A Few Of My Favorite Things

Posted on April 13, 2011 by phella| 4 Comments

I feel like I haven’t given an accurate update of my life on here lately. So here we go. My top 10 favorite things at the moment….

  1. Adele’s album “21″. When I’m in the creative zone that I’m in right now, I tend to find art in just about anything — even two forks clanging together sounds like a potential hit record to me, the blue bucket that I’m looking at on my floor looks like…well, a blue bucket. But Adele’s album would be great regardless of what zone I was in. She’s dope.
  2. “Novacane”. It’s everyone’s favorite song on Frank Ocean’s nostalgia/ultra mixtape but before the world caught on I think I had repeated it 100 times on one particular day. It’s one of those songs that takes you to a place.
  3. Salads. I’ve become a salad connoisseur. I make my own when I’m in my apartment in Jersey and it’s great. Any dark green lettuce, lots of raisins, corn, peas, a bunch of stuff I’m forgetting and Italian dressing.
  4. Jennifer Aniston movies. I just like her for some reason. I’m not a big movie watcher but I find myself gravitating to her joints when I do have time. In almost every role, she has that “thing” that drives me crazy. That ability to cuss you out and make you laugh in the same breath…she’s dope. Second only to my original Jenny, the one from the block.
  5. Running on my broken foot. I know I shouldn’t be doing it. I know it’s putting me in a worse position than I’m already in but running keeps me sane. One or two months without it was cool but after month four I lost my patience. Especially because my apartment in Jersey overlooks a park where people are constantly running. It’s not in me to see other human beings doing things that I want to do and not do them.
  6. 6S. Yes, we work together. Yes, it’s in my best interest for her to keep succeeding but no, this isn’t promotion. I don’t promote endeavors. I promote ideas. And the ideas she has, the ideas behind her music, it’s dopeness.
  7. Not reading. I’ve been wanting to pick up a book for the longest time. I swear everyday that I’ll do it and I never get around to it. Ironically, it’s because I read somewhere that we all fall victim sometimes to too much intake. Taking in all that information without testing it out is as wise as eating for a week straight without exercise.
  8. My mother. Nothing new there. She just has a good soul. No matter what life or other people hand her, she has to actually try to be mean and even then she falls short. In a world full of people who are effortlessly mean, it’s refreshing that the person who raised you is nice by nature.
  9. You. Whoever you are. If you’re reading this, then you’re one of my favorite things right now. I’m inspired by everything and everyone. If it’s come across my sight, then it’s inspired me one way or another. Keep doing what you do. My only advise would be to do it better.
  10. McDonalds oatmeal. You know I never ate oatmeal in my life until like 3 weeks ago. Living this whole single bachelor life, most of it on the road, I’m forced to get creative with what to eat. After hearing a few good reviews, I decided to give McD’s latest creation a try and the rest is history. Now I’m trying to see if they can sponsor me…I guess it’s because I did this dope McDonalds commercial last year that still hasn’t been used and the “refuse to lose” in me wants that back. I’ll keep you posted.

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Posted on April 5, 2011 by phella| Comments Off

The story behind this one goes like this…Friday around Midnight I got a message from J. Rob saying “yo check this out and tell me what you think…it’s been a while.” I listened to the track and my first thought was “is this Adele?”. I’ve been listening to Adele non-stop lately and worshiping the musical ground she walks on so if it was Adele, I’m all in. Next thing I thought when the beat dropped was “I ain’t ate in 3 days, I ain’t prayed in two nights. God please forgive me cuz you know I’m trynna do right”. The beauty of making music in your head is that there’s no paper to ball up or phone to erase, you just edit as you go. 8 bars in I started feeling it was overly dark and overly aggressive so I started from scratch with “I ain’t ate in 3 days, I ain’t slept in 2 nights. Same dark issues I’m just trynna shed a new light”. I felt the first part showed that I’m going through stuff but the second part showed optimism which is how I like everything I do to be — the full circle effect. Once I had that foundation and direction for the track, the rest just came to me over the next two days and then I went in and recorded it. Hope you like.

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Don’t Disturb This Groove….

