Credit: John Delancey, Through My Eyes Film / ill! Makaniks @ The Barbary

From Thursday’s ill! Makaniks party to The BODYROCK on Friday to taking my kid to Dorney Park and waiting in mad long lines to ride just about everything to going tubing down the river in New Hope with friends and family then taking my son and his homie Jordan to the pool this afternoon, I’ve had a busy ass few days. Still I find time to update for y’all. I’m glad y’all read!

For those of you that are asleep at the wheel and didn’t notice, we continue to work hard to bring you the illest music, news, events and so forth. Tomorrow, catch us on The Difference on 88.1fm at 9pm if you’re in Philadelphia. For those outside the area, download the broadcast afterwards from the iTunes button to the left. In other illvibe Radio News, The Sure Shot Express is now available as a mobile download on the Sprint Radio – US Cellular Network. Click on LISTEN NOW and scroll to DJ Phillee Blunt. It is our mission to bring you as much freshness as we can in 2008.

During my usual scouring of the net, I stumbled across this article about
Rare Human Abilities. Check it out. It’s a little long, but worth the read. I’m thinking I identify with the first group as I’m always the first person to notice something tastes strange at the dinner table…

Anyway, read up, educate yo self and stay tuned!

I always gripe about different issues I encounter with traveling. I love the opportunities and realize the blessing it is to get on a plane to do what you love but some things just aren’t right. My sister, during her daily emails, forwarded me an article about THIS TODAY. It’s pathetic but read for yourself.

Also, thanks to those who came out to ill! Makaniks last night at The Barbary. Me and Skip play well together.

Tonight, it continues at the M Room as we BODYROCK…

And last but not least, check out this video by my folks in Cali, FORTILIVE. I love them…

Also add them on myspace.

That’s all, now time to start my fun filled weekend.

For a few years now, folks in Philadelphia have compared Illvibe Collective with the Skratch Makaniks DJ crew and have even put together little scenarios asking what would happen if this guy battled that guy. “Who would win if Skipmode battled Excel and Jay-Ski battled Statik,” etc… Little did a lot of these folks know, we’ve always been comrads. We are all skilled and accomplished in our own rights, from my world tours with various artists to Aktive rocking MTV and BET stages with Mario and Nas, to Jay-Ski and Lil’ Dave”s legendary contribution to Philadelphia radio and so on. To put it short, beef occurs often when there is insecurity on someone’s part. We’re all super confident and respect each others work so we love hearing each other in the mix. Which is why when we were approached to do a collaboration last summer, we said “Hell yeah, let’s do it!” The night was so powerful and memorable that we were just waiting for another opportunity to present itself. In steps Justin from www.215hiphop.com who asked us all if we’d be down to do something on a monthly basis. We decided that it was a good idea and decided to have Skipmode and Sat-One hold things down on the regular with support from everyone on the respective teams.

Tonight is another edition of ill! Makaniks in which I will be the featured guest with DJs Skipmode and Sat-One. It will also be the listening/album release event for Dave Ghetto’s Hustle Simmons project so come early tonight. Plus there are dumb cheap drinks at The Barbary. Don’t Miss it.

I recently reviewed some of the music I grew up on in search of what led me to prefer the music I listen to over what’s necessarily popular at the time.

Among fun stuff like EPMD and Stetsasonic, I held a special place in my heart for X-Clan, KRS ONE, Tupac, Rakim, and Jungle Brothers just to name a few. I for some reason related to these guys at a young age without dismissing their music as preachy like so many people do today. I think I just felt the connection to black music and realized something special was happening. People were being enlightened while they were dancing or driving to the mall on the weekends. Man I miss those days.

Nowadays, if you say something serious, lots of our own people will shut the topic down with a more fun topic like American Idol or something else meaningless. I remember being in LA and seeing the Read A Book video on BET and realizing that it would be the last time I’d see it on television. For others with something to say, they can look forward to the same fate. Fortunately we have the internet as our medium to view material that is otherwise censored.

Peep

NY Oil

Nas Escobar

and tune into The Difference Tonight!

Peace