Hot Dolla = Dolla?

I remember seeing a couple of singles by Hot Dolla a while ago, but I didn’t really think much of it.  Then I hear this new single on the radio, “Make A Toast,” by Dolla.   Same guy?  Probably….I can’t imagine two artists with that same spelling of “dollar.”

Hm….that first verse wasn’t that bad and it’s definitely catchy.  New smash radio hit?  Sure why not.  Haha, be funny if this was a secret promo video for the Ace of Spades champagne.

Dolla – “Make A Toast” feat. Julian

I’ll Be In The Sky

The last semester, yea…. glad that’s over with.  Always the next one, right?

Have I really slept on B.o.B?  Guy is a genius and his latest (single?) “I’ll Be In The Sky”  is so catchy I can’t believe it’s not on the radio yet.  Plus he’s got tons of material before this so I have a lot of catching up to do.

This winter break has been very relaxing.  But I have to get into some kind of workout routine, or else it’s going to go to waste like all the other breaks.   On the plus side I’ve already booked a lot of travel plans for next semester.  Monterey with Amy, Vegas + Mexico with the sirs and maams, it should be real fun.  And hopefully better academically as well =]

“I’ll be in the sky, I’ll be there, oh all right, I’ll be in the sky….”

Home for the Weekend, New Laptop, New Music

Home for Thanksgiving was good, delicious food like always and Amy came down with me so it was nice.  Took her back to Berkeley and went back to San Jose to chill. Got enough stuff done, and now I’m about to leave for class.  

My current laptop died a couple of weeks ago and I just got the official word from my uncle that it really is dead.  Apparently, using my laptop on top of my bed was a bad, bad idea.  The motherboard overheated, apparently from lack of ventilation (i.e. leaving it on bedsheets all the time).  I didn’t think it was that bad, but oh well. My dad is loaning me his MUCH better laptop for the time being, thanks thanks dad.  This should hold me over until Christmas time.

New CD’s I bought:

• Kanye West – 808s & Heartbreak / Pretty good after a couple of listens.  However, some of the songs sound like each other after a while and if you don’t like the vocoder do not listen. 
• San Quinn – From A Boy To A Man / WARNING UNNECESSARILY LONG STORY: I went into Rasputins to buy music during the E-40 release event for his Ball Street Journal.  To be honest, I’m not a big E-40 fan.  It might be all these Bay Area blogs that hate on the later “Bay Ambassador” E-40 compared to his old “Captain Save-A-Ho” self, but I never really liked ANY of his stuff.  ”Tell Me When To Go” was hot of course and I have “Ghetto Report Card,” but eh, nothing too special.  Back to Rasputins, I felt bad not buying ANY Bay Area artist.  By then, I had in my hands the last Lupe CD, Kanye’s latest, and this other non-Cali group Foreign Exchange.  I’ve liked San Quinn a lot no matter what he puts out, so I thought what the hell, I’ll give this a try.  It’s not so bad so far but I’ve only listened to 6 out of 19 tracks.
• Foreign Exchange – Leave It All Behind / I should have bought their last album, “Connected,” so I made up for it by buying this.  Haven’t listened to it yet, but should be good.
• Lupe Fiasco – The Cool / Haven’t listened to the actual CD yet, but I mean I loved all of his singles that ever received airplay so the CD is bound to be great.

Ok, off to Bekeley.  Audios.

Oh baby please don’t go…

Some songs I’m feeling right now:

• Termanology – Please Don’t Go/ WOW, what can I say.  I mean, no pratical application to my life at all, my current love life is going spiffy spiffy.  But still, the song’s hella funny and the women vocoder on the hook is genious.  Plus with the funky sounding synth beat, it all comes together pretty well.  And not as much name-dropping from Termanology as he usually does, which is a good thing.
• Eddi Projex – Breezy As Ever feat. Keak Da Sneak / Another laid back track.  No real lyricism here in my opinion, I can’t remember any lyrics off the top  except for Keak’s “pimping ain’t easy, [expletive] is you breezy?” But the beat and chorus are superb enough to make this track memorable for me.
• Q-Tip – Gettin Up / Not the usual Q-Tip?  I mean, I have not really listened to much A Tribe Called Quest aside from The Low End Theory, but I don’t remember any love songs like this.  The beat of course is laid back, I guess it’s a theme from this post.  
• Robic Thicke – Magic [Remix] feat. Sugar Tonglue Slim / The song just screams CUPCAKE CUPCAKE, haha but I was playing this for a while on my computer.  To my defense, I credit it’s replayability to the STS’s verse and the beat, but still … this is not something I would be proud to blare from a car.
• T-Pain – Can’t Believe It feat. Lil Wayne / Yes, Lil Wayne does sound like he has marbles in his mouth.  It’s probably because he can’t sing, even with a vocoder.  BUT DAMN, how does T-Pain do it.  It’s like his 5′th #1 radio single in 4 years.

Long day today, plus homework due tommorrow.  Hope this KALX thing turns out interesting.

