Video Premiere for "I Got My" by Magnetic North and Taiyo Na featuring Jin

In celebration of APIA Heritage Month, our friends Magnetic North (Derek and Theresa) and Taiyo Na premiered the video for their song "I Got My" featuring Jin (as in Jin tha MC).  If you havent already heard,  it's a really inspiring upbeat song that makes you appreciate the support and community you have. Derek describes the song as "basically about embracing who you are what you got... fam, music,  arts,  community,  love.  It's for anyone and everyone who respects themselves and are doing something positive with their life."

Since the theme of the "I Got My" revolves around having love and support, the video includes appearances from many of our artist friends, as well as other prominent Asian Americans doing things in media and Hollywood, as well as regular community folks - and Yellow Rage was invited to be in it! To extend the love to our own community, Michelle and I asked Gary San Angel (one of our mentors and the reason we met to form Yellow Rage) to film our portion of the clip at the Asian Arts Initiative and included participants from last month's Family Style to be in it too!  Also in the video, look out for hip hop artists Blue Scholars, Denizen Kane, Far East Movement, America's Best Dance Crew winners Poreotics, spoken word artists Bao Phi, Beau Sia, Adriel from Ill-literacy, bloggers Phil Yu from Angry Asian Man and Diana Nguyen from Disgrasian, writer Ed Lin with his wife actor Cindy Cheung, and the list goes on. It was great to be in good company of such amazing talent, but the most exciting cameo came from 1960's activist Yuri Kochiyama who is lip-rapping in the video! What I love too is that everyone's name is underneath, so there's always an opportunity to learn and check out what else is doing.

So proud of you guys, and so humbled to be part of this community that continues to grow and inspire us. Thank you for letting us be a part!

-Catzie

Phill-Literacy!

So that amazing group of poets from the Bay were here in Philly for a night, yes I'm talking about Ill- Literacy. And because I am lazy and a loser, I didn't listen to my voicemail nor did I call Adriel back (I know I'm awful) when he first phoned me so when he made one last attempt to reconnect before hopping on the Chinatown bus to NYC, Ruby, Nico and Dahlak had already gone their separate ways. I didnt want to leave Adriel all alone and bored in the city so I told him to meet me at my office and informally made it "Bring Your Friends to Work Day" or as we call it in the artist world "Bring Your Fellow Artist to Your Real Day Job Day". Fortunately, I work for two.one.five magazine and my boss knows I'm a bossy bitch, so I decided to rent a car via Phillycarshare and took Adriel to Denise's Jamaican Food Lunch truck, right outside the 30th Street Mail station.

Since I was lucky enough to have a car today, I drove all the way up to West, West Philly to see about getting some doubles from the Brown Sugar Bakery, a Trinidadian Restaurant. If you don't know what doubles are, they are sandwiches made from curried chickpeas and two fried flatbreads. They're street food, and usually sold with wax paper twisted on the bottom to keep the filling from falling out. At Brown Sugar, they only have doubles from Wednesdays to Saturday, and cost $1.50. I was so excited I couldn't stop talking about them driving through traffic while Adriel held a hot bag of Jamaican food sitting on his lap trying to tell me the story of how people are confusing them a group from America's Best Dance crew, because they happen to be a group of mixed ethnicities and genders as well. Of course when I got there... they were ALL SOLD OUT. I couldn't believe it, the lunch rush hour wasn't even over yet. And it wasn't only Thursday. I left instead with 3 vegetarian patties and headed back to the office. During this whole time I realized that Adriel had been taking pictures of me while reiterating to me the importance of continually updating your blog. Albeit it was a camera phone but he was thinking. I unfortunately was not. This is the only picture I could get of him.

And yes, it was also on a camera phone.



- until next time,
Catzie