New Hip.hop Album
Regenia Junke
When Nile Speight-Leggett, A24, took the mic on a recent Thursday night, his rap was all about the Benjamins. But while plenty of hip-hop artists sing about money and the rush of spending it on diamonds and cases of Cristal, he extoled the benefits of saving and investing.
Financial literacy, social media addiction, and homelessness were just a few of the subjects that the 30 students in the course Hip-Hop and Social Change chose to highlight for their final project, an album with music and lyrics they wrote themselves and performed at an April 25 record release concert on campus.
Graduation derives from the style of his first and second studio albums, The College Dropout, and Late Registration, and instead decides to go for a more stadium-sounding soundtrack, which he got inspiration for while touring with U2 and the Rolling Stones in 2006. He also got slight inspiration from listening to electronica, HD synthesized music, and EDM.
Another thing different from his previous albums is the length. Late Registration and The College Dropout each have just over 20 songs, while Graduation only has 13 songs. This may seem like a downside, but all these tracks are more high-quality than his other work, so it seems this album is really quality over quantity.
To wrap this up, I would say that while this album is supported by heavy electronic beats, there is still a noticeable instrumental part in some songs in this album. The different sounds in each song are unique from each other, and no two songs sound alike.
It charts the locations of 26 rap albums that were released in 1994, placing them in quadrants based on their individual qualities, specifically as each relates to iconography, cult status, spatial order, and temporality.
Usually at a sidewalk corner where people are likely to wait for the pedestrian crossing "walk" signal, a gang of two, three, four people are present. One of them hands a CD in a plastic pocket, supposedly a pre-release brand new rap album of the guy. The way he wants you to take the CD is rather aggressive. Another man of the gang does the same thing, even asking for your name and writing it on the plastic pocket. They even give you extra CDs, makes no sense!
The trouble comes when they all start asking for money, talking about a donation. It begins by $1, $5... and it seems very difficult to say no as the guys do not want to take the CDs back. As they look physically in good shape and likely to have regular workouts at the gym, they appear impressive, and the idea of getting into an argument is just out of the question.
In the process of taking the money out of the wallet to pay the forced donation, when I was caught in that scheme, I accidentally let them see a $20 bill in my wallet. They wanted it right away and gave me minimal change out of it "as it is for their friends too".
Note for duplicates: This situation, even if similar to the string scam used in other cities, is unique due to the approach of someone looking friendly and the realistic expectation to discover new music. And such people are rather difficult to "calculate" on first sight. Furthermore, I was not aware of similar schemes with different objects used before living the scam for real.
Avoid making eye contact with them. Nothing will make them come up to you more aggressively than eye contact. You've seen them, they saw you see them, and they know it's a lot harder for you to ignore them now.
Blow right past them. If you are not stuck on that corner just walk right past them without regarding them at all. Do not let them stop you. If one of them tries to block your way walk around them.
Wear headphones, even if you don't intend to listen to anything (and you shouldn't be.) It's much easier to ignore someone when you can pretend that you can't hear them. People are also much less likely to approach you if you are wearing headphones.
The City accepts reports of illegal peddlers or vendors operating without a license in a restricted area. In addition, you can report peddlers or vendors who are currently blocking crosswalks, traffic or ATMs, or otherwise causing a hazard or nuisance.
In case you have not seen it, there is a New York Times article on the practice in which the reporter describes getting his hands on a CD by purchasing it from a tourist (after a scammer refused to sell him one). The CD was blank, so in addition to the other crimes being committed there may also be fraud.
Simply act confident, say "nah bruh i'm good" and just keep walking or ignore them. They are used to it, they aren't going to waste their time harassing someone they don't think is a mark, and they aren't going to risk getting arrested for assaulting some dude who did what a hundred people have already done to them that day: ignore them.
This is difficult for a polite person to do, especially if your cultural background has a lot of greeting-related etiquette. It took me years, as an American who is accustomed to chatting with total strangers in line at a Starbucks. But if you so much as look up at them, they see it as an opening.
