TheBattleDrums.com

If you don’t already know this, I’ll come out and say it… i LOVE talking. Whether its conversating with friends, strangers, foolin around, or just talkin on stage, I love being vocal. And I think i genetically inherited this trait too. The beautiful ladies on my mom’s side of the family talk up storms that are big enough to make Zee TV dramas go out of business. (I’m hoping their not into reading blogs)

Even as a kid, I loved the attention by cracking jokes or break dancing or actin a fool like i do now. But one of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the years is the concept of “Less is More”.

As I continuously mature and become a wiser man, I’ve began to listen more and talk less. I tell my younger folks this all the time too: the less often you speak the more carefully people will listen. For example, if your blabbing on about this, that and other 24/7 , people around you will probably only take in an ounce of what you said. EVEN if you had something worthy to say, it’ll be lost in translation because you surrounded it with all the other jabber jibber. BUT if you only speak ever so often, people will pay very close attention to what you have to say. (trust me). Not sayin you should go emo on everyone and just stop completely talking and look all depressed, just be wiser about what you say, take into consideration who’s listening and speak in moderation.

I think this is most effective and applicable for older youth. Young adults who are in the position to be role models for the next generation. Try to apply this model to your life and see if it works. You might not see it work overnight, but give it a couple of months and you can see the difference for yourself.

- Saint

p.s. if you wanna see me talk unnecessarily and blab on about useless things all the time follow me on twitter @SaintSoulja  or add me on facebook  =)

www.facebook.com/saintsoulja

happy thursday!

Many times people have asked me what type of music I make. And a lot of times people have tried to label me as a specific type of artist. Some will say SaintSoulja is more of a political and social issue driven rapper, he mainly talks about those things. Some will say, SaintSoulja is a conscious rapper, while others will say he’s a horrible rapper. All of them are correct in their own interpretation. Because when I read a book or watch a movie I have my own opinion on it. I might think that Alicia Keys’ new album “Element of Freedom” has A LOT of  political undertones but others might not think anything of it. So I’m ok with your interpretations, because at the end of the day, its only your interpretation and not everyone elses.

The way I see my music is as “Me-Music”. I make music for myself, music that I enjoy listening to, and music that I feel will have some sort of impact on the listener. A lot of times I will say things that can be considered controversial, and a lot of times I will say things that very personal. Regardless, music is just a way for me to channel my thoughts, my feelings, and my personal opinions. Theres a lot of musicians and artists out there that will make “socially conscious” music, but if you were to sit em in a room and try to ask them about something like “hey man, in this song, you said this one thing, can you explain what you meant?” and they would have no clue or they would make something up.

I spent quite a bit of time hanging out with Rapper Immortal Technique over the years as we got to know him better, and I think one of the most unique things I’ve appreciated about him is that after every show/concert he would end up engaging in discussions with random people from the audience. And I think that is phenomenal. Because truly THEN music becomes the medium for education. Discussions are healthy for the brain, and I think most important ingredient is to have an open mind for someone else’s opinions and thoughts. So if you ever come across something that I say and wonder what I mean, just ask. I’ll be more than happy to talk to you about it. I’m not saying I know everything about everything, because I most definitely don’t. A lot of music is made from pure emotion, so if I can’t tell you the reasoning for what I said, I will most definitely be able to tell you what my feeling behind it was.

Alas, I leave you with some bars from my upcoming remix of “I’m Beamin” by Lupe Fiaso.

Peace be with you.

“This is for the non-believers, now I’m cleavin through the hatred/ to make my image clearer I will go and re-paint it/ carefully plated, they servin up your food/ you can put me in a box but I will turn it to a booth” – ss

The concept for the “Window Seat” remix is simple: Its about being Misunderstood. You ever get the feeling that people just judge you based on how you look, what you wear, how you speak and your general behavior? And without having known much about you, they automatically make assumptions about your personality. Like for example, the other day one of my newly made friends at work asked “hey, you drink don’t you?” and I said “no.” She said “oh, I thought you did”. And with a little bit of a laugh I said “why?” She said “I don’t know I guess it just looks like you do”. (the conversation went on after that, I didn’t really think of it as offensive or anything). But later I thought of it to be very interesting.

