[youtube]http://youtu.be/uFDYYF2qm60[/youtube]
Check out the Heart Break Kids taking over SF State in their newest recap directed by David Camarena. You can get all the LIVE footage above, stay tuned for more videos coming your way soon! Enjoy!
While we wait in anticipation for Iamsu’s debut album ‘Sincerely Yours’, Young Thug drops a collaboration with the Bay Area Torch Holder entitled “OMG”. Peep the track below with production from P-Lo of The Invasion/HBK Gang.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/92578422[/vimeo]
Check out the video recap of Southern Hospitality’s ‘Rap Gods’ showcase this year at South by Southwest . Hosted by Young California’s own DJ Amen, the video features performances by DJ Paul, Problem, Sage The Gemini, Iamsu! and many more talented artists! Check it out all above!
Couples sip wine on the balcony of Oakland’s The New Parish as Iamsu! lumbers in. Standing six-foot three, with a bonsai-sprout afro, the rapper/producer poses for photos with fans and childhood friends. The DJ plays one of his songs, “100 Grand,” and a silver-haired guy near the stage resolutely jerks around to it, dancing like a hippie at Burning Man. Pulled from one of his three 2013 mixtapes, “100 Grand” is a ’90s Cash Money-indebted, steadily thwacking track dotted with guest of honor Juvenile’s guttural wooooaahhs. The song’s a carefree brag, with Su acting out but aiming to inspire: Mad pussy, young niggas getting money now, he raps, just after praising himself for being genuine enough to attract authentic friends.[more…]
Su, born Sudan Ahmeer Williams and now 24, has made the half-hour drive down from Richmond, the North Bay suburb where he was born, for a performance by his cousin, Mani Draper. In many ways, Su’s journey to here really kicked off nine years ago, when Draper was the captain of Pinole Valley High’s varsity basketball team and introduced him to two fellow players, both also producers: Chief, who got his nickname from dancing at American Indian powwows, and P-Lo, a Filipino kid who wore flashy hand-me-down Polo to school. Later, the three would join with P-Lo’s older brother, Kuya Beats, to form a production crew called The Invasion, and around it, a collective of savvy misfits known as HBK Gang, the acronym short for Heart Break Kids.
At the club in Oakland, Draper’s sisters swarm him as he finishes a hard-spit set, and Su slips around the corner to join Chief and another HBK member at a teenage girl’s birthday party, where P-Lo has agreed to perform. Su sparks a joint, pleased with himself as the act goes unnoticed by two cops lingering nearby. Jumpstarted by the influx of tech money in nearby San Francisco, downtown Oakland is developing quickly; a few doors down, the historic Fox Theater has reopened after a 39-year closure, and the party is being held at a new gallery space across the street from a bar with shuffleboard. The owner stands outside, anxiously eying underaged attendants in Tumblr-approved fashions—white fur and cropped denim, dreadlocks and septum piercings—as one partygoer remembers aloud that someone was shot dead on this corner after a Gucci Mane concert a couple years ago.
Inside, P-Lo performs in the thick of a mob of wobbling girls, a cup in his hand and his tongue flopping out as he raps, Three white hoes/ I’m a giant in my city like fee fi foe. After he finishes his song, the apply-yourself anthem “Going to Work,” he scrambles onto the sidewalk where Su and the crew have been waiting. They’re without coats on a pretty cold night in the Bay, energized by chugged beers and some weed a guy delivered to another HBK rapper’s mom’s house in a Starbucks pastry bag earlier that day. Mostly in their early 20s, but buzzing with adolescent energy, they take turns running in tiny circles, picking up the speed to jump high enough to smack a street sign.
Today’s HBK Gang started to take shape in 2007, when The Invasion combined with another group of friends—Kool John, Jay Ant and Skipper—at Contra Costa, a community college in San Pablo. Their alliance was largely conceived by Iamsu!, who envisioned an audience for rap by Bay Area kids who didn’t neatly fit the archetypes of gangsters or skaters. “I think we’re all secret nerds,” Su says. “We like random shit and we’re not afraid to talk about it, so we all gravitated toward each other.” A quarter-century after San Francisco’s “People’s Station,” KMEL, became the country’s first pop channel to regularly play hip-hop, HBK is black, Asian, Latino and American Indian—mixed through and through. On a whiteboard in P-Lo and Kuya Beats’ home studio in nearby Pinole, someone has scrawled “Hella Brown Kids,” an alternative HBK definition that’s a joke, but a fitting one for a uniquely diverse crew in a uniquely integrated city.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST via The Fader!
[youtube]http://youtu.be/vzMiiRbhVUc[/youtube]
In the second Episode of IAMSU!’s ‘Only That Real Tour’ Vlog, follow the gang through LIVE performances at SXSW inside The Fader Fort & the Pink Dolphin Showcase, hanging out at the HUF House & a whole lot more! Make sure you check out all the upcoming dates and get your tickets HERE!
The Fader: “Naomi Zeichner’s FADER feature on HBK Gang is chilling online in its entirety, and will be on newsstands soon, so their hometown team can post up with the print edition under bucket hats and Bay Area sun. At 17 members strong, HBK is a pretty sizable crew, and so we thought what better than a FADER mix to get y’all acquainted. Their own DJ Amen hooked it up. MP3 download and tracklist are adter the jump!”
[more…]
Tracklist:
IAMSU – Go Crazy
Sage – Gas Pedal
P-Lo – One Time
IAMSU – Up (Blend)
Sage – College Drop
Skip – In This Bitch
Kool John – Quit Cattin
IAMSU, 2 Chainz, Sage – Only That Real (Full Song)
IAMSU – Bout Me
IAMSU – Mobbin
Skipper – Up (Blend)
IAMSU, Kool John – Gettin It
Sage – Red Nose
IAMSU, Juvenile – 100 Grand
P-Lo – This My Shit
IAMSU, Wiz Khalifa – Goin Up
Jay Ant – Do That
IAMSU, Kool John, Jay Ant, Skip, P-Lo – Never Goin Broke (Full Song)
Rossi, IAMSU – Like This (Blend)
IAMSU, CJ – She Ready
Skipper, Dave Steezy – That’s My Word
Sage – Swerv
IAMSU – Get It In (Blend)
P-Lo – Goin To Work
Jay Ant – Free
IAMSU – Return of the Mac
2 Chainz, IAMSU – Living
Jay Ant – Online
IAMSU – Hipster Girls (Full Song)
This Saturday Feb 15th from noon to 4pm at Pink Dolphin flasghip store in San Francisco, The Pink Dolphin/HBK Camo pack will release! The collection includes tops, bottoms, fleece and hats that are extremely limited! To go along with that IAMSU! will also release the ‘Camo EP’ with new all original music that will only be available at the release. The first 400 people will receive wristband to secret show later that night so make sure you come early, the clothing quantities are extremely limited. Hit the jump for the official flyer! [more…]
