Education Nation

“The current state of aboriginal people in Canada is a forced and created state, created by the government.”

-Justice Murray Sinclair, Head Chair, Truth and Reconciliation Commission

One of many reasons the Internet has become my favorite place to go read news is because of the comments. Yes, there are many comments that are an absolute waste of time, and I swear there are even harmful ones that will make you less smart just by giving them a few seconds of conscience thought. Like some kind of drug, wether it keeps you alive or kills you, I am admittedly addicted to gaining the perspective of others. I’m not going to lie, sometimes I only read the first few lines of a story and instantly scroll down to the bottom to read the comments.

When issues of Native rights, Native compensation or Native benefits emerge in the headlines, I always hear and read comments that continually carry the same closed mind message. The sentiments of these comments are, “Let the past be the past”; “Let bygones be bygones”; “Why should we pay for something we didn’t do?” The consensus of these comments is that we shouldn’t be giving our country’s aboriginal people any more benefits or support to improve their standard of living. Some of these comments carry the opinion that all deals should be off. You can assume that the folks who write these comments feel that the situation is unfair...

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How I Fell in Love With Helena

I’ve fallen head over heals for Helena Guergis! Though when I first read the “Jaffer-Guergis” scandal stories I instantly wrote her off. Just another scum bag MP, I said, who abused her privileges, though an unusually beautiful MP. I read the allegations made in the media, which are often enough to be the judge, jury and executioner (more so if your in the Conservative caucus apparently) and took them for way more than they’re worth. No charges were laid, but the allegations were pouring in, overloading my brain and allowing me to get caught up in the hype. Not to mention the build up before this really blew up! You really can’t write this stuff!

For such a beautiful cabinet minister, Miss or Mrs. (this confuses me with her) Guergis was rather low profile. It wasn’t until her husband “R.J.” got busted for going a little too fast, while on a D&D tour with a little bit of “fluff” (Cocaine Slang Dictionary) in his pocket, that her new, yet unwanted fame became the talk of a town that talks a lot. So when she freaked out a few weeks later at a Charlottetown Airport I gave her a pass, it was probably a stress thing. Though when “R.J” got off with only a $500.00 fine, I happily jumped back into the oily seas of public outrage. Just remember to scream the name Rahiem the next time you find yourself before a judge because you were driving too fast, while drinking and driving with a baggy of cocaine in your pocket.

Time to grab the shovel and dig for some dirt! Its still unknown who hired the shady P.I. that showed up on the Prime Minister’s door with enough goods to get Helena (I hope she doesn't mind) kicked out of cabinet, booted out of caucus and tasered...I mean investigated by the RCMP. No charges laid, but who needs them after all that! When you’ve lost an election and go into business in the private sector and your MP wife is putting bread on the table there is going to be strange ethical issues occurring. Hitting your uncle, cousin, father, sister or brother up with a contact or grant here and there seems to be the normal practice, but a spouse? Especially the failed M.P. who just got off with a $500.00 fine spouse? Nope there just has to be a show for this one. I think when the dust settles and clears we will be writing some new rules (and of course loopholes) for this sort of arrangement or relationship, whatever you want to call it.

So Helena, who is in way over her head and keeping quite, appears on the CBC for an exclusive interview with Peter Mansbridge. This is where I fall in love. No, it wasn’t because she still looks good when she cries or because you could tell by her body language that she was hiding something when asked about being present at a party with cocaine, prostitutes and worst of all Jaffer. No, what impresses me is that she is determined to stand with R.J. in very tuff times. I’m sure its been “over suggested” to her that she could save face by dumping him. Instead she says she wants to help him and stand with him. Having someone's back, when all hell breaks loose, is a rare deed these days, especially among Politicians. She could easily say it was his fault, she was manipulated.  Who votes for a M.P. who is easy to manipulate though? A breakup wouldn’t save her career but if she does do away with R.J., after she losses the next election and she is still gorgeous, I’d let Helena have my back. (Cue music “Just the two of us” )

@maddadam

Thank You GURU!

