Mac's Journey at SXSW

The following story was run last week on www.weouthere.net. Biggups to Jake Espinoza for putting me on.

Without divulging too much, I can tell you that the last few months have been an amazingly difficult for me. In desperate need of a temporary change of scenery, I decided to go to the music convention known as SXSW (South by Southwest) this year with my little brother Hanif, aka Luck One. Not having any current project of my own, I figured I'd use this trip to help promote his upcoming project (True Theory), network with the music community, and maybe inspire myself to get more serious with my music. I accomplished all of these these things during my trip, and not without a few stories to tell. So let's just go ahead and jump in, shall we?

Click here to read the rest of this story. Trust me, it'd be a wise decision. 

Press Release (By Me) - N.VS x Calvin Valentine - Trophy Cases

N.VS x CALVIN VALENTINE RELEASE FREE DOWNLOADABLE EP – TROPHY CASES

Let it begin. Portland-based producer Calvin Valentine has teamed with Chicago-based emcee N.VS to create Trophy Cases, the first of several releases planned from the seven-member Fang Tshida collaborative. The free and downloadable 5-song EP features cameos from rhymers Sam Trump, BE.Water and Epp – as well as musical input from DaiN, Hi-Res and Chase Moore – and is themed with radio clips from the Portland Trailblazers’ 1977 NBA Championship series; clearly a nod to the duo’s Oregon roots.

Valentine and N.VS grew up as friends in the Oregon college town of Eugene before settling, respectively, in Portland and Chicago. Calvin Valentine is an extremely soulful young man with a penchant for combining slappy beats with live instrumentation. His clientele list includes Two Time World Rap Champion Illmaculate and West Coast hip-hop legend Planet Asia. Meanwhile, N.VS – an audio engineering student at Columbia College Chicago – is a smooth syllable-slicing wordsmith turned beatsmith, eagerly finding his way back to the proverbial wax. Focused on producing for the last three years, Trophy Cases is his first return to the microphone as a headlining emcee.

The resulting combination is a free EP that works. N.VS’ well thought out rhyme schemes and experience performing with a live band help meld his voice comfortably with Valentine’s expressive head-knocking compositions. With a sound built to satisfy existing fan bases in two very different regions, this first installment from Fang Tshida is certain to garner significant buzz. The title track, which is also the single, is receiving radio play on both WGCI 107.5 (Chicago) and Wild 107.5 (Portland).
Download Trophy Cases for free at: http://trophycases.bandcamp.com/

What If: "I Started This Wanksta Sh*... Is the Motherf* Thanks I Get?"

11:00 PST

This morning, Ja Rule held a press conference to officially side with Jay-Z in his hardly-escalating beef with Oakland, California rap pastor Hammer.

Ja stated that he understands what it means to have people take shots at you, assured Jay-Z that their friendship was still intact, and shamelessly showed footage from the "Can I Get A..." music video and the motion picture "Backstage". When asked by a tabloid journalist why he was needlessly inserting himself into this mess, Rule responded, "I started this wanksta shit... Is this the motherfuckin thanks I get?"

Hammer's camp has been quiet, but strongly hinted that due to budget constraints, the response will not be as well produced as the Jay-Z attack.

Jay-Z has declined comment on either matter, but smiled at the paparazzi and mused, "Holla, holla."

No major news stations were present to record this occurrence; however, FOX News did show up an hour later and report "Live" from the scene.


What if...?

twitter.com/macsmiff

Flicks: The Town (or so they call it...) **NO SPOILERS**

Whoa... I know it's been a minute. Things have been hectic in the life of Mr. Smiff, and for some reason I let that stagnate my writing. My bad...

So what brought me back? A promise to a friend that after I saw the new Affleck-directed movie, The Town, that I would write a review. Not one to break a promise, here I am, keeping my word.

