The Brilliance!

The three of us are going nuts over on our new Flickr account. Uploading photos from all three of our lives and everything else in between. Simply cool…simply fun. Add us to your friends/contact lists and get down with THE BRILLIANCE on Flickr! We’re very late! We know! But better late than never… Take note: Ben said “It was a SPAIN in the neck!”

Annnnddd we’re back!! Been a minute since we did an interview right?! We decided to take a break from that – plus we couldn’t think of anybody we really wanted to interview, and its almost impossible to get a hold of Marc Jacobs himself. So you know… Anyway, we are hitting you guys quite hard today with an amazing new interview put together by our new champ Virgil. Introducing Ibn Jasper – this guy is next level. Image consultant for Kanye West himself, amazingly talented barber behind all your favorite celebrities cuts, global jetsetter, and a classic chi-city trend baron. Just try to catch up with this dude…yikes. Check our interview where Ibn addresses the recent Kanye stage-rush on MTV, flying private, $1500 shape-ups, hanging at Nigo’s house, international shopping-sprees with the G.O.O.D. Music crew, ollies over shopping carts, and too much more. We got exclusive pictures of Kanye and Justive vs. Simeon backstage hugging it out!!!

I kind of feel like I am supposed to write about this…I mean, I watched the deal/rumors like kawsone.com right before it updates…I cant lie, I love this stuff. Love the deals, love hearing about the insane numbers, and wondering what it must be like. $1.65 billion in stock…not too bad for a company that is ultra young and really has only ‘mattered’ for 12-14 months. Isn’t that just mind numbing?! I mean, it was not a widely used service a while back – then it simply exploded. Some interesting notes: (1) The ‘nerds’ seem to share the same thoughts that Google Video is a better product…the soundtracks are perfectly synced, faster, etc – but the majority rules as was illustrated here. (2) The cost of the deal, $1.65B in stock, is roughly equivalent to a mildly rough week of trading for Google – basically nothing to them. (3) Sequoia, the venture cap firm they used stands to make $500+ million on their original $30 million dollar investment – the majority of which went to server/hosting fees – very easy to manage compared to people/staff. (4) The three founders of YouTube are going to bring in an estimated $100-$200 million each – don’t you wonder the first thing they thought this morning when they woke up? …so yeah, as we’ve said before – the internet is back. ***Take a look at the link below, its TechCrunch’s first write-up of YouTube back in the day.

I think its safe to say our time artistically is influenced by Andy Warhol. I was flipping thru this Barneys catalog that came in the mail and noticed that they are licensing Warhol to push their products. In it, every few pages or so, they published some of his classic quotes. Here’s a few. “I like to be the right thing in the wrong place and the wrong thing in the right place.” or “My new line is, in 15 minutes everybody will be famous.” and “My idea of a good picture is one that’s in focus and of a famous person.” Dude was funny. Now I see his streetwear comparisons come from. After reading this article I find his fascination with business and expanding his brand through art, motivational. I didn’t know Campbell’s soup was remaking their labels Warhol color themes, that’s kinda cool, right? My favorite quote of his is this… “Fashion wasn’t what you wore someplace anymore; it was the whole reason for going.”

Ugh, another technology post?! You’re such a nerd Ben. So yeah, I put Diddy in my ‘Top 8’ as a joke type thing a while back…but then I started getting all of ‘his’ bulletins, then I started watching his webisode/youtube things, then I started checking his tracks, then I started watching his little contents things…etc. Needless to say his ploy to grab the internet kids is working quite well – he’s gotten my attention more than a few times. Thing is, he hasn’t been doing the myspace thing for that long – but he already has 4.1 million page views. All that bandwidth, all the streaming videos, all the streaming music, all the promotion, all the exposure, etc. – FOR FREE. Seriously. He has done little to nothing different than your average high school garage band, he just happened to be famous before the fact. Without all this, I honestly wouldn’t have checked for this album – but now I’m actually waiting for its release…have I been brainwashed?! Who knew?!!? A great illustration of why Diddy continues to be successful – adapt to your market!!! Honestly, hats-off to our generation’s Frank Sinatra – Mr. Diddy. Virgil here, co-signing on this album, just listened to it 2x in a row…for real…Diddy pushed the artistic envelope and I am riding the ‘New Wave’ vibe, reminds me of Kelis - Wanderland, take that…take that

Unbeknownst to me, Bottega Veneta has been doing some amazing home furnishing pieces. Who knows how long…I just took notice recently. Real luxury type stuff. What is impressive about Bottega from a branding standpoint is how they bypassed a logo-logo like all the other lux-brands, opting for a weave pattern as their signature and using that on all their leather goods, shoes, bags etc. The weave pattern is especially nice on their desks and tables. If your BAAALLLLINNN’ and not into that, do it in Ostrich and be a real boss. Check out the bedroom set up…it is so me. Listening to all this Jim Jones has got me thinking I have this kind of money to spend. “We stay fly….”

