Peace,
Employee

If you’re like me you’ve endured a grueling past few months with Sole’s departure from Anticon looming as an ever-present rain cloud. Fret no more! Let’s find out what this firebrand has been doing:

man.

alot of things have been coming together in a very natural and great way lately. over the past year i’ve been putting together an album to accompany this book ravi zupa and i have been working on called “the pyre.” its basically an epic poem. the project started when we were working on the video for “stupid things implode on themselves…” ravi had been making these anarcho-mythical images that he wanted me to write a creation myth to. i failed miserably at all my attempts and gave up on the project. this prompted a few years of obsession with the form of epic poem & myth. i went on to read a ton of myths and mythology books over the subsequent years. when i moved to denver, ravi approached me about it again and i felt ready. the result is a 70 page illustrated book with this epic poem about civilization running through it, told in the form of myth. i created an album to go with it, it was supposed to be a spoken word record with some ambient noise (but listenable) but ended up being something entirely different. this should be available for purchase by the end of july.

secondly…. we’ve got about 5 new songs recorded for the next sole and skyrider record…. since these guys have moved out here we’ve been working at some new performance styles and skyrider has been cranking out the classic beats. this is the most fun i’ve had working on music in 10 years, a lot of it has to do with the tremendous label support we are recieving from fake four, but really its just the right time and the right place for me and the band to re-invent our wheel. i imagine we will have an album plus more of material complete by the end of the summer.

thirdly…. on a personal note, its really fun to have a lil thriving garden in your yard.

doing what you love for a living, for a sustained period of time can be very challenging and not always fun. it takes an extreme amount of resilience and self determination and lots of hair pulling. sometimes it involves making a lot of difficult decisions. these days, for a living i tend my back catalogue/website/bookings and for fun i work on new music, which is the best possible place to be in.

my garden has 3 parts… one part is the strawberry patch which isnt officially part of the garden… where i have 5 strawberry plants going…

part 2 is the herb garden, all the basics; lots of mint & basil, rosemary, thyme, savory, oregeno, peppermint, dill, etc.

the final part is the vegetable garden… i have spinach, mache, lettuce, kale, beets, tomatos, cauliflower, cabbage, spring onion, heirloom carrots, zuchini, jalapaneo, some kind of hot pepper, green beans, cucumbers… the spinach already has been eaten, the butter lettuce is overproducing right now and getting eaten. only problem im having is with this wasp/hornet that are thriving in the yard and eating my greens. they have essentially ruined my kale. at least they have good taste. where the spinach was im probably going to plant some summer squash and maybe some more kale so i can have it for fall… fuckin wasps….

lately we have been making lots of sun-tea kind of stuff with fresh mint and peppermint. just throwing peppermint in water is the shit kinda.

since im renting im not going too crazy. i just wanted to try my hand at a successful garden. it is a small garden, although there is a lot in it, there is only one cauliflower, one cabbage, 7 green beans, 6 cucucumber plants, 6 tomato plants, 3 zuchinni etc. i have an updated video but havent uploaded it.

anyway, my dream is to pull up some wild rasberry bushes from the wild and plant them in my yard. they are an awesome invasive species, and there are few things better than drinks flavored with berries and berry pancakes. in rimrock i would go rasberry hunting all summer. it was awesome.

Sounds thrilling, bro!!

Peace,
Employee

I guess this is what happens after being disowned by Anticon. Duke’s backyard looks like a disco for animal corpses.

Peace,
Employee

When Employee asked me to write one of these I was at a loss for what to talk about…as I often am when people ask me to tell them stories about where I go and what I do. It’s kind of a problem I have where I’m not as mindful of my accomplishments as I should be because I’m always trying to get to the next thing. I also hate qualifying. I’m the dude that’ll tell a hot bird my dayjob is picking up animal dookie at the petting zoo. However skimming through the writings of the other guys (except MB…I totally skipped that philabuster) made me get more perspective on my year. Then I wrote it and it was dumb long and I had a nightmare where I was pelted with “didn’t read” emoticons.

I started the year wasting my life at a job I hated and on some probation called “accelerated rehab” for some bullshit with a cop in July of 08 which means once it was over I still have no criminal record and can still get into the UK and Canada unless they call Interpol. I ended the year happy as fuck with no job, on unemployment, and officially free of a woman I now only refer to using words like “paramour” and “succubus.”

