Chicken Comes To Harlem

So I was coming from the radio station on wed and noticed a crowd standing on 135th Street. Upon further inspection I saw that the line was actually people standing on line at Popeye's Chicken waiting to purchase the special "8 piece for $4.99" offer. I suspect in a few months they will be selling watermelon soda to go with the special.

It was one of those moments as a black person where you are slightly embarrassed yet amused by the whole situation.

My people hold on...

I know, I know...

I know, I suck. I was supposed to be blogging more consistently. I say this all the time but I dont follow thru. Well now I will get on it. I have a birthday coming in a few weeks and I always use that as a reason to make changes so in addition to eliminating salt from my diet, I have a few other changes I plan on making. Keeping the blog current is one of them.

In that I will be adding stuff from my radio show up here. Now I never really was the type for putting or for that matter even taking photos with famous people and that Is for a number of reasons.

1. Seems like some real cornball shit to do - I saw this one guy who had a buncha pics with him and famous rappers and actors and shit. Upon doing the research i found out he was some lowlife scumbag drug dealer who used that as his way of trying to make himself signifigant and impress girls. It just seems like posers are the type to do that shit. Cats trying to front and impress people.

2. Is it really that serious? - I mean If you are Muhhammad Ali, Magic Johnson or Bobby Seale then yeah, I wanna take a pic with you but not for the world to see. Even if you are not famous I'm down to take a pic with you but I dont need the whole world to see it. Thats not the kinda attention I need. I prefer to keep my memories to myself being that to a degree I share so much of my life in a public manner. It seems like bragging to put pics on blast like that and it kinda cheapens the moment.

3. Who is really that famous anyway - I mean we are all people. Taking a photo with someone famous doesn't mean anything. At the end of the day we are all people. I've been around "famous" people my whole life and and never felt the need to tell everyone that. My being as a person is not validated by me taking a photo with someone famous or hang around them. That's their life not mine. And to quote my man Rich Kid, i'm on some "Fuck (place famous person's name here) I gets my money just like he do!" type perspective. LOL

I dont knock people who do it. If thats your thing then do you. Its just not mine. Anyway, I just went into that to explain that I will be doing a post of photos of people that come thru the radio station. Just know that its always business, never personal.

Another Great Day In Harlem

This is my account of one of the most historic days in recent history. Now first off you have to know that I personally I had a lot of back and forth debate within myself about whether I would vote in this years election. Personally I feel that the whole political process is antiquated and needs to go. After the Gore / Bush election I had lost faith in the democratic process. I stopped voting altogether so I hadn't planned on things being much different this year.

Now the other side of the coin was that this year we had a black man who was running for office. Not only was we black, this brother was qualified and in my opinion the best possible candidate. This would be a momentous occasion and how could I not do my part to help this brother pave the way for future generations. I had decided to let events fall into place and wait for a sign that would allow me to make a decision. I took a few photos to show some of the events as they went down and wanted to share a few with you.


This is the Barack Obama and Rakim shirt that a sneaker store had in the window on 125th street. I thought this was kinda stupid because WTF does Barack Obama have to do with Eric B and Rakim? Just another example of how people were pimping Barack and this whole election to make a quick buck. Other examples of this are.













The Barack Obama button lady selling buttons for $2 dollars a pop.












The Rhinestone Barack Obama Shirt which I don't know how much this brother paid for it but he is obviously happy to be wearing it
















So aside from all if the other things being sold on 125th street, Charlie Rangel had made arrangements to have a Jumbotron set up in front of the state office building.
Everyone came there to watch the election results come in on CNN. A few Celebrities showed up as well. I saw Jeremy Piven of Entourage there at some point. I heard fellow Harlemite Dougie Fresh was there, but it was really all about Obama. As you can see there were lots of




News Trucks














People













Even Obama himself showed up to watch the events on the Jumbotron. And for 5 dollars you could even take a picture with him. (I swear if the resurrection happened tomorrow and my people knew about it in advance, they would have T-shirts with Jesus' picture on it talking about “The Comeback 08”)






Anyway, I had decided a way that I could still vote without being a hypocrite and participating in the political process myself. I wanted my daughters to be able to understand the significance of this moment so I decided to take them into the voting booth with me. This way they would be the ones pulling the lever and actually voting in my name (I know its a stretch but It works for me) I took this picture so that they would be able to show their kids one day that they voted in this election.










This is a picture I took maybe 30 minutes later of the aftermath of a buncha Bloods jumping on someone in front of the building around the corner from my house. No matter what is happening you can still expect some cats to act totally uncivilized in the face of progress.







