Making magic on Fridays

More on me and the PKG crew.  We do a bunch of stuff on Fridays.  Ciphers, printing, art, promo, vandalizing, and just overall painting the town red.  This video is a small portion of the sparks we unleash on the weekend.

Playing with a Vinyl Cutter

The video below is about my main headquarters in Philly.  It’s called PKG.  It stands for many things.  Philly Kid Group, Philly Kid Gang, Philly Kid Grafix, Pretty Kinky Girls etc.  The PKG crew is how you say, ride or die kind of dudes which is one of the reasons why we roll together because I’m the same way.  Me and PKG have alot in store for the summer including more free mixes, colabos with other musicians, video, art, and even a new marble game called Pigeon.  The dude in the video is Travis.  He’s one of the head honchos over here.  At least he thinks he is and this is one of our toys.  The vinyl cutter.  It’s just another medium to do art.  You can put it on shirts, walls, mail boxes, someones face, basically where ever.  There’s also different types of vinyl like flock which is a suede material, reflective vinyl, fuzzy letters.  It’s basically the shit.  And they will know us by the trail of vinyl through out the city.

Show at Emoda Gallery in Philly

This was a show last weekend at the Emoda Gallery in South Philly.  Me and NAH did a super epic colabo there before the show at Union Transfer.  It was basically our first colabo show and it went great.  Got alot of love for the set.  Emoda was a cool spot though.  It was a crazy art spot with stuff everywhere but that was part of it’s charm.  These underground shows are dope because most of the time it’s BYOB and it’s easier to meet everybody involved.  But it did get packed and there was some great bands playing as well.  The Stable Boys played and they did there thing.  That’s definitely a band you should check out.  There was some chicks from Amherst called Potty Mouth.  It’s always interesting to see girls rock out so that was cool.  Plus they were super nice.  There was a two piece named Them Jawns who did there thing.  Their name is what made me smile the most though.  It was an overall great time.  We might do a mural there later.  Will keep you updated.  Got some new stuff coming up including printing on couches and bums tap dancing.  The adventures continue.

More video from the NAH show

Here’s some more video of the NAH show this past Saturday at Union Transfer in Philly.

Video from NAH Show at Union Transfer in Philly with Man Man and Death Fix

So this is a video of a show me and NAH did at Union Transfer this past weekend.  We opened up for Man Man and it was bananas.  It was a sold out crowd of 1,300 people.  Haven’t done a show this big since the Jager Tour but the crowd showed us super love.  Man Man ridiculously killed it.  They did one of the best lives shows I’ve seen in a while and they all played a bunch of different instruments.  Their studio recordings don’t do them enough justice.  The NAH Project should be ready by the spring time though.  Here’s an idea of what it sounds like.

Writing songs in Miami, FL

It’s funny I had this long explanation that I just deleted about why I didn’t visit anybody when I was in Miami and I was addressing rumors that I heard when I was out there.  Ehhh.  Fuck that.  I’m good.  I went through alot of trials and tribulations in Miami and it made me to the man I am today.  No regrets.  I just needed time to reflect with just me and the city.  And write songs.  I wrote the whole EP for this NAH project I’m working on due out in the Spring.  This guy below was my muse.  And it was the best.  I love you Miami.  I will always love you and I will be visiting you randomly through out the year.  Next up though is the ridiculously dope shows this past weekend at Union Transfer and Emoda Gallery in Philly.  You can actually hear some of the stuff I wrote in Miami from the video recorded at these shows.  Maybe you can make a connection.

Mural in Orlando, FL

Me and my bros did a mural at Jusincredible Cutz in Orlando, FL.  We’re trying to do more street art around the country.  We being the whole No Heroes Crew and PKG.  Most of the art is going to be black and white design kind of like what’s below.  We even used some stucco to make the moustache and beard look more grizzly.  More of these coming soon.

New project and new shows this weekend in Philly

So the new producer I’m working with is Mike Kuhn from the punk band 1994!.  His crazy hip hop production is called NAH.  Our first two shows are in Philly tonight at Emoda Gallery with Stable Boys and tomorrow night at Union Transfer with Man Man and Deathfix.  The Man Man show is the big one though.  It’s an R5 Production, it’s at Union Transfer which fits a gazillion people, and it’s Man Man which is a band I personally dig.  It’s funny one of my best friends loves the shit out of Man Man so hopefully I could get a pic or some momento to rub in her face out of love.  But there’s probably going to be 800-1000 people there so it’s the biggest show I’ve done since the Jager tour.

But back to the project.  Originally when I started working more in Philly and NYC I was suppose to make a vinyl record with Mike that was going to be released by No Heroes.  It got pushed back about 6 months due to our busy schedules but it’s going to get done eventually.  It looks like it will be an E. Grizzly release produced by NAH and it’s probably going to be called NAH MEAN.  The instrumentals will also be released under NAH.  Here’s an idea of what it sounds like.  Mike plays all this shit at once while playing the drums so he’s like a one man band.  It’s pretty sick.