I know many of times I’ve used references to Islam or muslims or muslim things in my music, and people have misunderstood that as me being Muslim. Or people that know I am a follower of the Sikh faith, have questioned why I feel the need to make such references. What they don’t understand is that I was raised in a small country next to Iraq called Kuwait, and that in America, Muslims face just as much discrimination as the Sikhs,  and Islamophobia not only affects Muslims but also affects us as Sikhs. So in many ways, I feel a sense of Solidarity with my Muslim brothers and sisters and I stand alongside them in our struggles.

So in the “Window Seat” I say things like

“I AM, Misunderstood man, they ask no questions/often, get salaams like Im Muslim/ which is Peace and I know we could use some/ but the race is human so why should I choose one?”

And what I found exceptionally beautiful at the end of this whole ordeal, specially at the end of writing of this song was put into my last two lines

“….but yo, Imperfections got a beauty of their own/man my God walks with me so I never die alone.”

Anyway, I can’t wait for this video to be finished so everyone can see how the music and the video all compliment the concept of being Misunderstood.

I think its also important to mention that the core concept for this song and video came from the last few lines from Erykah Badu’s Window Seat:

“they who play it safe are quick to assassinate what they do not understand. they move in packs, ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another. they feel more comfortable in groups, less guilt to swallow. they are us. this is what we have become, afraid to respect the individual. A single person within their circumstance can move one to change; to love oneself; to evolve.” – Erykah Badu from “Window Seat”

Happy Monday people!

Today is going to be madd slowww. So to make your time go by faster at work, i’ve decided give you this blog to read.

This weekend was RIDICULOUSLY tiring, but overall it was extremely productive and a lot of fun.

First off, I just wanna give a big shoutout to my man Harjus Singh from Cincinnati, Ohio to drove all the way to D.C. to come do this video shoot for me. Much love to the brother and a HUGE Congratulations to him for getting his movie “Through the Ashes” accepted into the Cannes Film Festival in France. If you don’t know about the Cannes (pronounced Khan) Film Festival, it is probably the world’s oldest and most prestigious film festival. Movies like Pixar’s “UP”, “Inglorious Basterds” and directors like Tim Burton are just some of the BIGG names in the film industry that show up for Cannes. So for a Sikh man to have a movie accepted and being shown at this festival is a HUGE deal. I wish my mans Harjus the best of luck and congratulate him again on this tremendous accomplishment!

So with that being said, this weekend the both of us set out to make a music video for “Window Seat” (Eykah Badu remix), which is going to be set as the 3rd or 4th single to be released from The Battle Drums mixtape.

Headed out to Georgetown in D.C., on saturday morning, and realized we don’t have a boombox. We had nothing to playback the music so we couldn’t shoot anything.  So then we spent the next 2 hours in a city filled with the most complex and high end retail stores, and not a damn place still carries a BoomBox. I miss the 90’s, when people would just carry Boomboxes with them as they walked the street. Needless to say, I have a new appreciation for Boomboxes.

3 Hours behind schedule. We finally began the shoot on the beautiful Georgetown University’s Campus and its surrounding areas. Then we shot some scenes near Howard University’s campus and finally we shot some scenes at the Famous Ben’s Chilli Bowl (this was REALLY dope). After a 12 hr work day, we called it a night, and went back to DC again on Sunday.

Sunday Morning, the weather was kinda awful. But with God’s grace and my “Rain Dance”, the weather was finally nice enough for us to shoot.

Also I wanna give a BIG shoutout to Jassimran Singh from D.C. Gatka Dal for helping us out throughout the day on saturday, and a Big shoutout to Mandeep”icanteatmuchcauseimvegan” Kaur for playing a special role in the film along with “Gupt ‘Shopper’ Singh” Shout out to all of them for helping out with the project.

(to be continued)

Whatsss Goood my peoplees? (all 50 of you that actually take the time to read this) This is the first blog in “The Battle Drums” blog series. I’ll be using this space to update you all on the progress of the mixtape, the ideas that I have, and all that other exciting stuff.