The only thing left to do now was to sit back and wait for the election results to come in. When they did, Harlem exploded. There were White, black Hispanic, Asian east Indian, all races running and shouting in the streets, hi-fiving and hugging each other. It was a celebration even bigger than New Years. I have never seen anything like it and I gotta say it was beautiful.







We went into PJ's which is a bar around the corner from my house to watch Barack Obama's acceptance speech. This made the day even more historic since PJ's is a place that I would never be caught dead in. It was great to see my people happy and celebrating but it was even better to know that we had a black president who won this election with class and handled himself with dignity.




I even got to get some video footage. I shot this footage at 1am on 133rd Street and 7th avenue in Harlem in front of PJ's Lounge on the night that Barack Obama was elected our nations 44th President. I wanted to show that the excitement was still in the air. Please forgive me for sounding so ghetto in the clip but I was soooo tired.



I hope that my people will take note and be the change that they want to see the same way brother Barack did.

Another summer blog gone by..

So this is the opening paragraph of the blog where I say how much I am sorry about not posting more often and how its just been so busy lately and how I promise to step up my blogging game and add entries more frequently and yadda yadda yadda and so on. So if we can all agree that we know that's what happens here then lets agree to just move on and act we all know that I'm gonna try to do a better job if it. Ok?

Ah, the summer that was this past summer. It was a busy time for me as I did my usual of racking up the frequent flyer miles. What were some memorable things that happened this summer? Well we shot more videos to support our album, tha radio show moved full steam ahead and the "From Dusk Til Dawn" CD kept moving units. We shot out video for our next single, "The Buckdown" and it was cool. We were doing one take and some random chick decides to jump her ass in front of the camera like she's in the group or something but other than that everything was fine. Big shouts to everyone who came through and supported. It was much appreciated.

The state of Hip Hop pretty much remained stagnant as usual with only a few decent offerings coming out this summer. I cant say that I got caught up in all tha "Little Wayne" hysteria but I can say that independent Hip Hop offered some good music that mainstream radio slept on as usual. Not that thass anything new though, radio has been sleeping for years. I am glad to see my cats in the underground stepping up to the plate. I have come to the conclusion that I am more interested in playing unsigned and independent artists than mainstream major label artists because they just seem to have a lot more substance lately. If fact, if you are an independent Hip Hop artist and would like to get your music to me for consideration for airplay on our radioshow, send me an e-mail or mp3 of your music to the address listed below.

Priest@priestforever.net Subject: Radio show submission

Please make sure that your music is radio edited. I don't have time to edit it myself so please make sure it is clean.

Tha superhero movies were in full effect this summer as well. I enjoyed "Iron Man" and was surprised at how good "The Hulk" was. Batman was a classic but Hancock was some old bullshit. Tropic Thunder was alright. I think that Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise were the funniest things in the movie but I am looking forward to "Burn After Reading". The Cohen Brothers make some funny movies. Rent "Raising Arizona" or "The Big Lebowski" if you don't believe me. I know its "No Country For Old Men" that everyone is buzzing about but I haven't seen that one yet so in my mind they are still primarily comedy directors.

I'm so glad that the football season is in full effect now. I have had these Giants fans giving me the business all summer and now it is time for my Cowboys to redeem themselves. The sad truth of the matter is that with Brady gone for the season, the NY Jets with Brett Farve now have a better chance of making the playoffs than the NY Giants do. Also big ups to Serena Williams for winning her 3rd US Open.

As for this upcoming election, all I'm gonna say about that is I'm voting, "Eric B. for President" (Clap ya hands and do what he's doing...) I know that if Obama does get elected to office, black people are gonna act like it is a national holiday. I can't wait to see it unfold, cats soming in to work late talking about "Man, its national Obama Day, I aint even supposed to be at work today!" I thought about getting some t-shirts made up if he did win that would say "Tha Black Man Wins Again!" the problem is I cant ever really figure out when we won the first time.

Other than that I'm gonna, well you know what I'm gonna say here, just keep checking back man...

March Madness

Wow, what a month

Aside from seeing another birthday come and go, I have had the pleasure of seeing the independent release of my latest project. I feel like I could just pass out from being so tired but the grind continues. There were a lot of good things that happened this March and that makes me feel very optimistic about the future. We got some solid support from people and a lot of positive feedback about the material. There is still much work to be done though.

