J-Pros: Down With The Kings.

We were blessed with the opportunity to rock with Amsterdam, 2Soul and Urban Seeds last night at Neumos! It was J-Pros' first time at the Capitol Hill venue and we performed our longest set to date. Needless to say our set went really smoothly (all those rehearsals paid off) and we definitely had a blast. We truly appreciate those who came to the show and supported local music!

Here's a video for the beginning of our set:

Check out Reggie's (R'Senull) YouTube account for the rest of the set. I'll be uploading photos on my Flickr account later today.

"The Grudge" Music Video.

After a couple days of filming in Seattle, we recently released the video for "The Grudge" on YouTube and Vimeo!



We've received good feedback in general about the message of the song, but there have been some mixed signals about what we were trying to say. To clear the air: In the Filipino culture, lots of parents push their kids to pursue certain careers and disregard what they might really want to do. In our culture, it just happens to be medicine/nursing. And so to our friends and colleagues in the medical field, remember that this song isn't a personal message to you -- it's about the moral of the story. With that said, enjoy!

A huge thanks to Donny Rojo of Kinematic Frameworks for conceptualizing and directing this video! We hope to work with you again.

Respect Mine.

It won't be too long before I'm back in the studio. The need to create new songs is way too strong to ignore, so I'll appease that craving by filling up more pages in the rhyme book. Granted I'm a little rusty having been away from the game for quite a while, but I'm not too worried about the output. I just need to remember to keep producing quality bars that exceed my own expectations about the song-writing craft.

I was browsing photography blogs for inspiration and happened upon this one, which offered a relevant quote about quality and talent:

Talent is not when your friends tell you they love your work, but when people who don't like you have to admit it's good.

I love winning over non-believers, if not by them becoming actual fans of our music, the at least by their respect for what we do. But as we all know and have unfortunately experienced:

mm hmm

Here's to some productive sessions in the booth in the upcoming weeks.

BTW, J-Pros is now on Twitter. Click that Follow button, people!

Decent Exposure.

I admit, it feels nice to be interviewed about our music. Yesterday R'SENULL and I finished up an email interview with Vivian Nguyen, a writer for Northwest Asian Weekly. She was interested in writing an article about J-Pros in the wake of our second album, Pacific Central. It's the second interview I've done this summer so I was ready for more.

nahmean son

The questions themselves were basically the same: our respective backgrounds, the origin of J-Pros and how Asian-Americans fit into the hip-hop landscape. Like Mister Vee, Ms. Nguyen asked about the internal dynamics of the group -- how we worked together under long-distance conditions and about our song-writing process in general. Answering the questions got me excited about performing music and even writing again -- something I haven't focused on in several months. (There's just something about being on stage that keeps drawing me back somehow ...) I have some ideas brewing around in my head that might improve my pen game, but I'll go into those in more detail in a later post.

I'm not sure when the piece will be published in NWAW, but rest assured I'll post updates. Stay up!

Beats From The East.

Last Saturday I was a guest on CJLO's Beats From The East radio show, based out of Montreal and hosted by DJ Mister Vee. The 2-hour program highlights "the best urban music (Soul, RnB, Hip-Hop, Funk, Electro, Acid Jazz, Reggae...yes, Asian-Reggae exists!) from Far-East Asian communities worldwide." Mister Vee had gotten hold of our album Pacific Central and wanted a live interview with Reggie and me; unfortunately R'SENULL already had plans for that evening and so it was left to me to hold it down.

CJLO Beats From The East

Mister Vee also had a guest in the studio, an upcoming French artist named Océane who was part of a band that covered K-Pop songs. He interviewed her in between tracks, and towards the end of the first hour spun "Grown Past That" to segue into the interview. As the song played, he called me on the phone (off the air) and we talked for a couple of minutes. As the song ended, he gave a pretty nice introduction -- mentioning us alongside Blue Scholars no less. Haha, dope.

For the 20+ minutes I was on the air, I think I did a good job fielding questions. Topics ranged from Seattle sports, to the state of the music industry, to the origins of J-Pros. I did enjoy answering questions about our music-writing process, as it definitely had been an interesting challenge to collaborate and successfully complete an entire album while Reggie and I lived in different time zones. I capped the interview off with an exclusive freestyle that I'd written earlier in the day. (I believe I stumbled a little in the beginning but a few bars later I hit my stride. Cut me some slack -- I haven't performed in a long time haha)

You can listen to the entire podcast here, or go straight to my interview here.

