This is why I love DC to BC. Because people go above and beyond to get stuff that they really want. Like Ebony, for example. She submitted an entry for the Virgin Mobile FreeFest ticket contest on the last possible day to enter, and stole the show. What a G. Don’t believe me? Watch below (and watch the entire thing because the end is the funniest.)

CONGRATS! Thanks to those who entered as well. I appreciate you. Go harder next time, though.

This is my trunk rattler for 2010. It’s probably the most played in August in my iTunes besides Spitta and Snoop’s “Seat Change”. I don’t really care how you feel about him, because this joint thumps. As to whether or not he’s sane (I had to question his sanity after reading that XXL interview, but at this point in the game, that’s irrelevant. I’m about results, baby! And Based God is giving me them.

I downloaded the Blue Flame mixtape, too. He has a lot of based music (yeah, I just said that), but he also has some regular ass rap that you wouldn’t think he could come up with. The samples are all really abstract and weird, but I jammed it when I was ridin’ ’round shinin’ in Baltimore the other day, and I was surprised at how listenable and not ridiculous a lot of the music was. Don’t say I co-signed his rapping, but I certainly will verify that he is indeed BASED! Let’s go.

DOWNLOAD: Lil B – Wonton Soup [It's about a minute or so longer than the video version. Another verse, baby.]

BONUS!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

DOWNLOAD: Lil B – Paris Hilton [Second verse, he has a line that goes, "I'm Paris Hilton / Home at the Hilton / I'm out driving drunk, I look like Paris Hilton. Watch Paris Hilton, Chain Paris hilton. Ring Paris Hilton. I think I'm Paris Hilton." If that ain't BASED, I don't know what is!]

Having immigrant parents that work for the World Bank has its perks. Who am I kidding…it is the power move of all power moves. I was able to go to the best  high school in the nation for virtually nothing (yep. They paid for the majority of Sidwell. Why? I don’t know. But now I know why all the minority kids had parents that worked there too. Makes sense, right?), and I get more free flights (via my parent’s frequent flyer miles) than Cab Calloway at the height of his success! Passport has been on pivot before I could walk.

There’s not much to this video, actually. Just a random excerpt from my life that I stumbled upon and figured I’d throw up. It’s me, my mom, Eki, and Kalaya hanging out in this nice little square we came across while roaming the streets of Paris on a quick, 5-day power move to the world’s most romantic city. Circa ’09. Check my French, too. I’m nice. Eki sucks with the camera, by the way. I showed somebody the video and they got motion sickness just from watching.

Take this while you’re at it, too:

DOWNLOAD: Lupe Fiasco – Paris, Tokyo (Remix) (feat. Pharrell, Q-Tip & Sarah Green)

Pharrell’s verse steals the show. Painting a vivid picture.

I knew there was a reason I didn’t rock with the midwest all the way.

This is literally the most ridiculous thing you will see all day. Maybe all week. In all honesty, it should be up there with the most ridiculous things you’ve encountered via the internet. It’s about 3% joke, and 97% real deal Holyfield. Just watch.

Oh boy. Congrats, Kyle Barton? I don’t know if that’s good that you won. The craziest thing is, he’s touring the nation, trying to win all the state fairs that have pig calling championships. All the states he names in this video. have now been crossed off the lists of states I need to visit. “Well, you know, I’m a city boy, so…” WHAT!? City boy!? I’m staying on the east coast. Shout out to Nick Simmons for the find.

I knew Inglewood’s Shawn Chrystopher had some star power the first time I saw him. I didn’t even know it was him, either.

Me, Dre, and Phil Ade were driving around Austin, TX out at South by Southwest (SXSW) and from afar I saw a skinny black guy with glasses walking on the side of the road, far from everything in sight. He was leading a flock of goons, goblins, gorillas, and gargoyles around the outskirts of Austin, probably looking for food or something. Nobody really had bread to rent a car out there but Dre, so everybody was pretty much on foot. He was a good 10 feet in front of his team, handling business on the phone. Any move he made, they made. Tacit knowledge at its finest (editor’s note: my vocabulary is fire on the low. If you didn’t catch that, here’s a definition breakdown.) I thought to myself, “Damn. I wanna be like that.” We continued cruising.

Fast forward to one of the shows. I was backstage with StereoFaith, Tabi, Wiz, and Spitta, in fly-on-the-wall mode. Then I saw the  same skinny black guy with glasses walk approaching with the same squad, again following behind. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite tell until he was right in front of me that it was indeed Shawn. I recognized his face after Jabari hipped me to his A City With No Seasons mixtape (editor’s note: I actually used his joint “Heartbreaker” for my Singles Awareness Day 2 Valentines Day compilation, although I don’t think he knows that) I said what’s up, and after some small talk and him saying he was familiar with the site, we exchanged info. Cool dude.

That story was just to put all this music $#!t in context. There’s a reason I saw him for those few seconds we were driving around, and there’s a reason he was 10 feet ahead of his team. I could talk about what he sounds like, but everybody else does that all the time. He’s from LA, and he can flow. He occasionally says “f*ck” a lot on tracks, even though you wouldn’t expect it at first glance. Lol. That’s pretty much what I got for you. You already know everything I put up here is trill. So jam out. I think the second joint, “Catch Me If You Can”, is more of a banger to me, but they both crank. Both tracks are produced by Cameron Wallace.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

DOWNLOAD: Shawn Chrystopher – Sold Out Shows (feat. Cameron Wallace)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

DOWNLOAD: Shawn Chrystopher – Catch Me If you Can

Do your internet research if you like what you hear and grab his mixtapes. I gotta go eat, so I can’t do that for you at the moment.

Yeaaah. More concerts, baby. This time, it’s that Virgin Mobile Free Fest. You know, the ridiculously anticipated all-day affair featuring M.I.A., LCD Soundsystem, T.I., Luda, Thievery Corporation (DC, what’s up!), Chromeo, Neon Indian, Matt & Kim and MORE!? Welp, I have good news, and I have bad news.

Let’s start with the bad. As you might know, free tickets for Virgin Mobile FreeFest have “free’d out”. Shucks.

I’ve been looking for this clip for 16 years. Maybe longer. Shout out to my girl Taylor for bringing this to the forefront of my mind again after more than a decade. I’m officially old now – 24 isn’t a joke. Whatever. I always felt just like this soulful owl growing up in my household. Watch this, it’ll bring all the emotions out. You’ll smile in the end.

Keep your head up, people. You can prove those doubters wrong in the end. Don’t conform, and compromise only if need be.

DC to BC started in ’07 as a twice-weekly radio show with my friend Quinn Coleman and I (we went to school in DC together at that school Obamas kids go to now and ended up at Boston College, thus the name; I hope you knew that.) where we played stuff that the big stations didn’t. We were fortunate enough to land KiD CuDi’s first radio interview ever back in ‘07, and since then, we never really looked back. As DC to BC made some respectable leaps and bounds as it evolved from a low-budget, rinky-dink radio show to a makeshift blog run by me and my Macbook. Most recently, Roc Nation signee J. Cole shouted us out in Complex and XXL put us down as one of the 100 Best Hip-Hop Web Sites in their December / January issue. in November, and We’re blessed to have that love from the big guys. But ever since graduating from BC, I‘ve wanted to move on to a new endeavor. That’s why I decided to start The Great Progression.

The Great Progression (also known as The Gee Pee) is a multifaceted movement of sorts started by myself and some friends. I wanted to take what I was doing with DC to BC and enhance it by including more people and more perspectives, but still stay true to the same style of blogging/writing/malarkey that had people coming back for whatever reason. I also wanted to create a brand that is as visible in the streets (events, functions and gatherings) as it is online. It’s purely for entertainment’s sake, but we’re serious about keeping you engaged and reading regularly.

The Gee Pee is a creative collective comprised of people with various interests and from all walks of life. It’s a place to articulate and provoke thoughts, indulge in tomfoolery, expand your musical palette, and fully embrace the elements of various subcultures. It’s more than just a blog – It’s something tangible. We’re real people living real lives, passionate about our interests and motivated by everything around us. Every good English teacher I ever had told me to show and not tell. So don’t trust me. Just check it out, and hopefully it lives up to your expectations.

I can’t give you a concrete launch date at the moment, because it’s bigger than me. I can, however, say that the next thing you should look out for (besides updates on @TheGeePee. Matter fact…follow that joint while you’re here please.) is everything Rock Creek Social Club related.. That’s my latest project. At first glance, you’d think it’s some promotion stuff, but really, it’s deeper than that for me. It’s more like an opportunity to see if I can fine-tune this brand that my friends and I created. We had a pretty successful debut party this past Tuesday, and will continue to do so every other Tuesday. If you want more info, @RockCreekSocial is the squad to hit up.

Right around when I started going to college, I heard of the infamous sneaker collector / fashionisto (as far as this Hypebeast culture is concerned) Dizzy, or Josh as I know him. I remember his MySpace celebrity status was at 100 trillion; flicks of shoeboxes stacked to the ceiling and rare, impossible-to-find gear that people who didn’t know much about streetwear but were always somewhat intrigued by the lifestyle would drool over (like me, I guess). I don’t know much about those shoe collector forums, but I feel like he was probably some kind of legend in those back when they thrived.

The most important thing I learned about Dizzy just from e-stalking / watching from afar was his constant hustling. He was always flipping the gear he got – he’d buy some fly ass kicks or some raw denim jeans and take some pictures to post on the internet. After he had people talking about the stuff,  he’d sell it for more than he got it for. A lot more. I realized right then and there that he didn’t really give a hoot about the stuff. It was a business, and he was catering to those who would give away their first-born for some kicks or a 1-of-1 tee that was only released in the South of France. There was a huge market for this, and from University of Delaware (his alma mater. Sidenote: this guy can hoop. He may not have height, but he’s got heart. That’s a whole ‘nother conversation, though.) or his Silver Spring abode, he could supply the nation. The power of the internet.

That’s how I heard about the guy – from the internet. But he also had space for a small sneaker consignment store within the quarters of my man Vince’s barber shop, and that’s probably the first time I met him in real life. Five years later, we’re real life acquaintances. Contemporaries, if you will. When I was driving around DC with Josh and we ran into J. Cole walking into Ooh’s and Aah’s, me and Josh went to chop it up and eat with them. I’m sure Josh hasn’t doubted me since then.

It’s cool to see the progress he’s made since we became cool. He’s relocated to Philly since graduating from school came out to support at Child’s Play last week, as well as my birthday party this past Saturday. I recently came across this smooth, documentary-style video on him speaking about style, which is all this post was supposed to consist of before I started typing like a madman. Check it out below.

Also, he was featured in Madbury Club. Check that feature out here. Shout out to Phil and Ellington for that site, by the way. Trill $#!t.

Shout out to my homegirl Reiana for chopping up this footage from our Child’s Play event! It looks marvelous, and captures pretty much all the memories from that great day. If you need some film work done, holler at her: @flip_the_script. Check some of her stuff at ESSTXR Media.