The Gray Way

The Frank Ocean-assisted opener to Jay-Z and Kanye West’s much-celebrated Watch The Throne opus finally comes to life in the visual form.

“When the weather get warm I just feel like I gotta contribute to makin the world a fly place.” - Dom Kennedy

Dom’s forthcoming ‘Yellow Album’ is on the way.

So, an extremely talented cohort of mine, filmmaker Ryan Lipscomb, inspired by the shootings of Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo and Oscar Grant, has put together a truly ambitious, pertinent and thought-provoking drama entitled “Bruise.” Centered around the coinciding accounts of a clique of African-American college apprentices heading to a Friday-night house party and a pair of uniformed officers making their nightly rounds, the zenith on which these two factions collide is tragic. Something that’s become all too familiar. However, with “Bruise,” uniquely explored in the drama (which will double as Lipscomb’s USC thesis film) is not so much the nighttime calamity, but the incident’s essence, dually deep-rooted in fear built on seeds of misgiving, of “victims of police brutality who are more than just symbols and martyrs, but human beings, and…the police officers who are responsible for these incidents, and police officers at large, [who] are more than just agents of oppression but also, human beings.” This is a very purposeful, highly intense exploration with the goal of better helping these groups historically in combat better understand one another. That said, catch the teaser for the short film below and, from there, please invest into something pertinent to us all here.

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This scheduled lineup for this year’s installment of the Rock The Bells festival that was just announced at Hollywood’s House of Blues? Mind-blowingly incredible. I’ll have much more to say about it later, but for now just scour through the star-studded bill above, begin planning your trips to the Nos Events Center (August 18 & 19) in San Bernardino, CA, the Shoreline Amphitheatre (August 25 & 26) in Mountain View, CA, or the PNC Bank Arts Center (September 1 & 2) in Holmdel, NJ and go here for more information.

Big K.R.I.T.’s musical brand of pensive depth and warm ambition for the everyman is officially set for retail, as his Def Jam debut Live From the Underground is scheduled to hit stores June 5th. Today, as an appetizer to the forthcoming 16-track southern comfort food, Krizzle relinquishes the album’s tracklisting that includes co-starring appearances from Bun B, Melanie Fiona, Ludacris, 8Ball & MJG, B.B. King, Anthony Hamilton, Devin The Dude, 2 Chainz and more.

Check it out below.

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“Every kingdom comes up bloody. Every castle is built on a pile of bones. Back East, I was a gangster, out here, I’m a god.” — Sean Penn’s Mickey Cohen

So, um, yeah, this initial teaser trailer for “Gangster Squad” looks pretty damn amazing. The forthcoming crime film, directed by Zombieland’s Ruben Fleische and due this fall, enticingly fictionally retells the true-life warfare between Brooklyn-born, vindictive Jewish mob “God” Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) and the LAPD’s small sect of vigilante, gritty misfits—led by Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) and Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling)—for a powerful stranglehold on the 1940s and early 1950s Los Angeles ran by Cohen, whose leaned on his unprincipled winnings from drugs, prostitution and guns to sit atop the underworld’s mountaintop with police, goons and politicians alike at his beck and call for protection. And in the two-and-a-half-minute clip we see that the power-hungry, star-charged (Emma Stone, Nick Nolte, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi and Michael Peña are also featured) battle for vengeance with copious amounts of style, trepidation and Tommy guns will aim at LA Noir traditionalism with a fresh peppering of gusto. Catch the trailer—capped off with Jay-Z’s “Oh My God” musical lead—below.

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