The Green Rush

The Green Rush is a documentary that follows the lives of a couple people risking it all to take part in Northern California's #1 cash crop. Two grow operations inside the mountains of Mendocino county are followed through months of hard labor, piles of cash and fertilizer, and in one case, heartbreak. I never thought a documentary about weed could be so touching, but like many instances I was proven wrong. The directors of this hour long video did a great job capturing the lifestyle and emotions of these gardeners through the dangerous yet lucrative Green Rush of Northern California.

Watch "The Green Rush" Here

Artists Boycott Arizona

There's is now a band of, well, bands that have organized and decided to punish Arizona by not playing shows there. They call themselves The Sound Strike. This protest of course is in response to Arizona's extremely controversial illegal immigration bill that many believe leaves the doors wide open for racial discrimination and profiling. Bassnectar announced that he has been looking into joining the list of protesters. Already signed up are:

Cypress Hill
Conor Oberst
Los Tigres Del Norte
Rage Against The Machine
Joe Satriani
Kanye West
Rise Against
Serj Tankian
Massive Attack
One Day As A Lion
Sonic Youth
The Coup
Tenacious D

There's also a couple more, and the list is sure to grow once the word gets out about it. You can sign their petition and check out Zach de la Rocha's written statement on the site (linked above). Happy Protesting.

Lazerproof (La Roux/MajorLazer)

Major Lazer (Dj's Diplo & Switch) recently teamed up with singing sensation La Roux to drop a mix tape they fittingly dub, "Lazerproof." The mix just dropped and according to Diplo's twitter about 200,000 people tried to download it at once and crashed their server. The mixtape also features verses by Drake and Gucci Mane, and one song featuring the bass wizard Rusko. Given those names and that number it must be good.

Download and get the track listing for Lazerproof right here.

Wu-Tang Clan to perform '36 Chambers' at Rock The Bells

Wu-Tang Clan is once again headlining the Rock The Bells tour this summer, but that's not the news here. The legendary rap group also announced that they will be performing their debut album "Enter the 36 Chambers", in its entirety. That's definitely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Also performing their debut albums at RTB are KRS-One and Slick Rick. This is definitely a good sumer for old-school hip hop fans.

So if you're free around mid-August be sure to check out the tour at either it's L.A. stop (Aug 21) or when it's up at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View (Aug 22). Other performers at the traveling festival include Rakim, Street Sweeper Social Club, Murs, Clipse, and Brother Ali.

World Cup Music

Caspa, the British dubstep producer, announced on his Twitter the other day that he was offered a show in South Africa in June during World Cup season. First of all congratulations to Caspa, no doubt there will be masses of people from all over the world at the show! Point number two being, I wonder what other shows will be going on around South Africa during that month? I'll be on the look out.

New Stuff: Flying Lotus and Foals

Flying Lotus is making such a name for himself that he played at Coachella twice this year (no lie).

His new album (Cosmogramma) was conveniently released on April 20 and is propelling him into the larger music discussion. It's getting great reviews, and for good reason.

Flying Lotus (aka FlyLo aka Steven Ellinson) mixes an experimental blend of jazz, drum and bass, dubstep, space-samba (really what you can genres you wanna throw out there). Oh, and he's related to musician Alice Coltrane. The talent must run in the family.

FlyLo has been mixing for quite a while and came up through LA warehouse scene. He's also playing in San Diego this summer at ResetFest with Bassnectar and A-Trak.

Speaking of Bassnectar (who recently BLEW THE FUCK UP and seems to be playing every festival for about a year now); it looks like FlyLo might follow right up in the experimental/dubstep foot steps of the SF deity.

Check out some songs below:

And the World Laughs With You (feat. Thom Yorke)

Velvet Cake

Parisian Goldfish (off older album)

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The UK indie band Foals is back...right where they were before. The new albums called 'Total Life Forever', but there's really nothing that "new" about it.

Reports say that the band was "unhappy" with the sound of their last album. So I guess they gave it another shot, because it pretty much sounds exactly the same. That's not particularly a bad thing. I'm a fan of their dirty, poppy, disco-electro feel. And the sound is still fun, but personally I liked their last album (Antidotes) a little better.

Check it out for your self though, and let me know what you think.

Total Life Forever

Black Gold

Miami