You may or may not have remembered me ever mentioning something about my friend Marc and his bamboo longboard company, Booboardz awhile back. Since Booboardz are grown and handmade in the Philippines, he asked me to do more of a Polynesian tribal twist to their logo.

BooBoardz is founded upon using quality bamboo and the decks themselves are “an innovative new product specifically designed For skateboard builders seeking a more environmentally friendly skating option with a sustainable solution.” Definitely sounds like something I could glide with.

Peep the video below from Marc’s brother Rob who’s posted up in Cebu and loving life. The longboarders over there began a movement on Earthday, linking their arms together and keeping the highway traffic at bay. Pretty incredible what a few kids can do.

Live right,

Throwback thursday tune is brought to you by DJ Freeza Chin and his dope warm up show on nasty.fm for Junglist Movement this past March 2nd, while your girl was trippin off the Wu. click here for the mix that is a nice selection of classic reggae and dancehall that has been sampled in ragga and jungle. As a junglist and lover of reggae myself, I’ve blasted this on continuous rotation a dime of times since having it passed along to me only two days ago. The funky at the end is the cherry ontop. Be sure to listen for the track below, official throwback thurstday tune for the Ides of March by Major Notes and Mellody.

Tags: chunes, freeza chin, funky, jungle, music, ragga, thirstay, throwback, thurstday, toronto

The Genius, in the flesh. So anybody that knows anything about me can be sure of two things: a.) that I absolutely fucking love am obsessed with WU TANG (can’t believe I actually wiki-hyperlinked that, but hey, some don’t know but should def get to knowing), and that I’m barely ever seen out of my workshop lab, so you can understand knowing these two things now, that I couldn’t pass on seeing Gza, The Genius perform live with Masta Killa at the Opera house here in Toronto this past March 2nd. A WuTang show is enough justifiable reason for me to go out, round up my homies, have a couple drinks, and cut loose, guilt free.

Maybe I should take the time to explain why it is that I love the Wu so much. First of all, Wu is for the children. As most people would immediately assume that it’s gangster rap, upon close lyrical inspection, it would become very apparent, very quickly that these guys are super intellectual and not only think and reflect about what they have observed in their thirty to forty year stunts on this earth so far, but they also tell the stories of nyc so goddamn eloquently. It has been said that the big apple is a zoo, Sinatra himself sang about how if you could make it there, you could make it anywhere, and when you listen to the Wu, it’s a huge surprise that these guys were able to make worldwide domination take place on a legendary legacy kind of way.

These 9 soldiers (there are also peripheral members of the Wu, ofcourse, but the common number across the board of the original crew seems to be 9), are all unique dudes who grew up during the crack and aids epidemics in the harsh and over populated projects and tenement buildings in Parkhill, Staten Island to Brownsville, Brooklyn. Make no mistake, the environment and experiences are written all over their tracks and rough-neck demeanours, no strangers to the streets, their minds on something bigger than running around in circles in the depths of the zoo. So you can imagine my amazement at Rza the Razor‘s ability to round up all these super talented dudes, make them come together for one vision and make it all work cohesively. Rounding up artists, let alone rough dudes who no doubt have enough stacked against them already as it is, is like herding cats and somehow this dude made it happen.

I’ve read the Rza Wutang manual, more than once, cover to cover and for those of you who think this is just some boyband type shit, you are sadly mistaken. These guys have much to say about life – they’ve seen things that I would never want to see, they’ve seen afrocentrism stake a claim and then deteriorate into the substance-less blingbling era, been influenced by old members of the Black Panther party in the community, whopped crack to get out of poverty, been in and out of the penitentiary institutions and have solid foundational beliefs relating back to martial arts and other mystical teachings like numerology. Through the manual, I quickly realized that Rza is the ultimate general, a talented, determined, smart and strategic business man who placed his soldiers amongst different labels, placing his chess pieces accordingly. He knew the strong points of each of them, and utilized them to their best ability. Bending the soul sucking corporate hiphop label world to its knees by staying true to themselves and keeping focused on their vision is no easy task, but these guys pulled it off with ease.

