The Official Website - DJ Decryption - Tha Blog

Boredom is a choice

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Growing up, I always experienced a curious phenomenon - I was never bored. My friends often complained, "I don't have anything to do" or "I don't feel like doing anything". I didn't understand how this could happen. Fueled by a large supply of books and the only-child-survival-strategy of endless self-entertainment, I always found myself creating imaginative scenarios (usually based around some computer game) in which I was a protagonist equipped with absurd amounts of (usually technologically suspect) weaponry. I gave up computer games when I turned 18 to focus on music, but I never lost the imaginative sense of creativity.

In "Open Curtain" from Soulfire, I say "Boredom is a choice" - a statement I definitely believe, but I heard an interesting twist on this idea while listening to motivational guru Tony Robbins recently. Tony suggested that if you don't put an emotional concept into your language use, it doesn't exist. Think about that for a moment. If you never say "I'm bored" (even to yourself), then you're never bored. After thinking about this, I found myself agreeing. We have feelings which are very nebulous... they're just sensations until we give them meaning. For example, when someone is disagreeing with me, I can feel my anxiety level rise and my heart rate quicken. But that doesn't inherently mean anything. I choose how I want to channel that feeling. I can choose to be angry, or frustrated, or hurt, or amused, or even powerful. I can use their disagreement to show them something they may not have considered, or I can use it as a learning experience to discover a new perspective for myself.

This is the reason I have never been bored in my life. Whenever I felt what people normally call boredom (a state of inaction), I either use that as motivation to go and accomplish something, or I'll take that moment to quietly reflect and rest. My interpretation of that state of being is what makes it my reality. If you say, "I'm bored", you're making yourself a victim. No one is entertaining you; no one is engaging you. But instead, if you take ownership of your time and activity, you'll see that these moments are the best opportunities you're given! You're in control! You get to decide what you want to do! Think of how often we have to do things that other people want us to do. How rare is it when we can determine our own actions and plans! So the next time you're feeling inactive, think to yourself, "if I could do anything in the world right now, what would it be?" Now start doing it in your mind. Notice how you feel, how your body responds. Now put together a plan to do that activity. You've just turned "boredom" into the thing you most wanted to do in your entire life.

Peace,
DJ Decryption

Ana Free - Keep On Walking (Free Download)

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Greetings Kinfolk,

A quick update with some exciting Ana Free news! You can now watch Ana's first official music video below:

You can also download the single, "Keep On Walking" free here:
Download Ana Free's new song "Keep On Walking" (256kbps)

Finally, you can find her other new single "Self Inflicted" on iTunes at http://www.itunes.com/anafree

Here's a cool AF Facebook Fan page application:

Ana Free on Facebook

More photos and magic coming soon! Hope you're all having a great summer!

Peace,
Decrypt

A bit of Free Music

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Here's a summer jam that Ana Free and I did - you can download the studio version of the song for free here (it's part of a Portuguese wine company campaign called "Fresh Faces of Portugal" that features Ana). Hope you enjoy!

Peace,
Decrypt

DJ Decryption - Soulfire is now Free!

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Greetings Kinfolk,

I have an announcement for you. After much consideration, I've decided to make the full Soulfire album available for free download. You can get it here if you didn't already peep the link on the homepage.

Why set Soulfire free? Well, it's not because I've recouped my investment on it... I'm still about $750 in the hole from the mixing/mastering/manufacturing process. But after a lot of soul searching, I realized it was more important for me that I share this music with people than make money from it. After receiving emails from people whose lives had been touched or changed by the music, I decided that I didn't want that impact to be limited to those people who could afford to buy a CD.

Continuing with this idea, I've also been giving my album to kids who participate in the hip-hop education projects I run. Recently, I've been doing a series of beatbox workshops where I bring a professional mobile recording studio into a school, spend the morning teaching students how to beatbox, and in the afternoon they pair up and record their own song for an album, which I mix, master, and manufacture for them. It's amazing to watch students, many with behavioral or learning disabilities, jump enthusiastically into these projects. It's a skill (and a musical instrument!) that they now possess, and their creativity expands every day as they re-create songs and sounds from their environment.

The best part about the workshops is that the students also learn transferable skills, though this is not necessarily explained to them at the time. They learn music theory, public performance technique, group communication and listening skills, and hip-hop history. Part of the workshop is spent critically reading hip-hop texts and images, as well as discussing the potential to combine the students' passions with their academics. I often find that students say "if school were more like this every day, we'd love coming here!" What I try to explain to them is that they can make school like this every day. They can write about a topic that they love, be it sports, music, or anything else. They can become broadcasters, presenters, or writers if they improve their public presentation and composition skills. There are so many opportunities for students who really invest in their education, and it's so hard to see so many students beaten down by the expectation that school will be boring drudgery until they graduate and get a boring job. Once school becomes something that incorporates their passions, they no longer feel as much of a separation between the fun (i.e. rebellious) part of their life and their academic career. Obviously this approach has its limits, but that spark of motivation and relation to students' lives makes such a profound impact on their future. If all it takes is making that connection, isn't it worth a shot?