Do not say hello. Do not reply to good evening. Do not stop. Do not say thank you if they compliment your clothes. Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not turn when they mention their sick daughter. Put your hands in your pockets; all the better so that they cannot hand anything to you, and to foil any would-be pickpockets associated with them or not. If they put something in your hand, put it back on the ground. If they grab your arm, pull away. If they get right in your face so that you cannot ignore them, give a firm no, I am not interested, repeated as necessary.
There is no need to be loud or violent or belligerent, just confident. If I see this kind of activity on a street and cannot avoid it, I will stop and put in my headphones (without even playing music) to make them easier to ignore. Once they figure out that they are wasting their time with you, they will move on to someone else.
Say "No", immediately LOSE EYE CONTACT and walk away.Do NOT be courteous. Do NOT say "No thankyou."Do NOT give any reason or excuse.Do NOT engage in ANY form of conversation.Just WALK AWAY without looking back.
Carson recorded the album in a small studio he put together in his apartment near campus, using Adobe recording software made available to all Clemson students. He enlisted two childhood friends from Illinois, Blake E. Wallace and Marcus Fitzgerald, to help produce it.
The time he was chased by a crocodile down a river in Africa. The time he watched his friend drown and come back to life while running waterfalls in Mexico. The time he helped his friend Rafa Ortiz prep and train to kayak over Niagara Falls.
Rush: Lessons in Folk Hop combines elements of, both hip hop, Americana, folk music, kind of combines all those elements together. I'd say like at its core, it's a rap album, but all the hooks, the choruses I've written With other musicians in mind, typically folk artists to kind of sing those hooks.
And so I think it's different. I think it's different than a lot of, the material that's out there. It's kinda of a reflection of kind of my life over the past kind of four or five years, which is about how long it took me to put it together.
I think it's kind of a testament to the kind of musician I am. I have to rely on working with a lot of different musicians to kind of bring my vision to life. And honestly, like this album is also kind of reflective to what I do as a filmmaker as well. For many years, I've been working on the original soundtracks to my films as well, where I've got to find, you know, some type of kind of music that's like a little bit more like world driven for to match Nepal. And then I kind of want something more orchestral to match this epic descent in California. And it's like, this kind of just like hodgepodge of throwing all these genres together to kind of make it work.
As I bopped my head along with some mandolin and banjo backed by sick hip hop beats, I wanted to know more about how this very personal, and very eclectic, album came together after decades of literally living on the edge.
Paddy: Real life actual death, in fact, is something Rush has only recently started thinking about. Which is pretty wild for a dude who, In his twenties, was constantly hucking his tenderloin off the craziest big water drops he could find.
Paddy: I recently turned 40 myself. And though I am nowhere even remotely close to being a pro athlete like Rush, I can confirm that the four decade mark leads to a ton of reflection on your own mortality and forces you to come to grips with what your body and mind can and cannot do.
Paddy: Changing his relationship with kayaking ain't exactly easy. Rush grew up in a small town next to the Salmon RIver in Northern California. His parents owned and operated a kayak school there. He's been in whitewater for so much of his life he doesn't even remember learning to paddle. It was just kind of always there.
Rush: It honestly kind of was like, I wanted to be, an actor and I wanted to make movies like be before kayaking for sure. And I was like, I'm not really into this kayaking thing, my first memory I have where I realized that this was something I wanted to do with my life was paddling the Grand Canyon with my dad when I was like 14 years old, I think.
And that's when I kind of got it. You know, it was, it was, you know, Like you're out there, you're spending the night, there's camaraderie with all these people, you're kind of working together as a team. On one of those nights just laying under the stars, you know, camped above one of the rapids that I was like, yeah, this is, this is what I want to do with my life. I want to do this as long as possible.
Paddy: Rush has been so obsessed with running rivers for so much of his life it's a shock the guy hasn't grown flippers and gills. He's competed at Freestyle World Championships and Grand Prixs, dropped waterfalls taller than most buildings, and pulled off first descents in remote areas of the world.
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