From the Kickstarter page:

In 1999 I moved to the L.E.S. of NYC during the hottest summer on record to pursue rap fame as the next hottest thing to the weather. With little more than a mattress and my MPC 2000 I was lucky enough to go on to make some records (when they still made those) with names like Mr. Lif, Aesop Rock, Cage, C-Rayz Walz and others before ultimately signing to El-P’s Definitive Jux label as one third of the rap power-trio Hangar 18. I got my first shot at a legitimate tour courtesy of Def Jux and The Hangar hit the road in support of The Multi-Platinum Debut LP, the most platinumest album of 2004. We did lots of shows in lots of places from Compton to Connecticut (peace Connecticut) and sold some CDs (when they still made those) but shortly thereafter came to the realization that the “rap game” was not for me. It was on a tour bus actually – sitting next to Shock G…but that’s another story. This is not a film about yours truly.

That said, many of my friends new and old either were or are actively pursuing a career in hip-hop…and “the game” is a cruel, cruel bitch with little to give but heartache, bad credit and chronic wanderlust.

So not too long ago I embarked on a journey to talk to some of my friends. Many of whom, like me, grew up in what’s considered the Golden Age of hip-hop. And many of whom, like myself, remember a time before hip-hop and it’s current ubiquity across our pop culture landscape. And many of whom, like I, have watched as our peers have struggled to maintain relevance and earn a paycheck as the torch is passed to a new generation of rappers that cut their teeth on You Tube instead of YO! MTV Raps. The journey to date has given me the chance to talk to a wide range of rappers, past and present, from indy to mainstream. Some you’ll know, others you should act like you do. So far that list includes; Yesh aka Yeshua DapoED, Soul Khan, J57, Alaska, Blockhead, DJ Js1, DJ Elle, Despot, J Zone, Jams F. Kennedy, Bobbito, Masta Ace, Eternia, Torae, Luckyiam, Brooker T, Jensen Karp aka Hot Karl, Cryptic One, RA the Rugged Man, Homeboy Sandman, Jarobi, Slug, Blueprint, Louis Logic, Open Mike Eagle…and the list grows like a 90′s posse cut everyday.

If you know what day Ed Lover Dance day falls on, what EPMD stands for AND you can name all the groups that make up The Native Tongues Family? You might just be an Adult Rapper. I think you’ll enjoy our story.

So if you’ve ever wondered what the other 23 hours (off stage) of a working rapper’s life looks like in the 21st Century – look no further. It’s a story we’re anxious to tell. It can be both inspiring and heartbreaking so YouTube millionaires take heed. Only some 30 years after the birth of the music we’re wondering – where does it go next? As rappers get older, their music arguably stays the same age. Will we see rappers age gracefully and perform well into their winter years like so many Jazz greats? Will Kane still rock the Apollo at 70? Do rappers have expiration dates, and if so, do they know it? How does a rapper get a real job after years on the grind? We explore all this and more through a series of in depth interviews with a line-up that would makes Eddie Ill and DL jealous.

We will be eternally grateful if you support our film. With your support we will wrap up shooting in NY, LA, Boston, Chicago, Detroit and everywhere else a great interview awaits. While a little luck and a lot of emails have gotten us this far, a little money will bring this labor of love down the home Stretch (& Bobbito).

Thank you.

Paul Iannacchino, Jr.

Help us make this happen.

Since Hail Mary Mallon’s Are You Going to Eat That? (RhymeSayers, 2011) was my favorite record of last year, you know I’m ready for what these guys have been up to since. With new records in the works from all involved, this summer is guaranteed to have an ill soundtrack. On to the goodies:

Aesop Rock and Whiskers the Cat star in the album tralier for Skelethon: [runtime: 1:57]:

Here’s “Zero Dark Thirty” from Skelethon (play this loud):

 
And here’s an odd clip of John Greenham mastering something new [runtime: 0:49]:

For more on all of the above, check out Aesop’s site and the compendium of dope weirdness, 900 Bats. It’s on like ‘frigerators.