As of the now i’m real excited, cause past weekend we OFFICIALLY started working on the mixtape, which is titled “The Battle Drums” and HOPEFULLY i’ll be able to release it by the end of the summer, so like around August maybe?

My most favorite part of this mixtape is that I’m going with NO COLLABS. Absolutely no collaborations on this mixtape! I think a mixtape is a place for an artist to build credibility and prove themselves as artists, so I don’t really see the point in getting other people to rap or sing on your tape when the whole point was to build your own credibility. So for this mixtape, Nothing but SaintSoulja for your ears. Also, this time I’ll mainly only be using industry instrumentals as compared to using original productions.

So far, we’ve recorded the following 5 tracks for the tape:

- I’m Beamin (Lupe Fiasco remix)

- Top of the World (Ace Hood remix)

- Wack MCs (Slaughterhouse remix)

- Window Seat (Erykah Badu remix)

- Just Begun (Reflection Eternal remix)

I’m gonna try and just go through all the tracks and record as many as I can, then go back and edit and re-do whatever needs to be re-done. Once everything is cleaned up, we mix n master and finish! (sounds simple, but these things take ALOT of time and effort)

I’ll also try and do some video blogs for you guys as well, take you inside the ghetto basement studio, show you some production magic, and of course give you some snippets of the kind of music we’re working on.

I’ll be back with a new blog next week after we’re done with a video shoot this weekend.

- Peace cause we need it.

p.s. enjoy this weedieo of the collab performance from Lahir (NY) 2009. featuring G.N.E, MC G-Singh, Hoodini and Humble the Poet

Whats goin on blog-world?

Where have I been you ask? I’ve been at work. BUT the good news is…we are almost done. End of tax season is officially 4 days away! woohoo!

In celebration of the end of tax season and Vaisakhi, I will be performing April 16th, 2010 at the University of MD, College Park. That’s THIS friday. So I need all my DC/MD/VA people to come through and show your support. The poster for the event is below. Make sure you spread the word, call your friends, and pick out your outfit. I’m hoping to release some new joints as well, so I’m excited.

Also. EXCLUSIVE for the blog. I’m going to let y’all know now, that the remix of Erykah Badu’s “Window Seat” is officially underway, and a Music Video is also in the talks. I will keep y’all updated on that as it happens.

That’s all for now. Until next time…

- The Beast from The East.

p.s. I hate pollen. My allergies have been killing me lately. I need my fix.

Whats happenin world? I apologize for not honoring my blogorific duties to the fullest. As I mentioned earlier, it is tax season, so time is very limited. But anywho. Here are some updates on whats been going on in my world.

I’ve started working on the next mixtape already, and honestly I must say, I’m REALLY excited about this one. I’m about 12-13 tracks in already and I’m looking to record about 20-25. That way you guys will get a whole bunch of different types of flavors and I’ll get a chance to try out all diff types of sounds and styles. So keep on the look out for that in the next few months, once I get out of tax season and get a hold of a studio, the mixtape will be ready for your ears.

Also, if you already haven’t caught it, here is the video (as promised) of G.N.E.’s Jus Punjabi Interview with Gurmeet Sodhi on her show GS with GS.

**nOte: The video is in 5 parts on youtube. You can always go to GS’s Youtube channel if you can’t find the rest of them.

Also I found this article to be very interesting today. It’s about a killer whale from Sea World that killed its Trainer. Was it because the whale was frustrated about being stuck in a bathtub and was sick and tired of doing silly ass tricks OR was it an accident because of the size of the whale and its nature to play with other beings? I’ll let you decide.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/02/25/florida.seaworld.death/?hpt=T2&imw=Y

PeAce from the East.

- soulja

There must be at least 6 inches of snow outside my door right now. Which I def. can’t be mad at, cause I’d rather spend the entire day chillin at home than spending another 10 hours at work like i was supposed to today. Any who, I figured now is probably a good time to blog since I know I don’t get this sort of time during the week. If you didn’t already know, your boy SaintSoulja works at a small CPA firm which means I have no life from Jan 15 – April 15th.