Originally Posted here!

Yesterdays sad new wasn’t a complete shock as it was well reported a few weeks ago that Keith, better known as Guru, who first rumored dead and then confirmed he was in a coma was suffering from serious health complications. That news back then spurred me to load my favorite Gangstarr songs onto my Blackberry and I’ve had been reciting Guru’s monotone flow everywhere I’ve walked since. When I heard the sad news ( via a twitter post with the only text being #RIPGURU ) of his passing today, I felt the same way as I felt when James Brown had passed away, I felt that an important chapter of hip - hop story was written and closed today.

The “classic” sound of sample based production and vicious rhyming was mastered by Premo and Guru. I’m sure many of your favorite artist still make music that sounds very similar and is highly influenced by there sound. Maybe I’m one of them. Guru you are a legend forever. Thank you for your time. Thank you for the influence.

Required Listening - 3 of my favorite Gangstarr tracks





Thank You GURU,

S

Which Pro Organization has the worst Hooligans? NFL? MLB?

Even if you aren't a sports fan this is very interesting!

36 have been accused of spousal abuse
7 have been arrested for fraud
19 have been accused of writing bad checks
117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
3 have done time for assault 
71 repeat 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
8 have been arrested for shoplifting
21 currently are defendants in lawsuits,
84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year.

Gear List - Part 1: The Hard Stuff

What do you use to make beats?

People who are already making beats ask me this a lot. The number one thing I tell them is that it really doesn’t matter what you use as long as you can use it. Macs don’t sound better then PCs. I’ve worked in million dollar studios but can still say that most of the time, especially when it comes to song writing and making simple beats, I prefer my home studio. It doesn’t matter if you have a million dollar studio or a $500.00 laptop that can barley run 5 tracks in fruity loops. It dose not matter if you have rooms full of gear. Its best to have only what you need.

For me it makes sense to have it all in one and have the ability to quickly record multiple live sources when necessary. This may or may not work for you. You'll have to figure out what works for you with lots of trial and error, while continually expanding what your capable of. At the end of the session it will be your knowledge, both musically and technically, that you put into your equipment that will fuel your creativity and shape sounds. I've written a little bit about the gear in my current home studio setup and have tried to provide links so you can learn more. I didn't want to get too technical myself and reveal how much of an audio nerd I can be :D

A Sad Truth About Lying to Ourselves.

I thought this idea was funny, but more importantly true!

"We have to lie to our self. Your going to die, everyone you know is going to die and most of the people in this world endure relentless suffering. We're still cheerful"

Bet you he lost.

 I wonder if this guy can get down on the mic. Rap, sing, speak, whatever. I'd give him a few tracks for free...what an album cover.

A protester kicks at police as they arrest one of the protesters Saturday morning in Vancouver. (CBC)

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/02/13/bc-vancouver-olympic-protest.html#ixzz0fSuEhCeE

The Koala, Lizard and Crocidile.

My aunt emailed me this...

A koala was sitting in a gum tree smoking a
joint.

when a little lizard walked past, looked up and said, "Hey Koala! What are you doing?"

A Song Stash (Can you abandon?)

I have to admit I have a problem with holding on or "song stashing" my material. I used to worry that if I saved it too long that it may become irrelevant, at the same time nobody wants to release something to the masses before it has been given a chance to reach its full potential. This was all before I discovered a philosophy that stated, “No artist ever finishes their work, it is merely abandoned”. I’m not sure if that’s the exact quote I heard or who actually said it, but the theory has always stuck with me.


Abandon. The term is attached to a negativity that not even the most seemingly dismal artist would want to have associated with anything they wished to call (and have others call) their masterpiece. How can you know when its time, that it will be okay, to abandon something you’ve been molding? Is it when you show it to another person and they approve? Is it when that last addition seemed to take away from the overall feel or original goal? Is it when someone cuts you a check? Many of us, for better or worse, call it a day when the ladder situation occurs.