In between all that:

-I ran a half-marathon for Crohn’s Disease & Ulcerative Colitis raising over 4 stacks. It was an incredible experience. I met a lot of great people and after I get in more stable space I definitely want to do some more fundraising and running for them and maybe some other different causes.

-Had my first probation officer who was a fly young puerto rican woman that found me a bit too charming say “I can’t supervise you…for obvious reasons” and gave me that look, crossed her legs, and bit her lip ever so slightly. Yeah I feel like my life is a movie a lot.

-went to Disneyland & Disneyworld in the same month.

-rocked a show in a Frat House in St. Louis with my very good friend DJ Fishr Pryce. Bronz Nazareth was on the bill. It was mad fun wildin out with Asher Roth demographic. They made us honorary brothers and I made enough money to spread it out on the bed and bang that girl on top of it.

-had sex while driving 80 mph leaving Disneyworld for the airport. Don’t try this at home. Please I was temporarily insane when I did that and it was incredibly exhilarating, but don’t do it. Ever.

-attended WMC & SXSW. Still don’t see the point of either except that I got to kill shit with Fishr Pryce at SXSW. He’s my main touring dj and we didn’t get to rock together that much this year but we stay on some guerilla shit at SXSW. Last year we equipped his car with turntables and a speaker and just stopped the car and rocked whenever we felt like it.

-went on a US tour with Sole, Awol One, Ceschi, Factor, and more. There were some really fun shows and then there were nights like when someone came to the merch booth and asked me “don’t you feel honored to be sitting next to Sole?” ***blank stare***

-I shot a couple videos with my friend Awar and the talented Matt Hobbs of Vital Films. Felt good to finally have something visual that matched what goes on in my head for these rhymes I write.

-Recorded on original Ayatollah and Alchemist production.

-Went on another European tour with Dos-Noun the day me and the aforementioned female cut the cord and I basically did all the stupid shit I had stopped doing years ago. Bagged some French models, got invited to “Drunk & Sex Orgy” parties by a Czech porn star (I declined), and running into women from my past. It’s all a blur but man did we have fun. Well I had fun, Dos complained.

-Killed basically every show I did. I’m obviously not famous but whether you like what I do or not there’s something positive to be said about a rapper that can walk in a room full of people (whether it’s America or overseas) that don’t know his name, face, or music and can make people rock with him like they been fans for years. On some tin foil hat shit I discovered something I call the “Spirit of the Party.”

-I played a few festivals on my own merit. No co-signs. no nothing. Just me on the main stage killin shit. YES! I love when I get the shot. I always deliver.

-I opened for the Ying Yang Twins in Dublin. HAHAHAHAHHA. That is all.

-Partied with basketball players in Strausborg, France. I walked up to a club and they walked up behind me and I heard ‘em talkin and I’m like “what is y’all American?” and they was like word… and I’m like word me too and then I’m bout to pay for the club and they like “naw he with us” Rest of the night was like a rap video. I woke up in somebody’s crib like where am I and what happened? Got out in enough of time to catch the train to the next city. Another movie night.

-I lived in Prague for a summer in a penthouse. Hung out, partied, rocked shows, drank Czech beer, and enjoyed a psuedo celebrity lifestyle in which I gained a lot of weight. Good times.

-Reconnected with the homies Solillaquists of Sound. We did a couple shows and ultimately Swamburger and I decided we are doing an album that he fully produces and I rap. He brought me out for A3C in Atlanta and put me officially down with the Second Subject family. I kicked it in the new Solilla Manor, we knocked out a track and he threw me some beats. It’s going to be an interesting project because he is trying to get me to record in such a way that I sound the way I do live. He’s also trying to get me to harness and refine my many styles. I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes of this project.

-Got down with this label in London called Tape Records for my electronic project with a guy named Animals on Wheels. We’re called Robots with Hearts. They flew me out to London to do some media stuff, record, and attend the label launch. We recorded in SARM studios. If you can name someone famous that has recorded in London they have recorded there. In fact Shakira was in the studio while I was there as was the bassist for Jeff Beck. It was an incredible experience that I almost blew by staying out late partying with my homies in London. I dropped by the Foreign Beggars video shoot and ended up drunk in the middle of the street tryna get a cab to stop for me. Once I realized it was like 6am and I had a session at 11am and nothing written I went into a full scale panic that would render me retarded. The songs I recorded that day I think I did like 300 takes. Suffice to say I got a good night’s rest the following night and came in a lot more prepared. Then after what seemed like the millionth photo shoot I met Shakira briefly and went to sleep in an apartment they said Bob Marley slept in when he recorded there. Yep…my life is a movie. Oh yeah they dropped the vinyl EP for our record too and it’s on iTunes. Go get that.

