Oh boy. Haven’t had a reason to post about the Harlem Diplomats in some time. But here we are. Looks like the Theme to this year’s PAID DUES INDEPENDENT HIP HOP FESTIVAL is crews. Dipset, Living Legends, and Heiro have been announced as performers at Paid Dues.

Previously it was announced that Wu-Tang Clan & Odd Future were headlining the annual festival put together by Murs & the Guerilla Union in San Bernardino, CA.

Other line-up additions announced today were Kendrick Lamar, DJ Quik, Psycho Realm and Dilated Peoples. Buy Tickets here.

So far performing at Saturday, April 7 at Southern California’s NOS Events Center:

PAID DUES Line-Up

Wu-Tang Clan
Odd Future
Living Legends
Dipset (Cam’ron + Jim Jones + Juelz Santana + Freeky Zekey)
Hieroglyphics
Kendrick Lamar
DJ Quik
Psycho Realm
Dilated Peoples
More to be announced

Well, I guess my theory that Dipset will be part of a new launch of Roc-a-fella is completely off. It looks likes rumors of Dipset on being on Interscope might be a reality?
Jim Jones tweeted today that they just got out of the studio with Dr. Dre?

interesting that appherently as rich as Dre is, he only owns one Nautica shirt, and wore it to both Jay-z and Dipset record sessions?

Click here to view the embedded video.

ROC we running this rap shit…now…this is purely speculation but…After Dipset came and dissed Kanye over his own beat last week.
And awhile back Jay-z came out with a Creative Control mixtape which raised eyebrows because thats the name of Dame Dash’s video brand. This came on the heels of Dame Dash boasting he was going to restart Roc-a-Fella records..
Like I said this is speculation but Freeway and Stalley are both down with Dame Dash so perhaps this a foreshadowing of a another Dame vs. Jay campaign?

Both Curren$y’s Pilottalk and Ski Beatz, 24 Hour Karate School(which dropped today minus any Mos Def involvement ) are said to be on Roc-a-Fella but the spine on the CD says DD172. So Dame Dash hasn’t fully jumped in the Roc-a-Fella takeover, yet.
My guess is that they are gonna wait for the new Dipset album to do that.
Is this foreshadowing or just rappers having fun with an instrumental?
In fairness beyond a reasonable doubt it has to be noted that neither rapper dissed Jay.
And i bumped into Free, Stalley and Rashad after the show, and beef with Jay was not the topic of conversation at all.
Stalley’s main concern was that it would be noted that he was freestyling and not kicking a written.
And Rashad and I just talked about him, and Stalley’s upcoming (((ITM))) release.
But Free did have everyone throw the ROC sign up. And it wasn’t for Jay-z’s Roc Nation label.
Whatever the case, here are Stalley and Freeway freestyling over Jay-z’s infamous diss cut “Takeover” here in Columbus,Ohio.

Or maybe none of this means anything, and the true Columbus story is that Freeway is shouting out both ROC and RSE(Rhymesayers Entertainment) home of the Al Shepard.

Columbus rapper YBM White hooks up with Dipset’s Freekey Zekey for Doe Boy Fresh. Filmed here in Columbus.

Directed by Adrian Stucker
Official Video for Doe Boy Fresh – YBM White Ft. Freekey Zekey Director/DP : Adrian Stucker Produced by : Fabb Vision Network, Streets Illustrated, Circle of Bosses Recording produced by : Dipset, 713, Skull Gang Shot with the Canon XH-A1 & Canon 550Dcted by Adrian Stucker

Official video for the the Black Keys, Mos Def and Jimmy Jones Blakroc modern blues “Ain’t Nothing Like You (Hoochie Coo)” jump-off.

Blakroc in stores November 27th.

A few weeks ago we celebrated the 4th annual Daymon Day here in Columbus. We had a basketball tourney, tribute mural, emcee battle, parade and a rowdy dance party. We got our Rucker park on and then brought it into the streets.

For those that aren’t familar with Daymon Day but like things perhaps reading this article before or after viewing the following videos and pictures might give you some background info.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This video shot by A.J.(i think) shows the parade.

