the dotmatrix project

One of my favorite Hip Hop groups is Move.Meant out of California.

They are a group consisting of an emcee, a dj and a producer.

I originally found them as I was submitting Inflowential, the Hip Hop band I manage, for different opportunities. Move.Meant was last year’s Hip Hop winners for the very popular but now deceased Diesel-U-Music international music competition.

The other day I was finally changing up my myspace page and got the update under my “friend subscription” that Move.Meant had uploaded a new song entitled “What Goes Around”; It’s great, I added it as my profile song. Later I read the blog talking about the new song. “What Goes Around” is actually the song for the trailer of the new movie coming out named “The Wackness”. I check out the trailer, it confuses the mess out of me.

Starring Ben Kingsley, Josh Peck, Famke Janssen, Olivia Thirlby, Mary-Kate Olsen, Jane Adams and Method Man, The Wackness takes place in 1994 and follows Luke (Josh Peck), a teenager dealing with teenage things, at least that’s what I got from the synopsis. This movie has very strong connections to Hip Hop. Two things are mentioned in the trailer itself and all the songs on the website are Hip Hop including “Can I Kick It” by A Tribe Called Quest and “Summertime” by Will Smith.

[old poster, new poster?]

The synopsis did teach me, though, that the end of the boombox-on-the-shoulder era was because Rudolph Giuliani, who was newly inaugurated, made it a crime.

This movie seems like a trip down memory lane, if that’s not the most cliche way of saying it. I may go and see it, ‘94 was a great time for me. Seven years old and all.. :)

Wow.

That’s pretty much all I can say. Today, I just got back from my first trip to Boston. It was cold and rainy for the most part but a very interesting city.

I was in the walking city because Inflowential, an artist I manage, won first place in an mtvU competition to open up for Wyclef Jean at UMASS. It was my first time seeing Wyclef perform and it was definitely the most exciting concert I’ve ever been to.

He is the most passionate performer I’ve seen live and everything he did was with such amazing ease.

He kept us on our toes for the entire performance with the surprises of:

• Playing the guitar behind his head
• Bringing his wife on stage — a beautiful lady who I had never seen before and who he admitted didn’t come to a lot of his shows
• Inviting 50 audience-member “Shakira’s” on stage to perform “Hips Don’t Lie” with him. (I had to be one..)
• Undressing down to his T-shirt in what felt to me like 40 degree weather and convincing the audience to do the same. (I did as well)
• Climbing the scaffolding
• Mixing his own vocals from the DJ booth

The picture above that I took from backstage shows right where he got everyone to take off their coats as well and wave them above their heads as we chanted “O-O-O-O-O” to a particular tune in support for Barack Obama.

The video below is very simple but touches my heart. I put together a quick video of two of my favorite clips of the concert, one from the beginning and one towards the end where his head was steaming in the chilly weather.

I had never seen something like this before.

I really hope you get to check out his live performance one day, it’ll be well worth it.