AllOne Network

“ Minimal Friends” NOX (prod. By Kev Brown) [March 2018] https://soundcloud.com/kingnox/minimal-friends-ft-allone Nox in full-form performing NOX is a fellow Long Island rapper and was a relatively new friend at the time of this collaboration, after catching him live a handful of times, it was clear we both had a verbose and intellectual approach to writing with an insistent emphasis on our strange sides and leaning into our interests. He's a fantastic freestyler (Here are some episodes of my Spontaneous Sundays with AllOne we did together: Ep. 55   ep. 60 , ep. 90 ) as well so we bonded on our love for the improvised craft. Nox, like Jesse, presented the ideal preparedness for a guest request, bringing the lo-fi Kev Brown instrumental to me as well as his fully formed verse and a solid intention for my role in the track. When he told me the theme and that he intended on calling it “minimal friends”, a sort of anthem for the outsider, a confessional tribute to...

Hey AllOne Family,      As we continue into early 2019 I thought it might be another fun retrospective weekly series to highlight some of the music I shared a role in throughout 2018. This year and 2015 were the only two years since 2010 that I didn't release some sort of full EP or LP project since I started sharing music publicly in 2010. However, Two-thousand and Collaborateen this was appropriately a relatively fecund year for quality collaborations and as a bonus, nearly all of them were unprecedented collaborations with artist friends as well!      Here is the start of an overview of a few of the songs that made it to the public ear (some that I wrote and recorded are still in behind-the-curtain stages). I felt it may be interesting to know the origins of relationship that spawned them and perhaps to know a brief comment on my intent and experience writing them.      I genuinely enjoy writing guest verses and answering t...

Happy New Year,  Welcome to 2019 as well as a humble welcoming back to the annual retrospective of reading material I've enjoyed this year! As you'll come to see, 2018 was certainly the most comic book and graphic novel dominated year yet. I think this is also because I (to my shame) fell into the trap of watching a lot of Netflix. My housemate got a big television last fall in my house and it becomes this media centerpiece with such distracting gravity. Admittedly I don't have the willpower to resist this electronic tide-pool always,  I still read a little every day and still stubbornly prefer to read physical books.  It just feels better to me. Regardless, there was almost nothing that I read this year that I didn't love or wouldn't recommend (unless you were adverse to certain gore-laden horror titles like the brutal “Crossed” series, which is not for the faint of heart, to put it lightly.) I ended up returning one book that was gifted to me last Chri...

Hey Folks, As many of you will know through my performances and content, I absolutely love freestyling and improvising. Even in elementary school, long before I knew about hip-hop, I recall making up silly songs on the spot to make my friends laugh.  Fast forward 2 decades and I've been doing a weekly freestyle show "Spontaneous Sundays with AllOne" for nearly 2 years now and constantly improvising rap in my shows.  This blog was prompted when a fan named Ryan sent a very complimentary email asking simply "HOW DO YOU DO IT?" So I thought a lot about it and polled an audience of some of my favorite improvisers that I know personally for their thoughts and responded with a version of the writing below.  I think anyone can freestyle if they practice and still I think it is one of the most impressive and amazing performances to watch whether it is musical, rapping, poetry, dance, acting or comedy.  Here are some thoughts.  I have so many personal and distant ar...

Happy New Year and welcome to 2018 my fellow AllOnederers. As the symbolic significance of year's transitions entice us into hopeful changes of habit and pursuits of our ideals, this post I've been thinking about seems prime time to share. One of the things I value more than anything is my writing and musical creation craft.  However, our priorities are really expressed through how we spend our time.  As Kristoff Krane expresses with beautiful brevity on his new 2017 release, "Kairos part 1 ": "There's nothing more true than "You Are What You Do" " I often find myself having a difficulty carving out time to simply sit down and work on a recording project or a writing endeavor.  A mix of my own ADHD and codependency (Note: Self-observed and described) implores me to say "YES" to every plan and event offer or request that a friend or family member asks of me.  The trouble is, often I'm thinking in the back of my head ...

Hello Bookworms!     As we approach a new year, which comes with a cliche degree of incredulity, I figured I'd share the  list up of books I read in the past year (with as many links as I could muster to relevant things either purchase-links or information/website links.)   I don't think it affects you remotely, except perhaps to see where my head may have gone as far as motivation to read one title to another if there were any discernible through-lines, but this list is also in chronological order of reading them (save for random comic volumes) This year I actually obtained three new bookshelves, one of which I made from two old dresser drawers, so my crazy personal library is a little more tidy!   To my retrospective surprise, A great majority of these are both graphic novels AND specifically ones by Alan Moore .  I've really fallen in love with the graphic novel form. Also, in any endeavor he is tackling, he seems to be the greatest creator i...