Early Daze

I was always into music as early as I can remember. I always loved to sing when I was a child and I remember wanting to be a DJ at a very young age. I hooked up my first Discman to a very old record and 8-track stereo system that would have been big enough and designed in a way it could have been my casket. Instead it breathed life into the concept of music performance to a young boy. I liked all sorts of music by the time I was barely 9 when I signed up for the old Columbia House deal when I was well under the age and completely getting all the CD’s for one penny that I could handle. I remember when they called me too J My first order was a bunch of music that I had never even heard. A wide range to start off my collection featuring titles such as the Boyz n’ the Hood soundtrack to Pearl Jam’s Ten. Not to mention they sent me other CD’s to make up for the ones I requested that they didn’t have. It would soon form the listening habits of my life.

CBC comments on international adoption

A comment I made after reading this story on the cbc.ca website. You can read the whole article here

"The message is the medium, the medium is the message"

Soo happy to announce I'll be dropping a preview of my upcoming album "The Medium" 

Student fined $675 000 US for downloading and uploading Music!

Just wanted to post the comment I made earlier on cbc.ca regarding this story.

You can read the story here on cbc.ca

Fan Mail

From: Nick Abrey
To: S
Date: Jul 14, 2009 7:23 PM
Subject: Your views on rappers


Hey,

How are you?

Just wondering your views on rappers, rappers get bad press, for glamouriseing, guns sex violence, for example 50 cent, but really is that him giving the message, is that really him, or just the case of him being over produced and that they want to sell records so tell him to act like this, if he never got his music produced like this, would he just be like you? real music.

would be intresting in what you think

Thanks

Nick

Hey Buddy,

How is summer for you? I've been so busy I'm actually starting not to have any fun. Sorry I haven't been answering back, but I filled my plate up with way too much food and I'm stuffing my face trying to clean it up.

As far as rap goes, I considerer it an art form. It usually takes a lot more words to fill a rap verse then it does to sing a verse. My favorite rappers at the moment are DOOM, Mos Def and Talib Kewli. If you ever listen to any of these guys its easy to see I don't have much love for 50. I used to be a big Dr.Dre fan growing up, but that whole camp relies on publicity stunts now a days, instead of great music. Don't get me wrong they can be dope at times. I guess Jay-Z ( I love all Jay -Z up to and including the black album) said it the best, "real recognizes real".

I've had to deal with people in and outside the industry telling me they like my stuff, but then its followed with the old "if I were you I would do this..." but their not me.

I remember producing and recording an artist at his home studio when his little boy creeped in one night. I had the kid head banging and playing with the buttons but as soon as the artist realized he was in the room he became uncomfortable. He didn't want his kid to hear the things his dad was saying on the mic. I remember thinking that if this was one of my songs being recorded it wouldn't be a problem. If I ever ( and that is a big EVER) settle down and have children, I want to be proud when I see them move to my music and try to understand the lyrics. At the end of the day I think its really important to make music you can stand behind when your an artist for years and years to come.

Take Care Brother and thanks for trying to stay in touch,

S

Want to jam with me?

Since I'm very humbled to be a featured artist on Indaba Music . I have decided to participate in the fundamental purpose of the their site. I put together this song for my album and I really liked it, but this is something I have wanted to try for sometime. I decided that instead of only leaving room for someone to sing back ups or rap the a verse, I removed my vocal performances. I really want to experiment with this process of creating music with other entirely online, so I made room for anyone who wants to try and create and do their own thing!

Me and MLSF Go listen to them!

I always find it interesting how an open instrumental inspires lyrics. I know that putting it out there for anybody to experiment with will have interesting results. Hopefully this will lead to unique track for my next album. I will be checking all the artist that have been hitting me up and especially members of the Alternative Hip-Hop group on Indaba.

