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Hello AllOne Family, I hope this message finds you safe, healthy and wonderfulfilled. Yesterday I was reading the transcript of Alan Moore's brilliant performance piece "Snakes & Ladders" (incredibly recommended, though esoteric reading). His words are accompanied in the offering by the multimedia visual artist Eddie Campbell. Afterwards, I was watching an excerpt of an interview with the great Alan Moore where he shares some important insight into the power that artists once had, specifically in the bardic and satire traditions. (Here's another link to the interview segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LYgkN2Ajmk ) Moore then infers this empowering historical truth could have great import for modern artists. "If artists actually remembered the power that they used to have, then I think that...if they treated their art as if it were magic... if they gave their creativity the respect that they would give a God, then I think th...

Welcome to the year 2020! I don't think I'll ever get used to how futuristic that sounds!  Much to my consternation I realized while typing up this annual book list, that I haven't made an entry here on blogger since last January.  When I consider that, and my intentions for the various writing series that I intended on and my list of blog topics and ideas... it seems to me that the year flew by, although of course it did not.  It never does, we just perceive the time differently in relation to what we've got going on externally and internally. As of the day I'm writing this, I have now finished my first year back at school, at Stony Brook University, where I'm working toward my Bachelors in Journalism.  You'll note that I've read a lot of non-fiction (or a lot more than usual for me) and much of it is of a more sober, academic nature.  I hadn't a lot of time to read as I was so entrenched in academia and so many of these books were experienced a...

“ 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...