Things I Say You Should Like

So there's a spring quarter concert called Mayday being presented by Backdrop Magazine, Black Student Cultural Programming Board, ImPRessions, Student Activities Commission, University Program Council, and Vision Ohio, featuring performances by Clipse and Consequence. The show is at 5:00 p.m. on May 20, 2010, at the McCracken fields and it is free of charge.

Neither of these entities have done anything memorable in the past 10 years, but all individuals are fairly formidable rappers.

Clipse is a rap duo consisting of Malice and Pusha T. I'm not very familiar with the groups work, save for the 2008 song "Wamp Wamp(What It Do)" featuring Slim Thug, but that's not to say they won't put on a good show. Pusha T has been featured heavily on a lot of peoples recent mixtapes, such as the Kids in the Hall and Bun B. One song in particular that sounds great bumping in your car is Ridin' Down the Block



Clipse' first CD came out back in 1999 and was, like their subsequent albums, produced heavily by the hip-hop producing duo The Neptunes, consisting of Pharell Williams and Chad Hugo. This helped push the groups popularity once the Neptunes and their side project N.E.R.D became popular; riding their coat tails in a sense.

Though both members of the group have expressed that they are going to be recording individual projects soon, it will be cool to see them together.

And then there is Consequence, who has been more successful with his personal feats than popularity, but they're impressive either way. After putting out a mixtape called Take 'Em To The Cleaners, he grabbed the attention of a moderately famous Kanye West, who offered him a verse on "Spaceship" from his freshmen effort The College Drop Out.

As a result of this, when West was looking for artists to sign to his label G.O.O.D. Music, he instantly thought of Consequence. Consequence released his first album Don't Quit Your Day Job, which wasn't received well but featured to solid songs Grammy Family produced by DJ Khalid and The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, both featuring West as a guest.



Long before Consequence was signed to West's label, he became famous for a different reason. Consequence is the cousin of Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest, one of the most popular hip-hop groups of the 90's. On their 4th album, Beats,Rhymes, and Life, he was featured on 6 different tracks. One of my favorites being Jam, where he takes the 2nd verse.

Though this was a great stepping stone for his career, Tribe broke up shortly after that and his fame was mostly relegated to his mixtapes.

Consequence released a pretty impressive CD a couple of months ago called Movies On Demand but failed to produce any hits thus far. It has a great backing cast, especially for someone most people haven't heard of, with artists like Kanye West, Rick Ross, Asher Roth, Common, John Legend, Kid Cudi and Talib Kweli (whom I saw perform at Ohio University my freshman year).

The CD is heavy with soul samples and samples of other old-school rap songs that serve his style of rapping well. Also, since he has West working on his album, you know its going to be rife with all types of soul and it fits the style of many of the other rappers on this CD.

You can pick up his album from the iTunes store or a record store, if they still exist but I don't know why you would do either. It is available from a free, sponsored download at datpiff.com, an excellent resource for all your mixtape needs.



I thought that I should also give an honorable mention to Wale, because he was originally supposed to be the artist performing at this Mayday event. I would venture to guess that a lot more people are familiar with Wale than Clipse and certainly more so than Consequence but I think its exciting regardless.

Wale is a rapper from Washington that is part of this new class of hipster rappers that white people just love. He has some pretty tight tracks, though he gets pretty boring over time. Two good ones to check out are Wordplay and Chillin' featuring Lady Gaga.

photo by Elizabeth Nihiser

So my birthday is coming up this next weekend and, much to my chagrin, one of my favorite Athens-born bands will be playing at Jackie O's on the 15th. The band I speak of is Joey Hebdo, which I realize is a persons name, the lead singer no less, but he doesn't always play with a band so, yeah. I first saw him my freshman year when he was in another band called Blackcoin, but they disbanded some time later. I didn't see him perform again until my sophomore year when he played a show in the basement of my frat, much to the disappointment of nearly everyone who weren't accustomed to partying and listening to what Hebdo himself describes as "adventure folk."



