Last week I did a workshop in New York for the Make Something!! School in association with Nike. They’ve been getting people like Todd James, Carri Munden from Cassette Playa, Todd Selby and more to come in and work with teenagers from the City. They’re all preparing a big blowout ceremony that will be taking place next weekend at the World Basketball Festival. In my case, I was asked to help the kids come up with a 1 minute musical performance. Check the video from Nike above, and more info on the Make Something!! blog.

Trizzy luh the kids.

I have an older brother, his name is David and he has a band called Chromeo. You know this, right? I just need to make sure once in a while.

(Are you following them on twitter yet? They’re new in town.)

Chromeo have a new album just around the corner, and having witnessed the brick-by-brick assembly of that beast, I can’t wait for the world to hear it. Dave always sings me his songs before he records them. Somewhere on one of my old MiniDV tapes I have footage of him doing Momma’s Boy on the air-Wurli and air-bells when it was just in his head… I need to dig that up. But I digress. They recorded the new album at a studio just a few blocks from my apartment, so I’d go visit them every evening and was the go-to “how does this sound?” guy. I even tracked their vocals on one of the songs. But truthfully, the way they work is extremely self-contained. If they do reach out to someone on the outside, it’ll be some random saxophonist, which has happened a few times already.

Now it’s all done, and it is my pleasure to present to you: “Don’t Turn The Lights On”.
Buy it on iTunes! (That’s the US link but it’s also out in the UK.)

For those of you who checked out Drake’s album you may have noticed I’m scratching on song #5, “Show Me A Good Time”. Here’s the story of how that came about.

You could think that there was some sort of Canadian connection, or even a Kanye connection for that matter. But there wasn’t. When So Far Gone came out last year and Drizzy’s buzz went through the roof of the stratosphere of the ceiling of the galaxy, I remember thinking “wow, this is interesting, this is the first time there’s a Canadian rapper that I know absolutely nothing about.” Canada, while being a huge country on the atlas, has a very small music biz. Having been active in it for over a decade, I can tell you that usually everyone knows everyone. But the truth is, I left Montreal 4 years ago and Drake is pretty young, so in my view he just came out of nowhere.

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If you’ve walked around the mean streets of New York in the last 2 weeks, you may have seen one of these snazzy Bushmills billboards, including this one with the FG crew next to the Alife Rivington Club. Or maybe you saw the Chromeo one in Williamsburg which is, oh I don’t know, 20 times bigger:

They actually painted them! It was a real trip to watch this guy paint my brother’s sideburns.

For more pics of the campaign you can check out the Bushmills Facebook page.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes video from the shoot itself, at Jonathan Mannion’s fabled studio.

This weekend I went to Mexico City for a gig and had a great time. There will be pics, recaps and mementos coming shortly, but for now I wanted to share a story about one of my favorite topics: laptops. I’m profoundly puzzled and wondering if anyone can help elucidate this business. It all started last year when I went to Mexico to play in Puebla. When I landed and went through customs and immigration, they searched my bags and asked me why I had 2 laptops. I told them I was there to work as a DJ, that one laptop is for my shows and the other for work. The officer said: “you’re a musician? do you have a card?” I looked at him incredulously. Like, a business card? I’ve always refused to have a business card. Categorically. But I wasn’t going to give this officer my schpiel about “why do I need a card? If I want to give someone my number I’ll just give them my number.” I simply said no, I don’t. To this guy, though, if you’re a professional musician you must have a card, if you have a card then you’re a musician and if you don’t then you aren’t. (Necessary and sufficient conditions. A question of logic.) It didn’t matter that I had an official work visa from the festival and letters stated that I was there to DJ. The fact that I had 2 laptops was a problem. After much pleading and interventions from the festival organizers they eventually let me through, but it was obviously a big problem to travel to Mexico with more than one computer, and in all my years of globetrotting I’ve never encountered anything similar.

This weekend when I was on my way to Mexico and filling out customs forms on the plane, I read the small print for the section where they ask if you’re bringing in professional equipment (and what you’re entitled), and lo and behold there was a clause about not having more than one personal computer. What in the world?? Thankfully this time when I went through customs they didn’t search me and I got in without a hitch. But I really felt like I was smuggling something. So strange.

Later that night I went to do sound check at the club. It was a big club and we had to fill out sign-in sheets. A security guard looked at my bag and guess where he stopped? He saw that I had a laptop! I had to fill out a sort of registration form just to walk into this club with my computer. Name, contact info, make of the computer and reason for bringing it in. All this for a Serato sound check.

People, people, people. What gives?

Last Wednesday Kidrobot hosted a signing at their NY store with myself and Dust La Rock for the launch of our Grateful Bear toy. Nylon covered it.

Check my pictures from the event:

More pics after the jump, including a surprise visit from Kid Cudi…

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Today is the first day of my tour and I have my bodyguard Grateful with me. He handled his first flight like a champ, and then we met up with our tour bus. Let the adventures begin!

I hope US Airways finds my luggage… Grateful might need to open a can of whup-ass.

You can purchase your very own Grateful Bear on the Kidrobot site. Limited quantities so hurry up!

Today I did a photo shoot for the next Swagger collection. Here’s a few pics from my camera.

Also met Pac Div at the shoot, they were mad cool.

It’s still sinking in… I know he’s gone but I still catch myself thinking “damn, Michael Jackson died.”

What a strange day. I got home mid-afternoon and my friend told me there were some rumors of Michael Jackson having a heart attack. Twitter started buzzing about “is he dead?”. The next 2 hours were very eerie. People speculating on his death, checking news sites frantically waiting for some sort of confirmation. It’s weird how we feel this entitlement to know right away whether or not the man had passed away. AIM shut down a few times. Then TMZ announced it way ahead of anyone else. I remember thinking “If they’re wrong they’re going to catch a lashing. And I hope they’re wrong.” But slowly, one by one, sources started announcing what we all feared. Michael Jackson died today.

Damn. The icon of our generation when we were growing up. Possibly the last music superstar of that stature. Who since Michael made pop music that was so universal and uncompromising? You listen to Thriller today and it still embodies perfection on so many levels, from the songwriting to the instrumentation, the mixdowns all the way to the pure emotion and well-roundedness of the album. The King of Pop reminded us in this jaded age that pop doesn’t have to be cheesy; on the contrary it can be superior music.

In the evening as I was watching a live stream of De La Soul’s Maceo playing old Jacksons joint, I started hearing that New Yorkers were going to rally in Times Square for a sort of vigil. I decided to go but alas found nothing but a small group of people dancing and the music getting cut off by cops. I thought this would be one of those magical nights where New Yorkers come together. I guess not. I’m sure there will be some proper tributes to come though. This is the biggest loss that the music world could have suffered. Let’s stay positive though and celebrate the man’s life and all the gifts that he left us.

Rest in peace Michael! Your music will live on forever.

I talked about this cardboard cut-out of Mehdi and me as Men In Black in my Pitchfork Guest List so lots of people have been asking to see it lately. When we got it as a gift at an LA show, my idea was to take pictures of it all around the world like in Amelie. But then we lost it the next day. We still got enough shots to make this gif though. This was on the first Fool’s Gold tour in October 2007.

I gotta give a give a big shout out to the artist who made this, his name is Busc check him out!