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.

I hit NY every once in a while to check in with my folks out there. Since graduation, probably 75% of my really good childhood friends have relocated there. I also gotta dap up those who held me down when I was a newbie to NY, living in Aris’ cozy apartment in the back room and taking the J train to Complex every day, almost always late. I miss NY just typing about it.

One of the guys who looks out the most for me in NY do or die is my bruv Callender (pictured above). I swear to Allah, this man walked about 75 feet, from one spot to another in the Lower East Side, and dapped up 7 people. THAT RATE IS ASTONISHING! I’m talking everybody from the local panhandler to that chick of Caucasian persuasion who looks fly and you don’t know what she does until you find out she designed the entire Fall season of some designer that you’ve heard of but can never afford. “We do laundry at the same place,” Callender explained.

Bare with me. I’m just tryna get my mojo back out here.

Callender took me out to lunch and I brought up this dude Rocky who  he works with and had put me onto back before there was a “ASAP” in front of his  name. Honestly, I wasn’t a huge fan of everything that I heard from him, but I did recognize his charisma and was waiting to hear something that I couldn’t stop listening to. He told me some new jams would be dropping extremely soon. But everybody says that.

Then I was on Twitter a couple days and I saw that my man Noz of Cocaine Blunts fame (as well as every epic hip-hop article, internet or print, of recent) had posted this video that I’m about to make you watch on The Fader.  It’s now 2 AM on a work night. If this whole song and video wasn’t that tight, I woulda been sleep 15 minutes ago. Right? Right.

I rock with Rocky cuz he has a lot of swag. I don’t really care if people think that word is overused, because it’s so appropriate. A Harlem kid with golds in his mouth, permed hair braided up like a left coast legend? That’s crazy.  He pays homage to that Houston movement with a chopped up, not slopped up jammy jam that’ll make you think you just sipped some purple drink once you press play. Lemme know what you think. Just swag rap, don’t expect to learn anything except how he has the boppas goin’ crazy. Just remember, this is a New York rapper. Keep that in mind. New York rarely gives the South respect. There’s something pretty major here.

If the tape is vicious, I’ll throw it up here. Drops end of this month, I believe! Download the MP3 too. You know you want this in your iTunes.

DOWNLOAD: ASAP Rocky – Purple Swag

Chip covers my favorite Bone Thugs song, “Days Of Our Livez”, and sounds just like his Ohio forefathers, almost to a T (Editor’s Note: NO idea what “to a T” means, but felt like I should throw it in here!). This is a smooth way to round out Friday. His harmony game is kinda tight; sounds a lot like CuDi in the beginning of the track.

DOWNLOAD: Chip Tha Ripper – Don’t Come Into My Hood (Bone Thugs Cover)

I’m one of the guys on the east coast who stayed up and watched Tyler tweet the countdown until the debut of his new video for his track “Yonkers” dropped.

Odd Future. These guys are like…well, they’re like nothing else, really. My man Thiz wrote about Tyler and his cohorts for Madbury a while back, and the article was being discussed at great length in the cozy dorming quarters of Ope and my man Tobi somewhere on University of Maryland’s College Park campus. No joke, I was there and witnessed it. The power of the internet is undeniable. I say that to say this: these young abrasive Californians have talent mixed with a few other things that make them stand out like a fat guy at an eating disorder clinic. Watch below, and then do some research on Tyler and the rest of the Odd Future family. Their video are especially crazy. Like, crazy. But yeah, watch.

Oh yeah, and don’t think I forgot about their show in DC on Monday. I’ll be there, suckers. Let’s go.

I tweeted the other day that Ab-Soul was my favorite right now of the TDE. He reminds me of an early Eminem; it’s rare that rappers can convey humor in their bars, and Ab does it so easily. He’s super crafty with it!  ScHoolboy Q, Kendrick, and Ab are the guys  guys I jam; Jay Rock I’m not really a fan of…at all…no offense, he just doesn’t have bars like these guys in my opinion. My man Dave just freed this leak from his new tape, Long Term Mentality, which drops soon.

