ajchen.com

Lily and I will be spending the next 10 days in the beautiful city of Paris visiting family, eating, and shopping. It sure would be nice to run into something like this while we’re here:

Sade came on the radio while Johan, Chris and I were driving around LA. After first discussing our favorite tracks, I mentioned this being her best video in my opinion. The video for “Never As Good As the First Time” is also good but makes less sense. Sade on a horse across a desert, I get it. Kids practicing bullfighting and random guys drinking in a saloon, unclear. I couldn’t quite follow the story she was trying to communicate – if you have any insight that would be great.

Last week I had the opportunity to hang out with some friends of mine from the pacific Northwest; to me they are Milton and Bryan, but to hip hop aficionados they are Ohmega Watts and Braille. Together with their partner in crime Tyson (aka Othello), they form a hip hop trio called Lightheaded. I first met them in early 2004 when they were touring through Chicago. At the time I was just starting to push a nascent t-shirt brand called 3sixteen, and it was via our shared passion for creativity in the arts that our friendship was born. Here we are, five years later… Othello is married with a baby boy, Ohmega has two successful solo albums out and a budding graphic design career, and Braille has a beautiful daughter. We’re all in different life stages and have gone through much; though we aren’t able to keep in touch as much as we did in the past, it’s always a pleasure to reconnect in person and see how we’ve all grown and what we’ve learned since the last time we met.

Braille is currently touring in support of an album he recorded with S-1 of Strange Fruit Project called Cloud Nineteen. They’ve gone to bars, concert venues, youth groups, after school programs, juvenile detention centers, shelters and more this past year to do shows and give albums away. Yes, the album is available for purchase in stores and via iTunes, but their goal has been to give away 30,000 copies free of charge. So far they’ve already distributed 9,000 and are receiving loans and gifts to print the remainder of the cd’s they need to reach their goal. When asked why they’ve decided to do this, Braille said that their heart for the project was to make positive, uplifting music available to anyone they met without cost being a preventative issue.

Over these past several years, I’ve been slowly discovering what it means to be a Christian in a creative industry. I’ve been encouraged by several individuals along the way who I really respect  – people who are sure of their faith and are not ashamed of it, and express it in the best way they can with the talents they’ve been given. Braille (and the Lightheaded crew) is definitely one of those people. We’ve had opportunities to talk about the role our faith plays in what we do, and I am always encouraged by how focused he is on how his art can edify others. That, and his relentless desire to perfect his craft and give it more impact. It’s fine to say that you want your beliefs to affect others through your art, but it means a lot more when you’re really good at what you do.

I have not been able to stop listening to this album all year long. What I really love about The Whitest Boy Alive is their stripped-down sound: it’s an interweaving of guitar, bass and drums that shines through its creative use of layering. The video above features the artwork of Geoff McFetridge, who also did their album art.