The Tragedy of Jerry the Pig

This story takes place in Polk County, FL just a few weeks ago for the holidays.  My families Puerto Rican and every year we make pounds and pounds of pork.  That’s just what we do.  Sometimes my Grandfather kills and guts the pig himself.  This year the younger generation wanted to try to gut it like the way the older generation did back in the day.  I wanted to participate because I wanted to experience where my meat comes from.  And this is the pig.  Let’s call him Jerry.

So a country man drove down a dirt road with two pigs in the back of his truck.  He drove to our house and tells us that he just killed them and bled them.  To bleed it is self explanatory.  You hang the pig upside down and let all the blood run from its body.  So we took Jerry, put him on ice for a few hours, and started the process.

After you kill it and bleed it you skin it.  Now you don’t technically skin it.  You basically shave it.  In order to do this you have to boil water, pour the scolding hot water on the pig and shave it with a knife.  The boiling water makes the hair easier to come off.  If you notice the guy with the hat and pot belly at the top is my O.G. Grandfather or as we like to call him, abuelo.  He’s schooling us and basically saying we’re not doing it right.  Of course.

As you can see this next step is when you \gut it.  It’s interesting because if you cut a little part at the top of the guts, and cut the butt hole, you can pull all of the guts out in one pull because all of the guts are connected.  After this you clean it, season it, put a pole through it, above ground usually on some cinder blocks or something to hold it up.  Then you put the fire underneath it and slow cook it for 6-8 hours like so.

Now if you look at the plate you have rice and beans on the north east of the plate, Mofongo to the NW, a little potato salad to the SW and in the SE is our boy Jerry……  Or is it?  If you butchered before you know where the tragedy lies.  That’s not Jerry at all.  It’s another pig.  Let’s call him Sebastian.  It turns out when you kill an animal you are suppose to gut the animal immediately and if not you risk the chance of bacteria seeping into the meat which is exactly what happened.  We could’ve poisoned the whole family.  Thankfully we’re Puerto Rican and had two huge pork shoulders on reserve in the freezer.  Our abuelo got the last laugh and we are still light years away from his manly skills.  Maybe we can compete next year.  But next up on the adventures is a Mural in Orlando, FL, writing songs in Miami and a show I’m doing with Man Man in Philly.

Grizzly Show at The Nuyorican Cafe in NYC

I had the long New Years hangover so I haven’t gotten a chance to write about my new adventures.  We left off at me releasing a new mix and doing a show before Christmas.  The show was at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in NYC.  Now it’s strange because living in Miami I was always told that the Nuyorican was this poetry paradise flowing with milk and honey.  It was always considered to be a privilege to be on that stage.  I did spoken word there a few months ago and I got the call to put together a show there.  So you can imagine I was pretty excited about this.

I took the China Town from Philly to NYC.  By the way these adventures are car-less or with out a car.  I gave away my Honda Civic last year just because I was kind of sick of driving.  and it’s a very liberating feeling.  I really don’t want to own a car anymore if I don’t have to.  Or at least not drive it or not drive at all.  So I got into the LES in NYC.  If you don’t know what these terms are then read the last show I did in NYC.  I explain the terms to my peoples who never been to New York.  So I get to the venue which is in the LES and everything is going according to plans.  I was doing the sound and the sound there was so cake it was ridiculous.  There’s no way you should be getting paid alot of money to work the sound there.  Because the sound is already so dope that there’s not much you have to do.

So we had a fashion show, MC’s, poets, singers, DJ’s, lions, tigers and bears, oh my.  As far as what caught my eye.  I was surprised when JR Writer from Dip Set did a surprise set.  I always get surprised when it gets super packed which it did.  Black Rose did a release at the show which was dope.  I did a release as well which was equally as dope.  Thoughts did his normal, rowdy, set of entertaining hip hop splendor.  I put on my boys from Lancaster, PA called Mile High.  They came through and killed it.  I had a few people say their favorite sets were Mile High and mine.  Thoughts got props of course.  Actually he started the first fight in all of the 137 shows I’ve ever put together.  It was two girls fighting each other over the right to love the man known as Thoughts.  Another thing that was interesting was I was talking to one of the more popular NYC poets who does the open mics on Friday at the Nuyorican and we started talking about Will Da Real One.  Will was one of the more popular poets in Miami who was murdered last year over some nonsense.  It was good to see that Will’s influence made it all the way to New York.  He was a big inspiration for me.  But that’s about it.  More stuff on it’s way including murals in Orlando, writing songs in Miami, and gutting pigs in Polk County.