The way he ended up playing the frat was that he had lived with one of our members older brothers a few years back and he thought it would be a good idea to play a show in a frat to get his name back out there. Turns out not too many people enjoyed it but I loved it. I approached him after the show and said "Are you thinking of rushing this fraternity?" puzzled, he responded "no" and I told him I didn't think he would have made it anyway. Then I laughed and he gave me a copy of his CD un Ep and I loved it.

I see him nearly every time he comes to Ohio University and always encourage others to come with me because his shows are a lot of fun. This past year he came out with another CD entitled Prosciutto that I find equally enjoyable. He's always given them to me free on the condition that I give it to others and spread his music around to others, which I frequently do.



Its hard to describe his brand of adventure folk, so in the words of Rachel Stiller, "What I enjoy so much about your music is your freedom to just "rift on a known score" so to speak. Your music travels like a journey, and when you play its kinda like you invite the listener to hop in the car with you and ride shotgun. The car drives itself, you only appear to be behind the wheel. From an artist perspective, you're just as much the instrument as your guitar. The surrender is rare... No definite notes or road maps. Perhaps, just an idea of things you might like to see along the way."

If I were to compare him to other musicians, I might cite people such as Andrew Bird, the Beatles or Black Moth Super Rainbow, all groups having their own unique spin on the folk genre.

You should definitely check out his MySpace and listen to all of his songs really, but two of my favorites are Come for Me and Where Is the Love? If you were so inclined, you can also pick up his CD here. Or if you want to get one in person, you should probably just check out his show this Saturday at Jackie O's at 10pm.

I've been exploring Athens and the surrounding area as often as time permits since I was a freshman here. This summer, I rode my bike about 40 miles every day up and down the bike path and discovered some pretty neat things. I found this soul food restaurant called Jana's, a bunch of abandoned rail cars, an iron bridge that looks like its older than my grandparents, a bar called the Ice House Tavern where you may or may not be able to buy meth but they still let you smoke cigarettes inside, and Larry's dog house. I also have been lucky enough to always know they people who live at the balcony above Subway and it is definitely my favorite place to people watch. One of the main reasons I decided to attend Ohio University is because of all the outdoor activities you can partake in and a bunch of really unique businesses. I can't get enough of Athens, and I'm sad that my time here is nigh.


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Larry's Dog House is definitely one of my favorite places to go eat questionable meats in phallic form for a very reasonable price. I feel as if its one of the most over looked eating establishments in Athens and its right under your nose. Oddly enough, its located a few seconds past Lucky Dog on West Union Street, so you should definitely check it out the next time you make a liquor run.

They have a pretty standard menu full of things that make me proud to be an American; foot-long chili dogs, hamburgers, fries, fish, chicken in its many forms, hand-spun milk shakes, and even pork tenderloin. I have never ordered anything besides the foot-longs and fries but I would assume that it is all just as satisfying.



The thing I really like about Larry's is that I feel out of place when I go there. The crowd there consists mostly of locals and there's always tons of little kids and old people there. It definitely has a very down home, mom and pop kind of feel to it. Every Wednesday is Weenie Wednesday where you can get a hotdog for 99 cents. What a deal.

So, we all know that everyone loves to go to Stroud's Run during spring quarter but most people just go to lay out or play frisbee. I feel like people don't take the time to explore other aspects of the park like its shooting range, camp grounds, Indian burial sites and trails. The other day, some friends and I went adventuring to explore the woods around the park. It was great exercise, very relaxing and I felt like I did something with my life besides sit in the library.



I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived...Thoreau

It would seem to me that one of the more popular types of posts in the blogosphere is that of lists of helpful things to make your life easier. I am assuming that most of my readers are college students, perhaps journalism majors, and these are some sites that I find helpful in my life so I would assume they could help you too. Some of the sites are more for entertainment purposes, or just interesting articles you can throw into every day conversations.

