Now obviously that means nothing except my family used to celebrate them and we'd get half a cake. This year however, it means that I am just about half way through my year long challenge (thanks to slackin' February, the actual midpoint is in a couple of days). Looking back, I'm pleased with the work I've done on the blog thus far and I only hope to continue to write and create with as much ferver in the second half as I did in the first.
A little throwback to my first song, 180 days ago, on my actual birthday... My favorite band, Blind Melon proving why they might be the best touring band of my generation. (Screw you Phish and Dave Matthews).
The new Reflection Eternal just came out. The original collaboration of Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek, Train of Thought, dropped in 2000 so this new release is highly anticipated. If you didn't know, Me and Talib are boys...
We met at 92Y Tribeca's awesome Hip Hop Lecture series, Noisemakers, (which will have Diddy on June 15th) late last year and he signed my vinyl copies of Reflection Eternal's Train of Thought and my Blackstar album he did with Mos Def, who has the best rapper name ever. Actually Mos might have the best rap name, but Talib may actually have the best REAL name ever. Talib Kweli Greene (we'll just drop the Greene part for now) comes from the Pashto language, spoken in Pakistan and other central & south asian countries. Talib is the singular of Taliban which doesn't mean terrorists like you may think if you watch FoxNews, it means Students. Kweli comes from the term Qawwali which, in Islam, is the Musical Recitation of the Holy Qua'ran, the most allowed of all musical expressions. That makes Talib's natural and given name, The Student of Holy Song, if thats not the best name (to an ethnomusicologist) then I dont know what is.