Tomorrow Is Another Day

I always come back to this blog and I write on how I am going to blog more often yet somehow, I never do it. While I admit to be guilty of procrastination at times, this is not the reason I suspect that this continues to happen. Aside from the hectic schedule that I have, I think that maybe if I put these thoughts and ideas into print and document them then that somehow commits me to whatever I have written. Maybe its a fear of being held to something such as me writing I'm going to get to the gym more yet not having the time. Or maybe I have too damn much on my plate. I don't really have the answers but I am going to try an exercise in discipline.

Once a week from this point forward I am going to update this blog with whatever I feel I want to at the time. Being that I am focused on this next Gecko album most of it will center around that. I am going to try and be consistent more so than worry about whatever the content of what I add is so we will see how it turns out. And if not, then hey. Tomorrow is another day right? LOL

Anyway, as for what's going on with me right now, Tha Gecko Brothas are getting ready to do the Emcee To Emcee" which is a showcase put together by H2C2 and Ralph McDaniels of Video Music Box fame. I hope you can make it through.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow...

2 Months after Xmas and 3 weeks before my birthday and we are in the midst of a snowstorm like none we've seen in a minute. I think its a metaphor however, as things fall into place around me.

I had the pleasure of stopping 3 Hispanic kids from jumping a younger brother today. It was some real BS and I wouldn't have gotten involved except for three reasons. One, the kid was going for his and was outnumbered. Two these kids were Hispanic and this was a young black kid. It has nothing to do with being a racist but the reality is that in on the block I grew up on, as a black man you don't let a bunch of Hispanic kids jump one of your own. Cats would look at me suspect for letting it go down like that. Lastly, years ago that kid was me. I spent a good amount of my time in middle school fighting against the local Latino gangs and they were notorious for trying to jump somebody. So it wasn't going down like that. If they were gonna shoot the one, fine but it wasn't gonna be a 3 on one situation.

So as I found myself telling them to chill one kid steps in front of me acting like he has something to say about it. As I told him I was a grown-assed man and would slap fire out of him and that he should be easy about it, other people who were there got involved too. This broke up the situation and the kids walked off. The kid they tried to jump got a few bruises but not what it would've been had no one been there to stop it.

So what does this have to do with falling snow you ask?

Anyone who knows me knows that I have progressed past a lot of things in my life. Violence being one of them. However like anyone who has moved on life, it is easy to fall back into old patterns and habits. This applies to everything from workplace behavior to how you deal with your family. We are all guilty of falling off the wagon every now and then. Normally I beat myself up for stepping backwards into old ways. It is not "grown man behavior" to engage in street fighting and I know this. I would be lying though if I said it didn't feel good though to clench my fist in preparation to try and knock someone's head off their shoulders. What felt even better is not having had to. Maybe I saved a kid from getting severely hurt tonight or maybe for my own selfish reasons I involved myself in a situation that had nothing to do with me hoping to let off a little steam. Who knows and who cares.

Deeper than that though is the understanding that sometimes we all will regress and It will be okay. Trying to walk around acting like you've got wings sprouting out of your back all the time is unrealistic. I put a lot of effort into trying to do right by everyone around me. Tha old ways that we fall back into may be learned patterns that protected us at times in our lives so they can't be all bad. And when you encounter situations that make you wanna revert into being the person you used to be do you always have to take the high road? Maybe, but I am human and far from perfect so I will have my moments. Not being harsh on myself after is the hard part. Tonight though, I'm okay with it.

I think like everything in life it is about balance. I do a good job balancing the person I have to be versus the person I want to be but sometimes... Sometimes you just gotta do you and let the shit fall where it may. I got a lotta shit falling around me right now but let it snow. Eventually snow melts and the bullshit drifts away. Just try not to slip and bust your ass in the process and you'll be alright.

Damn, It's 2010 already?

I mean, where did the time go? It was just 2008. Now its the holiday season and we gotta go through this whole Xmas exercise and Thanksgiving is just the beginning. To be honest, this is probably one of the most enjoyable Thanksgivings I have had. Some of the cats from my radioshow went to serve Thanksgiving dinner at a local church around my way. It was really cool and I will be doing it again next year.

So I only blogged twice this year??? Didn't realize that. I will have to do better next year. Its not like a lotta stuff hasnt happened this year to talk about. I do realize that I have been slipping on posting about it tho.

From now on I think I'm gonna post my radioshows up here on this blog too. It will give me a reason to post more content. I am also gonna figure out this podcasting thing and see how it works too. If you read this blog then let me know what you would like to see up here and I will try and add some stuff up here for ya.

In the meantime, rock with this post and get ready for tha new year.

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...