So the tour landed me in Darby, PA right outside of Philadelphia. This wasn’t a college campus. It actually was a car show for Philadelphia Custom Motor Sports. Author/Businessman Nasir Aleem was our host. My job:spread word about The Famous Firm and perform a few of my songs, including “Oh Really” with Artic who was also performing.
Plenty of car trouble, an attempted drive by, a 5 year old thug imitating Lil Wayne, a decent performance by myself, a classic performance by Freeway and a tour of some exclusive whips from Nasir and I am back home. Tired, excited, exuberant, and a bunch of other things are what I’m feeling now. Videos of as much as I could capture below:
My first ever post on this blog was about Freeway. It was a video of him and the Roc crew performing “What We Do”. That song is easily in my top ten of all time and Free for the past 6 years has been one of my favorites. He captures the struggle and the plight of the inner city the way few rappers can and still makes it sound dope.
Seeing the kind of love and respect he gets from people in his hood really raised the respect level I had for him. They treat him like the mayor or the savior over there. I don’t really get star struck or in awe of anyone but the Freeway situation meant a lot to me. I remember using his cd Philadelphia Freeway to make it through the days like 4 or 5 years ago and now I’m sharing the same stage and chillin with him. Definitely something I’ll remember forever.
Ab Liva and the whole Re-Up Gang crew also influenced me heavily when I was coming up. The Re-Up Gang mixtapes vol. 2 and 3 are better than most albums I’ve heard in my life. Liva is another cool Philly dude. Mad laid back and humble.
www.iamphella.com is at 1000 views for the month which is small time in the blog world but big for me since this is my first official month. We got there with about 7 days to spare too. Thanks to all the active participants like Karim Diane aka Kay, Sean, Sickamore, Bombchell and everyone else. Thanks to everyone who sends in material for me to post on here as well. As The Famous Firm grows and I grow as a person and an artist the future of this site looks promising.
Today I was checking the stats on Realtalkny which started out as a lil ole blog similar to this one a few years ago. They get over 1,000,000 views every single month. That’s dedication holmes. I probably won’t/shouldn’t ever get that much traffic but lets see how it goes.
My future wife Keyshia Cole modeling her Respect My Vote shirt. Like I always say Keyshia just wait for me a lil longer, I’ve almost got my act together.
Props to DJ Laser for sending me an exclusive preview of his upcoming Best Of Stack Bundles Mixtape.
Stack Bundles was one of those guys that coming up as a hip hop head I always knew about but never could really name any of his songs. I just remember playing “Nobody Loves Me” featuring Joe Budden like there was no tomorrow.
It’s unfortunate that he went so young and before dropping an album but people like DJ Laser, Lupe Fiasco, Joe Budden, and his fans are keeping the name alive.
I also found out that Stack, like most mixtape rappers coming up in the early 2000’s used to rummage through the Sickamore mixtapes and just run through the beats. Here’s two examples courtesy of Lasers mixtape:
So for those that don’t know Lil Bow Wow challenged The Game to a game of Madden. I believe it was for $100,000. Game accepted and said that if he won he should get Ciara. Lil Bow Wow responded and said if he wins he should get Mya.
Then this video, the most interesting of the saga. The genius decides to flash Bow Wows moms number on camera for millions of youtubers to see. Then he shows 50 Cents number, calls it, gets dissed and screams G-UNOT as he apparently hangs up on one of Fifs henchmen. FOR THOSE OF US LIVING IN THE REAL WORLD, YOU CAN SEE AT 1:23 THE SHOOK ONE HANGING UP WITH HIS THUMB BEFORE FIF’S PHONE RINGS.
Moral of the story? I don’t know but Game has the world talking and I hope it does what he wants it to do which is sell albums. The Alicia Keys and Kanye West memo-GREAT MUSIC IS ALL YOU NEED TO SELL RECORDS apparently hasn’t reached Compton yet.
Myself, Articulate and Sakwe of The Famous Firm got up at the Subway on Howard University Campus to discuss business earlier on this evening (tuesday). We talked about everything from road trips, to promotion, to the progression of recorded music, the industry and blah blah. Good meeting until we saw a bunch of college types heading to what seemed to be a party.
We decide to investigate further….A 5 mile walk, an ID swap, and a few dollars later we were walking UNSEARCHED into a club with about an 11/1 girl to guy ratio. Needless to say it was POPPPPPIIIINN!!!!
I swear on everything I’m not a party animal. Im actually the opposite, but recently I’ve been on a tear. And a bash on a Tuesday night was really the icing on the “Phella has lost his mind cake”. Maybe I’m rebelling…any thoughts?