This week, I am proud to be guest-tweeting for Mark America’s remixthebook (Univeristy of Minnesota Press, 2011). In addition, I posted a piece on the remixthebook site. remixthebook and its attendant activities situate the mash-up as a defining cultural activity in the digital age. With that in mind, I tried to go back to the writings above and update them using pieces of relevant things I’ve written since. If you will, my post is a metamix of thoughts and things I’ve written about remix in the past decade and a half or so, pieces which also represent material from my other book-in-progress, Hip-hop Theory: The Blueprint to 21st Century Culture. It’s a sample-heavy essay that aims to illustrate the point.

Here are a few excerpts:

Culture as meaning-making requires participation. In addition to the communication processes of encoding and decoding, we now participate in recoding culture. Using allusions in our conversation, writing, and other practices engages us in culture creation as well as consumption. The sampling and remixing practices of Hip-hop exemplify this idea more explicitly than any other activity. Chambers wrote, “In readily accessed electronic archives, in the magnetic memory banks of records, films, tapes and videos, different cultures can be revisited, re-vived, re-cycled, re-presented” (p. 193). Current culture is a mix of media and speech, alluded to, appropriated from, and mixed with archival artifacts and acts.

…

We use numerous allusions to pop culture texts in everyday discourse, what Roth-Gordon calls “conversational sampling.” Allusions, even as direct samples or quotations, create new meanings. Each form is a variation of the one that came before. Lidchi wrote, “Viewing objects as palimpsests of meaning allows one to incorporate a rich and complex social history into the contemporary analysis of the object.” It is through use that we come to know them. Technology is not likely to slow its expanse into every aspect of our lives and culture, and with it, the reconfiguration of cultural artifacts is also not likely to stem. Allusions – in the many forms discussed above and many more yet to come – are going to become a larger and larger part of our cultural vocabulary. Seeing them as such is the first step in understanding where we are headed.

…

Rasmussen wrote, “there is no ‘correct’ way to categorise [sic] the increasing diversity of communication modes inscribed by the media technologies. Categories depend on the nature of the cultural phenomena one wants to investigate.” Quotation, appropriation, reference, and remix comprise twenty first century culture. From our technology and media to our clothes and conversations, ours is now a culture of allusion. As Schwartz so poetically put it: “Whatever artists do, they are held in the loose but loving embrace of artists past.” Would that it were so.

The whole post is here.

Many thanks to Mark America and Kerry Doran for the opportunity and to everyone else for joining in on the fun. Here’s the trailer for the project [runtime: 1:21]:

It’s also in Cyberculture & History, and right now, in the New Arrivals.

So, if you’re in Austin and don’t have a copy, stop by and get yours.

Many thanks to Michael McCarthy and everyone at BookPeople for their support. And to you for yours.

In his defense, the man has been busy with several records by him and his friends (Rob Sonic, DJ Big Wiz, Kimya Dawson, et al.). Here’s the latest from Hail Mary Mallon, which consists of Aesop Rock, Rob Sonic, and DJ Big Wiz: “Smock” (Live from the Burgundy Camry), directed by Alexander Durrant, Justin Metros, and Rico Deniro [runtime: 4:44]:

You’re right, Roy, you’re hopeless. Hopelessly obsessed with a time in your sport that died a long time ago… — McGoo

Roy Christopher executes a Backwards Elbow Glide at a Jacksonville NBL contest circa 1990. (photo by Peter Cowley)

The experience of a BMXer today is much more likely to be mediated by technology than it was in the ’80s. Given the proliferation of technology into every aspect of our lives, that’s not much of an insight, but hear me out. In addition to the lack of dope video games, the riders of thirty years ago were also missing out on the parks. There were like three ride-able skateparks in the whole country. Now there are at least that many in every city of any size whatsoever. Where the past was spent riding curb cuts, banks, walls, streets, and backyard ramps, today the terrain consists of those as well as many human-made options. It makes for different riding, different tricks, and different values.

