Vic Mensa performs private show for Summer of Collaboration
Summer of Collaboration presented by AT&T partnered with Vic Mensa for a private show at Chicago's AT&T Michigan Ave store with street photographer Vivian Maier’s.
Maier was street photography’s best kept secret. Maier worked as a nanny in the Chicago suburb North Shore in the late 1990’s. That's where while working she took what would become some of the best street photography.
Maier’s work almost never saw the light of day if it wasn’t for Chicago artist John Maloof. Maloof purchased Maier’s extensive work at an auction. He found an extensive amount of film, negatives, and prints of hundred rolls of film, home movies, and audio tape interviews that all belonged to Maier.
Maloof hosted a presentation going over Maier’s mysterious life and talking about her work and the impact surrounding it. Described as a Mary Poppin’s type, this introverted photographer opened her subjects up in the most beautiful way.
Chicago rapper Vic Mensa when up on stage admired Maloof’s courage and passion for being bold and fearless. Mensa was set to perform only three songs but added an additional for go measure. He performed: 16 Shots, Shades of Blue, There’s Alot Going On, and U Mad.
We recently caught Vic Mensa at The Vic Theater while on his "There’s Alot Going On" Tour. While at the Summer of Collaboration event we witnessed a side of Mensa that most music fans don’t. Pegged as a south side rapper and Kanye West pupil, Mensa is keeping busy with work outside the studio.
Vic Mensa has been politically active when it’s come to personal issues. Vic Mensa participated in the Laquan McDonald demonstrations. He also volunteered at Flint, Michigan during their water crisis. Vic urges young voters to register to vote by offering his latest EP “There’s ALot Going On” for free when they registered to vote.
Vic Mensa made sure his personal efforts were made clear as the Roc Nation rapper treated fans to a stadium caliber performance. With so few attending the private event, from seeing the incredible photographs from Maloof and seeing one of best in the city with Vic Mensa, the Summer of Collaboration was one of the purest ways to end the summer off right.
View our photo gallery of Vic Mensa’s Summer of Collaboration event below!
[Video] Donnie Trumpet & Peter CottonTale Talk Tour Life
Video by FragDfilms
Donnie Trumpet & Peter CottonTale have been very busy lately. The pair of Chicago-raised musicians each saw a transformation in their careers last year as Chance The Rapper's Acid Rap, aided by horn play from Donnie and plenty of production from CottonTale, vaulted their close friend to the forefront of not only the national hip-hop scene, but the larger music world in general.
At the time, Donnie was playing trumpet for Kids These Days, who broke up weeks after the Acid Rap release and spent the summer touring with Frank Ocean while CottonTale continued to work with Vic Mensa on Innanetape and joined Chance and Mac Miller on the road for a national tour. Everything came together in mid October as both appropriately were chosen by Chance to join him on his first national headlining tour, dubbed the "Social Experiment Tour." The tour, which ran from October through December 19 and sold out in almost every city, was a fitting end to a wild year for both Donnie and CottonTale, who served as Music Director for the tour. We caught up with the pair last week at Force One Seven Studios to get a little insight into what life on the road is like and what the whole experience meant to each.
Check out the full video below and be sure to catch Donnie Trumpet performing tomorrow night at The Riff in Chicago's South Loop for his "Farewell Donnie" show, details listed below the video.
[youtube id="7pdrx0GHTRI"]
[Video] Donnie Trumpet: "Don't Leave" (Feat. Vic Mensa)
Chicago's own Donnie Trumpet stays busy. After last week, which saw him drop a project, Loopie, and appear on Mike Golden's song "Hey Jane" with fellow Save Money member Vic Mensa, Donnie is back with a video for "Don't Leave", another turn with Mensa handling the rap end of things. The video, shot by Naveen Chaubel, is a bit of a mystical dream that starts off with a ballerina performing at the foot of his bed, beckoning him to stay, as he knows he has to walk away. The experience leads to a very ethereal, zero gravity moment of reconciliation and reflection that is especially on point thanks to the talented director, Chaubel. This is the second time in a week that we've heard something new from the pair of former Kids These Days members, who have blossomed over the past year in their own individual lanes that have continued to get bigger by the day. Start your day off right with some Donnie Trumpet and Vic Mensa, "Don't Leave" streaming below.
