ILL K Entry 34 APRIL 19 -- 4 years ago "The Community's first night"

ILL-J - Still Living (Produced by B-Roc)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to The Community show, its been a minute I know you miss rockin' Pinas' hiphop wednesday nights during the summer -- but don't think for a second that we forget. We see you everywhere nowadays, we don't have to wait for summer -- you seem to be instilled in people's thoughts just as we planned it. Thank you for the memories.

That first night was like going on a first date, my team have been promoting all month long after doing that show with Jin and Loon in Taipei. I guess my team was there at Club Halo around 830PM setting things up -- and one by one the people started to come through, cyphers broke out outside. The parking lot was a scene on its own, excitement filled the air as we saw peoples faces light up just by having a home to call for the rest of the summer.

The first two nights of the show was one of the most creative spurts this scene has seen -- where in we decided to do a raffling out of beats from our list of producers to our MC wish list for that year. It showed pairings of these tandems and created gems -- Nimbus was the first to pick and got Artstrong's name. Miscellaneous picked Dash, Dcoy picked Mic of Ampon and produced the song "Wika" (don't get it twisted, AMPON produced that track, all in the spirit of The Community), Syke picking DJ Umph -- I remember Syke asking me "magaling ba ito?" -- well they have spawned 3 classic songs after that night. People's Future was chatting it up with me outside and was wishingly hoping to pick DJ Arbi's beat, and they did. Deleet got Chrizo, and Chrizo's beat for this CD consists of two beats in one song, Mike Swift got the Raimund Marasigan contribution, Stick Figgas got the Traumatik beat that well became "Ikaw Nga" -- I mean do I have to tell you how well thought of this event was? I tell you -- show me a moment more creative than this, besides Konketado's celebrations -- that had been ideal enough to promote peace and put everyone to work?

Today I give you my contribution to this still unreleased CD, Still Living by one of the last lyrical juggernauts in my book, ILL-J the Demented Lyricist. I worked with ILL-J prior to this, but this one was one up against the rest of the tracks people made and yo -- this song is a classic just cause if you play it now, RJ's points of view has rarely changed. I remember asking the producers to submit the beats to me a week before April 19, and I would review them all and decided to make the beat for this collaboration a few days before the event. I remember playing it for Chrizo and Nathan J, and got a thumbs up -- Nathan J joined the raffle hoping to get this beat, but he got one better -- Tibbz of Miscellaneous which birthed Nathan J's "I Shall Proceed" song.

Salamat sa lahat ng sumuporta. You know who you are.

Throw your L's up, Mike playing the saxophone -- hitting a bad note, RP not showing up to perform when we let him share the billing with the heavyweights, Madd Poets coming to perform together again, Gloc 9 performing Lapis at Papel, Johnny Krush x SVC reunion performance, Diego and Dash performing Jabongga acapella with a beatbox, Bigkas Pilipinas performs infront of an all hiphop crowd and killing it -- Cosmic Love, Out of Body Special and rock heads come to support, DJ Jena producing a beat for the compilation, Candy Cousart giving a welcome home performance that included Keith Martin dancing around, hehehe. Tons of memory Manila -- you already know.


WE STILL BUILDING.

DEFEND THESE WALLS.




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