Lets see what you got CLICK HERE to check out and join the session

My Life in Music: Part 1

Early Daze

I was always into music as early as I can remember. I always loved to sing when I was a child and I remember wanting to be a DJ at a very young age. I hooked up my first Discman to a very old record and 8-track stereo system that would have been big enough and designed in a way it could have been my casket. Instead it breathed life into the concept of music performance to a young boy. I liked all sorts of music by the time I was 7 and I remember signing up for the old Columbia House deal when I was well under the age and completely getting all the CD’s for one penny that I could handle. I remember when they called me too J My first order was a bunch of music that I had never even heard. A wide range to start off my collection featuring titles such as the Boyz n’ the Hood soundtrack to Pearl Jam’s Ten. Not to mention they sent me other CD’s to make up for the ones I requested that they didn’t have. It would soon form the listening habits of my life.

By now I had heard a huge range of music, a lot of one hit wonders, legends like Elvis and The Beatles, a lot of Dance Mix. The first tape I remember being fond of was given to me by a cousin from an uncle I never met. It was full of great black music a lot of Motown old and new which included Boys to Men. However the first album I really can remember anticipating in my life was no less then Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle. The whole west coast gangster rap resurgence, created by Dr.Dre, had drawn my friends and myself in from all the way across North America and across a US, Canadian border. We all knew the words to the Chronic, even though we had no idea what they meant. I find that strange now because I so appreciate and expect great lyrics so much, especially from hip-hop.

When I moved out of the city, and into a new school, it drastically changed what types of music I was into. Being in a new school and being a lot different from everyone, I would follow the trends and make an effort to fit in. In a lot of ways the content was a lot less mature, especially the music. I went from hanging out with friends that would recite the words of Snoop, Biggie, Pac to Metallica and Nirvana, to trying to fit in with kids you liked the Lion King Soundtrack to Garth Brooks. I’m not trying to front! I really, really liked the soundtrack and the movie too, but you can see that this is a really big change. I don’t even want to talk about going from baggy to tight jeans J I guess at this moment I feel it gave me more of a childhood instead of trying to grow up to fast.

I eventually had two different groups of friends by that first summer and my new friends loved heavy metal. Mostly the big three of the time, Metallica, Guns and Roses and Megadeth. One day I walked into a local store and noticed a copy of Guitar Magazine that featured a bunch of Metallica riffs written in something called tablature. I bought the magazine and when I got home I went into my parents room, crawled under the bed and took out my Dad’s acoustic (a twelve string, that what forever reason he still only keeps six strings on) and tried to translate the notes into something that resembles parts of the songs. After about three hours of figuring out how this tablature thing worked, I was playing something that sounded a bit like the main riff to Metallica’s Enter Sandman.

Here is where my Dad comes in (who can play all the cords and performs for fun and charity to this day). Instead of teaching me a G, all he says is you should sing and play and you will get better. Whatever that means! Anyway I got into playing guitar and started learning more and more riffs, never full songs, that is important for later on in my story. After going down to the city to hang out with my old friends, I heard and became aware of an album that would become monumental to me, equal to Snoop’s Doggystyle, Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged.

The End of Part 1

Okay that’s all for now folks. I just wrote this out of the blue when I was tryin

g to write a more personal bio for a website, but now it seems like a good idea. However I am hard at work my new album SO! You will have to come back for part 2 another time.

Check the links below to hear my stuff and keep in touch. Also you can get my podcast on iTunes or find the player on my Got a Love Woman Blog and MySpace.

Thank you for listening,

S

At this moment in listening to Al Green “Guilty”

 

 

New Podcast!!

New Podcast!

So I’ve finally got my act together to put out my second podcast. My first podcast got over 40 000 plays so thank you very much.

In this episode I am playing my version of the album Yes! by k-os that was recently released. I got to thank almost everyone who I let hear this stuff, they convinced that I need to let everyone hear this stuff so here it is!

Stream it below or subscribe to my podcast on iTunes, I have a few planned out for the future already as I finish up my new album and get “hyphy” this summer!