-Went back out to Europe in November. American heads got me lookin at Europe like the ball players do. So I figured I’d jump over for 10 days and try out the new material before I brought it out at home. Sorta like trying out my new crossover on these cats before I bring it back to the league. I got down with the Herbaliser band for a couple shows. Rocked for a sold out crowd in Prague. 900 people.

Continuing with the basketball metaphor, rocking with the Herbaliser was the equivalent of coming off the bench for a championship team scoring 40 and sitting my ass back down watchin them win the game. Rumor has it we might do some more in the future. YES!

-I dropped a new album with Chum. I had a lot of fun making fun honest music with good lyrics and people that like to go out and party and come to shows love it. So I’ve succeeded in reintroducing myself (as MiC K!NG) to the people that actually go out to shows and enjoy music. People from my past that I haven’t seen in years are finally embracing what I do because of this record and this is just the outtakes from the main album. So I’m very happy and can’t wait to see what happens when the self-titled Cool-Aide album drops. Big shout out to Slug. Much appreciated. Big ups to Has-Lo as well (http://www.reverbnation.com/haslo). Shout out to Elzhi too, he’s very talented. Thank to you my best friend Ceschi and Fake Four. Thank you to everyone who is getting down and showing love. I’m indebted to you forever….and I truly appreciate you.

The one truly negative thing that happened in my world this year is I lost my grandmother. There’s not much I can/want say about that to convey the void it’s created but even so I have to say something. I’d never been to a funeral before. I’d never really lost a close relative before. So suffice to say my family and I were devestated in a lot of ways. But at the same time it pushed me to stop wasting time with a lot of things that ultimately don’t matter and just seize the moment. So through that overwhelming loss, I grew and although my grandmother is gone she taught me to keep perservering so that’s what I’ma keep on doing….

So yeah. 2009 is over and it was a great year. Time to make 2010 even better.

Thank you.

Peace

-MiC K!NG (fka iCON the Mic King)

p.s. Catch me on tour in Canada in January. I will be performing a set of Drake cover songs. Also US & European tours coming soon. Going to be EVERYWHERE in 2010.

______________________

A tip of the hat to iCon the Mic King. More iCon here, here and here.

Peace,
Employee

Intuition: “Damnit… sole is playing at low end theory tonight and i totally had a ‘hi employee’ sign made to take a picture with him but he politely refused. i swear to christ on a cross. i told him that he should just be a sport and laugh at himself just this once but he wasn’t having it. such is life.”

Intuition is my message board friend. Since I exist only on and see the world exclusively through the internet, I am forced to rely on random dispatches and cables regarding situations surrounding myself. And he had nothing to do with this post so please don’t throw tainted broccoli at him if you two ever cross paths. I will be deleting all digital copies of your music. This is in addition to allocating all physical copies of your music (irrespective of eBay value) to the garbage can department. To you, your Crocs, your prima donna revolution, I bid adieu.

To the rest of you kind folk, register at the PhilaFlava Forums and participate in the madness.

Peace,
Employee

A hardscrabble investigative internet journalist can never be afraid to ask the painful questions. Put forth the challenging inquiries. Stare into the face of the cold truth. Get the answers. Let the dominoes fall as they should. Slug shines a spotlight on what happened with and the mechanics of the legendary quartet Deep Puddle Dynamics in this hard-hitting, in-depth interview.

Employee: DPD is widely regarded as a groundbreaking collaboration of the early internet rap gawdz. Was recording it awkward on any level or did it flow seamlessly in the studio?

Slug: i lost a close family member during the recording sessions. so i had to leave for 2 days during our 10 day session.
i wouldn’t say awkward, but we didn’t know what we were doing.
we had a lot of fun.

Employee: Post-DPD you started to noticeably distance yourself from Anticon as a whole. I’m not asking you to burn bridges or critically blast anyone. But why the effort to separate yourself from the Anticon collective?