Overall, I had a great time. Mister Vee was an excellent host, and J-Pros definitely appreciates the shine we got on the show! (Not to mention the numerous mentions on Facebook, Twitter and the CJLO website.) Beats From The East has earned itself a new listener, and maybe we can build and off this new friendship. Mike: Thanks again for hosting me! Let us know if you're ever in Seattle! One love.

My (Unfinished) Book Of Rhymes.

It's been a long time since I've finished writing a song. I think the last one I actually completed was sometime last spring for J-Pros' album, and that felt good to accomplish, but I can count on two hands the number of unfinished songs that are sitting in text files or in my book of rhymes (c) Nas. A couple of them are your typical exercises in braggadocio -- iller-than-thou displays of timing, pattern, breath control and flow. But most of the songs are incomplete fragments of my long-postponed solo project, Pisces Child, which is centered around my life experiences over the past three or four years.

As expected, much of the subject matter is introspective, dealing with lots of negative/destructive feelings I've harbored (and have since attempted to channel through more positive outlets). Admittedly it was very therapeutic to write down these feelings. The creativity and effort required -- to put them into rhyme form, then into something resembling a cohesive song, and then into something resembling a listenable album -- was a productive use of my free time, and I enjoy working on a project that carries so much personal meaning. However, school and my other commitment to Pacific Central inevitably ended up delaying work on Pisces Child.

[via]

Not that I'm complaining. We're rolling out Pacific Central this Thursday, 17 June, through various online outlets and I'm highly excited about unveiling our work to our friends and family. Ultimately, this will mean a bit more free time to polish up my song- and rhyme-writing skills and eventually continue work on my solo stuff. There's still so much in my head to write down, and I hope to be able to complete the Pisces Child project before too much longer.

The Front Cover.

With the upcoming release of J-Pros' second album, Pacific Central, we've been finishing up some important details having to do with mixing, sequencing and mastering the music. Reggie and I have recruited a couple of friends to help design the cover/album artwork to accurately represent the mood of our new batch of songs. Here's the cover we're going with:

Pacific Central front cover

I really dig this. Designed by the always-creative Arnold Arandia, it's a clean, clever and quite literal representation of the album title -- which combines our cities of residence (Seattle and Kansas City) in their respective timezones during our work on the music. (Needless to say, recording songs wasn't the easiest thing to schedule, but we got it done.)

We're also working on an actual website for J-Pros, so stay tuned for that. Meanwhile, I hope the sneak peek at the cover whets your appetite! It won't be long now.

Lyrics: "Weather Advisory" (Verse 01).

This song will actually be on J-Pros' second album, Pacific Central. "Weather Advisory" touches on a handful of subjects personal to Reggie and me, including addressing various rumors circulating about my dealings in Seattle. It felt good to write.

People say I got issues, why'd I quit the scene
So soon in the game when our shit was mean
So close I could reach out, grip the dream
In my hands then transform it to cream

Hold up though, I was split between
Dealin' nicotine-laced lyrics to fiends
And handlin' a whole other pressure inside
No doubt, I was in for a hell of a ride

I can't stop the gossip, plug the rumors
Designed to hurt me like cuts or bruises
You wanna see Merc messed up? Guess what
You can all kick rocks, son, scuff ya Pumas

Say what you want, and direct all your weaponry
Against me -- you won't affect my trajectory
In fact, it'll just reflect that my destiny's
To keep keepin' on, so respect that and let it be

With that said, Happy Monday.

Takin' It Back To The Essence.

Time for a little break from my usual introspective/depressing posts. Last week in Seattle, I put in work with Reggie, Rey, Joel and some friends to film a couple of videos for J-Pros' upcoming second album, Pacific Central. Reggie is doing the bulk of the video editing and he recently sent me the nearly-finished clip for one of the songs ... and I love how it's looking so far. Here are some teaser stills from one of the shoots:

Basically I stood around for a while trying to look hard. jokes

We had a ton of fun filming the videos, and I'll post embeds/links when they've been finalized. We're planning on releasing the first video/single later this spring, so stay tuned!

Keep updated with J-Pros on Bandcamp, MySpace and Facebook.