I went to San Francisco the other day, because we are shooting this live acoustic DVD for Nightranger. Well, they were shooting it, I was only doing the photos for the album package. So in-between sound check and show I did a photo shoot with them in 3 settings. 1 got cut out cause it was an outside one but ended up to windy, 1 was added when I saw something cool during sound check so back to 3. The show was cool too, at 2 am we arrived at the Hotel, got back up at 4 am, took the first plane back to L.A. at 6 am. Had breakfast real fast with Damani and drove the equipment back to the rent at around 11 am.

Here is the photo set up … not really ended up shooting like this but close.

After that I started working on this website for the team Snoop and Soopafly coaches, for the S(noop) Y(outh) F(ootball) L(eague). They are coaching the Diamond Valley Steelers (before: Pomona Steelers). They also want me to go out to their trainings and shoot photos during training and games and run the website on a daily basis, we will see how that works out. Here is a little preview:

I am trying to build content, and I think this is an interesing idea. Most mixtape covers are a lot of photoshop work as far as composing images. Like this one, I shot the photo in the studio with D-Dimes in front of a white wall. I really try to get away from that, specially when doing album packages, but sometimes there is no way around it (especially in Hip Hop).

When I lived in San Francisco, I met this guy Lord Nez. He is original from Hollis, Queens, New York. I told him I been there, now you got to understand, somebody from europe will never be there, even somebody white will never be there. We are talking about the deep Queens project, so Nez looked at me and was like “Hell no! You never been in my hood!”. Matter of fact is I been there a couple of times, and always had my camera with me. So I started showing him photos and ends up that I been right by his building, and actually also on the roof of it. He was tripping out, and we became good friends from that moment on.

Later on we met again in New York and he introduced me to J. Simmons (Russel Simmons nephew – he has a big tattoo over his eyebrow that says SIMMONS – stupid). His wife had a real upscale clothing store, and in the back room he had his little man cave: video games, comic figures and music stuff. So he wanted to put out an album called ‘The Family Tree’ and he had the vision of the artwork totally mapped out, he wanted something that shows how the artist all make sense and connect with each other that are on there. So I brought his idea to the screen, and he was super happy. The actual project never came out. Here is how it looked like and the track list to it:

The first post I ever made on this blog included the Mac Lucci flyer, the third post was the actual back of the project called ‘The Pre-Hustle 2′. Well all that changed now and we finished a complete new look.

First off, I don’t want to just post the art, I want to tell my story with the artist, maybe that’s something interesting and what I should do more. I first met Lucci around 2007 … I can actually tell you the exact date, it was March 3, 2007. Why I still got this date in my head? I don’t know it just stuck with me. Anyway, the whole crew was at a Snoop video shoot to the Boss’ Life video, and I guess Dogg was looking for new artist. There were a bunch of people just freestyling and battle each other. The last two left were D-Dimes and Mac Lucci … the Hustle Boyz were born.

Later I moved back to NY from L.A. and like always, out of sight out of mind. Lucci went on a little journey also, but not to a different state, he went to jail. A year later he got out and thanks to house arrest he did not jump back into the streets, he left the hood and started using the house arrest time and shot a movie. The story to his life. Its part of his album ‘California Hustle’ and till this day I am very impressed with what I saw, and like I said before to many people when I told them this story – I never seen an artist on a level like that (underground, no album out) with such a great quality product!

Time passed by and I came back to L.A., so fast forward to December 2011. I was sitting in Snoops Apartment in Hollywood, and all the sudden Lucci came in, we both said hello and he sat down. At this moment he didn’t realize it was me, so I passed him my art book and he went through it, at that moment he realized it was me and we connected straight away. So beside that artwork, there is a lot of shit coming with him … artwork, photos, videos …

What I like about Lucci is, usually when artist get signed to any mayor artist, they get comfortable, just relax and chill and wait for the artist to set everything up, but they have a lot of shit to do too, so 9 times out of 10 that’s the reason why most of those artist never get big or better: they fail. Mac Lucci is not one of them, since he got out of jail he filmed a full movie, shot numerous music videos, and put out 4 mix tapes with all original beats. So he is grinding his ass off. He is making things work for himself, and just use the Snoop Dogg co-sign to promote himself. Dope. I like that. And even if you do or don’t like his music, with ever project he put out you can actually hear a growing in the quality of his music, and he kinda found his sound and the lane he is in by dropping different stuff.

So the album / movie is coming out late summer 2012. And as of right now, there is ‘The Pre-Hustle 2’. Check out the artwork below:

Oh and here is the trailer for ‘California Hustle’, it’s actually kinda old and the release date is wrong to, but this is the first one that came out to it. Then I guess Snoop saw the quality of the project and pushed it all back and kinda took over the executive spot to make sure everything is right since he felt the potential (that is my guess).

I am back! Where can I start … well I stopped for a second cause there are not many readers so the big question is if it was really worth it, but I guess, just to go back one day myself and look at it maybe or just to make that 1 person happy. Anyway, I’m back in Los Angeles. Been here three weeks now, the Anchored and Snoop video dropped that I was telling you about. I will attach the video @ the end of the post, I hope people from overseas can see it …

Hm, what else? After I got here the first week I been traveling around with Rita Ora, she is signed to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation and gets pushed real hard right now. She is originally from London, UK and is going back and forth right now. Her first single ‘R.I.P’ dropped in the UK last week and went straight to #1. So I been going around L.A. and Vegas with her, documenting every step she makes for a whole week, that was kinda cool cause she has a good team. The videos will be out on YouTube soon.

Then I just finished a new artwork for Treacherous Records, it’s called ‘The Mint Room’, there are still some minor changes, once that is done I will upload that. Damn there is not to many stories right now, so I will just leave you with the video …

BTW: Ab-Soul’s ‘Control System’ came out today. Dope!