Author Archives: Zo!

D.C. Dilla Tribute @ Liv… Starring Ma Dukes Yancey, Illa J & Phife Dawg (from 07.08.09)

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This past Wednesday we had a tribute concert and fundraiser honoring the memory of the late GREAT Jay Dee a/k/a James “J. Dilla” Yancey at Club Liv in Washington D.C. Those headlining the bill included his younger brother John “Illa J” Yancey, longtime collaborator and former A Tribe Called Quest member Phife Dawg, and Dilla’s mother Maureen “Ma Dukes” Yancey.

 

This was actually the 4th event done in D.C. in honor of Dilla and the first that I have been a part of. The band for the night…

Jon Laine – Drums

Dennis Turner – Bass

Brock Smith – Guitar

Nila Kay – Guitar

Dre King – Keys

Zo! – Keys

Alison Carney &  J-Hill – Vocals

 

The results? Honoring the music of Dilla Dawg, raising money for the Lupus Foundation, and providing some good live music and a damn good time…

Here are some video clips shot from that night… I’ll add more as I find them.

Highlight Video

 

Phife Dawg performing “Check Tha Rhime”

 

Me and Phife Dawg after the show

Zo! featured on Friday FaveCast (FFC)

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Huge shouts to my man Fave outta Houston, TX for featuring me on his website and podcast for this week. He put together a helluva playlist for this week’s edition and included our interview toward the end of the podcast itself.

Fave says:

In this edition the heat and good music increase exponentially from familiar favorites and incredible newcomers to the game. Nod your head to the best in soul and progressive hip hop from across the land and the pond.

The health tip / update deals with the mental / emotional / spiritual issues that attack our physical bodies.

As we quench our thirst for quality tunes, get ready to chop it up with one of the rising musical stars of the new millennium. He’s a dynamic instrumentalist (the piano is his primary weapon of choice) and works with some of the FFC’s most coveted artists. Zo! checks in and breaks down the current state of the industry, taking the stage with the Foreign Exchange and what’s coming soon from his creative mind. 

Get a cool washcloth, a glass of ice water and press play. The weekend doesn’t officially begin until the FFC gets in. . .

Enjoy yourself. . .

Click here to download.

~The Playlist~

C17 – Moving Violation Tribute (instrumental)

M64 – Rhythm of the Drum Sa-Ra – Love Czar

?uestlove/Foreign Exchange/Zo!/Carlitta Durand – Purple Flip

Self Scientific – Love Bird (instrumental)

Donnie – Cloud Nince [DJ Spinna Remix]

De La Soul – View

Psymun – Ain’t No Sunshine (instrumental)

Shawn Stockman – If You Were a Boy

Carmen Rodgers – Dream

Otis & Shugg – Journey

Garcia’s Grooves – I Can’t Help It (instrumental)

Atjazz – Before feat. Clara Hill

Zo! & Asylum 7 – Overdue Process

Zo! – 4 Dilla (instrumental)

Nicolay – Rhodes (instrumental)

Foreign Exchange – If She Breaks Your Heart feat. Yahzarah

Zo! & Tigallo – I’m Only Human

Zo! & Asylum 7 – Rigorous (instrumental)

Nicolay – Coltrane (instrumental)

Fave – Another Love Song (instrumental)

9th Wonder – Everybody Loves the Sunshine (instrumental)

G.C. – Off the Wall Tribute (instrumental)

Questlove Talks About the “Purple Flip” joint…

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As y’all may know from the last post, the brotha Ahmir Thompson a/k/a Questlove, the drummer from the Legendary Roots Crew programmed the drums on the “Purple Flip” joint that was leaked yesterday. Well here is what he had to say about the song itself…

Questlove/The Foreign Exchange/Zo!/Carlitta Durand EXCLUSIVE!

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Let’s get down to business immediately… I want to drop something new on y’all today. The night before our vacation to Bermuda a couple weeks ago, Phonte hit me up at about 1am and passed me this joint to play on. He was telling me that Questlove had flipped Prince’s “Take Me With You” and that he and Carlitta Durand also did their own take on the lyrics…. Dope. I sent my parts back, Nicolay finished it up while we were gone and now we have a 5-person collaborative effort in tribute to the living legend himself….