Certainly a cops-and-robbers movie intent on recapturing the chilling suspense and brazen emotion of movies such as Heat and The Departed, the storyline in The Town revolves around a small gang of Boston bank robbers and the federale intent on bringing them to justice. Of course, these are no ordinary bank robbers... No, these elusive thieves live in the ghetto of Charlestown (aka "The Town") which is apparently a breeding ground for only the finest of bank robbers. The leader of the gang is played by none other than Ben Affleck (Dogma, Daredevil, Gigli) who also directed the film. Now I know, the idea of Affleck playing a crime boss is somewhat tough to imagine, but he does a decent - if not believable - job and was smart enough to cast Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) as his trusty and rather unstable second in command. The rest of the cast is filled with familiar-yet-unrecognizable faces and names who all do a pretty darn good job in their respective roles.

Through the film, Affleck takes us to and through his clearly imagined rough-and-tumble home-town of Boston where the law is apparently everywhere yet incapable of stopping his gang from victimizing bank after bank so long as he is masterminding the schemes. Naturally, Ben's character quickly falls in love with a witness to one of the bank robbers (Rebecca Hall) who is not aware of his identity. Not surprisingly, she is a very plain white girl. More surprising, she is NOT played by Elektra - err - Jennifer Garner. This twist (the part about her being a witness, not the part about her not being his real life wife) makes for an interesting storyline, and I must say they do a good job of not slowing the movie down with boring banter. This is, after all, an action movie!

Eventually Ben's character, being a nice-guy at heart and merely a product of his super-ghetto environment, decides he wants out of the game... And the plot again thickens.

While rather unbelievable, I submit that this action drama was done pretty darn well. There are some compelling scenes, and some cornball scenes. A few very good chase scenes and a good climax. Plus a recurring theme that snitching is not cool. Not unlike a Friday night at the club. The only real gripes I'd have are a) I don't think there were ANY minorities in the movie, b) the over-inflated and annoying Boston accents, and c) the fact that everyone in the movie was borderline stupid, except for Ben Affleck, and naturally, his father (played convincingly by Chris Cooper).

Other than that, it was a good date night flick. I won't be buying it on DVD though. Good standalone movie, but certainly no Scorsese or De Niro masterpiece.  B+

Debauchery: We Win 2.0 Charity Show - Salem, OR

So Saturday night I drove down to the Capitol so I could be part of the second We Win charity show at The Coffee House in downtown Salem. Much like the first, the second show was a success and I thoroughly enjoyed making the crowd scream "They Don't Want It" with me and making the building shake. In fact, my dude Chris' wife was in the bathroom of the bar next door and said we made the mirrors shake. Good business...

I am awaiting footage and pics from the event, but in the meantime thought I'd drop some video from the first We Win event. Here's the set that I rocked the first go-round. If nothing else, skip forward to the 16:16 mark and watch how live the crowd gets when I come with the hit.

Enjoy!!

Debauchery: Victor Shade Album Release + Twista Show

So it's been a while... For that I apologize, but I'm back like I never left (in fact, I never left) with more stories for ya. I know you're thirsty... So as I sit and listen to Trox's "Small Hands Big Slaps" beat tape, I contemplate the last few wild days I've had.

Victor Shade Album Release
I drove up to Seattle on Saturday night (and missed Massive, sadly enough) to rock with Luck One at the Victor Shade album release party. Now I had no idea who Victor Shade was, nor am I particularly impressed with his music after the fact, but I'll tell you who I was impressed with. But first...

So Luck and I arrived to the party location at 11 - an underground loading zone in the heart of downtown Seattle - and the only person there was a setup guy who insisted that they'd get started around midnight and that "it's gonna crack". Doubtful and upset I'd driven to Seattle for a wack show, I went and got some food and an energy drink. By 11:30, people were circling the block and hanging out near the building... By 12, the doors were open and there were a few dozen people dancing to the smooth spins of DJ 100 Proof and picking up drinks from the makeshift bar.

