Monthly Archives: September 2009

Roscoe Umali x Dumbfoundead x Drunken Tiger x Epik High x Rakaa at Soulsonic 2009

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A few weeks back Roscoe Umali had tweeted about performing at a bboy event held in korea. Well full event details have been released and it turns out it’s going to be a joint stage concert event on September 27th also featuring Dumbfoundead, Drunken Tiger, Epik High & Rakaa (of Dilated Peoples). What an incredible line up! If you’re in Korea, this is a can’t miss event!

Seems like Rakaa’s been going in deep with Korean artists, already featuring on both Drunken Tiger & Epik High’s latest albums.

You can check out further details over at Seoulbeats.

WTF: Solid – To Be Unlimited

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After posting up the recent interview of Lee Joon from Solid, I’ve been in such a Solid groove, so I thought it’d be fitting to offer their “Best of” compilation album as this Week’s Thursday Freebie!

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You’ll have to excuse the poor graphic, it’s hard to find decent quality images of their albums since they are so old. This album was released in 1999 and offers a pretty comprehensive look into their catalog for the rough 4/5 years they were active in the industry. For those of you who don’t know, Solid was an R&B group comprised of three Korean Americans from the SoCal area. They were some of the first to successfully debut into the homogonized KPOP industry of the early/mid 90′s, bringing with them a heavy influence of western style. Along with Seo Taiji & Deux, they really helped lay the groundwork for what would ultimately become the Korean Hip-Hop scene that rapidly expanded in the late 90′s.

Some of the song’s havent aged quite so well but a lot of them still hold classic value. Be sure to check it out! Track listing and download link, after the jump.

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Lorenzo & Massiah Are Finalists for the Make-A-Hit III Contest

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Shadowville Productions has been holding a contest called ‘Make-A-Hit’ in recent years to showcase talent and help spread their production brand, allowing musicians to use a Shadowville beat and submit a video entry for a chance at various prizes. This year, Asian American artists Lorenzo & Massiah have made it into the finals with their submission ‘Tuesday’.

It’s a smooth r&b joint so make sure you check it out. They have approved it as a free download for a-Tunes readers!

So if you’re feeling the track, you can support them by heading on over to the contest website and voting for them.

Voting (free Shadowville.com account required)
We now ask you to carefully listen to and view the six finalist videos in an unbiased manner and help decide on the winner (you can use the decision factors mentioned above to help). Please do not bother voting multiple times — the system is designed to track duplicate votes via multiple techniques and will not count multiple votes from the same voter. Cheating will result in a banning of your account or access to the Shadowville website.

You must be logged in to vote or see the vote results. Register now!

The video isnt the greatest but I’m still feeling this track overall, what do you guys think?

(Does Lorenzo remind anyone else of Troy Polamalu? haha)

Bambu’s Crooks & Rooks MV Wins at Chicago Hip Hop Film Festival

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According to a tweet from EyeASage (Bambu’s wifey), The MV for Bambu’s ‘Crooks & Rooks‘ recently won best music video at Chicago’s Hip Hop Film Festival. Big ups & congrats to Bambu, Kid Heroes Productions & Xylophone Films for the win!

Below you’ll find the uncensored director’s cut that isnt shown on mTVu.

a-Tunes News: Launching “Showdown” & Thank Yous

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So this week we saw the launching of another feature on a-Tunes called “Showdown“. Since we are a youtube generation, it’s hard to ignore the power of streaming video on demand and how it connects everyone. However many artists end up covering the same style of songs or even the very same songs themselves when they post up a video, making it very easy to compare interpretations.

Our Showdown series aims to spotlight exactly that and we kicked off the serious a couple days ago with clips of Mike Isberto & Kina Grannis covering ‘Fallin For You’. Feel free to share any of your suggestions for this series as well!

Secondly, I wanted to say thank you to anyone and everyone who could relate to my first vlog and helped spread the message, whether it be through your site or via twitter or simply word of mouth. As I mentioned a few months back in the 1 yr anniversary post, hopefully one day there will be enough support for these musicians that this site wouldn’t need to exist anymore.