Posted on March 26, 2011 by phella| 1 Comment

So you know I have no issue with being honest on here. This is my platform to say whatever is on my mind with very little filter for as long as I know what I’m saying to be truth. Since I’m convinced I’m a pro athlete trapped in an artist and businessman’s life, iamphella.com is my equivalent of the media. Twitter and Facebook are the short interviews before and after games, this is a stone cold sit down with Stephen A. Smith, Michael Wilbon, Magic Johnson or whoever you choose. The type that usually happens when something very good happens or when there’s something to clear up. I’m not sweaty from the game…I’m in my Da Fam Inc warm up attire..chillin’. Ready to answer some questions.

Now that you have the scene, let’s begin. I came into this year with an extreme focus that I’ve probably never had in my life. I’ve probably been locked in more before but that was usually on individual tasks such as losing weight, gaining a ton of knowledge, making a certain amount of money, whatever. This year’s focus was very holistic and team oriented. From my family family to my Da Fam family to everyone who knows me and considers themselves part of my life the message was simple: We’re going to win this year and that’s it. No other option. No other choice. If you have an excuse why we won’t, keep it to yourself. If you doubt, go far, far away. If you’re ready to help me, let’s go. I’ll help you in return.

Just naturally, based on the laws of the universe and laws of attraction, once I took my cast off on January 14th and began to at least limp towards these goals, the successes of this new focus began to trickle in. You can almost say we started the season off with a 10 game winning streak. Obstacles were non existent, good art was being created, good business was being conducted, and personal life, what little exists of it, was in pretty decent shape. This hot streak carried on through February and started to kind of dwindle around early March but still going. Lost a game or two but overall still on fire.

Then came the test. “The test” is when you don’t have rusty teams coming into your arena anymore and you’re starting to experience some injuries on your own team. (Just so I don’t lose anybody, injuries in this case refer to the wear and tear of trying to build something; fatigue, stress, setbacks, jealousy, egos, etc.) Opponents now see that you’re about business and they’re giving you their best shot every night. No problem though, right? We’ve been here before. You practice all off season for this.

Life can be hard. Business can be hard if you approach it from the wrong perspective. Creativity, especially the selling of it is tougher now than ever before. Maintaining any kind of relationship (friendship or romantic) has always been hard and now social networking and such things make it that much more difficult. NO FREAKING PROBLEM. All sound like excuses and reasons to not win, and remember, we don’t allow those.

So I do what I know best when I feel things need to be rectified, I play. I play hard. I disregard the playbook, the system and begin taking shots from every angle possible. Teammates are winded and can’t make it up court? no problem. Stay back there, I’ll go one on five. Girl I’m interested in isn’t showing the same interest? no problem. Don’t show interest, I got five others who are interested. Revenue stream slows up? no problem. Got other ways to get it. Someone doesn’t have time or can’t do their job right? no problem. Give me a day or two, I’ll learn it and do it. Those statements are huge problems. They are problems because they come from a negative place and “the groove” only works from a positive place. The groove comes from unity and togetherness, not separation and individuality.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s good on occasion to do certain things to remind yourself and others about the “fierce urgency of now”. It’s cool to express disappointment when you feel yourself or someone else could have done better. But it’s not cool to be so focused on the win and the end result that you take away the enjoyment from yourself and others. You create an environment that becomes counterproductive to the end goal. It’s one of the finest lines to walk for anyone who has ever led. Whether you manage the night shift at Wendy’s or you founded Facebook. Achieving goals while allowing room for error is a skill you must learn or risk losing it all.

I say all this because the groove is still there. It’s going nowhere because I won’t let it. That’s just plain and simple. But the groove has been compromised with several losses in my personal and professional life lately. I take losses hard. Especially when I feel like I’m giving it my all but that’s a bad way of looking at things. Everyone of us is wired differently and consumed by different things so therefore your definition of “all” is probably different from the next person’s.

You shouldn’t take losses lightly but it also shouldn’t change your character. Motivate. Encourage. Lead. Don’t antagonize, stifle, and become an “uptight control freak” as I was called earlier this week.

