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“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.  

CHiTT Productions released this track on Representin’ 4 Life EP (March 2007), beats supplied by “Mannequin Rituals” (Stop the Police State, Save the Mannequins).  The cover read “Adrian H. Molina” aka Mo Brown.  I was flirting with the idea of keeping Mo Brown as my emcee name, but I wasn’t sure so I released the EP with my full-name on it just in case.  Had BIG plans for the EP… 

It was soon to reach the ears of tens of thousands of Hip-Hop heads coast-to-coast.  Didn’t happen like that, but that adds to the richness of the story.  You learn that your failures are your successes if you keep going.

The moniker “Mo Brown” had been with me since high school.  I shortened it from MomoBrown, which I decided sounded childish for a 17-year-old rapper.  I eventually scrapped Mo Brown after I realized how many emcees (male and female) claimed to be Mo Brown.  Adrian H. Molina became Molina Soleil (sometimes you choose your name, sometimes it chooses you), and now it’s somewhere in the middle, but I think I know where it’s going…

I sit back with my cheap glass of red wine and smile at the recording of this track.  So serious… and rightfully so.  It was the beginning of a movement.

I have more fun with the piece now, more playful with the delivery..  I reach into the box of Molina classics and pull it out every now and then.  I’m always in front of new people who have never heard it.  Sometimes I do it for the history, or for a familiar face in the crowd.  You gotta keep things fresh and mix it up, for yourself as much as for your fans and supporters. 

It’s a good moment to be here in Denver, CO, listening to this track and blogging it, marinating on my life as an artist, soaking it all up into my skin… preparing for a fresh MOLINA push.

I was brave enough to call my music a movement from day one.  I knew it was much bigger than me, that I was a filter.  But over the years I’ve realized that it doesn’t move without me.  You gotta be the engine.  If not you, than who?  For yourself, and the community…

Now’s the time, now’s the place, fight, now’s the time, one love for your rights.  Now’s the time, now’s the place, right, now’s the time, one love people unite… 

A.M. Soleil, Retrospectively is a weekly blog in 2010 focusing on 5 years of independent music by Adrian H. Molina, breaking down the history, insight, reflections and relevance one song at a time. 

Twitter @MOLINAspeaks

Circa Dec. 2007, Ed Auditorium, University of Wyoming

“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.

After releasing an EP and touring my first play Phantom Discourse in 2007,  CHiTT Productions released Up Before the Sunrise in August of 2008.  I packed up what little I owned, put it in storage, and hit the road for some gigs with $1000 in my pocket.  It was with UBTS in hand that I met the Papers film crew, Aju, DJ Icewater, E.G. Bailey of Tru Ruts, Hakim Be in Albuquerque, and a host other artistic folks.  These relationships would lay the foundation for my work in 2009 and 2010. 

“Skydreamer” will resonate with everyone with big ideas, honest intentions and a brave heart.  I wrote the track during the fall of 2006 when I took a job doing research for a gang resistance and education program in Greeley, CO.  I watched daily as police officers scared the shit out of mostly brown and working class kids.  There were some decent moments, a few well-meaning officers, but most of these cops weren’t teaching those kids shit.  They were indoctrinating them with self-defeating ideas of obedience and complacency, setting them up to fail, basically telling them where they knew these kids were going to end up – in prison.  They were already constructing prisons in these kids’ heads. 

It was one of my last research days.  I stopped taking notes, flipped the page, and wrote “Skydreamer”, thinking about all the prisons in my head that I had busted out of in my own young life. 

Tomorrow marks the 2 year anniversary of Up Before the Sunrise.  This album doesn’t carry the classic Hip-Hop sound of Shine Flow EP and SOULAJU.  UBTS was much more on the experimental tip, no samples, straight out-the-basement musicianship by my DIY homies at CHiTT Productions. 

I love the concept of sampling.  Hip-Hop was built around the art of taking something old and giving it new context, new style.  We are constantly in the process of sampling various ideas and realities, sifting through the possibilities, throwing out what we don’t need, keeping what we do.  I embrace this.

I’m also down to try something new entirely. 

Molina

Independent, experimental, sucka free.

“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.

The Making of “Trinidad Undaground”

“Poet Gettin’ His” by Molina of SOULAJU w/ DJ Icewater

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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. 

