I have a few news items to post.

First, we’ve finally come up with a name for another one of our parters in rhyme. Well, when I say we, I mean he came up with it himself. We identify him by the short form of his last name, Nate. So he came up with a great pun in Resin Nate. As soon as he said it, we knew it was going to stick.

We’ve written 4 more tracks, with the following titles:

• Feet, Life and Munchies
• Wheels of Fate
• This Is Total Take Your Soul Music (or affectionately, TITTY SM)
• Braggadocios (featuring Resin Nate)

Feet, Life and Munchies is pretty much self explanatory, just a funny idea to combine a few very different verses into one song. Wheels of Fate is a short solo track from Hype (and I’ll be writing a short solo of my own soon). TITTY SM is a track that I can’t wait to start. It’s going to be very experimental from a production standpoint, and I’ve got the basic idea for it in my head. I kind of want it to be a surprise to everyone, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be unlike any hip hop song I’ve ever heard. Braggadocios is our first track featuring Nate. All I can say is, Nate is ready to rhyme. We wrote it over a few days that spanned a few weeks, but I think the track is going to turn out quite sick. We’re definitely aiming for a Boot Camp Clik styled song, shout out to those guys, some of my favourites are from that crew.

We’ve also recorded a few songs. I’ve been mixing one of them (The Weed I Need) for a while, getting the vocal flavours to my exact liking. I’m done pretty much everything that I have to, we just have to record another set of back up vocals and then we’ll have that under wraps. We’re gearing up to do a long haul of recording sessions.

I’ve appointed Peter to produce the beat on “Tha Chambers”. I swung by his place last week to get a sneak peak of the beat that’s he’s creating on the PC. I don’t know why I did that. In any case, the beat was really nice, very distinct an different from my production style, but it’s a welcome contrast. He’s got a great style on the song and I can’t wait to rap to it.

Masheek has acquired a new microphone for our recording session, so now we can both record at the same time if need be. I might need another stand and pop filter, but it’s all good.

So that’s the update. Look for more frequent updates as we step up our game. peace

Not a lot has been going on as of late, but that’s just because Hype is gone to Amsterdam to get some legal greens. I can’t remember the day that he’s supposed to be back, but we’re going to record as soon as he’s finished his vacation.

At any rate, I’ve completed the T-Shirt design that I’ve been working on for the upcoming album. It’d make a decent cover too, but I’ve got to get the A-OK from Masheek before we go into production with it. I’m sure he’ll like it though, as I’ve shown a few people and they’re really liking it. All that’s left to do is buy the domain name(s) and we’re off to print.

I’m not sure if I should spell it “Thru” or “Through”, as I like the aesthetic look of the former, but I like the fact that the latter is correct. Something that I usually despise is when a title has “1 4 da money” or “Beat Dat Foo”, like purposely spelling things wrong for the sake of looking uneducated, or “cool”. I’m using a lot of quotation marks, so I’ll stop.

Anyways, I’d rather not give away the near obvious influence for the song, or at least I don’t want to talk about the exact method for penning it, I want everyone to come up with their own conclusions. What I will mention is the intention of the song, which is to create a hypnotic rhythm, with fairly trippy and droning lyrics. The beat that I’ve made so far reflects this quite well, and I was kind of in a trance while I wrote the lyrics. When I turned the beat off I felt kind of — empty I guess would be the best word. So I’ll be adding a few more pieces to it, but keeping it very minimal, like most of my stuff.

A few friends of mine, Peter and Nick, are coming over tomorrow to record some rocking guitars. Basically, Hype and I recorded some lyrics over one of my beats, and although it kind of goes together, I think it’d be a lot better for this song to have some hyper-aggressive guitars and some killer rock drums. What we have so far is us rhyming loudly over a dark beat, but it’s not hard enough for my liking. It’s a good beat, but it’d probably be suited better to something else.

This will be the second song on the CD with live guitar work. I think that’ll be it for the guitars on this album, as I wouldn’t want to carve a niche in that particular area. I might do one more if I can get Brendon, another friend of mine, to lay down something for me. He’s got a very different style of playing and it’d probably be a more somber and mellow piece rather than something that ‘bows you in the face. Don’t get me wrong, I love guitars, but it’s just not the overall direction that we want to take our album in, but we don’t mind making a few stops there along the way.

It’s pretty odd, it seems like we’re so far away from being done, but I sometimes forget how much we’ve completed. Hype was at my place writing some stuff. I was supposed to be out of town but I was too exhausted to go because of lack of sleep. So we chilled for a bit and got to writing a new song, and finished it in about 45 minutes. Sometimes the ideas just come to us so easily, those are great writing days.

The track we’ve written is called “Murderous Intent”, and it’s a dark track about, well, intentions of murder. It’s not about having guns and all that, but yeah it’s pretty vivid at parts, more about spirituality than anything. I like writing these “creative thinking” type tracks, as we get to write a lot of metaphoric imagery for them. These are probably my favourite lines that I’ve written for this track…

But it’s not easy, slaughter eases the pain
A crimson river in the path of the slain
A desire so intense that it bends the laws of physics
I dream a sequence, and the spirits get with it

So far we have only 2 songs completed so far, but we also have 5 more beats either ready or very close to it, and 5 songs ready to be recorded. We’ve recorded one of those, actually, but I decided against using that be for that particular song, as I’ve got a better idea for it that is much more suiting. We have 5 full songs memorized for the upcoming party. We’ll probably do a set of 6 or 7 come party time.

I’m really excited about the performance coming in June, I haven’t performed in front of a crowd in at least 7 years, it has to be at least that long ago. This time we’re actually going to be prepared. The last time we tried, we wrote 3 songs within a week and tried memorizing it, it was a bad effort on our part. Yeah, we got cheers but I’m sure we could’ve torn the house down if we’d practised for more than one night.

So it’s like 4 in the morning and I’m working on a beat, really slow but I’ve got a pretty kickin synth sound going on. I’m going to go for a hypnotic sound at the moment, but I always let my mood and heart decide what happens to the music, not my head. Basically it means I have no qualms about changing a beat half way through.

Masheek and I are heading downtown tomorrow, and I’m planning on getting some marshmallow, bubblegum, and mint papers. I’m most excited about mint because I think it’d taste pretty damn classy, but marshmallow sounds like a damn good flavour too, in a less classy sense.

Afterwards we’re heading back to the studio and start writing something to it, possibly record as well if we get it done early. We usually do a set of scratch vocals first, which basically are vocals that aren’t the best of quality, rough vocals to be exact. We listen to the scratch vocals for a few days and use them to help us remember the lyrics, and also to listen to any parts we’d like to change. If something annoys us after a few listens, either the flow or the wording, then we take a note of that and take measures against the “mistake”. Then we give a good take when we’re ready, and then it’s up to me to engineer the vocals. I usually do a decent job.