Category Archives: Blog Entries

Carlitta Durand & Zo! To Release Projects On Official Foreign Exchange Music Imprint

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Normally, I don’t wake up in a very good mood… But this morning, let me present some good news to you. I’ll let you read it directly from the Foreign Exchange Newsletter that went out yesterday…

Second of all, it is our great honor and pleasure to announce that Zo! and Carlitta Durand are now OFFICIAL artists on our Foreign Exchange Music imprint. *throws confetti*

Nic and I had always talked about the possibility of taking our partnership to the next level (I hate the word “label”), much like Jazzanova did with Sonar Kollektiv and how Jam and Lewis did with Flyte Tyme (for all my old heads out there…). When we decided to move full-speed ahead and form a production company, it seemed only right that our first artists would be two people we’ve been working with all along.

Zo! and Carlitta are much more than artists; they are family. Zo’s album “SunStorm” will drop early next year, and Carlitta Durand’s as yet untitled debut will come afterwards. I feel that Nic and I have set the bar pretty high with the level of quality and craftsmanship in our FE releases, and I have no doubt that Zo and Carlitta’s music will meet, if not surpass, that same standard. We treat their records with the same amount of love and detail as we do our own, and hopefully
upon listening, you’ll agree.

Be sure to send Zo! and Carlitta your love and well-wishes via their twitter and/or myspace pages.

Zo! (MySpace) (Twitter)

Carlitta Durand (MySpace) (Twitter)

Zo! On the New Nicolay Album ‘City Lights Vol. 2: Shibuya’

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Earlier today, the press release for Nicolay’s new album City Lights Vol. 2: Shibuya was made public, which included the tracklisting and cover artwork. I appear on two of the joints with keyboard solos (“Crossing” and “Wake Up In Another Life”)… Check the write-up….

 

Nicolay – City Lights Vol. 2: Shibuya (09.15.09)

 

Shibuya is the new project from the creative mind of NICOLAY, better known as one half of THE FOREIGN EXCHANGE. The group (which includes rapper/singer Phonte) and their sophomore album Leave It All Behind (TFE/Hard Boiled; Oct. 2008), continues to gain momentum as the duo and their extended family of singers and musicians are currently touring the United States and Canada. Nicolay and Phonte’s countless performances together have added a new level of sophistication to their musical output, resulting in what they consider to be one of their most ambitious projects yet. 

The idea for Shibuya, the second installment in Nicolay’s City Lights series, was conceived after Nicolay’s first visit to Tokyo in November 2006. The experience proved to be life changing for Nicolay, who has studied Japanese culture for most of his adult life. “This amazing place and all of its sounds and colors immediately filled up my senses,” he says. “I felt reinvigorated.” 

Once back home, he started to write and record music with a new-found sense of freedom, laying the groundwork for the albums Time:Line and Leave It All Behind as well a third album; a deeply personal homage to the Tokyo district of Shibuya that illustrates both the grandeur of Japan’s age-old heritage (“Meiji Shrine, “Rain In Ueno Park”, “The Inner Garden”) as well as the hectic city life of one of the world’s busiest metropolitan areas (“Crossing”, “Satellite”, “Bullet Train”). Where City Lights Volume 1 was primarily instrumental, on Shibuya the instrumental pieces are book-ended by several vocal songs written by Phonte and performed by Durham, North Carolina vocalist CARLITTA DURAND, who previously collaborated with Phonte on LITTLE BROTHER’s Getback album (ABB 2007). Also appearing is Foreign Exchange liveband-mate ZO!, who adds his virtuoso keyboard solos to two songs. 

“It truly is like stepping into a different world”, says Nicolay about his trip to the city. “What fascinated me most about Shibuya was the co-existence of ‘old’ and ‘new’ in seemingly perfect harmony. The most advanced technologies and innovations exist next to traditions that are rooted in thousands of years of civilization.” The album’s musical foundation mirrors this hybrid of different ages, combining influences from ’70s jazz, rock and fusion with broken beat, downtempo and electronica to form the lush, genre-bending sound that has become Nicolay’s trademark.


Tracklisting

01 Lose Your Way feat. Carlitta Durand
02 Shibuya Station
03 Crossing
04 Rain In Ueno Park
05 Satellite
06 Saturday Night feat. Carlitta Durand
07 A Ride Under The Neon Moon
08 Omotesando
09 Meiji Shrine
10 Shadow Dancing
11 The Inner Garden
12 Bullet Train
13 Wake Up In Another Life
14 Departure
15 Shibuya Epilogue feat. Carlitta Durand

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…

“Overdue Process” Track Breakdown – #5 “Crossover” (feat. Miz Korona)

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Track #5
“Crossover” (feat. Miz Korona)

One day in June during my wonderful summer break away from teaching, I was on IM with Korona catching up with her, just in general. I’ve known Korona for about 5 years now and we carry a special bond being as though we were born on the same day (September 11th) in the same year – so I always call her “Twin”, or just simply “Sis”…the girl is definitely like a sister to me. On top of that, she is just a flat-out gifted, experienced, and hungry emcee that makes you feel her passion for the music she’s on. 

So during this particular IM conversation, we ended up going back and forth talking about the projects we were working on at the time. She even sent me a couple joints to preview that were ridiculous…

The conversation started moving toward the progression of the Overdue Process album and how well things were moving…

Me: I’m finishing Asylum 7’s album. We’ve got about 3 more joints left to do.

Korona: I love his shit, he’s dope. …I’ve got to do a joint with him.

All while this IM conversation was going on, I started sending texts to A7. The gears were turning at this point…

Me: Ayo man, I’m on AIM w/Korona…Said she’s feeling your material.

A7: Oh word? I didn’t even know. Tell her I appreciate that

Me: What’s up w/gettin her on a joint for the album?

A7: Hell yeah!

It was all too easy. I guess it’s supposed to be when you have two excellent emcees that respect each other’s abilities. 

Musically, I wanted to create something a little bit darker and harder, but simplistic so that the music would be able to complement the emcees involved. I wanted that joint to provoke a sparring match between 7 and Korona – not a “Battle” between them, but healthy competition equivalent to bringing your teammate up for a big game. They did that…I figured that out on my 9th listen in a row after receiving the final vocals from them…