It feels great to be back in SA. I’m still floored at the fact that we got invited twice in less than half a year. Most Americans don’t even get to visit another country once in life. Let alone Africa twice in a few months. Definitely grateful for it. The folks at the Jo-burg airport were less enthusiastic, however. We got in, went to passport control, stood in line, and after a 24 hour trip here, I nearly got sent back to Paris where I connected from. Apparently I had only one Visa spot left in my passport and South Africa needs two spaces to stamp a valid Visa. The female border control officer’s solution was to send me back to France. I thought she was joking because she said it so nonchalantly. Her exact words were, “Your passport is full, you have to go back to Paris.” I was about to laugh at what I just knew was a joke until she turned her back to me and began having a conversation with someone else as if the matter was finalized. Then thankfully another guy came over and asked what was happening. They spoke in a native language about the situation and then the lady said she wasn’t going to let me in. The guy brought me over to another line and told me he’ll work it out. So dude, if by some strange coincidence (and it is a small world) you’re the guy who let me off the hook and you’re reading this, THANKS! And tell your co-worker who gave me a hard time that it ain’t my fault she doesn’t like her job and I love mine.
So Bahamadia and I finally go through to get our bags and of course they are the only bags still on the conveyor belt. We grabbed them and headed out of customs where another guy stopped us and decided to probe me with 21 questions about what I was doing there and where I live while rummaging through my belongings. When I told him I was on my way to DJ on YFM (the big urban radio station here), he asked me if I knew one of the DJs that’s on during the day and then let us go.
Our friend and host, Candace picked us up and put the pedal to the metal on the highway to get us to the interview. We then jump out of the car and went to get right on the Air on 99.2fm. Great to, once again, see Lee, Ace, and other folks we met on our last trip.
Overall a pretty hectic entrance to SA but still not enough to take away my joy and excitement for the shows that we’re playing here.

Stay tuned…

Also Black Moses & Bernie Mac, REST IN PEACE

Greetings y’all,

One love to Mr. Lif, my man Metro, and the folks at the Northeast Kingdom Festival in Vermont. We had a great time although we drove through about 8 hours of rain, messed up our good kicks, and got stuck in the mud, needing to be rescued by a tractor on the premises. The crowd definitely made up for it though and the show went really smooth.

I’m back for 2 days and preparing myself for another long flight to Africa. This time, we’ve been invited to other regions we didn’t visit last trip, so I’m excited. I’ll be sure to keep you guys up to date from there when I can get access to the net.

I know I said I’d update you all with another CD Archive and here it goes.

Back in 2003, King Britt was working on his Adventures in Lo-Fi album as part of the Beat Generation series for BBE and was preparing for it’s promotion at the Winter Music Conference in Miami. Perhaps he decided to contact me from hearing our radio show mixes back then or old mixtapes. I don’t really remember exactly how King knew I was the Philly “go to guy” for mixtape-style CD samplers but one day he called me and told me he was wrapping up the project and wanted me to do the promo mix for BBE. I was a fan of the series ever since the first release, Welcome 2 Detroit, so I was all ready to dive in. Once the mix was done and handed into the label, I eagerly awaited to see how it would be packaged and what the response would be overall. I received a bunch of nice feedback on it and even got offered a bunch of other jobs doing mixtape samplers for subsequent hip hop albums. King also threw a big album release party in Philly at the Five Spot and invited me to get down. The love King Britt has shown me and my crew has helped us and our brand tremendously since then.

There was a wide circulation of this mix during the 2004 Winter Music Conference and during further promotion of this album throughout that year. I only had my hands on about 20 of them I think but I managed to save one mint condition copy to digitize and give away to you guys.

So here…