I Directed the video with the assistance of media student and friend of mine Adam. I had this concept for a video in my head at the time of writing this song in the studio so it was just a case of making it happen. I edited the footage on Final Cut Pro X which was a joy to use and very fast but I felt lacked features compared with the Premiere / After Effects combination I normally use. However, it has it’s clear advantages and the Apple Pro Res format is really a joy to work with.

Below you will find the video, freshly uploaded to youtube in 1080p / 24. With this video more than others I have uploaded, I can really see the bad compression of youtube. So below the youtube link is a link to the Vimeo version which is a lot more clearer and crisp if viewing in full 1080p on a medium to large size screen.

Alternative Vimeo HD Link (Far better quality!)

I was listening to the radio this morning when I heard the press on Radio 1 during the news  report, talk about Reginald D Hunter’s use of the “N word”  at a recent gig for the Professional Footballers Association. It seems as though all hell had broken loose and I for one was kind of confused how the Press were running with this story and trying to destroy careers without hesitation. It shocked me how this could become such a big deal and get out of hand so quickly… I mean, do they have any knowledge of cultural history in America? I don’t even think the PFA made a bad decision booking him. I think the only bad decision was the knee jerk reaction that came directly after he used this word…

This is an exert from an article I read about some remarks that Maggie Thatcher’s daughters made in the past:

“Carol Thatcher (the daughter of the former UK Prime Minister) during a private conversation in a Green Room at the BBC, referred to a French Black tennis player as looking like a Golliwog,

The debate rages in the UK as to whether this was truly offensive or not?”

You see to me that IS racist and highly offensive. What possible argument can be used to defend that? Yet, there is a “debate”, because we apparently don’t know… A British newspaper that printed that, simply cannot establish whether those remarks are racist…

You see the action of defending such a remark is in itself racism. That’s how bad that statement above was.

…Never mind, we’ll reward her by heavily subsidising her mothers funeral so that she can keep more of the millions of pounds that will come from her mothers estate.

Today we don’t have a debate when it comes to Reginald D Hunter and the remarks he made during a gig at the PFA Awards. We just have the word racism being brandished with no opposing side of the argument. I find it hard to express how ignorant I thought it was for the Guardian and other newspapers to publish that knee jerk reaction to what was… well… NOTHING. For them to show a lack of knowledge when it comes to these issues, history, and lack of understanding for how the African American deals with his history where that word was used in violent situations and to terrorise a people.

I think the word “nigga” which is what I hear fellow black people say and the word “nigger” I historically hear coming from racist Americans  You see the two words are pronounced and spelled differently to me and many others. The word Nigger was originally used to keep African Americans down and instead was flipped and reversed and became OUR word.

Slavery, it’s abolishment and the largest and most powerful civil rights movement that entailed was a unique struggle in human history where an entire race was abused by another. The natural and clever reflex action that happened to flip and reverse the meaning of the word empowered an entire generation. It’s hurt was stripped away, and another meaning it became, for me, almost the equivalent of the word “brother” or “brethren”, it for me is a word that shows a bond between people and an identification for each other and a reminder so that we never forget the past. I think it is up to the people who are descended from slavery (including myself as a West Indian) to decide how the word should be used. I’ve had the word used against me and I’ve seen it used against my family in a negative and hurtful way… I’ve had it used against me to try to deprive me of my equal status as a human, yet I’ve heard the word used in a way that removes this negative power from it and instead flips it and turns it into:

“Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished” – Tupac Shakur.

“…You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.”

N.W.A released Straight Outta Compton in 1988. With its famous opening salvo of three songs, the group reflected the rising anger of the urban youth. “Straight Outta Compton” introduced the group; “Fuck tha Police” protested police brutality and racial profiling, and “Gangsta Gangsta” painted the worldview of the inner-city youth. While the group was later credited with pioneering the burgeoning sub genre of gangsta rap, N.W.A in fact referred to their music as “reality rap”.

Today I learned:

(source) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unrecovered_flight_recorders

The flight data recorders (FDR or more commonly known as the black box) from both the planes that hit the WTC towers were never recovered. A titanium reinforced, virtually indestructible, audio and data recorder. If it was destroyed you would expect a part of it to have been recovered, surely? It’s bright orange!

This makes those the first and only cases so far in history where a plane has crashed on land and the FDR was never recovered, bar one accident in 1985 where a plane crashed high in a mountain where the site is virtually inaccessible and dangerous to get to…

For me the disappearance of a key piece of evidence like the aircraft black box is highly suspicious stuff and is normally the first sign of insiders engaged in the concealment of truth.

This is the only picture to be released of the landing gear that was discovered recently near the site of the controversial mosque that is situated near the site where the twin towers once stood. The picture was taken by the police I imagine as this area is now being treated as a “crime scene” officially. Meaning there was no access to this area by non officials like the press and any other parties interested in the find.

You can google this story and find this exact picture on practically every article that’s talking about this convenient and politically well timed discovery and read the lies and lack of objective journalism coming from the mainstream media across the globe.

Here are my problems with this picture…

1) The Rope that is around it… I’m no aircraft engineer, but I think I can say with 100% certainty by using my common sense that rope is not a part of a commercial airliners landing gear. In fact, in my research I can’t seem to find any information about rope being used in modern commercial airliners.

2) Let’s say it did actually, somehow, land there unnoticed for 12 years in this spot between the building… There is a thin and apparently undisturbed pipe that the landing gear is resting on… Regardless of this material, lead, copper, steel, plastic, rubber… with the force of a heavy steel object hitting it at that velocity it would cause some visible damage. Unless the pipe is in fact made out of a virtually indestructible graphine based material making it the most expensive piece of pipe in the known world.

3) Seeing as the chunk of landing gear is fit so snug in that gap, I can’t see how it got there without causing damage to the brickwork/cement on that wall.

4) The fact this was discovered 12 years after 9/11 at a politically sensitive time when the Boston Bombs had not too long gone off is a little too perfect. It’s as if they are trying to bury the news of gleaming inconsistencies with the official story of what went on in Boston recently.

5) The distance from the trade towers where this part was found, for the weight and size of the part of the plane and the location of the plane that the piece originated from, seems to be too great when considering the forces at play. The effect we all saw of the plane hitting the world trade centre in the video and images that are available show the planes were absorbed into the structure almost instantly upon impact. I would have believed it if the part were maybe a piece of sheet metal from the wings of the aircraft which extended past the building upon impact. The fuselage area which is where the landing gear can be found, tucked inside, was a direct hit on both towers.

This appears to be completely setup and should warrant an independent investigation to ascertain where this part truly came from… Considering all this information is originating from the FBI, and other chosen officials assigned to this case, we are only relying on information that is unverified by any other sources.

You need to ask yourself the question, if this is what the government are willing to stage for political purposes, what else have they staged in recent times? What are the extents that they have gone to in the past? I believe the most pertinent questions we need to find the answer to though are:

1) What was the true role of the American government and it’s intelligence and security services during the tragedy that occured on September 11th 2001?

2) How can you find a large section of the landing gear 12 years later, a piece of card to identify the hijacker, but can’t find a titanium reinforced and virtually indestructible flight data recorder (black box)?!

The government insists that the devices were destroyed in the initial impact or melted in the conflagration that followed with not even a piece of it to scrutinise. Yet somehow the passport for Satam al-Suqami, one of the hijackers, survived this hellish inferno and was found days later on the street below.  Miraculously, this passport flew from either a pocket or a bag, escaped the licking flames and floated nearly entirely intact to the ground below.

There is an eyewitness, however, who contradicts the official report. He asserts that the flight data recorders actually survived and that he saw rescue officials carting off one from the World Trade Center site.

Myself (5n6) and Tommy DMO release our debut studio project as ‘XO The Rebellion’ starting with a free mixtape coming to you courtesy of UK Runnings and veteran mixtape DJ Tricksta.

The mixtape was released on Datpiff and other digital sources on 21st December 2012. The mixtape features just under a dozen tracks and has a total playlist of just over 30 minutes.

You can download it here for free: http://www.datpiff.com/UK-Runnings-Presents-XO-The-Rebellion-Kush-Cognac-mixtape.432318.html

Above is the official promo video for our upcoming full length LP between myself and fellow UK rapper/singer/producer Tommy DMO.

We both go way back to the days of playing in bands around the UK hardcore scene in the early 2000′s late 90′s. We’ve been good friends ever since, and as we were both involved in the hip hop/urban scene making similar music, this collaboration was of course well overdue!

More soulful hip hop coming soon as well as a link to the free download of the full LP

This mini-doc is the result of myself and UK Hip Hop Veteran Tricksta planning a night to catch up and drink Remy Martin til the early hours. We worked together on the ‘Collective Underground Urban Poetry’ mixtape released late last year.

I grabbed my 7D, with only one lens (a fast 1.4 ‘nifty fifty’) and made my way to Wolverhampton. I had nothing else, literally no tripod or microphone apart from the built-in 7D mic (which is widely accepted to have a shit sound, so apologies for that), this video is a result of what can be created with minimal equipment and when you have a REAL subject. I enjoyed being showed around Tricksta’s ends and filming what I saw. This is the first in a series of “portraits in film” that I will be showcasing on my Vimeo channel.

The slight flickering you see in the video isn’t the ISO on auto, it’s the shadow/highlight plugin in Adobe Premiere. I’ve heard it’s a known issue: forums.adobe.com/message/3890692

Buy Tricksta’s latest album featuring some of the biggest names in UK Hip Hop here: itunes.apple.com/gb/album/out-of-darkness-cometh-light/id525716121

Here is a video I filmed and edited of a day trip out to Ashridge Forest. I was sitting on this footage just as stock but then I heard an amazing classical piece on the radio and it inspired me to just compile the footage together.

Edited and graded in Premiere filmed at 720 but the bitrate is high so if it is jerky or stuttering then just remove the HD option as it is probably killing your graphics card.

Here you go:

Filmed using the 7D, my favourite prime lens in low lighting… around 6000+ ISO range…

Thought this would be a good excercise in low light filming as the club we were in is one of the darkest I’ve ever been in, with not much lighting and dark wallpaper. It’s a rock/metal club normally hence the design however apart from some grain I’m happy with the results.

Soundtrack: Bon Iver – Blindsided

Well, it’s nothing perfect and the editing seems a little amateur however it’s all a learning curve. I need to improve my workflow though as the DSLR footage is compressed into H264 and even though Adobe Premiere CS5 handles this file type natively it still seems to be taking forever to both render/export. Maybe I need to explore codec options, etc…

It’s in 1080p 24p

Here it is, shot mostly hand held with no rig on the 7D:

Third Eye Rhymes