Been In The Mix
September 29, 2011
Earlier this summer, Lupe Fiasco and I formed a DJ duo called "The Soundclash." Honestly, we're just two friends trying to make people dance. The project has evolved from a DJ duo, to us working on our first EP. In the coming months, we're gonna be releasing a few of our own tracks. In the late summer and early fall of this year, we were in the studio, both in Los Angeles and in New York, finishing up some original material for our EP--and some fun remix edits just to perform. To be honest, I'm pretty excited for what's to come. I mean, it honestly feels like I'm working on a music-themed science fair project of sorts. Except, in this case, the paper mache science fair volcano is instead a trans-genre electronic music EP co-created with my friend who also is a Grammy-winning solo artist? All in all, we're both incredibly appreciative of all of the artists that have contributed to the project thus far. I'd name them here, but it's better to save that for a bit later...
The EP's tentative title is "Don't Drop The Flag..." (that is NOT our artwork below. But it is awesome, nonetheless...)
Not too long ago, we had an intimate show at the historic Viper Room in Los Angeles (of course, all I have to show from this performance, alongside Christian Rich, is this blurry Instagram photo...)
Over Memorial Day weekend this year, Lu and I performed alongside DJ Vice at Tao Beach, and solo one evening at LAVO in Las Vegas. Here's a video of our DJ set at LAVO:
Soundclash "Lupe Fiasco" from 5th & Ocean Productions on Vimeo.
In June of this past summer, I co-produced a 12-camera live video capture of Kanye West's concert with Heineken at Brooklyn's Skylight One Hanson for Team Epiphany. The video was directed by my friend and frequent video collaborator Kenzo Digital. My other longtime friend, Virgil Abloh, art directed the videos and Kanye's set design as well on behalf of PASTELLE. To note, Kenzo also recently created Beyonce's memorable interactive video performance at the Billboard Music Awards, and Virgil, well, is Kanye's full time art and style impresario along with being a partner in RSVP Gallery and one of the OG writers for the site The Brilliance! Here's my favorite video that we created from this project: Kanye's song "Flashing Lights":
In September I was featured in an article on Forbes.com along with Kevin Ma, Coltrane Curtis, and Raymond Roker on this whole "influencer marketing" realm. The article's author, Matthew Newton, did a wonderful job researching and writing this piece. Thanks again for including me, Matthew!
Most recently, I just got back from China with 13thWitness. The flight was long. We're working on amazing project to be unveiled later this year...
