This is the first time I’ve blogged anything in a long ass time. The 9-to-5 life had me all but discard of this domain name, but alas, we’re still alive! I came back here to announce that we’re proud to present our next show, featuring DC’s own Fat Trel. Check the flyer out above! Crazy, right!?

I blogged about Trel pretty in-depth a little over a year ago (check that here). While bigger names Wale and Tabi Bonney have worked diligently to put DC hip-hop on the map, Trel has been too, just a little differently. Trel’s been in the trenches (read: the studio), perfecting his craft and killing open mics and murdering shows across the country when time permits. Sure, the noise hasn’t been as loud (although it did garner some attention from Cash Money CEO Bryan “Baby” Williams aka Birdman, some big magazines, and a bunch of labels), but you’re about to hear it.

You may have caught Trel at DC’s Vitamin Water Uncapped show alongside Rye Rye, Wale and X.O. earlier this year (I was in there. It was wild!). If you missed it, here’s some footage:

He’s only 20, but his talent as a musician is unparalleled by most. I wouldn’t have said that before yesterday, when the DC to BC team hit the practice site for Krank Factory, the electrifying band that will be backing Trel on stage. He told us it was his first real time rocking with a band that wasn’t a go-go band, but watching him work, you would think he’s a vet. Adding his input for when the guitar should solo on a track, communicating with the lead keyboardists to figure out how to recreate the synth sounds for the live performance. He was doing all that. They jammed out for like 6 hours straight and didn’t even seem tired. That’s an artist if I ever seen one.

I don’t need to sell you on anything else except his actual music, which is what the compilation that we’ve put together will do. It’s called The Set List, and it’s (give or take a few surprises!) the exact same set list that all 500 fans will experience on Sunday evening. We curated it and finalized it with Trel before we gave it to you guys. We hope to gain Trel some new supporters through this mix; you can download this today and know all the words by Sunday. Lol. But really though, we think this could be a cool new way of experiencing music as a new fan. The old fans already know what’s up, but it’s worth a download because it features a lot of his crazy thumpers on one compilation. The best part for both old and new? It’ll sound completely different (but equally as awesome) with a live band.

The entire point of this blog post was to give you guys an exclusive. So here it is, “Nightmare”, the introduction to his heavily anticipated mixtape Nightmare on E Street, dropping at the top of 2012. Enjoy.

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DOWNLOAD: Fat Trel – Nightmare [DC to BC EXCLUSIVE! PLEASE TURN THOSE SPEAKERS UP!]

DOWNLOAD: Fat Trel’s Nightmare Before Christmas – The Set List [Mix Compilation]

I’ll have the streaming version of The Set List shortly for those who can’t download. Gimme like 30 minutes. I gotta find some food. For those in DC, see you guys on Sunday (grab tickets here!). For those who aren’t there, we’ll definitely document that joint for you!

You’ve probably seen all the $#!t I’ve been talking online about how vicious this concert will be. Frankly, if you break it all down, August 12, 2011 can be seen as a historic day in DC as far as hip-hop is concerned. Before we booked this concert, the 9:30 Club (voted one of the top venues in the nation by Billboard Magazine a couple weeks ago) had no hip-hop concerts until like November. The spot is 1200 people, and honestly, most hip-hop shows these days can’t pack a venue that size unless it’s a mainstream superstar or it’s free.

We’re trying to break that mold, starting with this #DontWuwwyDC show. In addition to Kendrick Lamar, #DontWuwwyDC will feature four other artists: ScHoolboy Q, Phil Ade, Phil Da Phuture, and Ashton  Travis. The coolest thing to me is that none of these artists are remotely similar in style, content, and sound. They all bring something unique to the table, and that’s one of the big reasons we decided on these five to showcase their talents. I’m almost more excited to see them all interact and connect behind the scenes than perform the show itself. Almost.

Haven’t done your research on these artists yet? All good! We created “Hello, World” to introduce you to ALL five of the artists so you can at least sing along to the hooks at the show. If you like what you hear, do some more digging and grab their various projects from blogs, iTunes, wherever. The music should convince you more than my words. Grab the compilation, either by clicking the incredible artwork above (s/o to my man Angelo Logan for that, by the way. Hit him up for any graphic needs!), or the link below. Let us know what you think, and feel free to pass it along to people. Oh, and MAKE SURE TO GRAB YOUR TICKETS CUZ THEY’RE MOVING LIKE HOT CAKES!

hello, world. by DC to BC

DOWNLOAD:  “Hello, World.” [#DontWuwwyDC Mix Compilation]

P.S.: Bonus points to those who can tell me where we got the title of this mix from!

We were fortunate enough to recruit Top Dawg Entertainment recording artist Kendrick Lamar for a much anticipated performance at the 9:30 Club, making it his first-ever public show in the nation’s capital. The Compton standout is expected to sell out the 1200 capacity venue thanks to his loyal following in the DC metropolitan area. Kendrick will be joined on stage by fellow label mate Schoolboy Q as he cycles through his hits spanning from his early career to his most recent project, the critically acclaimed #Section80. Also sharing the spotlight for the evening are buzzing DMV natives Phil Adé and Phil Da Phuture, both signees of Grammy nominated crooner Raheem DeVaughn‘s 368 Music Group, as well as Houston’s own Ashton Travis, a lyrical mastermind recently crowned winner of the Hip-Hop Unplugged Series, hosted by Def Jam’s Lenny Santiago and MTV’s Sway. You never know who else may pop up, either…

If you have any sort of cyberspace real estate (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, your brand’s website, etc.), feel free to show the post love there too! Link for the Twitpic is here. #dontwuwwyDC is the hashtag for the event, so use it and abuse it up til the date of the concert to see who’s talking about it!

Event Details

Date: Friday, August 12, 2011

Location: 9:30 Club 815 V St. NW DC 20009

Time: 8pm until close (Doors open @ 8, show starts @ 9)

Tickets are now on sale. You can grab those bad boys two ways:

- Buying in-person at the 9:30 Club box office. Hours: 12-7, Mon-Fri and 6-11 on weekends. You avoid a service charge this way!

- Buying online: http://ticketf.ly/dontwuwwyDC

http://twitter.com/#!/DCtoBC/status/96581975376269312 <—— That is a tweet you can feel free to retweet in regards to the tickets.

I should add that the more support this event gets, the more everybody across the nation and the world will respect our city. We’re just trying to put DC in the game. People think about politics and government when they think about this area, so the DC to BC team is working really hard to change that.

Hit me back here or on Twitter (@DCtoBC) if you have any questions, and enjoy the day.

Welcome to the third edition of Singles Awareness Day. This year’s S.A.D. will be celebrated a couple days early, allowing you to ride into the weekend with 31 songs that say all the things that you’ve been thinking about love, lust, or anything in between. Most of these tracks you’ve never heard, and if you have, you won’t mind, because they just work so well on this compilation. Don’t think this just some sappy ass depressing music, either. Singles Awareness Day isn’t a day of mourning; it’s simply a time where you’re made aware of the single life, whether or not you’re living it. If you’re boo’d up, you can reflect on the lives of your friends who aren’t, or you can wonder what it’d be like if you didn’t have shortypop by your side this V-Day. If you aren’t, then you can play this and reminisce, living vicariously through the music.

If this is your first S.A.D. mix compilation you’re downloading, I should let you know that I do things a little differently: no tracklisting. Just get it, throw it in your iTunes, vehicle, iPod, and jam it. It’ll probably stay in rotation for a long while, so just be prepared to have some new favorite songs. As always, I dedicate this to all the maneaters, heartbreakers, and hopeless romantics out there. Click the artwork or the link below to download.

DOWNLOAD: Singles Awareness Day 3 [S.A.D. #3: The Mix Compilation]

Oh, and if you’re in DC, we’re doing it EXTRA BIG. Rock Creek Social Club has decided to throw a party around the concept, and that’ll be on the 15th. Sure, you may hear some of these tracks, but Jerome and Harry Hotter have their own playlists that’ll make partying on the day after Valentine’s Day super fun.