So DJ 100 Proof... Now that's one cool white dude! Even though he'd done a monster job scratching over my track "For the Gifted" for the Cut Em Or Pay Em record, I'd never actually met him and was really impressed with how he spun for our set. Also, he works with an entertainment group called Members Only, and I think we might see some collaborations in the future.

Oh yeah, our set... So Luck wanted to do They Don't Want It and let me tell you IT WENT HARD!!! We rocked about 12:30 and the place was packed. There were at least a hundred people packed in that cargo bay and they were jumping up and down, W's up still from when we did Warrior, yelling THEY DON'T WANT IT!!! Ha ha... Then the homies Jose and Nelson started getting me drunk... Yup, It "cracked"!

But before I took in too much liquor, I peeped a set by another Seattle mainstay I'd never actually met, Fatal Lucciano. Dude's only about 5'2" but he gets busy! His cadence is eerily similar to Biggie's so perhaps I'm partial to his style. Regardless, dude knows how to rock a crowd and we had some good convo afterwards.

Oh, highlight of my night actually came the next morning when I came out of Luck's apartment to find that my car had been towed... Boo!!!!

Twista in Eugene
After taking a day of rest on Sunday, the homie Nick drove me down to Eugene where I opened for Twista with my Salem family, Matty and Payne at The Blueprint This whole day was a crazy one and I'd love to explain why but I fear the FCC. Anyway, I just want to say ON THE RECORD that I'm hella jealous of Twista's security detail. Them dudes took over the club and at one point - while Twista was sound checking - they moved all of the "other artists" into a lobby and guarded all exits.  I felt like I was in a refugee camp.

The team performance went very well. The crowd was huge, and we owned it. After we finished, Mr. D.O.G. (who is really should not rap with his t-shirt tucked in) took the stage and continued yelling "They Don't Want It, heyyy!!!" Effin biter. LOL. On a random thought tip, I found that there's a nice population of Black folks that live in Eugene and are not students. This was very surprising to me, but very interesting...

Twista's set was amazing. As we already know, dude's got an incredible repertoire of hit records and he peeled them off effortlessly. From hard hitters to panty droppers, he wrecked shop for about 40 minutes before his security escorted him to the VIP area - as if he were the president.

Then came the hater move. Twista's impressive security squad - which appeared to be made up of former football players, MMA fighters and WWF stars - locked down the VIP section (which the other performers previously had access to) and only admitted pretty women. Sooo... after Twista rocked, the party was full of underage kids, thirsty men and goofy gals. This one thirsty male groupie followed me around the entire night and kept wanting to shake my hand... Who does that??? So we dipped back to Portland; and I had to drive because my "driver" got drunk. Ha ha!

Still had a blast tho... See?

Flicks: Shutter Island (No Spoilers)

Admittedly, I see a lot of movies. And while I like to critic and over analyze things, I feel I have a talent for taking things at face value. I like funny movies if they are hilarious, zombie movies if they make me jump, and action movies if people get to majorly jackin'. In other words, you'll never hear me hate on Die Hard With A Vengeance because the plot was unrealistic. Got me?

That said, I saw the above trailer for Shutter Island sometime last year (I think before Terminator: Salvation) and was instantly intrigued. That said, I've spent quite some time in eager anticipation for this movie to drop. Problem was, I wasn't sure what to expect... Whatever it was, I was thoroughly satisfied.

Scorsese and DiCaprio (the latter of whom I used to unabashedly hate on) have created another masterpiece here. A real cutting edge thriller where no one - including the viewer - can trust what they see or hear. The messages here center on sense of reality, trust, and the fragility of the human mind. In laymen's terms, this movie's a real mind-fuck (if you're looking for the definition of mind-fuck, see Requiem For A Dream) but also pulls together some brilliant acting, visual imagery, and an impressively appropriate score to create massive suspense at every plot twist.

What I once highly anticipated I now highly recommend. Spend the ten bucks and get freaked out. Shutter Island. One.