Wu’s been going strong for over a decade and a half now, easily. These guys have an intense world following. The production of their music is flawless and their lyricism is bar none. In fact many of the prolific rappers that are famous today could trace their styles, flow and technique to the members of the Wu. Surely you know Nasty Nas, the man who brought us One Mic, If I ruled the world (with Lauryn Hill), ex of hiphop vixen Kelis? Listen to that guy, then listen to Raekwon the Chef. Identical flow.

When you’re a purveyor of quality music, not just hiphop, the quality of these guys is undeniable. These guys have it SO GOOD that they don’t need an introduction. Gza showed up on stage in a pair of jeans, a commoner addidas hoodie and that legendary smirk on his face that says nothing but “I know what I got, I’m not afraid to use it, and I came to fucking kill it on this earth.” No fucking bullshit chain, no fucking bullshit displaced ego, just him and the mic and the songs he wrote nearly twenty years ago.

One word: Masters.

Yours truly, and fellow wutang lover, homegirl Suling of Breakfast Lunch and Dinner.

The Gza resurrecting the Dirt Dawg, Old Dirty Bastard through a rendition of Shimmy Shimmy Ya!

One of my all time favourite Gza tracks, featuring the first member of Wu I fell for, the one and only Panty Raider, Mister Method Man. (please refresh the page if the embedded video frame below doesn’t show up.)

RIP ODB. I can’t say enough about these guys. I mean, on Valentines day, I got their “W” symbol tattooed on my face in black light ink. In many ways, they’ve influenced and inspired a lot of my work, and I know they will continue to do so for years to come. There are already recordings of their little shorties up on the booth and to hear their kid’s drive and balls in their flows is such a revelation. They’ve proven they’re here to stay. Everything they said has come to fruition. Method Man and Redman in movies, promoting Mens speedstick in commercials??! They were the first dudes to start doing that. Y’know how all these geedee rappers are making their own “clothing labels?” Well, Wu tang was the first on the scene with that again, as these dudes used to get their clothes tailor made for them to be unique in nyc, they created WUWEAR. I remember being a snot nosed yout at eleven, and seeing girls rock babytees with the wutang W and their “icecream sundae” label on em (ie. french vanilla for the whitegyals, chocolate for the sistas, and caramel and butter pecan for the rest of us tan complexion ladies) and scrawling “W: CARAMEL” EVERYWHERE. And for those of you who think that they’ll fizzle out, check out the Tim Westwood freestyle by Methodman, U-God and Masta Killa. These guys age like a fine wine.

#longevity.

Peep the Wutang throwback I had to toss into the design:

Tags: ghostface, gza, hiphop, longevity, method man, music, odb, opera house, playtime, raekwon, rza, shaolin, toronto, wu tang

“When I see open road in front of me and open sky above me, this strong urge to twist the throttle and plow right into it overtakes me. I live for those opportunities.”

We finally got pelted by a few inches of snow here in Toronto, and until I’m up at the top of a hill about to glide and carve down it on my swift and trusty snowboard thankful for the fresh powder, I’m missing summer days more than you even know. Time to put my head down, get diligent and dream of the warm sun on my skin. For now, I found this archive video of me and my bike riding through my old crib in East York to the downtown core from my youtube channel that kind of twanged my heart a bit with anticipation and longing. enjoy!

Tags: cruising, katchoo, motorcycles, summer, sv650

Chase the sunshine.

Tags: 1996, 2011, 2pac, bonnie and clyde, california, city of angels, dreaming, los angeles, tupac

Happy fourtwenny to the Only Other Girl, MaryJane RedGreen: thirteen years of unwavering devotion, loyalty, inspiration, burn-outs, ridiculous laugh fests that swayed my soul, and marvelous munchies. Thanks for letting me still do me through all these years you stood by and never laid a guilt trip when I had to take my time and space.
Always, C. xo