PURPLE FLIP [right click and save to download MP3 file]


Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson– Drums, Samples

Nicolay– Fender Rhodes, acoustic piano

Zo!– Moog synth, additional rhodes

Phonte and Carlitta Durand– Vocals

This is the first in a series of random goodies that we will be periodically dropping off in your mailboxes. (Who loves ya, baby?)

We recorded this over a month ago specifically for a ?uestlove tribute party dedicated to The Purple One himself. Other than passing it off to a few DJ friends who vowed to keep it on some secret squirrel, “bet you aint up on THIS!” status, no one has ever heard it. In the wake of the incredible loss we suffered on June 25 however, this joint took on somewhat of a deeper meaning.

We decided to share it with our fans not only as a token of appreciation, but also as a way of paying respect to one of our last living musical geniuses.

Let’s not wait until tragedy strikes before we show love and gratitude to our heroes, people. Give them their flowers while they live.

This one’s for you, Mr. Nelson. You are loved and appreciated.

Enjoy!

One Love,

‘Tay and Nic

Enjoy this one!…

Damn Wishbone! b/w A Tribe Called PPP

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Before our departure from Chicago, I set up a breakfast meeting with one of my old college teammates and my homegirl. I had my mouf all set for some CJ’s Eatery being as though they had come through so tough last month with the absolutely ridiculous catfish breakfast platter. BUT, we got word that they didn’t do brunch on Friday. No problem, let’s hit up Wishbone! I’ve been there a couple of times for breakfast, and they do their thing (my breakfast history @ Wishbone: Shrimp & Grits and the Banana Pancakes –LAWD). So we met up at about 10:45a and put the orders in at a little before 11a… of course if I’m listing times, you already know where I’m going with this. 11:30 came and went, 11:40…11:50?!!?!

Come on now… We had our drinks and no real explanation on why we had no food. The place was packed up, yes..BUT people around us were getting their food. I think the joint just got lost and they were covering it up – poorly. So in order for me to avoid missing my ride back to O’Hare, we had to leave and walk up the street to Starbucks so I could pick up a breakfast sammich. By this time, it was 12-something and I was HOWNGREE… I didn’t give a rat’s ass what I ate at that point. I thought that sammich and orange juice was the greatest meal of all-time… Wishbone FAILED miserably, almost an hour went by with no food, and no real explanation why. Damn, what happened? Then fast forward to the airport… It’s myself, Jeed, Train and Syd all checking in and going through security. The nasty-minded older female security folk were giving me an earfull basically saying they were gonna go through ALL of my stuff, frisk me, and make me play my bass guitar for them before they let me through. Wonderful…

We got through that madness and walked over to Johnny Rockets for a bite to eat before heading to our gates. Now mind you, I had on my Tribe Called Quest t-shirt as the four of us stepped up to order our food. The girl who took Coultrain’s order was just grinning… ear to damn ear. Then she kept saying, “I know I’m not crazy… I know I’m not crazy.” It was strange, but kats finished placing the orders, got our seats and waited for the food… 

We all looked at each other trying to figure out what the issue was and why ole girl was at the register having a moment. Train was like, “I’m pretty sure she thought I was somebody I’m not.” But the million dollar question still remained… WHO? So when Jeed went back up to get his food, he came back laughing. It turned out that because of my T-shirt, she thought we were A Tribe Called Quest HILARIOUS. So we spent about 5 minutes at the table tryna figure out which one of us was who… She had to have been real young, po’ child. At least she had A Tribe Called Quest in her mind as an option to choose from.. *shrugs*

With PPP In Chicago @ The Shrine – 07.02.09

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Well… Hit the airport for our 45 minute flight to Chicago and got to O’Hare and found a limo pulling up for us. Oh word? We were in there taking pictures like we’ve never been anywhere before… Gotta enjoy yourself right? Hahahahaha.

Anyway, we pulled up to the hotel, checked in… got grub, and hit the soundcheck. The check was long as hell, but once they got the sound locked in, it was a wrap and it was sounding good. Toward the end, in walks Muhsinah and fellow ELs member SlimKat78 to set up and check as they were scheduled to go on before us.

We had a looong time of waiting around at the hotel before we were to return to the spot to perform, so I got a workout and a pre-show meal in before we had to jet up. Once we got to the Shrine, we were informed that the place was pretty much packed out, which is ALWAYS good news. Now, once the show started…it went smoothly, until the end when they cut our set a song short because the club was about to close in 10 minutes. Can you say horrible time management? Damn man, it didn’t feel good to leave the crowd hanging like that. On top of that, the after the show piece when I like to get out there, mingle, say ‘what up’ to everybody who came out was eliminated as security was wanting everybody to leave immediately. It was confusion… but a great show once again.

