A Week In the Life of a Star Wars/Marvel fan

I was going to write a post last night, to talk about some of the things I was looking forward to this upcoming week such as the new Kendrick Lamar album dropping this Friday along with our first look at a little movie coming out in December:

Rumor has it the first trailer/teaser for the latest entry in my all time favorite movie franchise will be dropping during Star Wars Celebration in Orlando, Florida at the end of the week; somewhere between when it kicks off on Thursday or Friday when the actual Last Jedi panel takes place.

Like I said I was going to write something, but pulled back at the last minute.  Started listening to some Fela Kuti instead and have no regrets.

Then Marvel decided to turn a normally boring Monday morning into an event by unleashing this:

THOR: RAGNAROK TEASER!!!  I had no idea this was dropping today.

(insert every happy/excited emoji right here)

That party people, is how you get the blood flowing on a Monday morning!  AMAZING TEASER for a franchise that 'some' folks are not as warm about compared to other Marvel franchises.  Well dare I say, the naysayers may be taking cover right about now.  So here I am writing something now.

Full disclosure: I LOVE the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Sometimes I feel like I want to live there, because the worst part of the movies is when they end, and I have to wait months on end until the next entry comes out.  So I LOVE when there is news from official channels about the upcoming movies whether its a poster, footage in the form of teasers and trailers, to when tickets go on sale weeks ahead of time.  I've made it my business to be at the first showing of these movies at 7pm Thursday the day before their official release on Friday because I cannot risk being spoiled about ANYTHING once the movie is out.

And of course when it ends I am sitting in my seat waiting for the post-credits scenes, cuz Marvel always likes to tease the future.  I can't decide which tease was better when Nick Fury teased the Avengers Initiative to Tony Stark at the end of "Iron Man", or the appearance of Thanos at the end of "Avengers"?

Sidenote: it kills me seeing folks get up to leave when the credits are rolling.  I just want to shout to them, "WHERE ARE YOU GOING? THERE IS STILL MORE TO SEE!!!"

So while I had every intention of writing last night about the things I was looking forward to this week, sometimes its the things that we do not see coming that end up making us just as happy as well.

But who am I kidding....If the "Last Jedi" teaser has a lightsaber igniting along with hearing the first bit of new dialogue from LUKE MOTHERF_CKIN' SKYWALKER in over three decades, how could that NOT be the best thing to happen this week?

May the Force Be With You
Make Mine Marvel

"Many Facez" by Tracey Lee: 20 Years Later

1997 will be remembered as the year that saw the release of the Notorious B.I.G’s  double album “Life After Death”  on March 25, mere weeks after he was murdered.  A few months later the Wu-Tang Clan dropped their double LP “Wu-Tang Forever” on June 3.  Sandwiched in-between those two releases was a debut album from an up & coming emcee who hailed from Philadelphia and who made a name for himself in Washington, DC while attending Howard University.  Powered by the hit single “The Theme: It’s Party Time” and featuring the last recorded verse from Biggie while he was still alive, “Many Facez” by Tracey Lee is celebrating twenty years since its release in 1997.

Now what’s interesting about this album is those of us who were involved in its creation cannot quite pin down the exact date of its release.  Sure if you do a search for it in Google, it comes up as March 25, 1997, but keep in mind this album dropped at a time before Google was really a thing, of indexing history and the internet as we know it today.  Plus this is the same date that Big’s album dropped.  I personally do not recall picking up “Many Facez” on the same date that I picked up Big’s album.  Quick story: I used to road manage Tracey, and we were out on the road somewhere in the United States, and earlier in the day on March 24th we were at a Mom & Pop record store at a strip mall type location.  The owners told us that they would open up at midnight to start selling Big’s album, and we definitely planned to return later that evening so that we could pick up Big’s album as we continued on our promo run (special R.I.P. to the one and only Garnett Reid who took us out everywhere on the road).  When we returned later that evening, I remember picking up Big’s album, but not Tracey’s. We surely would have grabbed multiple copies of each had both been available for sale.  

Marley Marl & Tracey Lee outside of Hot 97 in NYC

I do remember that the record label, Bystorm/Universal originally planned to release Many Facez on March 25.  There was a belief that record buyers who went to pick up Biggie’s album, would also pick up Tracey’s album.  Speaking for myself I never thought that was a wise idea, and my recollection, thankfully, was that at the 11th hour a decision was made to delay the album by about 2 weeks, making the new release date April 8, 1997.  This is the date I remember, and oddly enough if you look up Mancy Facez on Amazon, April 8 is what comes up as the original release date.  Plus its chart history over on Billboard.com indicates that it debuted two weeks after “Life After Death” instead of debuting the same week.  It’s a fascinating, small controversy that Tracey and I have good banter over!

As far as the album goes, “Many Facez” was a concept album showcasing the different sides of Tracey, or the many faces.  They were, L, Rock, LR, Tray, and Mr. Lee.  These personalities allowed Tracey to be versatile in his song making using wih different flows, different rhyme patterns, and different styles; it all just depended on which face he was wearing.  Back then we probably did not articulate this concept as well as we could have, but as the album gets older I appreciate it more and more.  Listen to the album today, and you will see what I mean.  

Yours Truly, Pharohe Monch, Tracey Lee & DJ Parlay

One of the areas of “Many Facez” where this was evident was in the sequencing of having the song “Repent” appear before “Give It Up Baby” the second commercial single released from the album.  “Repent” was an LR record, and it was as far away from being a commercial record as there could be as exemplified by the hook, “don’t you hate n-ggas who make records for b-tches?”, yet this record was followed by its antithesis “Give It Up Baby” featuring Tray, the ladies man, a record that was made to have commercial appeal and get spins on the radio.  This was purposeful sequencing and one of the ways the concept of “Many Faces” was meant to come to life.  