Like the video? Catch Donnie at his "Farewell Show" next week in Chicago, check out the flyer for info below!
[youtube id="JcQlPLLjXbc"]
[EP] Donnie Trumpet: "Loopie"
Former Kids These Days trumpet player Nico Segal has been building a following under his moniker Donnie Trumpet for some time now. Having dropped the somewhat, self-titled Donnie Trumpet late last Summer, the multi-talented young artist is back with his latest five track EP, Loopie. The name derives from the loop-based sensibility of the track. Instructions for Donnie himself accompany the track on his Soundcloud, informing listeners "click repeat 1 on iTunes and the beats will loop in time. Producers go ahead and make songs. Rappers rap raps." Donnie/Nico is a truly resilient artist who has begun carving out an interesting niche with creative ideas and a horn. Busy on the road with Frank Ocean all of last year, following the break up of KTD, Segal has been moving around the country working for what should be a prosperous 2014. Check out his latest streaming here below.
Sidewalk Chalk: "There She Goes"
Chicago-based eight-piece band Sidewalk Chalk has been honing their unique assembly of Jazz, Hip-hop and Soul around the Chicagoland area for a minute now, gaining listeners and fans with an eclectic sound that appeals to a wide swath of music enthusiasts. The group's latest track, "There She Goes" premiered today on Okayplayer and is the first single off their upcoming project, Leaves. Sidewalk Chalk has shared the stage or opened for the likes of ?uestlove, De La Soul, Action Bronson, Jean Grae and Hiatus Kaiyot, among others, proof that the music doesn't lie. Leaves, the group's follow-up to 2010's debut Corner Store, is due out on February 25. Check out "There She Goes" available below.
[iframe id="w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/124719443&color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true" mode="normal" align="center"]
[Video] Marrow: "Two" (Behind The Scenes)
It's not where you start, but where you finish. The age-old fallacy is one everyone can live by, but likely rings a bit more true for the members of Marrow. Six months ago band members Liam Cunningham, Macie Stewart and Lane Beckstrom made up the core of Chicago genre-fusion band Kids These Days. Having reached a good deal of success (playing on Conan & at Lollapalooza 2011), the band split up in May after two albums and a host of shows across the country. Vic Mensa left to pursue a solo rap career, Nico Segal and J.P. Floyd went on tour with Frank Ocean and Chance The Rapper, and Liam, Macie and Lane retreated to Lane's basement to work on their reformed band, Marrow. Having spent the summer writing a library's-worth of songs and recording a demo, the former KTD members, along with newbie Matt Carroll on drums, have developed a new sound that merges the careful songwriting of Cunningham and Stewart with the inspired musicianship of Beckstrom, all accented by a different tone on drums with Carroll. While working on their upcoming (and appropriately titled) EP, Two, due out the same day as their show at Schuba's on December 19, the group had cameras rolling to catch all the action. Tap into the young musician's creative process as they put the project together with the video below, and keep an eye out for an Austin Vesely-directed joint due out in late November.
[youtube id="KYjBfhYOHc0" mode="normal" align="center"]
[Video] Closed Sessions: 'The Making of Innanetape'
Vic Mensa has been getting press for days since releasing his re-debut to the world as a solo artist, Innanetape, released at the beginning of the month. Since then, he's traveled around the country touring with J. Cole and Wale, went out to New York for CMJs and popped up everywhere there was a camera and a mic, and is gracing the banner and headlines of most every hip-hop site. Before all that, though, he was lounged back in a desk chair at SoundScape Studios with Mike Kolar, DJ RTC and the crew, working on his latest masterpiece. Check out the short doc Closed Sessions put together from their time helping put together Innanetape, shot by Andrew Zeiter.
http://youtu.be/wexOX8NOEcc
[RH Review] Vic Mensa: "Innanetape"
RH Rating: 
4/5
The thing that has always attracted me to Vic Mensa and his music has been his penchant for being different, his eagerness to push forward and his unwavering ability to make a stand for what he believes in. Those qualities and more manifested themselves fully on his latest project, INNANETAPE, released September 30.