On the Road With PPP in Detroit @ CityFest – 07.01.09

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Our West Coast trip in March wasn’t enough… Waajeed, Coultrain, Monica Blaire, Sydney Driver, and myself had to get back up again and roll through a couple more spots before it was all said and done. The first stop this time around was the spot where three of us call home, Detroit where we played at CityFest opening for De La Soul on the main stage.

Because of the early flight, I stayed up all night (surprise, surprise) and arrived at BWI Airport at about 4am. Delta was obviously having problems checking folks in, because despite the fact that I was there 2 hours prior to take off, by the time I got checked in, went through security, and got to the gate it was 5:50am …my flight left at 6am.


Once I landed in The D, Moms came to scoop from the airport and I got home and passed out on the couch. When I finally woke up, I checked outside and made sure I said a prayer for the bad weather to hold off until we played… Well, the weather held off during soundcheck, that was no problem. But soon after that, it started to POUR. We were scheduled to go on at 7pm and because of the downpour, the people got outta there for a minute. The rain held off for a little while once we did get on stage and the soundman had us sounding real good up there. The rain started to come back down in the middle of us playing “Stay With Me.” The thing that got me was, once the rain came back…the people stayed – how ’bout that?! I think that said a whole lot about the crowd and support group that we have back home, kats hung with us out there and I am very appreciative of that. Moms, Pops and my younger sister came out… popped open the umbrellas and enjoyed themselves – even took pictures for me. After the show, my family came back to the trailer and kicked it for a little while with the entire group, the brotha Maestro of Silent Riot stopped through, along with Mudd of 5 Ela. Everybody was just crackin’ jokes, talkin’ shiff and having a good time.

I ended up rolling to Champps with the family to get fat and have some drainks, in which I had two… We closed the night out by laughing at Shaq & Cedric the Entertainer’s Comedy special, which was HILARIOUS.

On to Chicago….!

BoltBus from D.C. to NYC

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Traveling to rehearsal in NYC for the PPP shows earlier today was interesting as always via the BoltBus, which for those who don’t know is a cheap ticket and it advertises free wi-fi, and working power outlets for your cell, mp3 player, laptop, etc. This was actually my second trip to New York via BoltBus – my first was in March. That time I had no issues with the wi-fi connection or the power outlets…started off on the right foot.

This time I wasn’t so fortunate. I couldn’t get a wi-fi signal on my iPhone, why? Because the ‘log in’ page that the nigganet defaulted to wouldn’t scroll down far enough for me to reach the ‘I Accept’ option. Therefore, I was forced to accept AT&T’s 3G availability all the way up 1-95. Ok, no problem. I decided to keep folks up to the minute by Tweeting every now and then about the loud ass kids that I happened to be sitting behind and the lil five-foot-nothing lady in the seat across the isle from me who decided she would occupy and entire row on her own. Alright… kats were keeping me on my toes, but it was alright because I still had the trusty nigganet on me to keep me busy the duration of the trip. So about an hour and a half into the drive, I figured it was time to try and get some sleep. While I got sleep, I wanted to plug my phone up to make sure it was charged back up, right? Nope! The punk ass (lack of) power outlet in front of me refused to allow that to happen by not working. I looked around at others on the bus and I noticed that no one else had anything plugged into their outlets either…WACK. So I spent the last half of the trip attempting to save my battery by not answering calls or texts (of course that’s the time when everybody wants to call or text).

Despite my phone’s power troubles, entertainment on the bus itself was never an issue. There was a kat about 4 rows in front of me who looked like damn Antonio Fargas who was on his cell talking lous as hell… You know the type of loud where a kat is just excited to have a cell phone and wants to let the world about it in his volume? This type of thing may have been effective in 84/85 when there were only a few kats carrying those big gray brick lookin cell phones, but in 2009 when EVERYBODY has one?… Nah bruh. Just when I thought ole FlyGuy was finished, he proceeded to pull out a sammich bag full of a red liquid, cracked the bag open and drank from it. I was sitting in my seat with my jaw on the floor like, ‘I KNOW this kat isn’t drinking some damn red Kool-Aid from a sammich bag!!” After no believing what the hell I had just seen, I waited for him to drink from the bag again, just to confirm for my OWN sanity the fact that I wasn’t seeing things. Huggie Bear didn’t disappoint, he tipped his head back and took a swig from the sammich bag one more time just so I could sit there by myself and die laughing while looking crazy. I hopped on Twitter for a hot second and wrote something about it and kats didn’t even believe me. I will say this as many times as it takes… I can NOT make this stuff up y’all….