Watch it if you think marching 300 plus people in the middle of the road to Black Sabbath, Dilla, Cam’ron, M.O.P. , DJ Przm, Camu Tao, Jim Jones,Pharoah Monche and Racist Joe instrumentals to honor their fallen loved ones on an OSU gameday sounds interesting.

Photos taken by Danielle Kline that show a different detail after the jump.

I missed the basketball tourney that CJ Townsend organized because I was out in the burbs buying Montana’s for a couple doods’ outline colors for one of the graffiti murals.As for the basketball contest, I guess Central City Recordings brought in some ringers and won the game.

The other big story from the tourney, was Team Weedsteeler was narrowly defeated by the Grip 14-1. The other highlight was that Ron House played for Agit Reader(i think) and appeherently was a fierce competitor.

I got to the Park right before the rap battle between Zero Star and EC Vol. The battle was in front of the newly restored Tuttle Park handball court mural.

A. Kern and Ender did a wonderful job covering up the alterations made by tags, drawing of penises and the weather that had overtaken the iconic mural orginally meticulously painted by B. Jones, S.Zook, G. Sparano and D. Duncan that expressed both graffiti writer’s civic pride and their often underestimated abilties.

(A. Kern is the young muralist that painted the Blue Danube, every Daymon mural, and the bathrooms of Milkbar among other things. Two of his murals were included in the Dispatch’s recent Top Ten Murals in Columbus.)

Unlike the cityscape that A.Kern fixed, the bottom pieces of N.E.W.S. were dissed beyond repair, so Ender created a universal font that honored our cities fallen Hip Hop heros, Daymon Dodson, DJ Przm, and Camu Tao.

The mural, in its orginal form, had burners of the words, North, East, West, and South, directing the viewer to the idea that the kids that paint the city with letters could literally paint the city to the letter. The letters were on the original mural were intentionally painted in highly stylized graffiti form next to an amazing rendering of the cityscape of downtown Columbus.

The idea of those involved with the graffiti restoration process was that deviating from a graffiti font was ok. The point that letters can be as technical challenging as photorealistic scenery had be proven by the mural’s original artists.

The muralists were restoring the idea that graffiti writers love their city and interact with their community.

So maybe the actual mural wasnt exactly restored to exact original form.

But the remembrance of icons and their contributions to our city is important to our city’s culture and identity development. Graffiti was used to put this back in people’s minds.

A legible font conveyed this sentiment by being more viewer accessible.

(plus the back wall has 18+ burners on it, painted by BSA,PBJ, ESE,IOK, 3WA and TFC doods.)

This set the stage for a rap battle between Zero Star and EC Vol.

Click here to view the embedded video.

video of battle by Chase Manhattan(i think)

DIY MARCHING BAND:Tony “Envelope” Collinger and Mike “DJ Detox” Tormey set up a PA in the back of a pick-up truck so that Detox could dejay while people marched in the parade.

Danielle Kline made a dinosaur float so that the Daymon Dodson doll would have somewhere to sit during the parade.

Parade time.

This is Jacqueliene Arias, a journalist, artist and filmmaker in town from NYC because of the festival on Gay Street downtown. She contacted me via facebook because she is making a documentary and wanted to talk about Columbus art and culture. So I picked her up.

She was really impressed by what she saw at ID09 on Gay Street. She expressed a notion that it was shame the events were the same day. I told her a real city can support two festivals in the same day.( Which Columbus did easily)

I told her that organizers of ID09 did try to include us.

However our parade is greatly contingent on having mural space to paint tribute walls, and the spectacle of marching in front of OSU celebrating football fans on gameday on OSU campus.

Daymon loved absurdity so trumping OSU football is prolly the best thing we could ever do.

Picture being a freshman at OSU:

You are on a porch playing beerpong. So pumped that the Buckeyes just won and you have a case of Natty Light to toast these glorious times..

You look over, and OMG, in the middle of the street are 300 people of every background possible except your own, marching to the instrumental Dipset’s “What’s Really Good” while chanting Racist Joe.