That said, there is a slight separation between business and personal. Business is business. To me business is sports. If someone claims to be about winning, I need to see a winning effort from that person or my natural instinct is to feel they ain’t really about that life. Times are hard right now. If you aren’t giving your all to your craft or your investment then it’s questionable as to if you really want to succeed.

Personal is a bit different. You can’t be so cutthroat and business-like. I guess that’s where I become my father’s son. He is and was extremely cutthroat and business-like with family and it cost the poor man dearly. I don’t want the same to happen to me so I’m sloooooooooooooooowly learning to check my basketball attitude at the door. Personal can’t be equated to wins vs losses. It’s a matter of growing and progressing. Allowing people to be who they are and still being there for them if ever who they are causes them to stumble.

Enough with the mushy stuff though. It’s 6:30AM. This past week was a week full of losses that I simply won’t allow to ever happen again. Every championship season has it’s tests. That was mine. That was ours. Now let’s get back to winning if no one has any objection. I wanna be able to title my next entry “How Phella Got His Groove Back” or at least “How Phella Finally Got A Haircut”.

Peace & Love…or should I say Love & Basketball. I’m out.

 

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Final Destination

Posted on March 11, 2011 by phella| 2 Comments

Last night was my first time this year sitting down to watch a basketball game from start to finish. It was my LA Lakers against our new rivals, the Miami Heat. We lost. We lost tragically. After the game, Kobe Bryant stayed in Miami’s gym to shoot hundreds of shots and then hit the weight room. It’s become this national “wow” story. Like it’s some kind of new phenomenon to want to perform better and not accept losing. I know he must be a combination of embarrassed and amused by the reaction to his “we lost so now I have to do something so we don’t lose again” session.

Kobe Bryant has a final destination. He wants to be the greatest player that ever lived. He wants to win championships. Whatever party his teammates Ron Artest (who committed two plays down the stretch that cost the Lakers the game) and Lamar Odom (who barely showed up) attended last night have absolutely nothing to offer that will help him reach that final destination. So he doesn’t attend. If he chose to attend that would be perfectly fine but he didn’t. Instead he did what he knows best which is to work on self. He can’t force Ron to make layups or Lamar to be more assertive but he can score 81 points if that’s what it’s going to take next game. And then maybe through working on self everyone else will become motivated and that will lead to another trophy in Southern California in June.

I believe we all need to have a final destination. Several of them. Visions that we want to see manifest so much that anything that doesn’t coincide with that is automatically filtered out. Do you want to be married with children and have four or five homes? Do you want to be the best manager Best Buy has ever seen? Do you want to be President? Just choose. If you say you don’t know what you want then you’re either lying or speaking from fear. It sounds so far-fetched to you that you’ve made it out to be an impossibility. Now your every action is going to take you further and further away from that vision to the point where it’s a distant memory. Then when it’s a distant memory you become frustrated and negative and a detriment to others who still believe in their visions. Don’t do that.

Once you pick these final destinations, you have to, with every fiber of your being, walk towards them. Do whatever it takes within your moral standards. Forget the masses, forget the norm, forget everything you’ve ever heard or told yourself about why it won’t work. I’ve never been a facts or statistics person. It’s one of the reasons why I left school. “Facts” are only facts till someone changes them then they’re no longer facts. Statistics are only statistics until new statistics come and erase them. For every billion facts reasons you can give me why something won’t work, I can give you one why it will and that’s all I need.

My whole thing is intuition and feeling. A deep, deep, appreciation and understanding for how nature works. That’s what guides me. Fate, belief, confidence and then maybe, just maybe, a tiny bit of knowledge. It’s a constant practice. You have to constantly exercise your intuition and feelings so you know that it’s real and show others what’s possible with just a bit of ambition and belief. You can’t let up or else you lose touch and begin to rely on “facts” again; facts that have been instilled in you by fear.

I feel like there’s more to this but I lost my train of thought…back to working towards my final destination and hopefully this contributes to helping you get to yours.

