“A Reflection of Hip-Hop” appeared on Representin’ 4 Life EP by Adrian H. Molina aka Mo Brown (2007), CHiTT Productions
I’ve been using this acapella piece as a crowd pleaser since 2005. I spit the rhyme for the first time at an open mic night at Coal Creek Coffee House in Laramie, WY. I recorded this track in 2006 with Will Ross of CHiTT Productions. We recorded in my bedroom, turned the room upside down and inside out: makeshift studio, mattresses pushed up against the windows and the walls. Borrowed mic, laptop setup, homemade pop filter.
We were very meticulous about the details. Everything had to be right. Unplugged the refrigerator and the other appliances in the kitchen even though they were all the way down the hall. We didn’t want the reverberation of the machines’ lull fuckin’ with our energy or our soundwaves. We paused when trucks drove by and scrapped the takes when we felt that minor noises outside might cloud the sound quality of the recording.
“Skydreamer” by Adrian H. Molina w/ Mannequin Rituals featuring Helen Chanthongthip, Up Before the Sunrise, released by CHiTT Productions (2008)
Skydreamer is the opening track off Up Before the Sunrise, my first full-length album. It was a dream. I had been writing rhymes for 10 years, constantly envisioning what my first album might look like. What would it sound like? What would I say if I had one chance, one album, to say something to the world?
I started writing material for Up Before the Sunrise during the summer of 2006. I had been through a lot during the years prior. In 2005 I left the life I was living. It was a life that wasn’t mine. It was beating me down, slowly murdering me, and it probably would have killed me, mentally and spiritually, if not physically. I faced my demons, handled my business, then tested out my wings.
SOULAJU spent some time in Trinidad, CO in May and June working with a group of young people connected to a criminal justice “Diversion” program. Good kids, smart and conscious of their surroundings, who got in some minor trouble and luckily evaded more serious problems like juvenile incarceration. These youth meet weekly and have to satisfy a number of requirements to complete the diversion program, including weekly meetings and community service. We had worked with Tony Diego, the diversion program director, on other youth programs through an organization called OYE (Organized Youth for Empowerment). He had an idea for a youth video project with flip cams. We had limited time and funding was also limited, but this is what we came up with after a few trips down to Trinidad: a documentary about youth culture in Trinidad, Colorado:
“Trinidad Undaground”
Our main goals in working with these young people were to empower them to tell their own stories and engage in a process of creating their own media. Before we put cameras in their hands we ran some workshops with them, talking about their experiences, identity, their dreams, life beyond Trinidad, getting them writing their thoughts on paper. The following video is a “making of” look at our work with this group of youth.
Switchin’ up the vibe and pulse. Recent weekly Retrospectives explored the lighter side of my work. A.M. Soleil, Retrospectively now moves back into harder-hitting territory.
Everyone’s heard the song “Gettin’ Mine.” Every rapper’s got a Gettin’ Mine track. The world is in a Gettin’ Mine state of mind. This is my version of Gettin’ Mine.
I was in Brooklyn when DJ Icewater sent this beat. This was before Aju and I were SOULAJU, before we decided to make an album together. It was a winter day in January 2009. I had the track on loop in my headphones, staring at the thick snowflakes falling outside Aju’s apartment window in Bedstuy.
No doubt about it, this was a love song…
Updated sometime in 2011
Love comes and goes but it always remains the same, true to its essence: Love. We’re always looking, wanting, hoping, wishing, praying… for that one true love. Some of us find it, some of us do not. For some of us, there isn’t meant to be just one. Some people come into our lives to help us prepare for the one.
It’s a tricky game, not supposed to be a game, but so often a game, even when no one is getting played. The game of life. Love is.
Love is… a beautiful song, to be remembered always….
A music video was supposed to come out of this. I spent a lot of time, energy, and money trying to make this happen. DJ Icewater flew out to Denver from NYC. We went through the whole shoot… dope ass footage… but months passed and shit fell through on the editing end. A disaster. A mess of egos and bad business. Unintended complications on the part of some. Toxic intentions on the part of others. Ultimately not meant to be.
There was never supposed to be a visual. But the song lives on.
This was one of the people’s favorites. “Love Is, Molina that’s the jam!” I was often told back in the Soulaju days.
I wrote five Letters to the Moon during a journey through northern Europe in November 2008. Three of these poems became compositions on Sacred Paths.
This Letter was written near a small town maybe 30 miles or so south of Dublin, Ireland. I can’t recall the name of the town, but I remember the day well. I remember the way the pen felt in my hand, the coldness of my fingers as a I scribbled the ocean’s words.
Representin’ (4 Life) by Adrian H. Molina w/ Mannequin Rituals first appeared on Representin’ 4 Life EPin March 2007. It was re-released on my first full-length album, Up Before the Sunrise, August 2008.
My main goal with my first EP was to clearly define my work as an artist, to define what I represented.
I’ve been a Hip-Hop head for 18 years, over 2/3 of my young life. I’ve been emceeing for 13 years and utilizing Hip-Hop as a tool for education, consciousness raising, and social justice activism for 9 years. I have released six independent music projects and am the music supervisor for a film about immigrant youth that has screened in almost all 50 states. I have paid some dues.
My hard work has bred some success … but not without some controversy.
I wrote the first version of La Historia del Mexicano back in 2002 during my days as an undergraduate student activist. I began performing it as a spoken word piece, then a lyrical acapella piece, then rapping it over other artists’ beats. Mannequin Rituals put a sound to it in 2008.
Sometimes I sit on a cloud andthink… Me inside of you… you inside me…
A simple but retrospective track, tracing roots, paying homage, showing respect to some of the people, and thus all of the people, who made me who I am.
The art of storytelling boils down to the ability to capture a feeling, to pull in a listener and make them feel you. To transport them into your world, weaving them seamlessly back into their own world, then back again, in and out, continuously, beyond the story itself.
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