If you're interesting in reading more about incorporating hip-hop into educational approaches, check out Marc Lamont Hill's Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life.

Thanks to everyone for your support and love along this journey - it means so much to me when I hear from people who have benefited from the kind of personal and musical empowerment that I attempt to share with the world. You and the students in your lives are the reason I keep doing what I'm doing!

To conclude, I'll leave you with a quote from Soulfire:

Life is a grind, and the grind takes time
But in the end we discover that the struggle's divine
So keep your nose to the stone through the thick and thin
And when you look inside, find the beauty within

"The Beauty Within" - DJ Decryption

Eagles

Mon, 25 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New Ana Free video!

A quick summary of everything else, in arbitrary order:

RIP Adam "Knight" Whetstone - you lived it up.

More Soulfire / Ana Free updates coming shortly.

Thanks to Ana, I now really like the Eagles.

New Asher Roth album is phenomenal.

New Eminem album is self-indulgent and uninspired.

I'm psyched for the Global Youth Conference in October... we're going to have a fantastic line-up of Gabriel Teodros, The Rebel Cell (Baba Brinkman and Dizraeli), and DAM (awesome Palestinian rap group). Also some phenomenal authors (such as Gautam Malkani, author of Londonstani) and scholars!

More research updates coming your way as well. Hang in there for the next installment!

Peace,
DJ Decryption

Ana Free Updates!

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Behind the Scenes with Ana Free (March 2009):

New Ana Free cover song (Second Chance by Shinedown):

We upgraded the audio recording quality on this one, so hopefully everything sounds clearer/fuller/more balanced!

Crazy studio week coming up - major song launching coming soon! We finished filming the music video for Keep On Walking (a forthcoming single), and we're getting ready to release Playgrounds and Kisses at the beginning of May.

Hope you're staying Spring fresh - catch you soon!

Peace,
DJ Decryption

WhiteBoys vs. Malibu's Most Wanted

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Greetings kinfolk!

A long awaited update will follow soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to do a brief commentary on a couple of films I was watching for my hip-hop research.

Whiteboys is a 1999 film about 3 white wannabe gangstas from Iowa, led by Flip Dogg, a hopelessly aspirational white rapper who mercilessly portrays the most reductive gangsta rap stereotypes possible. Most of the film consists of him acting like a gang leader and gratuitously using the n word in every scene. Flip's sole black friend is Khalid, a law school bound, respectful, and generally "normal" middle class kid. The rest of the film consists of a drug deal gone bad, some seriously awkward acting, and even worse rapping.

By contrast, Malibu's Most Wanted is about B-Rad, another aspiring white rapper and the son of a politician running to be Governor of California. The politician's campaign staff decide that B-Rad is a political liability and hire two black actors to kidnap him, take him to the ghetto, and "scare the blackness" out of him. Hilarity ensues.

One of the main elements that separates these films is the effectiveness of characterization. Whiteboys presents Flip as a one-dimensional rapper, and his crew displays little depth either. The film hints at family drama as being a source for Flip's identification with gangsta rap, but there's a much stronger implication (beaten into the viewer by heavy-handed monologues) that this is merely a search for identity in which every teen in this small town in Iowa sips 40oz, smokes blunts, and wears absurd amounts of FUBU. This film felt like a cruel mockery of the white boys, the drug dealers, the actual rappers (including a bizarre appearance by the elusive Slick Rick and cameos from Fat Joe, Snoop Dogg, and a painfully-used Dead Prez), and the audience's intelligence. While presenting stereotypes of gangsta rap, it leaned on every cinematic cliche imaginable - in the script, in the plot, on the screen... everything felt like a caricature of real people and emotion.

While Malibu's Most Wanted suffers a similar one-dimensionality, at least this film displays some nuance in its racial characterizations. While featuring the "black-but-not-really" actors who prepare for their kidnapping assignment by listening to Tupac (to understand their character's motivation) and reading urban slang dictionaries, this film uses the overexaggerated quality of B-Rad's rapper personality in a charming way. The point of Malibu's Most Wanted is that B-Rad has become the *culture* of hip-hop, just without necessarily internalizing other people's perceptions of him. B-Rad displays a somewhat-historical awareness of black struggle (ironically asking his black maid at his mansion, "how long they gonna hold our people down"?). In contrast, the Whiteboys have no actual understanding of the community they are imitating, and the point of the film is that they are *imitating* hip-hop culture. This distinction is crucial because Malibu depicts hip-hop as a culture used to express identity, whereas the Whiteboys characterize it exclusively by gangsta motifs. B-Rad uses hip-hop as a language of expression (the only one he knows, apparently), whereas Flip buys the entire message of gangsterism, from violence to drug dealing. The essential difference here is that B-Rad knows exactly who he is (but is not accepted for it), and Flip doesn't know who he is, so he adopts the gangsta persona.

