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

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

Is it ironic that the last time I posted a blog there was about 6 inches of snow on the ground outside, and now theres about 6 FEET (slight exaggeration its about 3-4 ft.) of snow on the ground?! Its Crazayyy! We just went through what the news people are calling “The Blizzard of 2010″. Ridiculous amounts of snow, power outages (about 70,000 houses affected), people making bad decisions, scavenging into the wild, the whole nine. It’s been quiet an experience. And we’re still snowed in…

But being snowed in was somewhat fruitful. I got a chance to re-write a spoken word piece that I had written a longg time ago.The piece that I had written initially was actually some of the preliminary writing for what is now known as “Souljas Story“. Join me as I tell you this interesting story.

So, before Souljas Story was Souljas Story it was actually a Love Story. After hearing that instrumental by itself for at least a month straight I decided I wanted to do my own rendition of Heer Ranjha by Waris Shah, which is a really famous love story from Punjab (sort of like the punjabi version of Romeo and Juliet). But I wanted to do it with a twist so I wrote it from the perspective of a character named Khaira, who was actually Heer’s husband at one point. But anywho, long story short – The Love story somehow mutated into a Souljas Story and took with it the core elements of the Love Story, which are Love and Infatuation. If you listen to the track carefully, you’ll be able to tell that Love and Infatuation have a lot to do with this Souljas Story.

But more than a year later, I’ve decided to bring that story back to the drawing board. And its still in the editing stages, but I’m happy with the revised draft. Still debating whether I want it to be a rap song (like souljas story) or make it more into a spoken word type piece. Suggestions are welcome.

Also I’m not sure what inspired the song’s re-appearance, but it may have been the single candle light that I wrote it under, or the blistering cold, or the power outage and craving for hot food, or a combination of it all…but needless to say, the ambiance definitely played a huge role in this resurgence.

Will keep yall updated with this as I make more progress.

Until the next time.

- Saint

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

One of our biggest accomplishments this past year has been the launch of this film. What started off as a music video for a 4 minute song, finally ended up being a 17-minute short film that was a great debut for us on the “big screen”.

The film turBAN has been directed and produced by our good friend Sartaj Singh Dhami from MD, and features our song “turBAN” from the Souljas Rise mixtape. turBAN has won First Place in the Sikhnet Online Youth Film Festival in 2009, been featured at the N.Y. Sikh Arts and Film Festival, has won 2 awards at the L.A. Sikh Arts and Film festival, and has also been featured in the Toronto Spinning Wheel Film Festival 2009.

So if you haven’t seen it yet, now is a good time to catch it. The Video is in two parts. Check it out here.

turBAN by Dashmesh Pictures & G.N.E. – Part 1

turBAN by Dashmesh Pictures & G.N.E. Part 2

To check out more of our videos, songs, and performance clips check out www.youtube.com/tanmit

And to view more amazing short films by Sartaj Singh and Dashmesh pictures, check out their website at www.restoringthepride.com