Thanks for your support. Any feedback, send my way in the comment section. If you’d rather e-mail, hit me: modi[at]DCtoBC.com. Thanks for all the artists who allowed me to throw their music on this. Everybody who submitted music and didn’t make the final mix, I apologize. It was a tough decision, but I think these 31 joints will satisfy everybody. Huge s/o to Odd Future‘s Matt for the album art.

If you know me, if you’ve been in my vehicle or been in my dorm room while I was in college, you’d know that my affinity for A.B. The Pro‘s music is probably unrivaled. I have a lot of confidence in this SE representer’s sound, and he’s my favorite artist on DC’s Studio 43 imprint. I felt like his mixtape he dropped back in ’09 was criminally slept on as far as production and the artists featured. You can tell that he cares a lot about putting DC on the map, and he without a doubt brought out the best in artists that otherwise may not have been able to convince you of their talent. In my eyes, “Stussy on My Back” with Young Marley could have been a local smash if the proper push was behind it (Stussy could have easily jumped on that joint and licensed it out and more money could have been made!), but 43 made the poor decision to push “W On The Fitted” instead, which was by far the worst joint on the entire tape. No offense to any of the artists on that track, but…that joint was so weak.  But hey. I’m not hear to chastise too much. That’s the past. We’re on to the future.

A.B. let me hold an early version of the mixtape to give him some feedback and criticism, and it’s so awesome to see that not only did he take it well, but he actually listened to the majority of what I said! Swapped some songs out, changed the tracklisting, and dropped a lot of freestyles over industry beats. In order to give you A.B. as an artist as opposed to just a producer, I feel like he needs to rap over his own $#!t. The one thing that I wished he did was to start the album with “Young Jimi Hendrix” (which is the first preview I’m gonna give you), or at least make that joint #2! It goes way too hard and kinda introduces you to what the entire album is gonna be like. Besides that, I don’t have too many gripes. The beats are mixed and mastered to thump in the vehicle or through your headphones, he has some club bangers that’ll make you raise an eyebrow and wonder why he doesn’t have stuff on the radio (or with bigger artists outside of DC, to be completely honest), and while he’s not exactly a rapper, you can’t be mad at his lyrics, cuz it’s all stuff people can relate to.

DC is proud of this, but I’m tryna make sure everybody beyond DC hears this product. Featuring a lot of untapped and under appreciated talent that you can read about on the back cover, this is a really good project that I’m proud to have been a fake-me-out A&R on, lol. Nah but really. Jam the previews, and then grab it below.

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DOWNLOAD: A.B. The Pro – Crown Vic Music [Mixtape]

My boys over at Pocket Full of Paper have been relentlessly working with one of their PFOP artists on a pretty damn good mixtape that I got two days ago, and it’s bumped ScHoolBoy Q and Trel over for a bit as far as my regular rotation. It’s February, so why not open your ears up to something completely different. Jersey’s own MoShadee drops Grove Street, a candid, telling project that I’d call more of an album than a mixtape to be 100% with you. I’ll let him do the rest of the talking.

Grove Street is the block I grew up on. Even though this is my second project, I feel as though this is a better introduction of who I am. I lived on Grove for eleven years. From the tender age of five up until my teenagers years. All the memories and lessons I’ve had while living there have been summed up and put into this tape. Not everything is Grove Street related, but the overall feel brings me back to those days. My best work yet, I’m sure listeners will feel the same.

I say grab this tape. The beats will entice you, and then once you start bobbing your head, you’ll realize he’s talking about some stuff that you probably went through! I got some tracks for you to preview, and then if you rock with ‘em, the DL link is below. I’ll give you one hard track and one soft joint, just to show you the range of sounds on this tape.

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DOWNLOAD: MoShadee – Grove Street [Mixtape]

It’s here. Dedicated to all maneaters, heartbreakers, and hopeless romantics – you know who you are. Proceed to download. It’s an epic one, I think.