Sadly I will have to remix and re-master the album but it is enough for heads to get the idea and that is a good thing. What’s important is that we were able to accomplish something that the system tries to tell you cant be done. There is so much good independent music out there that never gets heard but what artists have to do is learn how to do for self. Self reliance, cooperative economics, even the bartering system all comes into play when you are trying to do things yourself. Maybe you dont have the money to pay someone but what can you do for them in return? I’m not suggesting anything crazy, I’m just pointing out that you can help people and they will help you in return. These are the actions that form solid friendships that last through time.

I dont have enough time to list everyone but I do wanna thank the Equilibrium Radio Team and all of our supporters and sponsors who helped out this past month. Whether you came to one of the shows, gave items for the gift bags or helped spread the word about the material your actions were appreciated. Thanks to all of the promoters and venues that held us down as well. We look forward to coming back and playing these places again so be on the lookout. Remember that the summer is coming and we intend to bring nothing but heat!

I’m keeping it brief cause I’m about to get some sleep but I will be posting video of the shows soon for all to see.

Thanks for your support

Priest Forever

One Down Two Ta Go...

It was a great show. Shouts out to everyone who came thru and supported Tha Gecko Brothas last night at Amy G Funk / The Underscore. Special shouts out go to "Chilly G" (Brrrrrrr) for coming up with the new catchphrase of tha night.

Dont forget to come out to support the other dates on March 25th (Album Release Party) and the Emcee Challenge @ E.O.W. on March 30th

Peace
Priest Forever

Valentine's Day Joints

So we had to put these promotional mix cds together for our radio show but I wanted to make them available to good music lovers everywhere. The CDs are for Valentines day. One is all Hip Hop songs about love and relationships. The other CD is a mix of soul classics that you can put on for those romantic moments.

Please download them, burn them to cd, pass them around, whatever you want to do just get the music out. Also, fwd this e-mail out to anyone else who you think would enjoy the music. They are both I-pod ready and I have added the links and play lists below.

Hit me up with your feedback, questions, and music requests.

Hope you enjoy tha music.

P


Crys Breezy presents tha Equilibrium Radioshow Valentines Day Mixtape

01 Equilibrium Intro Crys Breezy
02 Brown Sugar Mos Def
03 Hot Thing Talib Kweli
04 I Want You Common
05 Selfish Slum Village / Kanye West
06 Shout Outs Crys Breezy
07 Teenage Love Affair Alicia Keys
08 Number One John Legend
09 You Should Be Here Dangelo - Raphael Siddiq
10 You Got Me Singing S.B.
11 Shout Outs Crys Breezy
12 Bonita Applebum A Tribe Called Quest
13 Come Closer Remix Common / Erykah Badu / Pharell / Q-Tip
14 Shout Outs Crys Breezy
15 Climax Slum Village
16 Find My Way A Tribe Called Quest
17 Shout Outs Crys Breezy
18 Tha Letta Tha Gecko Brothas
19 All Of Me 50 Cent
20 You And I J Dilla / Dangelo / Common
21 Step My Game Up Little Brother
22 I Need Love LL Cool J
23 Love You Betta LL Cool J
24 I'd Rather Be With You N.W.A. / Bootsy Collins
25 Shout Outs Crys Breezy
26 You Are Tha One Mos Def
27 If I Dont Love You This Way The Jacksons
28 Playing Your Game Buffalo Soldiers / Barry White
29 Shout Outs Crys Breezy
30 Cross My Mind Jill Scott
31 Brown Skin India Arie
32 Feel Like Making Love Dangelo
33 You And I Emily King
34 Shout Outs Crys Breezy
35 Coming To Break You Off Tha Roots

Download: http://www.zshare.net/download/7196775650e0ff/



Priest Presents Soul Standards Volume 1 Tha Love Ballads

01 Greatest Inspiration - Teddy Pendergrass
02 If Only You Knew - Patti Labelle
03 Send For Me - Atlantic Starr
04 Sparkle - Cameo
05 Love Train - Confunkshun
06 How Bout Us - The Manhattans
07 Can't Hide Love - Earth Wind and Fire
08 Love Ballad - L.T.D.
09 Say Yeah - The Commodores
10 Prince - Do Me Baby
11 Very Special - Debra Laws
12 Attitudes - The Bar Kays
13 Love Of My Own - Average White Band
14 No Hiding Place - The Gap Band
15 I Want To Be Free - The Ohio Players
16 Morris Day And The Time - Gigaloes Get Lonely Too
17 Marvin Gaye - You Sure Love To Ball
18 I Try - Phyllis Hyman
19 Cause I Love You - Lenny Williams

Download: http://www.zshare.net/download/7220848886a501/