DOWNLOAD: Ab-Soul – Hell Yeah [feat. ScHoolboy Q]

I gotta throw in another joint he leaked recently.

BONUS: Ab-Soul – Tits N’ Ass [Cool Like That Flow] [This joint rocks. A lot. Ooh wee.]

If you like Ab, hit the internet and get his old tapes. They both go really hard.

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.

DOWNLOAD: MoShadee – Grove Street [Mixtape]

Kendrick Lamar and Gucci Mane? Yes. They went around this the right way, and I won’t even spoil it. You’ll just have to listen. If you’ve heard the first version, and if you’ve heard him briefly refer to vanity slaves in “Michael Jordan”, then you already know what it’s about. Such a smooth beat, and definitely not ratchet like you’d expect from a track featuring a guy who just tatted a damn cone with three scoops of ice cream and a couple of blue lightning bolts to complete this inked masterpiece.

DOWNLOAD: Kendrick Lamar – Vanity Slave Pt. 2 [feat. Gucci Mane]

And just in case you haven’t seen Gucci’s tat…

“BRR!!!“

This may be my new favorite Theo Martins joint. He samples “You Can’t Blame Me” by Johnson, Hawkins, Tatum & Durr, which hardcore hip-hop heads probably heard flipped before on Reks‘ “Big Dreamers” and the tree climbers who were on that earlier Wiz Khalifa music heard on “When U Find” (which is my favorite Wiz song to date).

“I speak the issues that we all are under / but I also spread the faith that we can all recover.”

There’s some heat in this! Sounds like a heartfelt rap, dude. I really rock with this joint. Speaking of which, me and Theo just had a crazy awesome night in Philly last Saturday with the AnmlHse heads, and while I don’t have the means to throw all the pictures up, I’d like to direct you to AnmlHse’s site to check out some of them (there’s SO MANY GOOD PICTURES), and Theo’s site for you to catch his re-cap.

DOWNLOAD: Theo Martins – Lo-Fi Love [prod. by $port]

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve already heard me sing this album’s praises. I bought ScHoolBoy Q‘s Setbacks off iTunes, and now he’s released a free version. The free version is shorter than the iTunes joint (couple different songs, and honestly, one of them is potentially a highlight on the tape…yikes…oh well!) Since he dropped the announcement on Twitter Nation, I figured I’d let those who don’t know of him or follow him to learn about him here.

Q’s got a charisma about him, man. His voice is unique, and he kills the majority of these tracks with his somewhat unorthodox rhyme scheme. Every song is pretty intense, too, as far as subject matter. When I play this album, I paint a vivid picture of this hazy, California hellhole. Lots of drug talk, but the stressful life that he seems to lead kind of explains it all. I love pretty much every beat on the album, and the only real problem I have with the project is that he didn’t put the one song that I blogged of his a while back on the joint. I understand the decision (it doesn’t really work with the entire “setbacks” concept), but that joint bumped.

All of the features are awesome. Top Dawg teammates Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, and Jay Rock all have appearances (Kendrick actually has two, and the one on “LigHt Years AHead” is my favorite swag verse of his since I heard “Michael Jordan”) ***WOW! This song is NOT on the free version! Sorry, guys!*** BJ The Chicago Kid murders the hook on “I’m Good”, and in a great, great way.

I hate talking about music too much. Just listen to it. Thank me later. I rock with Q the long way. This album is the best thing to drop in January as far as hip-hop is concerned (that I’ve heard, anyway). Check out this video real quick, then grab the whole project via the link below. Oh, and shout out to @daveisfree.

DOWNLOAD: ScHoolBoy Q – Setbacks [ALBUM]

You know I’m probably Fam-Lay‘s biggest supporter. Ever. This is my favorite joint he’s put out recently, but Fam…where’s the album at!?

“I will put you up in something that you can’t get out of / got n****s makin’ money, shootin’ guns and sniffin’ powder.”

Goodness. So raw.