Talking to co-Executive Producer Peter CottonTale about the project, he calls it a "transformative" album that has rap at it's base, infusing it with a multitude of different genre-bending sounds that make the album hard to pin to one genre. Vic has interest in a wide musical landscape and it was the job of CottonTale and Cam Osteen of J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League to craft a sound that embodied all of them while sounding like none of them.
Since it's on most Chicagoans minds, yes Vic is somewhat like fellow SaveMoney artist Chance The Rapper, but only the way one might have a similar taste in clothing as an old friend. The comparison musically isn't fair. While Vic may have a similar aesthetic to his lyrical content and message, he has managed to create a wholly different, almost more mature sound for himself. The interesting thing is that many of the parts that came together for Acid Rap are present here, without sounding overly familiar or at all played out. It is a testament to the steady production process that Vic, Cam and Peter went through over most of 2013.
Innanetape is creative, it's interesting, it doesn't allow listeners to passively tune in. Bottom line; it's powerful, and you need to pay attention.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Innanetape is the development of Mensa since his days with Kids These Days. Always a lyrical artist, the Hyde Park native shows tremendous growth in his delivery, mixing in and playing with a variety of cadences and rhyme schemes that come together to create a collage of styles that is all his own.
On "Tweakin" Vic goes in like never before, vehemently rhyming: "I don't want to fight/I just want a quiet life and a nice little suburban place to cry at night/And an eye dropper filled to the top with cyanide/So my psychiatrist dies soon as she tries the Sprite." It's a rhyme scheme and content matter right out of Eminem's lexicon but with Vic's own playfulness layered to it. On top of that, "Tweakin" also has Vic's voice chopped and screwed, adding yet another element to a song bursting with them.
On "Orange Soda" and "Lovely Day" Vic gives listeners a chance to "breath, breath, it's all in your head," relax, before diving back into the mayhem and hairpin turns that is the rest of the project. Both were recorded in Los Angeles and bear the easy going West Coast stereotype which makes sense for a kid born in Chicago who takes regular excursions to the left side of the country for an escape. If anything, it's obvious that Vic is able to absorb what's around him and present it in a succinctly thoughtful manner.
Continuing to spread his wings with the project, Mensa also sings and dabbles in production. Drake, he is not, but his careful eye for crafty melodies adds another layer to the overall aesthetic that he has created. "Diditb4" was the first track Mensa produced on his own, put together while on the road in the back of the large white van with Kids These Days. Vic proves with Innanetape that he's not just a rapper, he's a artist.
When CottonTale talks about transformations on this album, he mentions Vic's openness to try different things. "Run" was one of the first tracks they put together and has the feeling of an 80s dance track rather than a hip-hop song out of Chicago. More than any other track on the album, it may be the most polarizing for listeners. The shrieking school bell sound, the muted hook and the sudden whirlwind into what CottonTale calls "pop juke" is a certain breath of fresh air, if not at first hard to decipher.
"I was looking at hip-hop and beats as becoming monotonous when I was out west. When I came out here I met rappers who had such an unorthodox style and delivery and Vic is a perfect example of that," said Las Vegas native Cam Osteen. "It's something that is very different and honestly something that rap needs right now. In Chicago you see a lot of these guys for the unconventional to steal the show, and that's what sets this project apart."
Innanetape is a long time coming. Work started at Soundscape studios soon after the announcement of KTD as the first draft of the tracks began to take shape. To have been able to sit in on some of the sessions throughout the process, it has been fun to watch the paths many of the songs took to get on the final project. About a year or so ago, the country took notice of Chicago for the antics of Chief Keef and the often cluttered thought of drill music which became the city's calling card. Heading into 2014, Chicago has regained it's stature as a soulful, creative, open place from which music emanates and that is owed much to Vic and the generation he represents in the Second City. Never one to satisfy himself with anything, it will be exciting to see where Mensa takes things from here.