“Without Papers” is a follow-up to “Sin Papeles” , which was released on Shine Flow EP with DJ Icewater, June 2009. “Without Papers” is a lighter and more hopeful version of the same concept, made specifically for “Papers” the movie.
Papers is now available for the first time on DVD for personal use.
As the music supervisor for the film, I needed a theme song. I was given the green light to create some original music to pitch. DJ Icewater worked on the instrumentation with his man G Koop.
The film Papers explores the challenges that undocumented youth face in pursuing higher education. But the film takes on broader issues with respect to American society, American history, and what it means to live in “America”. As artists, we had three and a half minutes to sum up musically not just the themes, but also the energy transmitted on screen.
“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.
Recorded in Harlem, NY, February 2009. Beat by DJ Ceiba, NYC drummer and producer. Released on My America, benefit compilation for Papers the Movie—a film about undocumented youth. Release Date July 4, 2009.
I walk on through the winter, where all the trees are dying. Behind me, a road of tar and red clay. I reach across the new ocean, borderless in brothels of freedom. A long night awaits us…” – e.g. bailey
(above: image from BP spill in the gulf coast, April 2010)
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.
REMIX: The original version of Wrong Ways appeared on Shine Flow EP during the summer of 2009. That was an Aju story—a journey through cultural transformation and personal affirmation.
The Soleil Mix is a tale of personal struggle—something everyone can relate to. Some of us have it rougher than others and circumstances transform us in unexpected ways.
Circle back to one of many beginnings. It was November 4th, 2006. I had the opportunity to open for Saul Williams at the University of Wyoming. Will Ross was running sound for ASTEC—the University of Wyoming’s student government sponsored production team.
I knew of Will, having run into him continuously at UW events, but we had never really had a meaningful conversation.
While running sound, Will recorded my performance on his mini-disc recorder. Young Brown Poet lit him up, and the next day he emailed the vocal track to Dustin Neal, his fellow band-mate and co-founder of CHiTT Productions.
Out of nowhere, I got an email from Will, telling me to check out a rough mix of Dustin’s vision of Young Brown Poet. Will explained how he had sent the track to Dustin in the morning, who ran home over his lunch hour and recorded music to the words. Will mixed it down.
I was floored by what I heard. Completely unexpected.
Hunger Pains first appeared on Representin’ 4 Life EP back in 2007. Representin’ 4 Life was all about flippin’ the script on empty mainstream rhetoric like “keep it real”, “represent”, “stay true”, etc.
I was hungry to put my stamp on the definition of “true Hip-Hop”, something I now feel is unnecessary. There isn’t one "true” form of anything.
In any case that was my mentality at the time and I took an aggressive approach to reclaiming these phrases and making them meaningful.
There were seven tracks on my first EP: three songs and four acapella pieces. Each track was about defining what I stand for and represent as a poet and emcee.
The three songs on the EP were “Representin’ 4 Life”, “Hunger Pains” and “Young Brown Poet”. All three were re-released on Up Before the Sunrise in 2008.
Mass deception, coups d’etats left and right, shared confusion, no way to tell what’s real and what’s fake—a collective inability to ascertain truth from lies because the spin doctors are that good.
Polar ice caps melting, mass global poverty ignored, apocalyptic natural disasters, conspiracies linking what was once natural to what is now claimed to be man-made. Seemingly no empirical way to make sense of it all, so the masses don’t even try. They just wait for 2012.
I’ve never been more actively involved in the creation of Hip-Hop, but I’ve never identified less with the “dominant” paradigm in rap music.
I’m not alone. Listeners of Hip-Hop are growing tired of the violence, misogyny and hyper-masculine antics in commercialized rap music. Byron Hurt’s Beyond Beats & Rhymes is one prime example of this discussion.
What I want to focus on is intelligence within Hip-Hop, ‘cause we are geniuses.
As the music supervisor for the film, I needed a theme song. I was given the green light to create some original music to pitch. DJ Icewater worked on the instrumentation with his man G Koop. 
