Pete Rosenberg and Cipha Sounds invited the boys from Serato up to their podcast, Juan Epstein, this week to discuss Serato Scratch Live and its impact on DJ culture, what ensued was 40 minutes of straight-up DJ-nerdism and references to Flight Of The Conchords (much nicer than sheep jokes). Anyways, if you are a DJ and/or interested in DJ culture this episode is worth a listen, if you’re not then don’t! (this episode is the height of DJ-nerdom and probably wont make sense to you anyway)

Juan Epstein - The Serato Guys [zShare]

Yesterday’s match between the Warriors and Wests Tigers marked Ruben Wiki’s 300th game in the NRL and I just wanna give props to one of league’s greatest ever players and to quote Tofiga on Off Work, “a role models in the gommunity”. The game yesterday was a fitting way to mark the occasion because the venue, Leichardt Oval, was where Wiki made his debut for Canberra (with their U-23s) and the coach of Wests, Tim Sheens, was Wiki’s coach at the Raiders when he first started. Since his early days with the Green Machine, Wiki has gone on to achieve a lot. He has the record for the world’s most capped test player (55), is the most capped NZer in the NRL (300*), is only the 10th player ever to play 300 NRL games and 1st Kiwi, was part of the 24-0 tri-series hiding of Australia, won a premiership with the Raiders in ‘94, has captained his country and club, was named in the all-time Kiwi team, and was made an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit for his services to rugby league. As well as his achievements on the field, Wiki has been a role model off it, renowned as an all-round good guy and inspiration to young Polynesian players in the NRL, and has been involved in anti-violence and healthy eating campaigns to name just a few. Personally I’ve always looked up to Ruben Wiki, and along with Tana Umaga, he’s made me proud to be Samoan, even if I am only 1/4. So yeah, shot Ruben, congratulations on the feat and I hope your teammates can get you into the playoffs in your final NRL season because you deserve better than a 12th place finish!

God bless the person that uploaded this to youtube, I’d searched for this numerous times in the past so I could share it with the shotthen massive to no avail. This song/vid is a bonafide classic, when the drinks are getting poured and this song comes on - forget it. 3 classic verses, 3 classic performances. Omilio Sparks deserves an oscar for his overacting, Oschino praises a girl for having straight teeth, and Young Chris reminds females worldwide that time’s the only thing you can spend with him. School yourself.

Update:
Appears Universal are fronting about the embedding as per usual, here’s the link to the vid.

State Property - Mami do you want me

The homie Ryan put me on to this. Ho-ly. “Kev, he’s a sickooo…”.

The 2008 BET Awards were held today and I’ve been reading summaries n shit of what went down. Unsurprisingly the winners included people like Kanye, Chris Brown and Alicia Keys, but poor old Rihanna got no love this year. UGK also won a couple, one being “Video of the Year”, which was bang on. I’ve been watching a few vids of the performances (well what I can find) and the standout so far is Alicia Keys’ set. The meanest thing about it isn’t so much the vocal performance, but the fact she paid homage to three of R&B music’s greatest girl groups by including them on stage to perform. Weezy performed Lollipop and A Milli, and a bunch of other people like T-Pain, Usher and Chris Brown performed too. To see Ms Smith Keys’ performance, check out the vid below, and to see a list of the winners, see after the jump.

VID BACK UP (for now anyway)

(more…)

Well this certainly lit up my morning. It’s already everywhere but I had to give it the c/s cause it’s fucken mean. This song goes hard, apparently it’s Travis Barker on the drums and it’s produced by 1500 or nothin (Just Blaze ??). Turn this shit up LOUD.

The Game - Dope Boyz

“Uh, as a kid? No”

Courtesy of The Best Article Everyday

Not trying to be on some shit, but I’ve been following the career of this guy for a lil while now. Prior to Cassie blowing up with “Me and You” I came across his website ns4life.com when I’d been searching on Google for “life in the music industry” or some shit. Why was I doing that? Cause I was too lazy to do something productive, and I find it fascinating. Of all the stuff I found that day, his website was by far the most interesting. A video diary about an up and coming mogul/producer/artist, where you got to see some inner workings of label meetings, artist development, and best of all - studio footage of production and songwriting. Upon first impression my thoughts were “man, this guys an eatarse and a wannabe Diddy” - however the more stuff I watched the more undeniable it became that this dude is just a super talented and driven individual. You have to admire that.

I can’t find it at the mo but I saw this old school vid of him on some local news channel, where it was talking bout how he was going to Harvard at 15(?!) whilst mentoring kids with disabilities or something. Then it showed footage of him looking like a young Steve Urkel, but carving dudes up on the basketball court. I recall one of the youtube comments saying “This dude is possibly the coolest nerd ever”. I’d be inclined to agree. Ryan Leslie, shotthen salutes you. Check the vid above of him doing EVERYTHING in the studio, I’m not even big on that song, but fucking hell.

Ryan Leslie feat Cassie, Fabolous - “My Addiction” Remix (I like this shit)

Ryan Leslie murking Lollipop

If you’re near a radio (remember those things?) this weekend tune into Radio New Zealand 101.4FM at 4.10PM on Saturday. Sam Wicks has put together a programme about beatmaking for Music 101 that features P-Money and Scratch22 discussing the source material that goes into their beats, this is must-hear shit for the bedroom producers out there. The programme will be repeated next Friday too, or for you tech-savvy peeps who no longer have radios maybe we can convince Sam to upload it too eh

If your views differ from that of the homie Racial (”hip-hop > sports!”) you will probably agree these finals were the most interesting since the Bulls dynasty.

I’ve heard a lot of talk about how the big three dominated the Kobe Show, which is true, but when it comes down to it the championship equation is easy… Thoro niggaz = rings. Look back at all the championship teams of the past few years. whether it was Bruce Bowen, James Posey, Robert Horry, Dennis Rodman, Horace Grant or whoever, they all had multiple dudes who’s job it was to do nothing but down and out dirty shit and get under the skin of the other team.

It became evident early on that the Lakers bench were a group of frightened puppies compared to the pitbulls on Boston’s squad. Posey & PJ Brown didn’t show up much in the stats, they just annoyed the shit out of lames like Farmar and Radmonovic. The most telling point of the series was when lil’ ol’ Sam Cassell slammed Sasha Vujacic A.K.A David Dallas to the floor and just laughed. In the final game while up by about 37, Big Baby ran the floor and stuffed in someone’s grill and Tony Allen caught a reverse alley-oop. The Celtics role players were ruthless. The Boston Three Party is no stranger to thoro’ness either. Between them they have been stabbed 11 times, repped Bloods on court, had a threesome in a Spike Lee movie, and named their dog Big Pun. So with that in mind, here are the two things L.A. needs to do next season…

1. Get a thug/thug’s
The Lakers need to do anything they can to get Ron Artest. He would be the perfect fit. Solves the confusion at small forward, can score sufficiently, exceptional on D, and crazy as fuck. Either him or give Kimbo Slice a one year contract. Even if he cant dribble a ball, his intimidation factor would suffice.

2. Embrace Compton, not Hollywood
The Celtics come out to 50 Cent, the Cavaliers come out to Jigga, the Lakers come out to…. The Who. Classic band but, when you rep the home of N.W.A and Death Row there are countless hits that I feel would top the CSI theme. Dre Day, Straight Outta Compton, Bow Down, Hit Em Up, the possibilities are endless. And fuck Beckham and Ashton Kutcher, how about Suge Knight and the Boo-Ya Tribe courtside.