But this blog isn’t about my resume. It’s about a t-shirt. And not just any shirt. But THE shirt. Let’s just take a minute to squash some of the common misconceptions and clear the air a little bit.

I think the most common question and response that we’ve gotten from the t-shirt is “whats’s wrong with bollywood?” I think people are under the impression that just cause someone says “Death to Bollywood” its means that they are on a rampage to boycott ALL of bollywood and their lifegoal is put the industry out of business.

Not the case in this situation. The primary goal of the t-shirt was simple: to provoke discussion. It leads people to say “hey, whats with the shirt?” Well, our goal isn’t to start a hate group against Bollywood or to assassinate its directors. Our goal is to educate our community about the strategies and techniques politicians use to manipulate a community’s image. More importantly our people need to be far more conscious about how we are portrayed in the mainstream media and what are its direct affects on us. There are plenty of Bollywood movies I like, in fact I saw “3 Idiots” today and was pretty much in love with the movie (I also like some of the other Aamir Khan movies, i think hes amazing at what he does).

But long story short, the point is, be more aware of what takes place in mainstream media. They might be making movies like “Sinngh is Kinng” and “Rocket Singh” to make us feel good about ourselves (not my opinion just a general consensus) but at the same time there 2 other movies in production that are glorifying murderers like Indira Gandhi and K.P.S Gill. (links are below)

BTW, we also have some dirt on Amitabh Bachan. Read below

http://www.sikhsforjustice.org/?q=content/amitabh-bachchan

So if theres anything that you want to take away from this post, or from the shirt its this: Be more conscious about what you watch, be aware of how mainstream media portrays your community, how those portrayals directly affect you and your community, and learn that sometimes its ok to say “no, thats not acceptable”. Our forefathers taught us never to turn the other cheek so lets try to follow in their footsteps to the best of our ability.

http://www.bigoye.com/news/Sanjay-Dutt-to-play-KPS-Gill/118262

http://www.santabanta.com/cinema.asp?pid=28983

http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/news/2009/11/20/13501/index.html

P.S. I like what my good friend Humble the Poet had to say about the t-shirts. I thought it was funny.

“His DEATH TO BOLLYWOOD Tees have dented the bootleg Hindi film industry to a point that they can only produce 18 000 movies this upcoming year (41% drop from 2009).”

Until Next Time.

- SaintSoulja

Most of you that follow me on twitter and facebook usually get the play-by-play of all our amazing all-over-the-map adventures. But for those of you that don’t, here’s a short synopsis of what we managed to accomplish in 56 hours starting Tuesday night around 10pm.

FIRST, we officially finished designing and putting the final touches to our brand new website (which is where you are now) and prepped it for its first TV debut.

Side note:  MUCH love to my brothas Sachdeep Singh and Maneet Singh for putting together an amazing website and working tirelessly to make this happen.

THEN. We drove to the biggest apple in the world aka New York City and sat down to do an interview with Ms. Gurmeet Sodhi on her talk show, GS with GS (Gup Shup with Gurmeet Sodhi) on JUS Punjabi TV. If you missed the three handsome sardars on TV, you will get your chance to check out the interview once its up on youtube but in the meantime checkout this yellow-ey photograph of all us at the studio in Queens, NY. T-shirts are courtesy of www.RootsGear.com

The next morning we had the glorious honor of driving out to the middle of nowhere, where the gas station might be shady but the people inside are even shadier. Yes of course, I’m talking about Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania. Thanks to our good friend Hartej Singh, we got ourselves a nice small gig with the PSU SSA students and below is an article from the School’s newspaper covering our performance and the event.

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2010/01/22/singh_brothers_rap_to_promote.asp

Needless to say, if you know anything about the geography of the east coast, out of the 56 hours of the trip, we spent at least a good 20 in the car. (not fun)

For all the other random, fun, entertaining and irrelevant details that you don’t really need, you have to follow me on twitter or facebook. www.twitter.com/SaintSoulja or www.facebook.com/saintsoulja

Until next time.

- Saint