I have two announcements to make.

First, I did a mixtape called “Kanye’s Soul Mixshow” (I didn’t pick the title) for this Japanese label and it just came out. I think it’s a Japan-only situation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some CDs eventually showed up on our shores. The concept is pretty simple: it’s all soul records that Kanye has sampled. So the challenge was to take all these records that happen to be linked to Kanye’s catalogue and make a good, coherent mix out of it. I’m pretty happy with how it came out. Kanye hosted the whole thing. And it’s not some generic drops; he actually tells funny stories while the samples are playing. My favorite is during the Cam’Ron “Down & Out” sample, he goes into this whole thing about “this is my favorite beat that I didn’t really do”… You gotta track down the CD to get the scoop!

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I ended off my summer with a 2 week string of shows in the Old Continent, which I guess could qualify as the European (and final) leg of the Sunglasses Is A Must tour. My first show was a the Hip Hop Kemp festival in what I thought was going to be Prague. In fact it was 2 hours away, in rural Czech Republic. I don’t remember the name of the city but I couldn’t really pronounce it anyway, in all honesty. Really, I was picturing going to Prague and recreating the “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” video by myself. Instead I had a driver who blasted a Tiesto live mix in the car while dropping such jewels as “I stop at petrol station to roll joint with other driver, OK? You want sandwich?” The show itself was dope, though. 20,000 people in a field. The next day I did the Lowlands festival outside of Amsterdam, which had a great lineup but I didn’t get to see much because of heavy rain.

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