 

Oh yeah, rehersal went pretty well too.

The Foreign Exchange in Detroit – 06.04.09

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I’ll be honest, I was really looking forward to going back home for the second time in a matter of about 10 days to play a show with Foreign Exchange. Ever since we started playing together in November, I have been asked in just about EVERY city we have played in, “When are y’all playing in the D?” With the way things have been looking economically here recently, I had absolutely NO answer for that question. Well, we finally got a show back home at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History – which, until recently I had no idea that they even held performances there. 

Anyway, me, Omar and Biscuit arrived in Detroit in the morning and I drove them up to the house. It was already weird to see my D.C. kats in my hometown, much less kickin it at the house. Then, I took them to The Original House of Pancakes over on 10 mile in Southfield. We HAD to head to the hotel after that because the ‘itis began to show itself as the fellas were in the car OUTTA THERE. I had enough time to sneak in a workout before heading to soundcheck. 

Overall, the show went well. Kats who came out, came OUT and seemed to really be into the show. I saw a few familiar faces… not as many as I thought would show up so it was actually good to play in front of a new crowd. My family was in there sitting front row and enjoying every bit of the show, I’m glad they enjoyed themselves. Of course I never have enough time to catch up with everyone when I go home, I don’t care how long I’m there for. I did get to kick it w/KT, Malik Alston, DJ Sicari, K-Fresh, tREBLEFREE, Alex Rogers, Roxstar, and my man Tate McBroom. See y’all again when I go back…

MusicalArchitect.com News 05.28.09

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What’s the good word y’all? Well, I guess I’ll jump right into it. Now, y’all know that since I’ve been in the DC Area, I’ve been playing with a band called The ELs, right? And since November, we have been the touring band behind Phonte and Nicolay, collectively known as The Foreign Exchange, right? Well, ever since our very first show back in November, I have been asked the same question in EVERY city we have played in, it never fails…

“When are y’all gonna do a show in the D?!”

“Are y’all comin’ to the D anytime soon?”

Welp! That time has finally come. Next week on Thursday June 4th at the Charles H Wright Museum… Foreign Exchange will be in Detroit performing with vocalists YahZarah, Darien Brockington and us…The ELs providing the music. Y’all don’t understand how excited I am about having the opportunity to go back home and present this show that I have been talking about, showing pictures and YouTube clips of for over 6 months now. To my peoples at home –please spread the word to everyone. I wanna see a ton of familiar faces in the crowd!

This show will kick off a couple of other dates including a return to Chicago and our debut in Toronto and L.A. Here is a list of the schedule:

Thursday, June 4, 2009

The Foreign Exchange with Yahzarah, Darien Brockington, Zo! & The ELs

Charles H Wright Museum, Detroit MI

More Info | Buy Tickets


Friday, June 5, 2009

The Foreign Exchange with Yahzarah, Darien Brockington, Zo! & The ELs

Revival, Toronto ON

More Info | Buy Tickets


Sunday, June 7, 2009

The Foreign Exchange with Yahzarah, Darien Brockington, Zo! & The ELs

Double Door, Chicago IL

More Info | Buy Tickets


Sunday, June 14, 2009

The Foreign Exchange with Yahzarah, Darien Brockington, Zo! & The ELs

The Roxy, Los Angeles CA

More Info | Buy Tickets

In the meantime, …just visiting too has just acquired vocal assistance in the form of Phonte and Carlitta Durand. The three of us just finished a new joint for the new SunStorm album as well. Keep your ears open…

Aaaaaand, school is almost out and I will not be teaching in the summer…so it will be yet another productive (and peaceful) couple of months. I am also one class (and two standardized tests) away from a Master’s Degree! How ‘bout that?

 

As always, I’ll continue to keep you all updated as things come up. Thank you for listening and see y’all at the next show!

Zo!

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