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March First

Posted on February 28, 2011 by phella| 1 Comment

We live in a day and age of rhetoric. Everyone wants to say that next thing that will be quoted or gain cool points. The thing about rhetoric is that it works better when you know what you’re talking about it. When you feel it. When you live it and will die for it. Short of that, it’s just more rhetoric. No matter the amount of exclamation marks or cool font you put behind it. Same with spoken words — shout it, swag it out, chew extra mints if it makes you feel better — those words still mean very little without true sincerity and action behind them.

I know a lot of people who like to be lied to. They live in a made up world and become uncomfortable around truth. You ever speak to someone for hours and not gain a thing? Like after the conversation you don’t feel like you’ve grown in the slightest way? I’m not about that life. Those conversations can be extremely draining so I try to stay far away from them. It’s like staring at great art that’s been destroyed. Very hard to look at because you know it’s not how it should be. You know it could be better and if you’re like me, you hate being cheated. I want to see my mother at her best. Same with my brother, same with my girlfriend, same with those I work with, same with even my living room. I want everything at it’s greatest or at least on it’s way there.

Let’s joke and have fun, but most importantly, let’s grow. Let’s be better. Tomorrow we enter the third month of 2011 and I just encourage whoever reads this to be 100% about what you speak. Talking is wonderful. Communication is necessary 4 the growth process but not as necessary as action is. Even with the best written speech, Dr. King would have been just another dreamer if he didn’t March first.

**** Like how I tied that all in? Last day of Black History Month? Dr. King? March First? never mind…..

Peace & Luv

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“Dancing”…via Da Fam Sports Group

Posted on February 20, 2011 by phella| Comments Off

Not my best but I had one foot at the time. The point is to make the best out of what you have. Being fit and healthy doesn’t have to be a million dollar project if you push yourself hard enough.

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Unthink

Posted on February 7, 2011 by phella| 3 Comments

I believe Unthink was the name of some KFC marketing campaign about a year ago, I’m not sure what that was about but I can assure you this has nothing to do with fried chicken.

I’ve come to the realization lately that a lot of our struggles are due to too much thinking, or even thinking at all. Human instinct, the heart, and natural intuition are far more useful than we believe. The tendency when there’s any kind of chaos in our lives is to think, think, and think some more. Then we think we’re stressed. Then we think we need some kind of fix (drugs, alcohol, etc.). Then we think we’re addicted to those things. Then we think we need rehab. At this point, a problem that probably started out so minute and could have been easily resolved has been multiplied into lifelong suffering.

Another example is when it comes time to make a decision or take action. The more you think, the more likely you are to think of all the times people have failed after making a similar decision or taking such action. You’re bound to think of all the fear that has been instilled in you since birth. You’re bound to think of consequences. You’re bound to think yourself right into indecisiveness and inaction; two things that are deadly to making progress and achieving success.

I’m not saying to completely abandon your brain and never think. I am, however, suggesting that it would make sense to trust one’s intuition, which is pure and unfiltered, over one’s thought, which has been constantly clouded since birth with useless knowledge. If you were dumped in the middle of a jungle and saw a lion approaching, intuition is what will tell you that you should probably run or climb something to avoid being chewed; thought will get you chewed. It takes too long and tends to strip the body of energy that could be used to take real action.

Unthinking is why kids have more fun than adults. It’s also why athletes and musicians in their zone always claim to not be thinking of anything when they deliver their best performances. I know I do my best everything when I’m free of thoughts. For that reason I try my best to stay clear of people and things that cause me to think too much. Instead, I surround myself with people and things that allow and embrace instincts and intuition. If I have a conversation with someone and I have to think of what I’m going to say next, chances are high that future conversations will be few and far between.

Of my 401 blog posts I’ve written on this site, not one was given any thought. I just come up with a title, write, and publish. The ones I thought of ended up getting deleted before I even got a paragraph in because I THOUGHT they were no good.

Stop thinking, start doing. I THINK you’ll like the results.

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400 Degreez

Posted on February 4, 2011 by phella| 1 Comment

I never wanted to be famous, not even popular. Not even remotely known. Just wanted to get messages out, inspire people to be better and possibly profit from it in the process.