My favorite record on the album hands down is “Stars in the East” featuring another one of HU’s finest in One Step Beyond (Kenyaflow, MID, and John Doh representing the Bronx, Newark, and Philly respectively).  The Jones Girls “Nights over Egypt” sample alone makes this a classic record, and Tracey in the L persona trade verses with Kenyaflow and MID was nothing short of magical.  This song could still be released TODAY and it would be a smash, it’s that good!

Biggie, D-Dot, Yours Truly, and Tracey Lee

“Keep Your Hands High” will always be special, because this is the last record that Biggie did a verse on while he was still alive.  Recorded at D&D studios, Biggie and Tracey traded verses as if they had been rhyming together for years, and I could not help but think that this would be the first of many collaborations between the two of them, since the head of Tracey’s label, Mark Pitts was also Biggie’s manager.  A few weeks later in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997, Fate would have other plans as Big was murdered shortly after leaving a party that we had also attended.  When it came time for “Many Facez” to drop, we were unable to use Biggie’s name on the sticker that would showcase songs and features on the album.  I didn’t even know that sort of thing required permission.  Live and learn.  

Of course I can’t talk about this album without talking about the hit single “The Theme: It’s Party Time”.  Catchy, infectious, a roof raiser, or party starter you name it THIS record was the SHYT in ‘96-’97 when it was out and can still get the party going today.  DJ Red Alert was the first DJ to play it on his show in NYC in November of ‘96.  Before we knew it, we were on a plane to Atlanta in January the following year performing at a party in honor of Nas’ second album going double platinum, and I just remember seeing the whole club raising the roof as the song was performed and singing “It’s party time...Whoa It’s Party Time”.  It was at this point I knew Tracey had something special.  This was twenty years ago, and it seems like only yesterday.  

So I want to send a special shout out to my friend, and my brother Tracey Lee as we celebrate the 20 year anniversary of his debut album, “Many Facez”, an album that took us all over the country and allowed us to see things we could only dream of.  You made a helluva debut album, and I can’t wait to reminisce about this over the course of the next twenty years!

If you want to purchase “Many Facez” or any other album in Tracey’s discography head over to http://traceyleemusic.com/

"The Get Down" Part 2 Review

Much to my delight this past Friday April 7th, Netflix released Part 2 of "The Get Down".  I was anxious to see the further adventures of The Get Down Brothers (Books, Shaolin Fantastic, Ra-Ra, Boo-Boo, and Dizze) and Mylene Cruz and the Soul Madonnas.

Some criticism of Part 1 was that its scope was so ambitious that at times it seemed the story meanders a bit, particularly in its presentation of the early days of hip-hop.  I stress that this is a drama, and not a documentary.  "The Get Down"  never aimed to be a historical, fact by fact telling of important milestones in the development of hip-hop.  This is a fictional ,coming of age story about a group of kids who grew up in the Bronx during the tumultuous 1970's, and it would be impossible to tell this story without including the early days of b-boys and b-girls (as well as the decline of disco.)

This is not to excuse some of the historical anachronisms that exist (such as some members of the crew who were rapping in double time, which was not a prevalent style of rhyming at this point in time for example) but its fun to see how these characters come into contact with this culture either through the rapping, playing music or through other means (some which were not so noble) These moments are what makes "The Get Down" so special, because if this culture means anything to you, you probably remember that moment when you discovered, it or when you fell in love with it; and for a lot of us the discovery and love were one in the same!

Compared to Part 1, Part 2 is a bit more streamlined.  The characters are established, the origin bits are out of the way, and they can pretty much get down to business in each episode.  For those who disliked Part 1, or found it a chore to make it through all the episodes, I would definitely say give Part 2 a fair chance.  Each of the episodes treat the expression of hip-hop as something that already exists, albeit in its earliest form, and does not have to stop and explain various elements at every opportunity.  Even when it does, such as when Books is explaining how a DJ finds the 'get down' part of the record and brings it back and forth between two turntables to a co-worker, it moves at a brisk pace and does not take up half of the episode.

If you enjoyed Part 1, these five episodes that make up Part 2 really bring the whole series together.  Being familiar with the characters, you will empathize with their various journeys and struggles even if some seem predictable, the cast is so likable you may find that you talk to yourself when certain characters meet obstacles, or express their frustrations about how life is treating them at a particular time.  Strip everything away, and a few of us, i'm sure have been in one of these characters shoes at one point or another.

A pleasant surprise in the storytelling mechanism for Part 2 is at various points throughout the episodes the story is told via a comic book strip where the characters and setting are animated and the actors provide voice-overs for their respective avatars.  I wonder how this series would have been received had it been completely animated.  We may never know, but for the parts where this did appear, I appreciated it tremendously.

Finally, as Part 1 had appearances by actors playing Grandmaster Flash, and Kool Herc,

*** spoiler alert***

Part 2 introduces the final member of the hip-hop trinity in Afrika Bambaattaa & the Zulu Nation.  No the show does not delve into the controversies surrounding him, he and his crew play a key role in the climax that is  similar to the opening few minutes of "The Warriors" .  It will be interesting to see how purists respond to this part of the story.

My review of Part 1 of the Get Down can be found here

Peace, Love & Unity

update: This new track from Nas that is featured at the start of Episode 3 "Angel Dust" just popped up on youtube today.  So dope!