Talib Kweli – Getting My Grown Man On

Unreleased track from Talib Kweli’s Eardrum album, which is a damn good album.  Of course, if you’ve ever listened to Bay Area radio over the last couple years, you must have made the connection between this and songs like Dem Hoodstarz’ “Grown Man On. ” It makes me think though … I know (or rather I’ve gleaned from reading a bunch of Bay Area hip-hop blogs) that Kweli is in-tune with the Bay.  Yet, the only reference we get in the song is through a metaphor involving Too $hort and trees.  Plus why is Little Brother on the track? I don’t know too much about them (I’ve heard a couple of their songs and they’re supposedly well respected lyrically), but no Bay artist on there?  One line and a North Carolina group feature when we originated the shit?  Come on now…

Makes me wonder if we really orginated the phrase in the first place?  Urban Dictionary seems to agree with my way of thinking, but eh you never know.   It’s a good song nonetheless, a nice ride-and-bump song I would play in my car if I had a CD player / MP3 player.

My Life and CS61a

Seeing as I haven’t updated my blog in a while and I don’t feel like getting started on any of my school work, I’ll go ahead and write about my life for a couple minutes.  Right now I’m currently taking CS 61A, the first of hopefully many computer classes that I will take in order to graduate with a computer science mnor.  Boy, is it hard.

I’m really glad I’m only taking one class this summer because it seems like I’m doing so much more work per week than in a normal semester.  It’s not even optional studying or reading, it’s just a slew of homeworks, projects, and soon to come, midterms.  I know if I had more programming experience or if the class was a little slower paced (like in the normal semester) it would not be this hard for me, but eh oh well.  Hopefully, when I take 61B and 70 this next fall it won’t be this bad.  Blah, I’m tired just talking about it, time to move on to another subject.

So, for the first couple weeks of summer, before summer school actually started, I started playing Guild Wars again.  Yup, the game that consumed a whole summer during my high school years is now back in my life.   At first, I was just playing it to pass time until my CS class started this summer, but after a while I got addicted again.   I gotta quit though, too much stuff coming up.

Payday tomorrow.  Huzzah!

It’s 5 A.M. in the Morning

Yup, and I’m up and at it.  I got work a 7:30 A.M., so I’m already awake in preparation for a good breakfast and hopefully a fine day at work.  I think I can really pull off this morning thing routinely if I had the will.  Who doesn’t love a good breakfast wen you wake up and feeling awake instead of groggy all morning?   It takes a whole bunch of effort and presupposes that you slept at a reasonably early hour last night, but if all goes to plan it works out quite well.

The only problem I can foresee is the dreaded 2-3 P.M. nap.  For most, this turns out to be a nice 30 minutes to a hour siesta, but for me it usually drags on until 7 or 8 P.M.  This in turn ruins my sleep cycle and prevents me from waking up early the next day.  We shall see what happens.

Beeda Weeda – You Don’t Hear My Tummy

Haha, I know this is just one of those myriad money songs, but when I saw the video on a random music blog it was in QuickTime (e.g. high HIGH quality) and it was a Bay Area artist to boot so I was like “whoa,” there must be some quality production value there at least. I didn’t recognize it at first either, but thanks to the little sound clip at the beginning of the video I made the connection with this and the Mac Dre line. Plus, this song just feels a little better than most paper-praising songs.

from youtube.com posted with vodpod

Back in America and Back to Work

Yup, just like the title states, I am back home.  Studying in Singapore, for better or for worse, has made me realized how proud and content I am being American.  Despite how messed up the country can seem at times and how dirty it may get, I am happy to live in America.  The reasons are many and I can discuss it with you if you want, but I’m not going to write it down here.  The list would most likely be too long and it’d take way too much effort to write so I’ll leave it as a mini-stub here in my blog.

I just got back to P&T and back to the kiosk booth.  It may not be the most respectable job or the most well payed, but it’s easy.  Plus I can get near 40 hours a week for a decent rate.  I mean, I just worked almost 9 hours today.  Not bad, not bad at all.  Although, if I could get a job somewhere else for comparable hours and better pay I’d definitely take it.  I guess I’m just too lazy to take initiative and look somewhere else, being happy with what I could find in desperation a year and half ago.

Giant Panda album coming out tomorrow.  I still got to buy the Lupe Fiasco one too.  But, there’s a lot of stuff I have to buy first.  Oh well, it can wait.  The Giant Panda one better not turn into an iTunes exclusive too soon, I gotta have the jewel case and album art.  Call me a sucker for packaging, but it’s just my thing.

And of course, random hip-hop video from YouTube coming soon…

Almost Done

Who would think that I’d be in the library AFTER finals were done?  It’s just so cool in here, with the air-conditioning and all, I just can’t help but think the library is the place to be in Singapore.  Haha, OK well of course it’s really not, it’s probably any place with air-conditioning, but since this is the most accessible and most affordable (free) place I’ll take it.  I’m a little disappointed in myself for my lack of proper budgeting, as I should probably be traveling and seeing the rest of South East Asia right now.  Unfortunately, I think I’ve spent so much money on eating that I’ve made quite a hole for myself.  Back to P&T for now and hopefully a close to 40 hour work weeks.  We’ll see how long I stay in this hole.

And, anyone here the new Nelly song, “Bay?”  It’s a tribute to Spice 1, Too $hort, and E-40 done by Nelly … supposedly it’s getting heavy play on KMEL right now.  Beats me though, I don’t have access to Bay Area radio here in Singapore, at least not for the next week.  I got the MP3 though thanks to the wonders of piracy and the internet and the beat knocks incredibly hard.  The last couple Droop-E songs I’ve heard have been very impressive, I’m really starting to like this guys production.  Go here if you want to hear: http://www.cocaineblunts.com/blunts/?p=977