The track is produced by DJ Icewater.  Dig the bounce in the beat.  Love the organ.  Was unsure about the “hook” when DJ sent the beat, but as I marinated on the possibilities, I got into the hook.

My favorite rhymes on the track:

Verse I: “I swim wit da riddim, a tree said to give ‘em /somethin’ new for the listen, fresh for the mission / she grew new leaves, I saw my pen bleed / like a phantom in a dream planted a seed / like a fly new track by that man named Molina / just climbed out ya speakers and hopped in ya lap / opened up ya gut, swam through your chest / hit you in your heart so you felt it kick start…”

Verse II: “So suckers be like ‘please’, they hate when you like me / like ‘oh, I think they like him,’ now we gotta spike him / take his last life, strip him of his power / end the final game, conquer him like Bowser / I tower like a hawk, swoop through all they tricks / bypass the facade, see the game like Oz…”

Verse III: “…reflected dialectics, eclectic, polyrhythmic / A-freeka aesthetic, Mexika-type phonetic / like Nezahualcoyotl just snuck inside my head, took me for a ride, dropped me from the sky / like Damn Xicano Brown, he rip the mic right / inject the enigmatic and inflect the lime / with style that permeate, moist up the vibe /with rhymes that elevate, snake like wild vines…”

“Like a black JFK I know that I can…”  BUT I will…

Get yours how you get it and give back.

- Molina

Despite his young age and youthful appearance, Molina is a veteran Hip-Hopper, philosopher, law school graduate, DIY/indie entrepreneur, college lecturer and all-around human bridge.  Molina is nationally renowned for his eclectic music collaborations and his work as a poet, storyteller, and youth advocate.

A.M. Soleil, Retrospectively is a 52-week music blog in 2010 reflecting on five years of independent music, one song at a time.

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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.

Love is… what you make it. 

Molina

A.M. Soleil, Retrospectively

Letters to the Moon Pt. II (Omnipresent Stream) appears on the album Sacred Paths by Asia Jazz Project featuring Molina Soleil & Aju (2009)

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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. 

I was not sure exactly what I was doing in Europe, or what I was doing in that particular city at that moment.  But I was supposed to be there, alone, a feeling that shadowed me everywhere I traveled.

I fell in love. 

It was some combination of personal relationships past and present, reflections on lessons, acceptance and forgiveness of self and others, recognition of the unseen: stunning clarity of all that I am, beyond me.

She became everything that day.  She presented herself as all she would be, eternally. 

I did not want to leave her.  I knew I did not have to.  I would write her story again.

Molina

Representin’ (4 Life) by Adrian H. Molina w/ Mannequin Rituals first appeared on Representin’ 4 Life EP in 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. 

Representin’ 4 Life was the first song I wrote and recorded with Mannequin Rituals and CHiTT Productions.  After many years of flowing over other artists’ instrumentals, this was the first beat I could call my own.  Music is fun first and foremost.  But at the end of the day these are my sensibilities as an emcee: substance over blind profitability and consumerism, standing up for social justice, cross-cultural solidarity, a celebration of roots, respect for those who struggle, self-empowerment, and the ability to rise up after getting beat down.

If there is any question, check the selection: I’m representin’… 4 life. 

A.M SOLEIL, RETROSPECTIVELY is a 52-week blog series through which Molina breaks down five years of independent music (2006-2010) one track at a time… the history, the theory, the rhythm, the rhyme. 

Molina – www.molinaspeaks.com

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.

The Situation:

After two years of having album review requests ignored one album and EP after another by major news and entertainment publications in the Mile High City, Denver Post journalist Eryc Eyl recently took notice and wrote a dope piece about SOULAJU.

The controversy came when a few people apparently mistook the Reverb Blog as an artist profile FOR Denver’s 2010 Juneteenth celebration. How, they wondered, is it legit for a non-Black music group to be one of the only acts that gets press for a Black-arts oriented festival that celebrates the end of slavery?

Important question. Realistic scenario. Not the case this time around.