Also, B-Rad reminds me of Da'Ron on occasion.

I found Malibu's Most Wanted to be a hilarious movie that I could completely identify with, whereas I almost turned off Whiteboys halfway through because I found it misrepresenting hip-hop culture to such a painful degree. I understand that the point was the misrepresentation, but that didn't make it any more enjoyable to watch.

Keep it real - more soon!

Peace,
DJ Decryption

For Joe

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

A good friend of mine, Joe Martinez, has been telling me for months to update my blog. And he's right! It's been a disgracefully long time in blog-world. However, rather than doing the usual "what's-up-with-DJ-D", I thought I'd take a moment to talk about Joe.

We met back in our sophomore year at Wake Forest, when we were the only two new members inducted into Innuendo, the co-ed acappella group at Wake. We were both thrown into the acappella scene without much introduction, and we eventually found that we had a shared love of improvised jam sessions (Joe is a phenomenal singer and guitarist). Many nights after Innuendo practice, we'd stay in the rehearsal room and bang out hip-hop and R&B medleys on the piano... throwing everything from Jay-Z, Fat Joe, Clipse, Atmosphere, and R. Kelly into medleys with Third Eye Blind, Oasis, Matisyahu, and John Mayer songs. We had both done a fair amount of traveling and had lived overseas, so there was a certain shared global perspective to our worldviews which I found very comforting and engaging in the occasionally insular world of Work Forest.

The summer after graduation, I was working on my album "Soulfire", which I envisioned being the politically fiery raps of Immortal Technique combined with the great harmonies of Pretty Ricky. I asked Joe and our mutual friend Jewelz to make the album, and they graciously agreed. We proceeded to have weeks of wonderful recording sessions (fueled mostly by grapes and floor fans, as the recording studio regularly reached 80 degrees). Those were some of the best memories... random dance parties, little sleep, and a lot of laughing.

Since then, Joe enrolled in photography school, where he has been creating the most beautiful photos I have ever seen (check out http://www.joemartinezphotography.com or http://www.flickr.com/joemartinezphotography ). He just graduated and hopped on a flight to spend a couple of weeks in Europe, touring historic sites and taking beautiful pictures. It was the first extended amount of time we had gotten to spend together in many years, and I am so thankful that he made the trip.

I guess I just want to relate how real, honest, talented, passionate, caring, and intelligent Joe is. In every interaction I've ever seen, he is the most genuine person with everyone he meets, and his ability to make people feel special and valued is unparalleled. Aside from being an amazingly gifted photographer, singer, and guitarist, he is an incredible human being. So yeah... that's Joe. :-)

In closing, here's some musical Joe for you to enjoy (for more, check out http://www.youtube.com/djdecrypt ).

Peace,
DJ Decryption

October Arrives

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Greetings Kinfolk!

My many apologies for the extreme delay in blog posting! Perhaps some substance will make amends...

First off, some major Ana Free excitement since the last post. Ana has been involved with a national campaign with Zon NetCabo in Portugal, the "Making of" which is here:

"In My Place" has been #1 on iTunes Portugal for the past 3 weeks, and it currently holds the #3 position on Portuguese Top 40 radio, so we're very excited about that! A huge shout-out and thanks to all of Ana's supporters who made this possible... none of this would be happening without your dedication to Ana and her music. We are truly humbled and grateful to be a part of this, and we're going to be able to keep making great music with your help!

On that note, I can finally give some more details about the projects in the works! The first is an acoustic album, with many of Ana's most popular YouTube songs appearing on it (all originals), along with a couple of new songs too! The second is the more produced album (like "In My Place"), which is currently about halfway done. We're psyched about both of these, since they give different perspectives on Ana's artistry and show her love for a variety of playing styles. Ana will be touring in Europe and the US over the next year - doing both acoustic and band shows - so you'll get to check out both vibes if you'll be around! (You can sign up for the mailing list at www.myspace.com/anafreemusic to hear about new releases, concerts, random hilarious things that Ana is thinking about, etc.)

Other things... for the most comprehensive Ana Free news and updates, I highly recommend (and so do 9 out of 10 dentists!) www.anafree.de - Alex (who runs the site) is one of the coolest people we've met... he flew from GERMANY to attend Ana's last concert in Lisbon. We got a chance to hang out with Alex, and we can honestly say that he is one of the kindest, most considerate people we have encountered during our time in this musical world. I'll leave it at that for now, but just know that I'm a major fan of Ana's fans. They blow my mind every day...