Peace S

Subscribe Free Add to my Page

Get the Never to Forever EP by S on Amazon or

A World Removed.

The last month has been amazing change. I moved to a new city, and I’m having a blast! The people seem really down to earth for better or worse. In Hamilton, real Canadians have real problems. It feels a lot like home (Nova Scotia, always). Adversity always has been the turning point for most great men in history. I believe all great artist need struggle in their life. In the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) it is hard to find a minority and it’s the only place in Canada where 60% of the population are immigrants. I think it’s hard for artist raised and living in the richer areas of the GTA, to identify with being a visible minority, which the majority of us are across North America. I was adopted and raised by a Caucasian family in Nova Scotia, and was always a visible minority until I moved to T.O. I have to admit it freaked me out for a while, I guess seeing too much on any color all your life will make anyone crazy!

It was interesting to learn that most minorities think about what color they are everyday, whether in a positive or negative way. I never realized it, but I have though about it since I was six everyday! I asked some of my Caucasian majority friends from Nova Scotia and most of them admitted that they never think about it. I Think its hard to know or  identify struggle, living in a place where people like to pay more for everything, and think its worth more just because of the cost, in attempt to make your friends and neighbors jealous. Take the library for example, for me it’s a gold mine, but so many people think there is no good stuff in there just because its free. Just like public school, there is a belonging to a group mentality that occurs with kids when they go to school, even with out the uniforms; it’s hard enough to be an individual. School is an institution that sets up our children to be able to function in all the institutions that control our lives and minds…all right enough philosophy on my recent observations :)

BACK TO THE MUSIC!

If you followed my podcast you know that I remixed the entire Yes! album by k-os that was scheduled for release on March 31^st, 2009. When I was remixing the album back in November, I had never really remixed anything before. I knew that I was creating some of my best music, as soon as I finished remixing “Burning Bridges”. After the first track the ideas were uncontrollable! I played guitar, sampled the originals, lots of key and drum programming and I couldn’t hold back from singing back up’s on the hook and rapping a verse on “Fun”. I had a goal to change the feeling of each track and allow the listener to focus more on k-os’s amazing lyrics, that a lot of people never hear for whatever reason. I was really happy with the work and was sure I made at least 6 tracks that would be accompanied with the release of the album.

One of the judges, Mantis Evar, contacted me and told me I was going to be a featured artist on his music collaboration site Indaba Music, and I was honored to be a featured artist last week. When I found out that none of my tracks made the compilation I was oddly not sad, mad, pissed or confused. I was passive, and I convinced myself that this is destiny. Many of the tracks used my own original material only, and I was actually really happy to use the tracks to write my upcoming album (which is going very well! I listen to the demos and I’m getting really, really stoked to let the world hear it). Since finishing the remix, I have let more and more people hear my version of Yes!, which puts them in disbelief. A lot of them aren’t interested to hear it at first because they are not big fans of k-os, but they all say they love my version and think k-os is sick afterwards. They love the music and they realize how good of lyricist k-os is! That was the goal.

A friend of mine really loved it and told me it would be a shame for me to not try and make as many people as possible hear my remixes. Since my blog and podcast are usually easily in the 25 000 – 30 000 views within a few weeks, I will be playing them all in their entirety for my next podcast which will be up this weekend! Please check back on my sites (links below this post), iTunes and of course http://gotalovewoman.blogspot.com to subscribe to “S’s Live Podcast”

That is the current in a nutshell or shells. I just got internet at my new house, I could write all day but, I’m cutting it shorter then I’d like to so I can live up to my word and drop the new podcast by the end of the weekend. New photos coming soon too, I’m surprised at how different I look these days. It may sound strange to some, but my dreams have turned to desires and my desires to reality. It takes a lot of practice to convince your sub conscience, but once you figure it out, you can truly control and create your own destiny….

For better or worse! Thanks for sticking with me,

S

“What’s an industry? If the listeners always stand beside me” – Q-Tip

Get the Never to Forever EP by S on Amazon or