Izza Kizza presents the Wizard of Iz

I’ve been slacking on whizhouse, but part of it has been me grinding harder at my thankless paying job. Last week I covered a mixtape release party at the Red Bull space and you can read the entire post here.

It was a hell of a night. Ian rolled through with his roomates and Dan took some fantastic photos which I posted here, and we deff enjoyed the free booze. On top of all that, this mixtape is actually much better than the first Izza tape, make sure to check it out, the download link is the The Volume post.

LVHRD presents WRK/PLY

Looking forward to a nice day of randomness and meeting some interesting people tomorrow at LVHRD’s first WRK/PLY, a non-conference conference thats going to be “really heavy on the non and pretty light on the conference.”

With an open bar from 12-7 from Dewars at Brooklyn Brewery, the speakers may be an after thought, till you look at how good the people on these panels are:

Art + Photography: Chris Rubino
Music: 88-Keys / Izza Kizza
Culture + Lifestyle: Steve Hindy
Fashion + Style: Revecca Turbow
… and more.

To make things evening more interesting the Lunch hour will include guest from the famous (and tumblr users) scanwiches.com, with their famous scanner on hand, allowing your lunch to be part of the internet. Awesome.

Now, I just need to pace myself to get the most I can out of this great event. Buy your tickets here (use discount code ‘happy’ to save $22 bucks) and read up on more great LVHRD events at LVHRD.org.

Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek on Juan Epstein

Great interview dropped by Juan Epstein today with all of the regular highlights including yelling at Rico, Jen From Brooklyn, and Rosie hating on Ciph for getting name dropped by Kweli back in the day.

The video above shows one of the big surprises from the show as Kweli performs a few classic snippets. Nice to finally hear Rosenberg and Ciph doing a great show. I’ve been avoiding the morning show since its format change but this back to a the classic Juan Ep’s, all the way left.

A few points during the interview also reminded me of shows I had completely forgot I had been to. Kweli mentioned opening up for N.E.R.D. on the Sprite Liquid Mix Tour. I attended the show at the Tweeter center (how great is that name now?) in Massachusetts and remember walking by the second stage and seeing Kweli perform in front of about 12 people. N.E.R.D. only performed to maybe 300 on the main stage and were on in the middle of the day, but the closing sets by Jay-z/Rocafella and 311 were packed. 311, stole the show with Amber.

Another reminder was during the Matt Pinfield walkin and Talib talking about a Highline ballroom performance for myspace. That was one of the most awkward shows I have ever been to. I was one of the few people there old enough to drink and the thing was setup as a fake New Years event but tapped over a month before. At least it was free.

Enough of my rambling, download the podcast.

Track of the Day Kid Cudi - The Sky Might Fall

It has been over a week since I did a track of the day. Sorry for the regulars, work + a FL trip tomorrow has made for a busy couple weeks.

This track has been floating around for a while now, and although Cudi claims it is not finished, its nice to hear the first glimpse of an album style cut for Man on the Moon.

Last week I posted a video for the new Transformers trailer, praising them for including this Cudi track as a theme for the movie. Turns out, it was all a fake. In the below video interview with MTV, explained how the vid got out:

Cudi said that when he was in L.A., he showed the mashup to West and director Hype Williams, who both encouraged him to put it out.

” ‘Aww, man, that’s perfect. You should put that out, like, now,’ ” Cudi said, mimicking West’s voice. ” ‘Just put it out as a teaser.’ “

Great story. Can’t wait for more from the Kid.

See previous TOD:
Big Sean ‘Million Dollars’

Lil Wayne 51st Grammy Poster

To promote this years Grammy’s top nominees were asked to name their top 15 songs from their lifetime. These song titles were then used to produce portraits of the artists face. Other posters made include Stevie Wonder and Rihanna.

The poster design is similar to video designed for Jay-z’s Brooklyn (Go Hard). Even if the concept is far from new, its nice to see design being integrated into advertising. As we begin to phase out more and more of the millions of images presented to us daily, its going to take more than a glossy photo to get a viewers attention.

via creativity-online.com

kinda forgot I uploaded this last week. Its Mickey Factz “automatic” performance from CMJ at Crash Manison. I had posted a link to the writeup with the Time Out branded clip, but the quality it a bit higher here.

KAWS new exhibit “Saturated” is set to open November 6th at the Gering & Lopez gallery in New York. Visit the gallery site to check out more sample work from the show.

On Thursday November 6th the gallery will hold an opening reception with the artist from 6-8. The show closes on December 23rd.