The timing of the article coincided with SOULAJU being asked to play a small role in this year’s Juneteenth celebration. We did not seek out the opportunity but we respectfully accepted it. We were not contacted by any journalists or media organizations to discuss our involvement in Juneteenth. If you read the article, it is clearly a profile about SOULAJU as a music duo and the larger work we do in communities throughout the West.  We were asked what our next gig was.  We said Juneteenth, and that was that. 

Sometimes you are brought into histories and situations that you did not create but nevertheless must be accountable and responsible for. If it was empty shit talk I wouldn’t even address it. I constantly teach my six-year old son that there will always be people who judge for what you do, regardless of your intentions. What ultimately matters is that you stand up and be accountable for yourself, your truth, your passion. But the circumstances of this small controversy extend beyond the personal. As a man of color and a Cultural Studies lecturer, I recognize that the substance of this matter and the concerns expressed are relevant.

I am publicly addressing this issue to straighten things out personally, but also out of respect for Denver’s African-American community, especially the artists and activists who struggle against racism and economic inequality, political neglect, disproportionate funding cuts, gentrification in areas like Five Points, and over-criminalization of Black youth, among other pressing issues.

I am not a Denver native but I am a conscious Denver resident and I have done my homework. I recognize that what was once one of the largest Juneteenth celebrations in the country (Denver’s) has been sliced and diced in terms of scale and funding. There is a clear lack of representation in media and political representation as it relates to African-Americans and other residents of color in the Denver Area, as is the case nationally. I can understand the frustration that would arise from the snubbing of African-American artists as it relates to a Black cultural festival, or the idea that a non-Black group would take an opportunity to contribute and in turn exploit it for festival-related media coverage.   There is a long history of exploitive cultural appropriation and Black identity theft in the United States.

But this is not that story, neither with respect to the journalist nor the artists involved. 

The story is a fresh and meaningful mixture of multi-ethnic storytelling traditions, Hip-Hop, multilingual vocals and poetry, fused with other music genres. 

In Conclusion:

As the brown rapper at the center of the controversy in question, I hope this statement squashes any misdirected frustration and unsettled feelings regarding the recent press highlighting SOULAJU. Myself and SOULAJU as a duo stands in solidarity with all people who struggle against oppression, exploitation and slavery, which continues to be a major issue worldwide on all continents. We stand in solidarity with all people, all colors, all nations in celebration of victories for the people.

We look forward to contributing to the vibe at this Saturday’s Juneteenth Festival. Pro-Black. Pro-People. Pro-Planet.

con paz,

Adrian H. Molina

(aka Molina Soleil of SOULAJU)

“La Historia del Mexicano” by Adrian H. Molina w/ Mannequin Rituals, CHiTT Productions 2008

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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.

La Historia is a story that traces three generations of struggle and triumph.  A tribute to los inmigrantes who risk their lives for their families, the wise elders who keep ancient knowledge alive, the young activistas who carry the flame.

Latinos are indigenous survivors of 500 years of colonization throughout the Americas.  Most recently, brown people have been targeted by racist laws in Arizona, including SB 1070 and other legislation that bans ethnic studies and goes so far as to say that people without accents cannot teach English classes.

As “America” browns (people of color will be the majority by 2050, if not sooner), conservative white backlash will grow and become more violent, reminding us again and again of the 60s.

Us who condemn racism, us who affirm human rights and human dignity, we join together to celebrate culture, to celebrate the his/her stories of the people of the Americas.  Indigenous, black, brown, white, Asian, all relations on all continents, we join together to reaffirm a movement for justice.  We never die. 

Up Before the Sunrise.

Molina

Sometimes I sit on a cloud and think… 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.

The premise of You in Me is that I mirror you.  You mirror me.  If you touch me in this life I will always feel you, no matter where you go, regardless of where I wander.  Even if it is only for a moment, even when our ties appear to evaporate, our lives will always be intertwined.  You will always speak through me, and I through you, regardless of whether or not we see or accept the connection.

Like a breeze that curl, a twist of the wind, I could be you, you could stand right here…

Timeless.  Effortless.  In motion.

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Molina Speaks – A.M. Soleil: the morning sun rises. 

A.M. SOLEIL, RETROSPECTIVELY is a 52-week blog series in 2010, reflecting on 5 years of independent music by Molina.

You in Me is one of the new tracks off SOULAJU: Name your price @ http://soulaju.bandcamp.com/album/soulaju