Pic of Skinhead Rob doin vocals earlier today

So, a dubstep or grime is kinda like this ultra slow, ultra dirty spawn of hip hop, but it’s almost at a breakbeat speed, but it’s at a halftime breakbeat speed. So it feels, like, abnormally slow, and just gives this really heavy feel.

Since the evolution of music has slowed since, say, the early 1980s, I thought it would be a long time before a popular genre of music came along that seemed, to my old ears, to be noisy garbage…but then dubstep came along. Industrial, happy hardcore, metal, punk, glitch, and even drum & bass I can appreciate, but dubstep makes me want to yell at children to get off lawns. And I actually like that door stopper noise!

Donald DeSantis explains how an unnamed “crime boss” mentored him through his first high-tech startup. The piece is a little oblique, thanks to a lack of specifics (“The other business was transactional and lacked any customer loyalty or love.” — OK, what was it?), but it’s still an entertaining read:

Cut out the middleman
As Kobayashi’s businesses grew, he was in a position to start bypassing middlemen. Instead of dealing with distributors, he went straight to producers. Instead of hiring contractors, he purchased required equipment and moved people onto payroll. Everywhere he saw a third party making money, he figured out a way to replace that person or bring them in-house. He reduced costs at every step. He constantly encouraged me to do the same.

Interesting things happen when we cut out the middleman. In addition to reducing cost, we often end up creating an internal byproduct that can be productized and sold to a completely new customer. (Amazon Web Services is an example of this.) Sometimes the middleman’s market is so huge, that a freaking enormous business can be built simply by providing their customers a lower cost and more efficient option. Two-sided marketplace businesses are a textbook example of this type of disruption.

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ASAP Rocky and araabMUZIK have announced a joint project titled A$VPMUZIK.

Though a timeline for the project is currently unknown, the pair hit the studio this past weekend to begin working on the album. The duo has previously put in work together, recording a track in fall 2011, and both appeared at the Fool’s Gold Day Off party in September. Both are scheduled to perform at the upcoming Coachella 2012 festival.

There are legends and there are immortal underground legends to a hip hop geek: Cypress Hill‘s cult status elevates them over and above the confines of the rap genre with such an unique sound, and universal subject matter, treated so cleverly that it still continues to delight a young audience globally.

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Dr. Dre & Snoop are headlining day three while Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky, Frank Ocean, Childish Gambino, The Weeknd, araabMuzik all so on the line up

So, what do you know? I’ll bet you know lot more than you get credit for knowing. No matter your background, you have a lot of experience, knowledge, and insight.

Because education happens in jail cells. It happens in dark alleys. It happens on the bus and in the shower and in front of the television. It happens in ivory towers and in the back seats of borrowed cars. Sure, we learn from teachers and mentors and leaders. But we also learn just as much, if not more, from hoodlums and jerks and con artists. We learn from bad examples how not to act. We learn from disasters what not to do.

We learn from books and lectures, but we also learn by eavesdropping and people watching. In school, we learn all the fundamentals: reading, writing, math—but we’re also learning how to dress and talk and get along, and how to wake up early and often. We learn that not all teachers are equally inspiring and that not all guidance counselors know where they’re going. We learn to pack our lunches on sloppy-joe day, because of the rat traps behind the cafeteria. We learn not to insult each other because we don’t like how it feels to be teased.

But we don’t call all of that learning. We call it life. Every experience teaches us something. Every piece of information has the potential to change the way we think. And the more we think, well, the better we can apply that thinking to any job in any industry.

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