Thirty Three Jones | Desktop Site
This is the Kenny Dope profile pic from thetruth.com. It's hard to see behind the lettering, but they have him dressed up as a pixie for some reason.
I don't normally tune into TechTV, other than to watch the incredible Ninja Warrior, but I made an exception today as the focus of their "news" program Attack of the Show was "hip hop for geeks." After a brief discussion of a few hip hop blogs (ohword, hiphoplinguistics and some other site I had never heard of before and whose name I am currently unable to recall), they mentioned that various deejays (Diplo, Kenny Dope, Pete Rock and Mix Master Mike among others) had been commissioned by the anti-tobacco group Truth to remix their PSAs. I must confess that I've always been on the fence about Truth; while I appreciate their general message - the message being that large corporations are more interested in making a buck than in protecting the well being of their customers - that cowboy commercial has always made me uneasy. Have Pete Rock put together a remix for you, however, and I'm willing to overlook that.
It's unlikely that you'll be bumping any of these remixes in your iPod, but I thought they were worth putting up if only for the novelty factor. The two most noteworthy efforts are Kenny Dope's remix of the Typo ad and Pete Rock's remix of the Magical Amount:
They've put all of the remixes for sale on iTunes, $1 each or $6 for the entire collection. I'm not entirely sure why anyone would pay for what amounts to little more than a P.S.A. with a b-side quality instrumental under it, but I suppose its a decent excuse to donate to the cause (though as for me personally, my annual allotment for charitable donations will probably be going over to the EFF after today's big announcement).
In any event, Z-Trip has made his remix available for free, and the rest can all be heard over at The Truth's imeem page. They also have a bunch of video interviews with all of the deejays over at thetruth.com. Most of the interviews aren't particularly exciting - they consist primarily of each dj briefly discussing how they started their careers, and then an announcement of how long its been since they last smoked (smoked a cigarette that is, though there's more than one nudge nudge, wink wink reference to other types of smoking) - though it was somewhat surprising to hear that Z-Trip will not perform in any club that allows smoking.
Also, for the handful of producers reading this, Truth has opened up their remix project to everyone, with the top 5 remixes getting featured on itunes. You can find out more, and download all of the instrumentals for the PSAs, on their imeem page.
9/18/2008 09:12:01 PM posted by Fresh