I love music. If it sounds good and has a strong enough statement to make, I'm with it. The evolution of the music scene has always been an area of interest for me. It's life long struggle to challenge the established order, honestly communicate and conventionalize, whilst trying to remain popular and maintain secular security is a good example of the whole, "to know where you're going, you must first know where you've been" ideology. It's a juggling act that has lead to some interesting amalgamatic eras of music!

We all have our favourite genres and artists. I myself am partial to a little Luther Vandross from time to time. I grew up with his music playing constantly in the house, the guy was practically a member of the family. The music scene has changed a lot since then, and lately I've found myself listening to Tinie Tempah, whose experimental fusion of electro, grime, drum and bass, hip hop, rock and even indie make him a perfect representative of a child born to the 'struggle' I mentioned earlier.

A lot of people had been raving about him but I had no clue who he was until about three weeks ago! Don't get me wrong, I'm up to date with my music (at least, I think I am!), but this one seemed to slip under the radar. I began to wonder where I'd been for the last ten months! The guy's everywhere! I later realised I knew a lot of his tracks without knowing he was the artist behind them, which gave me a small measure of comfort.

Being a creative, I really like the dynamic direction Tinie has taken both in his advertising and music videos. I've gleemed a lot of ideas from them and look forward to developing some of them in my own work in the near future. Below is the music video for "Pass Out".



This post is getting kinda long, but before I jet, if you are into Tinnie Tempah, WinkBall have been following his 2010 'Disc-Overy' tour across the UK. It's a cool way to find out what the people are thinking. You can find a link to the tours main page below:

Tinie Tempah UK Tour 2010 on WinkBall


-N-

Alex Boye', a friend of mine was down from the States over the weekend with his wife and baby girl (Still don't know how he produced such a good looking kid, definitely his wife's doing). A bunch of us ended up going to Zizi's restaurant on the Strand for dinner and a catchup. Alex is a singer so I kinda had the feeling that at some point the night was gonna turn into a episode of GLEE. It did. My friend Va was on hand with her WinkBall flip camera's to capture the wrongness! I'm suprised the manager didn't throw us out! In fact, all the staff really liked it! Maybe they should think about in house entertainment to accompany the fine food... that ones for free Zizi ;). What can I say, you can't take us anywhere!

Here's a clip of Alex and Richard singing "This is how we do it":


And here's embarrasing clip of me singing "If I ever fall in love":


-N-

Some friends were working on a blues riff and asked my to help with the lyrics. In the process I kinda got roped into singing the song at a music appreciation night. Na, that's a lie, I secretly wanted to do it! I must warn you that I was struggling with a bad throat that week! Ha ha ha! But seriously I was... ;). Good thing all I had to do was shout. We decided to call the group HUSLA but I guess it's subject to change. Here's a vid that a friend posted on a video networking site called WinkBall.


And here's a little nonsense we spoke afterward...

A couple of weeks back, Myself and some friends went to an open mike night at The Blend Bar on Wandsworth High Street. I love those things! Good vibes, good crowd, good times! You can get to hear some amazing talent! This one was no exception. Here's a clip of one of the performances. (Forgive the video quality had to use night vision and took it with my C902 ;)