Might make you spit out your shitty beer, and create a memory

(and at least we had a painting of downtown’s skyline)

rofl

The parade concluded on 5th and High where the crowd sung Daymon’s hit song, “Bitch, You Don’t Know Shit”.

I was terrified because Daymon’s family were there and the song is explicit.

To my suprise/relief Daymon’s mom knew the words. She giggled during and did not sing the “bitch” or “shit” parts. It was laughshh you don’t laughshh. It was beautiful that she had discovered and enjoyed that aspect of her son.

Detox finally gets to get out of the truck after dejaying a parade.

Eventually we left Milk Bar and headed to the Summit for this afterparty:

http://s877.photobucket.com/albums/ab339/itspos/daymon%20day/daymon%20day%20summit%20st%20jam/?action=view&current=100_0544.flv

video courtesy of pos 2.

Photo Credit:Danielle Kline from last years Jim Jones show. Not to be confused with the one I am mentioning in this blurb.

MP3:The Black Keys ft. Mos Def and Jim Jones – Hoochie Coo -

Dipset shows in Columbus, and Jim Jones in paticular were always an interesting spectacle throughout the duration of the crews artist thug -in-residency here in the C-O because there was always an feeling in the air that admidst that there may be some sort of animosity in the room.

witnessing what maybe  the source of stress in jim jones life after the jump

For example, the second time I saw Jimmy was at the Redzone with Hell Rell and JR Writer. Early on Hell Rell decided that the crowd wasnt expressing their emotions publically enough. So he asked the crowds what different gangs and areas of town were in the room. He then encouraged them to yell them at each other. This device broke people out their shells similarly to the first day of school when they make everyone in the class say their name and favorite food,(i always said bagels) but it also caused people to realize they should wave their flags and disrupt the activities of rival Jim Jones fans who choose different color schemes and residential locations.

One group of fans had decided that Jim Jones was perhaps friends with the wrong real estate agents or clothing designers and began the throw signifying hand gestures at his entourage on stage.

The intial interpretant, about eight doods to the right of Jimmy would respond with equally agitated hand movements. A second man, about 4 to the right of Jimmy would have a calmer, simpler response to the gentlemen in crowd throwing gang signs. He would point at his watch then stare back at them, then look at Jimmy to figure out what dynamic should occur.

Jimmy would just smile at the angry fans while rapping, drinking champaigne out of an expensive bottle as if he had just gotten a blowjob while taking qualuades before performing.

Real chill.

Mr. Jones then asked the dejay to play the instrumental to his song “Certified Gangsta”. As the song began, I look to myleft. A group of sportfans grinned at me so I smirked back. Then those gentlemen tied red bandanas around their faces, and put on hats that showed apperehent support of Southern Ohio Professional Baseball.

The Pete Rose fans then attacked the instigating deaf people that had been speaking in hostile sign language to the performer and his friends.

A huge fight broke out in which left was me standing with a bunch of women, and a couple of weedsteelers close to the stage singing along to said song while other people continued their altercaction. The fight ended abruptly with security and later the Columbus police demanding everyone “get the fuck out right now”.

We flagged a taxi while trying avoid the tear gas.

In light of what went down in Michigan with Detroit’s Trick Trick its nothing to say this tension in the audience prolly a constant in Jim Jones life.

So this Mos Def/Jim Jones Black Keys Black Keys song is kinda like a song about this sort of lifestyle and the toll it could possibly take on a man.

Looks like graffiti writers fucking with Dipset is not just an Ohio thing. The homie Wands sent me this wall by Sest ID repping for Cam’s new album “Crime Pays” out in Los Angeles.

After the jump peep footage of Bucket doing a Cali freeway spot in L.A. with “Reppin Time” by Jim Jones in the background.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This very website is throwing an event at Columbus’ Premier nightclub Spice Bar. This time around its Dipset Appreciation Night featuring the Catalyst covering Diplomat songs backed by Triceratops.
Myself, Johnny Cashola, & Detox will be playing all your Dipset standards throughout the evening.
Dirtnap will host.

For more info or if you have any sense of whats proper and decent during these troubled times please check out Party With the Universe Myspace