We are pleased to inform you that Ogilvy has selected your session, “Disconnecting the Dots: How Our Devices are Divisive”, as one they would like to graphically record at the event.

What does this mean exactly? This means an artist will visually document your SXSW panel session in real-time, and then share their interpretation via Ogilvy’s online channel and with limited-edition prints in the SXSW Trade Show Day Stage. Ogilvy is only able to provide this service for a very limited group of panel sessions, so it is quite an honor to be selected.

More information on this program, along with examples of work from all the talented artists involved, is available on their site. I love these live renderings and am super stoked to have been selected for this.

——–

Here’s one by Heather Willems from the Ogilvy site:

Here’s the excerpt that features me running my mouth:

“Having a beer with someone is still one of the most connecting things you can do,” agrees Roy Christopher, a communication studies doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin. Still, he says, “the nature of being human is having technology.” Christopher is currently writing a book about human relationships with technology, which he’ll discuss in his panel, Disconnecting the Dots: How Our Devices Are Divisive. “Every new technology falls on a continuum between obstruction and augmentation,” he says, and as such it poses unexpected paradoxes. For instance, “Everyone says ‘location doesn’t matter’ – but it makes location all the more important because you can choose to be anywhere.”

Admittedly, that last insight is not mine. Nicholas Negroponte pointed that out in his book Being Digital (Vintage, 1996). I’ll claim at least the synthesis of the rest though. I’m anxious to talk about this stuff at SXSW Interactive and in the new book.

Many, many thanks to Nora Ankrum and The Austin Chronicle for their time and attention.

Contemporary culture has eliminated the concept and public figure of the intellectual. A cretinous anti-intellectualism presides, cheerled by hacks in the pay of multinational corporations who reassure their bored readers that there is no need to rouse themselves from their stupor. Zer0 Books knows that another kind of discourse — intellectual without being academic, popular without being populist — is not only possible: it is already flourishing. Zer0 is convinced that in the unthinking, blandly consensual culture in which we live, critical and engaged theoretical reflection is more important than ever before.

While I can’t completely agree with such a dismal view of contemporary society, I couldn’t state my purposes as a writer any better than that.

The Medium Picture is a history of the future of our relationship with technology. Technological mediation has changed and continues to change our relationships with each other, our information, time, space, and ourselves. It isn’t going to go away. In fact, it’s only going to become more pervasive. The Medium Picture explores these relationships at all levels, from language and literature to television and cell-phones. It’s about mediation, not just technology: It’s about the ripple, not the rock. That is, it’s about the process we undergo with our tools and toys. It calls attention to the effects of ever-expanding mediation and urges the reader to be more mindful of what constitutes authentic experience. It isn’t about relying on technology less, but it is about what relying on it means.

Given their commitment to critical and engaged theoretical reflection, I am happy to announce that I signed The Medium Picture to Zero Books.

Thank you all for your continued interest and support,

And many thanks to the early readers of this material. I’ll never remember everyone, but here are some helpful folks who read early drafts of the proposal and gave invaluable notes and advice: David Patterson, Mark Wieman, Alex Burns, Steven Shaviro, David Barker, David Miller, Matt Schulte, Kristen Sensenig, Matt Bialer, Rebecca Oliver, Kasey Pfaff, Micheal Schandorf, Doug Sery, Erik Davis, John Brockman, Max Brockman, Jason Weidemann, John Oakes, and Doug Rushkoff.

Here are the details from Sandy:

I want to formally invite you to the opening of my first group exhibition of the year Storytelling at the L. Nowlin Gallery here in Austin. This exhibit, curated by the Austin Photography Group, features 40 Austin photographers and opens next Saturday, January 15th from 6-8pm. I shall be showing a piece from my Black Friday series from 2009.

Here’s a preview of the show. See you all there!