But until then, I’ll do my best to make sure a-Tunes is here to help. There are some interesting developments on the way in the near future so stay tuned!

Thanks again,

GT

Blue Scholars x Sabzi Selectah Drop a Free Mixtape

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The Blue Scholars have teamed up with Sabzi Selectah to bring you a new mixtape that’s free to DL. It’s called 69 Rolls & OOF! I haven’t had the chance to check it out yet but its 26 tracks and if it’s anything like their OOF! EP, im sure it’s gonna be pretty nice.

People ask me why I care about making a mix of Hawaiian tunes.  I tell them that it’s because Iʼm from Seattle.

I donʼt think I can apply the word ‘foreign’ to any cultural elements that have influenced me in becoming the person I am today.

Through years of, um, ‘nourishment’ from grinds, to listening to Jawaiian tunes as a teenager, to starting a group with a military kid from Honolulu, to learning the meaning of ‘false crack’ the hard way (ha!)… the spirit of Hawaii has long maintained a notable presence in my life.

And while Iʼm not Hawaiian, nor do I claim to be a local boy, I acknowledge and am thankful for the role that the Islands have played in the development of my cultural identity.

For me, a big part of the OOF! EP project was to experiment with a new way of identifying who we are and where we come from.  It was an exercise in global cultural expression.  Perhaps this is the age we can start believing that ‘where we are from’ is anywhere that has influenced us in becoming who we are.  And perhaps our brothers and sisters are simply those who want to share this belief with us.

Watch out tho.  When you embrace this idea, you start to think that home can be everywhere and your people could be everyone.

New People comin thru, son!

Respect to In4mation for the nifty ‘OOF!’ logo they designed and lent us, respect to Ohana for engineering the delicious shrimp tempura + diced spicy scallop + krab + masago sushi that they’ve dubbed the ‘69 Roll,’ and respect to you for reading this and listening to these tunes.

Mahalo.

saba / sabzi

Lyricks Releases Teaser for Upcoming Song ‘Up’

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He switched up his style a little bit for this one, but I’m digging where this is going. But Lyricks wants to know what you guys think too, so hit him up on his twitter account and tell him wassup!

they want a tune so here we go.
let’s make it something HIGH
so when they’re given lows…

we chose to be other side: giving hope,
and propose if we UNITE then the sun’ll show.

everybody wants spotlight! let it be…
i’m just drinking on this highLIFE, it’s letting me
hit this LETTER D. forget whatever they telling me,
SUCCESS isn’t guaranteed but… it was meant to be.

ch-check out my melody.
you hear the way it flows?
i flew out of here just by saying those…

Goh Nakamura Releases White on Rice MV

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Indie acoustic artist Goh Nakamura released the title track to the indie feature film ‘White on Rice‘. It’s a quirky, tongue in cheek song and the video showcases scenes from the movie. If it ever opens near me on the east coast I’m gonna try to catch it, it looks pretty interesting.

PS. the female lead of the movie, Lynn Chen, is pretty cute HAHA =)

Source: ChannelAPA

Lookin’ Back: SOLID

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Oh man so this brings back memories. In the early/mid 90′s three korean americans became one of the first r&b sensations in Korea as the group SOLID. The were pretty influential in helpling break down some of the attitudes native Koreans had towards “kyopos”, Koreans raised abroad. In a sense, they helped spearhead what I call the reverse crossover to korea. Over a decade later, the members have gone on to pursue other interesteds but recently Lee Joon was interviewed by KBS World Radio. (Source: Bump This) It’s crazy to hear his voice after all these years, I just remember him having random guest rap features on different albums and compilations. Oh yea and there was that ill fated collaboration w/ Uptown: Soultown… which didnt do so well.

There are rumors of a comeback from the group (if Roo’Ra can attempt it, why not?) I’m not so sure it would work out but regardless after the break catch a couple of my favorite SOLID songs courtesy of youtube =) and remember the good ol days.

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