Last time I wrote I was close to finishing up the Kanye tour overseas, where we hit festivals in no particular order and slept half-hour nights like it was going out of style. Yes, it was a hard one. We did manage to end it off on a grandiose high note. Our last show was in Nice, France (in a surreal field full of olive trees that obstructed the view of the stage). Kanye had decided to splurge and stay at a different hotel in Monte Carlo, and late that night we all went to meet up there, had a bacchanalian good time and drove back to catch our early-morning flights home.

Yes, I was home for a few days. These things happen sometimes. And then I went to spend a jolly week-and-a-half in Chitown. Ever notice how some people call it The Chi, some people call it The Go, but no one calls it The Ca? Middle child syndrome? One for the books, I guess.

First thing on the plate was Pitchfork Festival. I got in just in time to catch Flosstradamus and Kid Sister rocking and shocking it. I ended up staying with the former and making booming music with the latter that week so I’m glad I caught them. Let me point out that Chicago heat is no joke. It was so hot… I was laughing inexplicably, talking to lampposts and drinking Lake Michigan dry. Milk was a bad choice! I had the last set that day at the Biz3 stage, and then I went to play an afterparty with the Floss dudes. Both shows were awesome. I went back to the festival the next day to check out some of the acts like Diplo and Bonde do Role. CSS had a kazoo secretly stuck to the back of their guitar amp, maybe a good luck charm. I met Fred Armisen, a legend to any Anchorman fan. (“Yazz flute!”) But for me, the real surprise was this guy Glenn Kotche who is Wilco’s drummer, and he did a full performance just on a drum set decked out with all sorts of doodads, gizmos, xylophones, percussive ropes and magic boxes that I didn’t understand. Me being both a gadget lover and a drum lover, I was mesmerized.

A few days later I played at this photo exhibit curated by my man Cody Hudson from Struggle Inc, along with Ghislain Poirier and Elliot Lipp on the terrace of an art gallery. More heat! But it was great – I love doing shows in different, experimental settings like this. Cody designed a Sunglasses Is A Must t-shirt which is coming out soon through Sixpack France.

I quickly jetted to San Diego for a Kanye show where the entire (living) Wu-Tang played right before us, in all their majesty. And back in Chicago we played at Lollapalooza, where we were joined by the homies Karriem Riggins and Omar Edwards, who played percussion and keyboards with us on tour last fall. We also had Common, Twista, Lupe and Malik Yusef come out during the show. Lupe rocked it, hands down.

And I was in the studio with Young Lu just a few days later, working on my album. Matter of fact, there was an engineer at the studio that day who knew how to speak backwards! I shit you not, if you said anything to this guy, he could repeat it immediately with every word pronounced backwards, keeping the same order of words in the sentence. I was blown away. Hats off, mysterious backwards engineer man. I don’t remember his name but he had a beard, if that’s any help.

The rest of the week, I worked on some new tracks with Kid Sis and spent some quality Chicago time at the Floss mansion. They took me to the illest hot dog spot ever, incidentally. It’s called Hot Doug’s, go look at their menu. They make fancy, exotic hot dogs. I had a cognac-infused pheasant dog, topped with truffle mustard and foie gras butter. Heaven. Then I went too far and ordered an antilope dog with cherry mustard and gorgonzola cheese, but that cheese was a bit much for me.

Aside from that, Kiser just informed me that our Sunglasses t-shirt was on the front page of Digital Gravel yesterday! Those shirts are doing great, I think they’re in the new issue of Complex too.

By the way I’m supposed to be on vacation right now. So I’m gonna stop babbling and start deer gazing. Peace out.