Slug: dudes were younger than me, so it was hard to agree with a lot of the strong opinions that were floating around.
then, when i released godlovesugly and a few of those dudes started calling me a “sell out” for that record, i knew that for better or worse, i wasn’t on the same page when it came to making music.
it wasn’t so much that i was trying to separate myself from the collective, but i didn’t want to be part of the artmob mentality that i thought i was seeing from them.
however nowadays, i do consider how youth played a role, and i no longer have those issues with any of those dudes

Employee: You once remarked you’d participate in a DPD sequel if Sage Francis replaced Sole. Why?

Slug: i don’t remember saying that, but if i did, it wasn’t serious.
it was probably just a dumb jab at sole. i used to be mad at him.
i offer humble apologies for that.
truthfully, sage should have replaced me.

Employee: Where do you rank the DPD album in the Slug discography?

Slug: just another record. like the rest of the crap i’ve participated in.
i don’t really revisit any of my shit, unless i’m gonna perform it live.

Employee: Did you receive any backlash from friends of yours for the album itself?

Slug: nope. most of my friends didn’t listen to our type of shit.

Employee: Knowing what you know now, would you take part in it today if the opportunity arose?

Slug: wouldn’t work. i’ve become quite the control freak since those days.

The End.

Peace,
Employee

From 2002, featuring Dose, Sole, Telephone Jim Jesus, Jel, Bomarr Monk, Odd Nosdam, Passage, Sage Francis, Alias and Why?

Anticon Future Primitive Radio Session

Peace,
Employee

SHOUT: Sole Forum

Nuclear Winter

Peace,
Employee

Sole is unleashing his Nuclear Winter mixtape on the public in a couple of days. However, he’s taken the unusual step of both censoring himself and revising the hook to his interpretation of Jeezy’s “My President.” Why? A handful of bloggers and message boarders decried the track’s original hook and its perceived message. Vaginal artistic resolve and political correctness for the sake of political correctness aren’t suitable partners for someone whose staked his claim as a harbinger of truth and a beacon of rap defiance. You can listen to/download the new version here and peep the lyrically lyrical revisions here.

I thought you were da baddest poet.

Peace,
Employee

Sole’s rendition of Young Jeezy’s “My President” continues to stir controversy among the thin-skinned legions he caters to. Whining from the limp-wristers and rebellious vegans is expected. But now even Sole is confused:
“im gonna say… “my president is black, and thats cool and shit…
but i wont call you president till you show me your birth certificate….”

. gotta wait for my mother in law to leave so i can record it though!

and for the record, this is not a parody.

its less of a parody actually, then the version of “this land is my land” they sing in elementary schools. (… the socialist messages are taken out of the woodie guthrie version). in the mainstream world, everyone is reworking each others’ tracks, kind of covering them, but adding their two cents and making it a new song. its in the folk tradition, a song is passed down, improved, changed, adapted to fit the times…. so why does it make it parody when i do it? is calling my shit a parody…. is that like… reverse-reverse-reverse racism? black hole racism? white dwarf racism? is it kneejerk-faux-libertarian-collegeboy-selfhate-backtalk? what is the meaning of life?”

Ummmm……..WTF? It’s a parody. Then it’s not. Then it is. Then it’s kind of a parody, but not really. Then he reverts to being the perennially misunderstood, tragic indie artist.

Not long after that we stumble across another heaping serving of Sole’s inverted political message fuckery:
“its a hiphop mixtape, its not a parody, you do know what hip-hop is right? you should look up “detournment,” a situationist tool for changing the meaning of something and giving it a new message. thats exactly what i had in mind with this shit, i cant wait till you hear “turn my swag on.”

white guilt is some 90s shit.

and no im not a birther, that was a joke.

im not dumbstruck, im dissappointed with how boring/literal/kneejerk some people are.

if i was black, wearing a scarf, making the same music sole had, yall wouldn’t say its a parody. so who is showing their white on white racism here?”

As I’ve said in the past, Sole is a firebrand in his own right and doesn’t strike me as a dumb mother fucker. But shouldn’t you be clearer about your purpose and intent than Gucci Mane’s diamond collection when you’re dropping material bound to incite?

Are white rappers allowed to criticize and/or mock the commander-in-chief? Is today’s white rapper at a disadvantage “solely” due to melanin deficiency?

Chuck D lights a candle and cries.

Peace,
Employee