Those are the loudest thoughts going through my head as I write this 400th iamphella.com post. It’s been 3 years now and I sincerely thank you all who read what I write…thanks for sticking with me through the droughts, the highs, the lows and the in between. Thanks to those who left and came back. Thanks to those who are new. Thanks!

I’m far from famous and that’s the scary part. If I’m already feeling too known and too on the radar at this point, what’s going to happen as we go further? Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for every fan, friend, and follower I gain; without that, these words would mean nothing. However, I wish there was a way to get my vision out without having to attach my name or face to so many things and so many people. I know the day is coming but it can’t come soon enough. I just want to make change in the world (using artistry, athletics and literary work), put change in the pockets of those I love, buy a few nice things and ride off into the sunset — only to be heard from when I absolutely have something useful to say.

I just feel like the world, in particular the young entertainment world, is so loud. Just noise everywhere. Everyone trying to out- “cool” and out- “grind” one another. So few actually cool. Even fewer actually grinding. Attention seeking is at an all-time high, regardless of the price we have to pay. I can’t blame people. We’re currently more lost than human beings have ever been. On a minutely basis we have all these things being thrown in front of us that distract us from the main goals in life. Even the most focused man or woman will occasionally give into the temptation…this week alone I’ve strayed from my eating habits twice, slept way past my 5AM wake up time all five days of the week, failed to make enough time for my spiritual practice and served my own interests far more than I did anyone else’s.

I guess I never realized just how bad it was because I’ve been in it for so long. But after two relatively noise-free months, to suddenly find myself conference calling while driving across state lines, while updating statuses is a reality check as to how crazy things can be. And like I said, this is just pre-game. The further into this year we get and with the hard work myself and people around me seem like we’re about to do, the calling, driving, and status updating only increases from here on out.

It doesn’t help that I’ve watched my favorite movie, “Carlito’s Way”, a few times. For those that don’t know, I’m convinced that minus a few differences, that character is me; that’s why I jokingly call myself Phellito sometimes. Basically a guy gets out of jail and swears to live a clean life; all he needs is to get his girl, get some money, and disappear to paradise. Unfortunately for him, he gets caught in a web of betrayal, not knowing who is who or what is what. Despite the change in mind frame, he’s still surrounded by people and things that bring the very kind of trouble he’s trying to escape. What can he do? It’s all he knows. That loyalty to “friends” and inability to completely separate from all things bad cost him everything. For me it won’t. I’ll say peace out to all worldly things before I allow myself to succumb to the pressures of them.

All that said, check out my latest videos (www.youtube.com/dafamcam), my two updated websites (www.dafaminc.com) & (www.dafamink.com), add me on Facebook: Tobi ‘Phella’ Alli, Twitter: @Phella. Damn.

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Still I Play The Starring Role In Phellito’s Way

Posted on February 3, 2011 by phella| Comments Off


“I don’t invite this sh*t, it just comes to me. I run, it runs after me. Gotta be somewhere to hide.”

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Back In The Game

Posted on January 30, 2011 by phella| Comments Off

Right on time. The broken foot saga seems to be coming to an end and I’m beyond thankful. I rarely get nervous but I can’t lie, the amount of horror stories I heard about how fifth metatarsals are the worst bone to break in the human body, there were a few moments I was unsure about my recovery.

I’m nowhere near 100% (still have four weeks of rehab to do) but I’m pushing this thing to the max and forcing it to get better — and it’s working. So much that I’m standing easily now, wearing regular shoes, and walking with little discomfort two weeks ahead of schedule. So much that I was able to engage in a snowball fight with my younger brother last night…

I just thank all of ya’ll who helped me push through and kept my spirits high. I definitely let a bunch of people down with this injury but I can’t say it wasn’t a blessing. I learned just how much you can do even when you don’t have something you think you need. Not once did I feel sorry for myself or act like some helpless victim. We thugged it out like we thug out every other card life hands us.

Shout out to my moms for her greatness from the minute I limped into her home that December night on one foot till now as I get ready to say goodbye and get back to New Jersey. Shout out to all my friends and fam who said prayers and sent well wishes. The love was felt and I promise I’ll remember it forever.

Now no more foot talk forever…let’s get back to the game. Put me in coach!

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