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yerp. your local clutch city DJ’s are back at it. you may remember when i dropped the last cush cush joint way back when. but it’s ’09, and dj’s ace boon coon and b*luxe aren’t playing games. at all. one super-track that’s essentially 53 minutes of mayhem, baby. music selection is more eclectic and diverse than new york city. need to throw a party but have no DJ? throw this joint on. trust me

my man brandon “DJ B*Luxe” luckett told me about this lovechild that is his latest mixtape. the tape was crafted for a clothing label, Overachievers and modeling agency, Page Parkes, and features everything from old school rap to reggae to soft core electro.  this one really feels like a mixtape, like it should be on a cassette in an old school walkman with the earphones with the thin-ass foam cushion headphones on it that have your ears hurting after an hour.  this is called a “1 take” because they recorded it live: “we only had 1-take to get it right otherwise we would have had to start ALLLLL the way back at the beginning.” impressive, right!?

enjoy, listen all the way through, but as always if you don’t like a song, fast forward about two minutes and you’ll probably a region of the musical galaxy that you never would have expected to come next. it’s like that. the file is too big to sample, but i’m trying to get around that. trust me though, it’s worth the download. i wouldn’t steer you wrong. and E-MAIL THEM IF YOU WANT THEM TO ROCK YOUR NEXT PARTY! e-mail address on the album cover.

DOWNLOAD: Cush Cush – Overachievers

BONUS: Dusty Crates Interview with Cush Cush

Clif Soulo mentioned he would be doing this Common-themed album a while back, and the final copy has final . I heard some of the early mixes, which had some quality takes on some great instrumentals used by Common. This mixtape utilizes beats from both “Finding Forever” and “Be.” Big up to our friends EddyNPizzle for providing some graphics.

I recommend y’all check this out and show Clif Soulo some love…for him pursuing his love of hip hop music. Diggin this.

Via Clif Soulo:

“I created this album called Forever Be Hip Hop. It’s my own take on instrumentals from Commons’ album’s Finding Forever and Be. I tried and hopefully was successful in creating a new album introducing myself to the world as “Clif Soulo”, but also paying homage and showing respect to Common. If you get some time, download it, listen, let me know what you think.”

Leave him some direct feedback via his twitter page @ClifSoulo!

DOWNLOAD HERE (alt. link here), and tracklisting after the drop.

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Today feels almost as great as when a member of the Star Trak family drops an album. Why? Well, because the music blog of all music blogs, Blind I For The Kids, has dropped a powerful, two disc compilation of everything that production gods The Neptunes haven’t leaked to the masses. I consider myself a Neptunes superfan, but most of these I’ve never even heard of. It’s like uncovering fossils or ancient ruins to me. I could talk, but I’d rather let the creator, my ninja Sulaiman out the Chi, do the rest of the talking while you jam this unreleased Fam-Lay snippet featured on the tape.

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I’ve been working on this for a LOOOONG time and I finally completed another masterpiece. For those not in the know, The Neptunes are a record production duo consisting of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, who are credited with contributing the sound for some successful Hip hop, R&B and Pop artists in the late-90s and 2000s. The Neptunes’ sound is a distinctive brand of off-kilter, stripped-down electronic funk. Along with Timbaland and Dr. Dre they were the driving force behind many of the musical characteristics of late-90s/2000s hip-hop, helping to re-introduce sci-fi style sounds into the hip-hop mainstream, along with sounds from Middle Eastern and Asian music including percussion and woodwind.

I decided a few months back to make a collection of my favorite rare, b-side, and unreleased Neptunes production, from 1999 to 2009, in order to create a dedication to over 10 years of next-level music that still stands the test of time. I swear listening to these tracks puts you in a state of mind where everything’s better around you. Decemvir, which is the latin term for “ten“, is used to describe this decade of incredible works from the stellar production duo. Their music can speak for itself more than anything I can say, so without further ado, I give you…

DOWNLOAD: The Neptunes – Decemvir (DISC 1 | DISC 2)