Speaking of which, big shout-out to Claudia and her brother who flew in from the Netherlands, Rodrigo and JoÃ£o from Porto, and all the other AF crew who made some significant trips to come to Music Box. The gig was awesome too... here are a couple of fun moments with Ana and myself (courtesy of Mica):

I had a blast at this concert - so much great energy in the room... especially when Keep On Walking exploded!

PhD and the Global Youth Conference are rolling along as well! Just finished my theory chapter on postcolonial hip-hop identities and the commodification of global youth culture, which was enjoyable. I had a chance to meet up with Marta from the Youth Press Portugal in Lisbon, and we have some plans in the works for a global youth extravaganza - hopefully more on that soon!

Speaking of which, it's about time to get back to the academic realm before sleeping tonight, so...

I'll leave you with a graphical representation of the lyrics of Soulfire (the companion volume, which also includes essays), with the size of the word reflecting the frequency of use (wordle.net)

Some observations:
1. I've written extensively on the role of analogy in hip-hop, so it isn't surprising that the word "Like" would be the most used word in this project. Similes are the bedrock of rap's creative enterprise, and these connections are the innovative sparks that make poetic lyrics so evocative and engaging.

2. I am surprised by the prevalence of the word "rap" in Soulfire, since one of the explicit purposes of the album was to avoid extensive self-reflexive discussions about hip-hop. I suspect that much of this usage is from the introduction and essays, since I referenced the medium more frequently there.

3. "Time" is a highly appropriate word for this project, since everything from the artwork of the companion volume (featuring allusions to James Joyce's Ulysses) to the song structure (aligning biographically and thematically) are based on temporal progression or stagnation, as the case may be. The eternal present, the questioning of history and revolution, the meditations on art and relationships... these all revolve around our ephemeral presence on this mortal coil.

4. The most unexpected word? "Never" - I must have been quite adamant throughout the album, although I don't recall using such certain language all the time! This probably comes in part from the end of "I'm Not Gangsta, But Yo Mama Is", where I say, "I will never give up; I will never give in / I will fight by your side until both our lives end", but there are clearly other places as well.

5. Yo. Nuff said.

Thanks y'all - peace and love!
~DJ Decryption

P.S. Shout-out to Joe Focus for wamp wampin' art school!

Music Box and Rebel Cell

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Greetings Kinfolk,

Another marathon stretch of excitement for July! Ana Free's first single "In My Place" went into rotation on the major Portuguese radio networks, which is very exciting. Ana's first concert of the summer was a big success (sold-out the venue), and I'm looking forward to performing a bit of piano and beatbox with her on Sept. 12th at the Music Box in Lisbon, Portugal (www.myspace.com/anafreemusic for details). We've also been plugging away at the debut album here in the studio - it's coming along very nicely. Based on the overwhelmingly positive feedback from "In My Place", I think people are really going to enjoy the direction of the album.

Here's the latest AF video for you... a nice and mellow Ben Harper number:

In other news, global youth conference planning has been flying along - the first round of invitations went out, and we're very pleased with the response... it's looking like an all-star cast for October 2009! For those of you just tuning in, this is a half academic / half performative conference on representations of global youth culture that will be featuring scholars, activists, poets, spoken word artists, and rappers. We'll be announcing names once we shore up funding. :-)

PhD writing has been going well... I'm doing the theory chapter right now. A critique of subcultures, scenes, and neotribes alongside an analysis of consumer capitalism and postmodern aesthetics - it's a party!

Speaking of capitalism and subcultures, I went to see Baba Brinkman and Dizraeli perform "The Rebel Cell" in London last week. Imagine 8 Mile meets 1984... an hour of theater featuring non-stop rhyming (even in quiet conversation) about political philosophy, hip-hop, art, capitalism... everything. Baba and Dizraeli are actually fantastic actors as well, so the theatrical performance was as strong as the rapping. And it's hilarious - during some scenes it was all I could do to stay in my seat from laughing so hard. They've posted the album version of the show for free on Baba's website, so you can download it to get a flavor at www.babasword.com - not gonna lie though, the show adds a component that really completes the piece. If you're around Edinburgh, they're performing the Rebel Cell for the next month at the Fringe Festival - check it out!

Finally, a quick report on my father's book launch for the Seamus Heaney bibliography that he just completed after more than a decade of work on it. The launch was phenomenal - Faber and Faber (the publishers) did an amazing job setting everything up, and Seamus was incredibly generous and kind in his remarks about my father's book and life. I also got to catch up with some family friends whom I hadn't seen since we lived in Ireland in 1993, so that was awesome too. Plus my mom flew over - so it was basically one big reunion in Dublin. And I may have done a little rapping and beatboxing for the Duchess of Abercorn as well... :-)

Lightning is striking, so I'm going to shut everything down over here... nothing like one fried computer to change your perspective on unplugging everything during a storm...

Hope you're all having a great summer!

Peace,
DJ Decryption