I gotta stop with these technology posts! You’d think I have something brewing myself… Honestly though, I don’t just hang out on the internet – I go out and socialize, I swear. I just bring my Treo. Anyway, finally someone wrote it, who better than the NY Times. This is the ‘VH1 Behind The Music’ tell-all story about Friendster and why they didn’t get cash like Myspace. I’m not going to spoil it, or write a lot here…but one thing: Take $30M dollar offers – have these kids ever heard of compounding interest? It’s a long article, I won’t be mad if you don’t read the whole thing.

You know this must be good…we rarely post about streetwear and street culture stuff anymore. We kind of realized that’s best left to the other blogs, and one in particular to make fun of it all…but I digress. This goes beyond streetwear or opinions on the whole scene. Jamie O’Shea’s Supertouch Blog has a nice writeup and photo review of this Stussy X Nike event at the Blu House in LA. The Blu House was the beachfront home of The Doors in ‘67, according to Supertouch. So they went into this event in a venue that was already filled with a rich creative history and did a truly amazing job. I’m a big fan of KAWS first and foremost, and I have to say, the huge mouths on the wall are spot on…I love them. Just so cool, what else can you say? The REAS piece is nice as well… So anyways - this was to celebrate Stussy’s “Worldwide Tour” campaign…and so it drew some incredible artists to the event. Check the picture with KAWS, Mark Parker, and Pushead. Like Supertouch says, talk about a dream collaboration. But seriously - I bet the level of creative energy in this room was unreal. Very inspiring just looking at the pictures… My favorite picture has to be the shot of Weezer’s Brian Bell…check the dude in the background with his mouth open. Ha…way to be ‘that guy’...Anyways, just check out the pictures from the event and while you’re at it, have a read through the rest of Jamie’s blog. Consistently good coverage of consistently inspiring people.

What do you say when you’re about to sell a $139 million dollar timeless Picasso painting and then go on to accidentally ram your elbow through it, leaving a silver dollar sized hole? You say, “Oh shit, look what I’ve done.” Ha… So, this dude Steve Wynn…he’s got himself this damaged Picasso now…and he plans to get it restored and keep it. Good idea man…but maybe you should have been a little more careful around your PIECE OF TIMELESS, $139 MILLION DOLLAR MASTERPIECE. Ha?! I’m sorry, but the second someone told me they wanted to finalize a $139M deal for a piece of art, I would have that thing put behind a thick glass case. Or frozen. Or something…whatever it takes to keep it in absolute pristine condition. There’s accidents, and then there’s accidents. And this falls under the ACCIDENTS category. Nice goin!

How to start this post…not sure. I’m such a big Jay fan, huge…so I am ultra critical of this album. First things to clear out, the Neptunes & Swizz tracks are terrible – should have left them off. Now that we have that out of the way, I can honestly say I really like this album. It needs to be listened to in an entirely different context than any of his other works – and actually, different than any other rap album ever made. He’s mature now, his life is worlds different than when Reasonable Doubt came out, or even Volume 2 – so the content and feel of the album is of course going to reflect this. This is truly business-rap…warm-up music for the boardroom. Me vs. venture capital firms type music…ha, seriously. The tracks: (1) I dig ‘Prelude’, the beat, Mr. Pain-in-da-ass’ intro, all of it. (2) Just Blaze does some amazing work for ‘Oh my God.’ Something to shift gears to, good stuff. (3) Wish they wouldn’t have leaked this, I love it, but would have had more impact off a first-listen within the album. Another classic driving track. (4) Closing down roads in Monaco to race Ferraris and Zondas?! A zillion miles from reality – nuts. (5) ‘Lost Ones’ – finally a little inside glimpse from the man himself, very interesting and very good. (6) Wow, pretty amazing track, and John Legend fits perfect. We love to hear Jay talk fly – he lets us live vicariously through him on tracks like this. Inspirational (7) The opening line of this song is pretty much all you need to hear, ‘you don’t have enough stamps in your passport.’ But yeah, this is the maturity here – real chill track. (8) The classic this-one-is-for-my-mother track – good stuff. (9) Terrible, seriously. After ‘Change Clothes’ and ‘Frontin’ this is all we get? (10) ‘Hollywood’ is good stuff – Jay-Z talks quite a bit about fame in this album, how its the most addictive drug. Beyonce and Jay blend so well on this track. (11) Ehh…not too into this track. Doesn’t even really sound like a Dre beat. Good lyrical content though. (12) What is this?! Not a good look, shouldn’t be on the album. (13) An intense track indeed – didn’t actually expect this from Jay. Very good, not too much more can be said – although its interesting to hear Jay kind of apologize for just giving money and not time. (14) Another ‘wow’ track – a great way to close it out. My favorite line off the whole album: ‘…sunset hov, how you get so fly? I said from not being afraid to fall out the sky…’ So yeah, a thanks goes out to Jay for another album to get inspired from. He is truly a living legend.