1) Accessing Blocked Websites
-One of my favorite tips from this website tells you how to watch television shows online that are blocked because you don't live in that country. Oddly enough, I use it for the very reason they suggest, to watch episodes of BBC's Top Gear online.

2) Confusing File Extensions
-There is nothing more aggravating to me than not knowing how to do something on my computer, like finding the correct file extension to get in order to read a file. This website ended these problems.

3) Common Misconceptions
-This one just fulfills my need to know a bunch of obscure information that most people wouldn't bother investigating. But did you know that for the time period, Napoleon wasn't even short...that blows my mind.

4) Be Smarter and Informed
-I find news stations in the United States to be ever so annoying, so most of the time, I watch my news on BBC. They do a good job of covering pertinent things in the world today, and this podcast is a good supplement for that. I just subscribe to it with my iTunes.

5) Finding New Music
-This is a really fun and intuitive website that helps you find new music in an interactive way. I like to always be listening to things people have never heard of, so this is the perfect site for other music nerds.

6) Free Office Software
-My computer crashed not too long ago and I didn't have the installation disks for any of my Office programs so this came in very handy when I had to make presentations and use a word processor. It is completely free.

7) Never Register with a Website
-I hate giving my personal information to websites in order to view their content and this lets you get around that. Basically, people put their user name and password for different sites on bugmenot.com and you bypass the whole registration process. Pretty cool.

8) Text to HTML
-This does exactly what it sounds like, and if you blog, you could see how it could be useful.

9) Learn to Read Faster
-Spreeder is a website that allows you to paste whatever text you want into this program and it will display it to you at whatever speed you choose. This will help improve your reading abilities, which will make your studies easier.

10) Free Books
-I've taken many English classes and have had to buy many books that I later found to be foolish decisions. So many of the texts we read are available for free online if you only take the time to look. Even if you don't have English classes to navigate, this is great for casual readers as well.

Festival season is upon us in Athens, Ohio; a time in everyone's school year revered to be the best of the best. This upcoming weekend, we have both Ark and High fest to attend. We wait through our towns miserable winter to behold the beauty that is spring quarter; scantily clad women letting it all hang out, shirtless beer-bellied bros bonging beers, people spinning around playing dizzy bat and making some of the best worst decisions of their lives. The coup de grace of festival season is the final Fest of the year, this year being 7 Fest, as it is named for the subsequent number of years it has taken place.

Last year, students attempted to get Kid Cudi to perform at the festival but sadly, this never came to fruition. This year however, we have secured Mike Posner to perform at the end of the day long set of performances. In addition to Posner, local rapper Jesty Beatz will be performing earlier in the day.



Posner's music is what I would put in the genre of hipster rap/R&B, with his contemporaries being individuals like Drake, Cudi, Wale and Wiz Khalifa. I haven't really decided how much I like this musician, but I've been giving his music a listen since being introduced to him by one of my roommates. He has yet to release an actual album on a major label but has put out two mixtapes that have garnered him considerable attention. Though currently signed to J Records, he decided to return to Duke University to finish his education, finding time to record and tour on the weekends.



My favorite track off of his first mixtape is "Drug Dealer Girl," because it has become a staple on my walking to class playlist on my iPod.



My favorite tracks off of his sophomore mixtape are "I Don't Trust Myself" and "Don't Trust Me." I like the first because I find it a humorous counterpoint to the latter song, which features guest vocals from Kid Cudi.

I don't know whether or not Posner will have staying power but I am still excited to see him perform at the festival. Its not exactly my type of music, its the sort of thing I have on my computer to put on when I have drunk girls over at my house, but there's a time and place for everything I suppose.

As it stands right now, he will be performing at 8pm on May 22 at this years 7 fest. Many have said that this is too late for him to perform, mainly because most people will be beyond blacked out at this point, so I suspect that his time slot will be moved to an earlier time.

Instead of being held at the Big Red Barn as it usually is, this year it will be located at 7755 Williams Road in Athens, Ohio.

So if you haven't heard any of Posner's music, you should check out one of these mixtapes to prepare yourself for the show.