Last week when I was mastering the mundane act of washing clothes at the card-enabled laundromat in my neighborhood, I found a stack of Stash magazines next to a dude who was clipping his toenails. I snagged one and temporarily cured my boredom reading insider hip-hop information from this decidedly bay-area rap-scene focused zine. Small enough to fit in your back-pocket and published in Frisco, Stash magazine is chock-full of interviews, articles, top-5 lists, album reviews, and paparazzi photos from concerts and other events.

Stash seems to pride itself on nodding to the underground, featuring pieces on The Jacka, Yukmouth from the Luniz, Prodigy of Mobb Deep, and Lyrics Born (who I’m hoping to see on Friday at the SF Outside Lands Fest). The stories herein deal with anything from label problems to struggles with the law. My favorite page had to be the E-40 slang word search. So don’t be a beezy and check it out at Stash Online.

If you are in San Francisco this weekend and you want to see some real underground rappers throw a party, check out the Universal Figures reunion show at the Red Devil Lounge on Saturday night. I got a chance to see them a few times during their hay, and they have some great lyricists including Bucc Rogerz, who has a dope song with Kool Keith on his myspace page. I’ll be in LA and unfortunately I can’t make it.

Jon and F.A.B.

Yesterday, I got a chance to see MC Hammer, Chamillionaire, and Mistah F.A.B. talk about internet music entrepreneurship at the AlwaysOn conference at Stanford. The panel, moderated by Quincy D. Jones, III, was an opportunity to get advice and pick the brain of successful rappers who have used the Internet to build musical networks. Here are some tidbits from the session:

Own your content
Chamillionaire, whose success on the Internet came as a result of mixtapes and ringtones, explained that when he negotiated his first contract, he wouldn’t even talk to a major label unless he had ownership over all of his cyber-entities. Had he backed down, he would have lost big on his record-breaking ringtone sales of “Ridin’ Dirty”. But even with this autonomy, Universal has required him to remove his songs from Myspace. Strange request when you consider Myspace is where his young fans go first to visit him online. Cham pointed out that die-hard fans are starved for content and prolific artists who put out tons of mixtapes (such as Lil Wayne) are well-rewarded when their actual albums hit the stores (1 Million copies of The Carter III in the first week).

Make friends with a true geek
Mistah F.A.B. spoke of the need for any entrepreneurial MC to make sure that they have an “MC CPU”, or a geeky buddy with a laptop on his chain who can pimp out your myspace (or Facebook page for the “grown and sexy” people). “Fabby Davis Junior” pointed to the interaction with the fans as the most important piece to Internet success, citing the Ghost Riding Grannie fan video that has gone “totally viral” on Youtube. F.A.B. claimed that you could find anything on Youtube, from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech to some footage of him in bed sleeping while he had “the dream”. In other words, F.A.B. was one hilarious panelist.

Never give up
MC Hammer, whose well-documented financial woes might make him seem an unlikely digital entrepreneur, got interested in web video after he was unable to find any of his old music videos on Youtube. Despite his past monetary transgressions, Hammer is the first person from the hip-hop community to go straight to a silicon valley venture capitalist to start his company. His latest venture, Dancejam, seeks to be the Youtube of dance videos.

The discussion went long and they cut the Q&A session, so I was never able to ask my Debbie Downer questions like: Why is there such a paucity of politics in your lyrics? Would you be willing to post a few songs under a Creative Commons license? Which of you dudes showed up in the streched hummer out front?

While browsing cute dog videos on Youtube, I noticed there are lots of home movies set to people’s favorite songs. So, I decided to set my latest rap song to the images of some of my favorite dog clips. Inspired by Weezer’s cute “Island in the Sun” video and the memetastic “Pork and Beans”, we bring you the latest Green Rapper Vid. Beat produced by J. Rief:

We talk about a lot of serious stuff here on Greenrapper.com, but we never pass on a chance at having a laugh. So, when my old MSU buddy Matt recently visited the bay area, we put together a pilot for Channel 101 New York. Channel 101 is a monthly film festival that started in LA and now has a New York version. We shot all of the footage in one day, mostly in the Golden Gate National Parks. Specifically, we did some guerrilla shots in the Presidio and Fort Mason. Though our pilot was not voted back by the audience, we did manage to pull off “Top Failed Pilot”, and our video is featured on the front page of their site. The soundtrack is peppered with songs by James Taylor, Lawrence Welk, Kafani, Little Wayne, and Iggy Pop. Here it is:

With the Beastie Boys making basketball documentaries, MC Serch hosting reality shows, and Eminem in self-imposed exile somewhere north of 8 Mile, there is a vacancy for hip-hop’s pigment-challenged ambassador. The next great white rapper might not come from New York or Motown, but instead the Pennsylvania suburbs. Asher Roth is a young, caucasoid MC who is branding himself as a sort of “Joe College” rapper. Its unclear if this sort of “Frat Rap” has an audience, but if novelty acts like MIA, Lady Sovereign, and Matisyahu can find a niche due to their talent, so too can Asher.

My initial impression is that the boy can flow, but he suffers from pop-culture reference dropping fever. His brief periods of introspection are weighted evenly with run of the mill, wack rapper misogyny. He is bound to get over-hyped in the next few months, but you can judge for yourself right now. Download his new mixtape The Green House Effect (which is more of a drug reference than a environmental reference) from his website, or check out this remake of Jay-Z’s Roc Boys, entitled Roth Boys:

Buy the album

In celebration of the near 100 degree temperatures we had here in the Bay last week, I’d like to plug a great Summertime album. PigeonJohn and the Summertime Pool Party is full of the kind of happy rap that you grew up with as a kid. Pigeon John was born in Nebraska but came up performing in LA’s Good Life Café. He has remained an indie act but gets a lot of local exposure, such as this performance on Morning Becomes Eclectic. There aren’t many rappers that seem down to earth enough that I’d actually want to hang out with them, but Pigeon John is that sort of fella. Even his wife (pictured on the cd) seems cool. She runs a non-profit that helps women extricate themselves from the sex industry. I’ve had “Money Back Guarantee” in my head for a few days now… check him performing it at FOX ROX: