"Welcome to Yungtown"

Hey everyone! Dang it’s been a crazy long time since I’ve posted anything. I really want to be more consistent…even if the blog has no dignified purpose…I could shoot out some words of wisdom that God blesses me with.

Anyway! As you all know by now…I had the privilege to fly to Alabama 2 weeks ago to hang out with, a long time friend of mine, Yungtown! You can check out his music at www.myspace.com/yungtownmusic - I have known this man since the beginning of freshman year of high school and he’s been such an inspiration to me musically and a good friend to listen to my life and give me advice on anything. We have done 8 collabs since we met back then, and it seems like each one was a dang hit - and we didn’t even work in the same room! This was when I first started, so no doubt it was mostly him carrying us through the charts…but hey I consider myself inspiring. Psh.

Anyway, so my birthday rolls around and I was talking to my dad’s friend and he couldn’t believe I had never met Yung. He said - “Y’all make such nice songs across the country, imagine what you could do in the same room!” Little did I know, that night he talked to my dad and my dad contacted Yungtown and next thing I know I’m on a dang airplane on my way to ‘Bama. At this point I was very excited, mainly because my anticipation kept being delayed. What I mean by that is…the original date to fly out was the 24th of October…which was then moved to November 1st, which was then moved to finally…November 7th. So as the weeks get closer to me going we started talking on AIM more about what we had in plans to do just so we had an understanding and everything wasn’t going to happen randomly. So anyway, we were both excited and I was very surprised to find out how excited he was as well. I was just glad it wasn’t one of those things where I was excited, but once I got there…he would be just like sleeping all day or some junk like that. It was a mutual fund of excitement. We had thrown around the idea of what exactly we wanted to accomplish song wise…and possibly even a mixtape. It was his idea that we did a mixtape. We were going to do 2 brand new songs and just compile them for download with all our old stuff. And on later thought that was revised, which I’ll get to later.

Alright so, I wake up Friday November 7th, 8:00am and get ready to head to the airport. Both flights going were smooth and no complaints. I had a very slight layover in Dallas both ways. Up until I boarded the plane that I knew was going to Alabama, I was fine. But once I sat down and thought about it my excited ness mixed with straight up nervousness. The lady next to me was nice, quite the drinker, but nice the same so it helped me relax a bit. I mean don’t get me wrong…I wasn’t like hyperventilating or anything like that…it was just very surreal. So the plane landed in Alabama and I got off…before I go on the dang Birmingham airport is small as frick. Like I told Yung, the car garage is larger than the airport. So anyway, I had to use the restroom and I wanted to contact Yung to make sure where he was at and my phone was being messed up so it gave me a chance to fix that. I walked out into the lobby of people and I’m scanning mad frantically for this tall dude with a beard and a black hat. Nothing. So I head downstairs cuz there was really no where else to go. No one down there so I finally got a hold of him and he was upstairs and was going down. Next thing I know the guy is walking down the stairs…in that moment it was like looking at a picture that popped out suddenly and became real. We greeted and the surreal ness was in effect until we started actually working together and got situated with each other being in person…at least for me anyway.


From the airport we headed to this restaurant called “Moe’s” - it’s like this burrito place that makes burritos and stuff of that fashion. Before we walked in he was like, “Alright, when we walk in they’re gonna be like…’Welcome to Moe’s!’” and sure enough, they did. So we were ordering and someone walked in and next thing I know Yung says it along with the staff “Welcome to Moe’s!” That cracked me up and was my first taste at seeing Yung’s strong character in person and how he interacts with people. Then when we were getting drinks, I sat down and these two girls came over who were in their mid-20’s and as Yung said, “Fairly attractive.” One sat down in the booth next to me, and Yung who was still getting his drink stopped and said to the girl, who had hair that was red and curly - “I like your hair a lot, it’s red…like fire.” It was just so random and cracked me up. This being within one hour of seeing him in person for the first time really made me look forward to the rest of my stay.

So from Moe’s we went to Game Stop to look for a game for his brother, which they didn’t have. So we went to the local gas station and got us each a Nos energy drink to keep us focused that night for our studio time. We got back to his house, which was also surreal to see just based on the fact I’ve seen it all in his you tube videos. I got to meet his 2 brothers and his sister immediately and met his mom and dad later. Actually, I didn’t actually meet his dad til’ Sunday before church.

Surprisingly we got started right away and we had beats already in mind on the table…I spent a few weeks almost everyday just browsing for stuff that I think would inspire us to do something mad hot to. So we found this beat which had this crazy guitar riff and we were talking and I was like…”I just want this song to be heard and people will be like, ‘are you kidding me!?’” So about 20 minutes later we hadn’t really come up with anything so we harnessed the concept of “Kidding Me.” and over 24 hours later we did the final render. Hook took 2-3 hours to write, that’s not even recording or mixing. Like I said once we started writing and bouncing ideas off of each other, for me at least I just felt really comfortable. It was crazy how we each just contributed ideas for flow…melody…lyrics…and overall composition of the and structure of the hook. We started recording that’s when the process started of the dang mixing. I won’t take y’all through all that. I’ll just say I learned a lot…mixing wise on how to just put everything volume wise and what effects to use. It was a lesson I’ve been wanting to learn for 4 years and it finally happened.

So that night, we did not go to bed til’about 7 or 8am. We worked on music til’ about 6 then he grabbed some food and we watched a bit of Family Guy. Then he’s like, “PraiZe, sleep in my bed.” So I’m like, “Yo man, it’s your bed…I don’t want to intrude on your life and take your bed like this.” He’s like “Nah dude for real, it’s broke in one part…but freakin lay that junk out.” So I laid that junk out. We talked for an hour at least and finally fell asleep. I woke up at 11, so 4 hours of sleep, give or take an hour. This dang fool slept til’ 4. Every once and awhile he’d complain about his brother and his brother’s friends being loud playing their Wii. So 4 o’clock rolls around and he lazily gets up off the floor and I’m all on KJ board tempted to be like. “Ooh look at dang me…my name is PraiZe and I’m posting this from Yungtown’s computer…ooh wee.” But I held back.

We finished Kidding Me soon after he woke up then started brainstorming for what to do next. We came up with the idea of doing the mixtape…but we did not want to just put a couple songs with a bunch of old junk. So we started thinking of which song we wanted to bring back. We came up with the top 3 that really made an impact on the internet world…which were, Ride With Christ, Represent, and Missing You. We almost immediately just took out Represent, because that song would be pretty intense to re-do and almost impossible to live up to the impact it left the first time around. So it was narrowed to Missing You and Ride With Christ. So we decided to just re-do Missing You with same hook, but include us both on that hook and re-do the verses. THEN we decided to just completely remix the heck out of Ride With Christ.

We then went to Arby’s and met this girl named Whitley, or something like that. I thought it was Whitney…which is normal. But hey, I’ve been wrong before. But anyway, her and Yung was doing his thing talking to Whitley, and once we finished eating he walked over and dedicated a dang bell ring at Arby’s to Whitley. “This is for you Whitley!” FFTTAAANG - The bell said. There we went to Target to get some toothpaste, because the security guard at the airport in Phoenix took me freakin’ paste. But we didn’t actually buy anything. However, we did run into an attractive friend of his…and it seems we ran into someone he knew everywhere we went.

So that night after Target we went back to his crib and started Missing You. We were going to record, but his dad text him saying that we had church and we should go to sleep. So I took a shower and got in his bed, to sleep. He was obviously on the floor though. Just wanted to get that in the clear. Anyway….we just started talking about music and the KJ board and just certain aspects of life and how it relates to music. It was great for me, and I think for him as well…we were able to just bounce life off of each other on a 1-on-1 level. It was a time to get to know each other a lot better I think. We talked for like 5 hours then I had him give me performing tips…which he like dedicate himself to. I really appreciate that from him…I learned so much in such a short amount of time it was difficult to retain it all. So by now it was time to get ready for church. So far from Friday morning at 8, to Sunday at 8am…I’ve slept 4 hours.

So we get to church, and this was the first time I’ve seen ‘Bama in the daylight and it’s so beautiful. Just the trees are crazy colors and all layered like some puzzle picture or something. Plus the weather was nice a chilly, but it was windy that Sunday morning which didn’t please me. Probably didn’t please Yung either, cuz Heaven forbid his hair is out of place. I say that based off the fact it took longer for Yung to get his hair right before church…than church itself was. (Pokes fun and Yung like the Poky Little Puppy.)

We got to his church and it was HUGE. It had like theatre seating and floor seating it’s like a dang concert. There was
a Starbucks there, which we got some cold drinks. Why cold ones? Ask Yung. So we sat down, and church started soon after that and we stood up and they played their music. We sat down and I felt like a jerk, I could not keep my eyes open for the life of me. If someone looked at me they probably thought I was possessed cuz my eyes kept rollin’ in my head and I couldn’t tell you one thing the pastor said. But hey, it’s the thought that counts right?

Alright so after church we did like the ninja sprint to the truck, well he did…my pants were falling off so I couldn’t pull off a swift zip line to the truck. We got in and this dude drives mad fast and jams out to the Zelda soundtrack. Yungtown, for those of you who care…listens to EVERYTHING. I figured I’d hear hip hop…but he’s got Zelda and Mario Galaxy tunes and he’s so pumped over it. “Like dude, this was in the game and once I heard it…I was like blam that was epic!”

So yeah, we got back to his house and we were like awake…and willing to work. But we decided to take a short nap and just refresh our mind. 2 hours later I woke up and wrote my verse for Missing You. He took awhile to wake up. I finished my verse and waited on him to finish his…cuz he ran to the “Movie Gallery” to return his game, because it was due that day and Yung didn‘t want to have a ‘late return‘ on his game returning record. So you know I had the extra edge on writing. So we laid out that track easily. We drank coffee and then that night DPB called and asked what was going on and basically he was like “I can come out tomorrow morning if you want to see what y’all are up to.” So that’s what he planned on.

Later that night we took pictures and did some extra junk that may/may not be heard. I was very excited/very nervous to meet DPB simply because of the fact of what he’s accomplished and his level. So yeah, we stayed up that night. Yung took forever to shave…in that time I just searched for beats and kicked back and just did some unproductive music stuff. It was 6am and after enduring many Morgan Freeman impressions (which were hilarious) - we headed to Jack’s for breakfast. It was cold as heck outside and I was so dang tired at this point. I just wanted to sleep. So we got back and slept like an hour or 2 and DPB called 12 fricken’ cuz we were past the time when he was going to be at Yung’s house.

DPB got there an hour later or so and it was just so interesting for me to hear all the wisdom DPB has to offer. I
learned a ton in those 5 or so hours that he was there. I got to hear a lot about Yungtown’s upcoming CD, just beats that are in question…concepts and promoting ideas. He then listened to some songs we had done and helped us out with some concepts. He recorded the hook for Ride With Christ at this point as well, which was awesome to watch progress.

Yung drove me to the airport and we said our goodbyes.

This blog is getting lengthy, so to not delay the end any more - basically my flight was cancelled from Dallas. So I spent the entire night in the Dallas airport staying awake…for an 9 am flight to Phoenix on 7 hours sleep from Friday. Morning at 8...until the present time.

But yeah, my overall experience with Yung was so much better than expected. I learned a lot and felt we became even better friends than we were before, which to me…was expected.

So be on the lookout for the “Collaborative Reinvention” mixtape which will be out soon!