People Bowling," "Crash" and "Girls Talk."

Sample line: "And I could never finish watching Gummo, but I saw enough to know that those cats got handled."

Listen to a few tracks here.


1. Maxwell/BlackSummers'Night



I'm not ashamed of my affection for R&B crooner Maxwell.

We have a long history together, dating way back to 1996 when I bought his debut Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite simply because the cover looked cool and Best Buy was selling it for $5.99. I've followed his career ever since and waited patiently during the eight years it took to release BLACKSummers'Night.

The time off was good for Maxwell, as it turned out to be his strongest album yet, with his best song yet ("Pretty Wings"), and earned him six Grammy nominations. BlackSummers'Night achieved the rare feat in 2009 of actually being an artistic, critical and commercial success, debuting as the No. 1 album on the Billboard album chart, and was the 16th highest-rated album of the year on metacritic.com's year-end music list.


But maybe the higest praise for Maxwell came yesterday from my wife, who said, "I wish I knew how to paint, just so I could just paint his face."

Monday, December 28, 2009

Avatar vs. Point Break



Carolina and I went to see Avatar on Christmas, the three-dimensional version no less.

I haven't seen a 3-D movie since I was little, back when the glasses were those cardboard things with the red and blue plastic lenses, so I was blown away by how much the technology has advanced. It wasn't like the old days, when you might see a couple of things that kind of popped out at you. This was really like you were inside the movie. At a couple of points, I thought movie bugs were going up my nose.

Unfortunately, this was the only depth that was achieved in Avatar. Still, I can't say I didn't enjoy it. In fact, I can't stop thinking about it. I was so transfixed by the visuals and the awesomeness of the 3-D that I didn't pay much attention to the dialogue or the beat-you-over-the-head James "I'm King of the World" Cameron allegory.

It's interesting that so many of his movies are about the shortcomings of technology (the Terminators, Titanic) because you could say the same thing about his films -- groundbreaking visual effects, but filled with empty emotion, cliched dialogue and rehashed plot points that leave you feeling gypped.

I was shaken out of my 3-D daze long enough to recognize that Cameron basically recycles the same undercover-character-meets-girl-under-false-pretenses-but-truly-falls-in-love storyline from a million other TV shows and films, including 1991's Point Break, which Cameron executive produced.

Instead of a hobbled (old football knee injury) FBI agent who goes undercover as a sky-diving surfer to catch a crew of bank robbers in ex-president masks, Avatar has a paraplegic ex-Marine going undercover as a blue-bodied Na'vi on the planet Pandora to catch a bunch of scientific data and precious metals.

While Keanu Reeves' Johnny Utah gets schooled in the art of surfing by surfer girl Lori Petty, then falls in love, in Avatar Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) gets schooled in the art of being a big blue alien on Pandora by Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), then falls in love. Like Johnny Utah, Jake Sully becomes unnaturally obsessed with the characters on which he's supposed to be gathering data, despite protestations and warnings from their co-workers. This all leads to the hackneyed old climax scene where the truth about the undercover agent's identity is revealed and that person desperately pleads with the object of his/her affection that "it started out as just a job, but it became so much more and now I really love you. Honest!" The loved one runs away crying, but not before gurgling an impassioned "I trusted you!"

Devastated, the undercover lover retreats, gets depressed and almost abandons the whole thing, but some big event occurs that endangers the loved one and all of his/her people, so the undercover lover comes back, puts his/her life on the line to save the day and in the process proves that he/she really does love her/him.

It doesn't matter if it's 1991 on the beach with a scruffy Patrick Swayze and a gang of bank robbers or 2154 on Pandora with very tall and slender blue people, but it helps tremendously if it's in 3-D.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Palabritas Beach House

I thought all of my Christmas dreams came true this year until I saw this house.

I want it.

It's on the Palabritas beach in Lima, Peru, and was designed by Peruvian architect Jose Orrego of the firm Metropolis in Lima.

You can read about it at this site, +mood, but check out these photos:




Saturday, December 19, 2009

Colbert continues to be the best

An amazing performance with Alicia Keys.

www.colbertnation.com

This was a good one

I love movies about journalism and last night we watched a good one.

"State of Play" with Russell Crowe, Rachel McAdams and Ben Affleck had everything a good journalism movie needs: a crusty reporter, a grouchy editor, intrigue, phone calls, typing. What made it unique was how it worked in the current issues facing the industry, especially how online reporting has changed print journalism.

Want other great movies about journalism? Here's a list of some of my favorites.
Citizen Kane
Network
The Shipping News
All the President's Men
The Insider
His Girl Friday

Friday, December 18, 2009

Proud Papi

Unbelievable talent, grace and charisma on the stage!

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Hey

What do you want for Christmas?

Update

I like these short posts about nothing.

I do like goofy children

I enjoy my Netflix recommendations.
They think I like "Goofy Children & Family Movies," which I do, but never together.

News analysis

Man, this Tiger Woods stuff is bananas!

Friday, December 4, 2009

Superfriends

Damn, does Robin have better legs than Wonder Woman?
Batman thinks so.


My kid goes through some weird phases. Right now, she's really into watching the 1960s Spiderman cartoon opening. I kind of like it, too.



But not as much as the Electric Company version:



When we'd watch episodes of "The Electric Company" at Virgil Grissom Elementary, as soon as the Spiderman theme came on the class would poop their corduroy pants.