Sam Adato’s Drum Shop, a staple of San Francisco’s SoMA neighborhood, was recently violated by some dumbass who drove an SUV through the storefront. Apparently the driver got out and ran after driving through the front wall.

Sam’s place is a well-loved local spot. Hopefully it’ll be open again soon. To see the extent of the damage, click here…

I sometimes get media mail containing branded merchandise for products, events, artists, etc. Most of the time, it’s pretty crappy — some weird candy, dime-store plastic toy, or wack T-shirt, usually bundled with some shitty indie artist’s shitty album, or a pitch for some niche event in bum-fuck nowhere that I could give two shits about — but late last week, I got a package from Red Bull, a pitch for the Red Bull Big Tune beat battle. Red Bull’s got loot to spend on promotional items, they have creative marketing folks, and they have a really active events group, especially when it comes to music.

Red Bull’s Big Tune event is basically a national beat battle, with events popping off all over the country — Philly, Oakland, Houston, Detroit, Chicago, Seattle, DC and Los Angeles — where budding producers and DJs go head-to-head to find out who’s got the best beats. The two top-ranked beat makers from each city will head to NYC in December for the big battle, and the winner gets a whole bunch of new studio gear and the opportunity to record with an artist of their choice at Red Bull Studios in LA (last year’s winner did some tracks with Young Buck).

The promotional merch for this event is sweeter than your usual run-of-the-mill promo garbage. The box the pitch comes in (above) is done up to look like a mixing board, and inside there’s a can of Red Bull, a couple of business cards, a one-sheet of event info, and a 4GB USB flash drive that looks like a little boombox made out of rubber. The can of Red Bull is whatever (honestly, though, I can’t drink that shit), and the business cards and the one-sheet are useful but not really that cool. The flash drive, however, is the shit. First of all, 4GB USB flash drives cost anywhere from $15 to $50, and generally speaking they’re pretty practical, so that’s a score. Secondly, this one ups the cool factor by being encased in a rubber mold of a boombox. Yeah, ultimately, it’s on some throw-away technology swag bullshit, but I’ll definitely use it…after I delete all the Red Bull Big Tune promo photos and video and PR documents from it. Thanks Red Bull. Too bad I got this package a month after the Oakland event happened. I totally would have gone. Maybe.

I hit the Hip-Hop Shop show that TopR and Quest performed at this past Friday evening. It was a private deal with free beer ad wine, and a really comfortable environment — the space was obviously live/work, and I’m pretty sure TopR rocked some dude’s living/dining room — but there was this strange Big Tobacco element to the whole thing. When we got to the address, there were people at the front door checking IDs and taking names, then giving those in attendance drink tickets with packs of cigarettes. So in order to get drinks, you had to have drink tickets and to get drink tickets, you had to take the smokes. Pretty interesting. Even more interesting: the art on the walls in the space was all Camel-branded paintings of various style. I felt like I was being aggressively marketed to. It was really weird. Even weirder were the stocky guys all wearing bluetooth headsets, turtlenecks, sport coats, apparently doing security. They were so out of place, people were talking about them, making jokes about the government using the Men In Black to keep tabs on underground rap shows, or how Big Tobacco had hired mercenaries to make sure we took the cigarettes.

Quest was already spinning when we got there. He wasn’t getting too crazy with the scratching — he’s one of the world’s best — but he was throwing down the dopest mix set I’ve heard in a long, long time, and tossing in some turntable trickery in a fashion that was neither phoned-in nor too wildly technical, nor a step out of line with the flow of the music in the mix. Strictly a rap music set, there were a lot of old school drops, and Quest got things hot enough to incite a b-boy circle, three or four dudes who got down in turns for about 20 minutes.

TopR and his hype man, the producer of his latest album The Marathon of Shame, Dick Nasty joined Quest and performed a tight set of new and old Top Ramen classics.

When we left, there were unopened packs of Camel cigarettes all over the place.

Hit the Mission Bar after the Camel rap show, and proceeded to spend the rest of the night drinking heavily with a friend who was celebrating his retirement from his days as a bartender. Things got ugly.

The homie Top Ramen, a.k.a. TopR, just put together this video for the song “Apathy,” off his latest album The Marathon of Shame (which is dope and which you should buy RIGHT NOW from the iTunes store).

If you’re around the Bay tonight, you can catch Top performing with the always incredible and hellsa-fucking-cool DJ Quest at a Hip-Hop Shop event. Here’s the info:

EVENT: “HIP HOP SHOP”
DATE: 7/25/08
TIME: 7PM-10PM
WHERE: 50 WASHBURN ST. SAN FRANCISCO
BTWN. 9th &10th St., BTWN MISSION & HOWARD (SOMA)
NO COVER – SPREAD THE WORD!
LIMITED CAPACITY – COME EARLY!
(2) FREE DRINK TICKETS UPON SIGN UP

And just for shits and giggles, here’s TopR’s last video, for “Security! Security!” (which I’m in, as the security guard who throws Top outta the bar), off the album Cheap Laughs for Dead Comedians (which you should also buy right now from the iTunes store):

Every two weeks — every other Friday, to be exact — I produce and post a new edition of a rap music podcast called The 40 Oz Show. You can download it at GurpCity.com, and subscribe to it in the podcast section of the iTunes store. If you just wanna stream it, then here ya go… And tell you friends…

[audio http://the40ozshow.podbus.com/40_oz_show_07-18-08.mp3]

Gird yourself, your liver, your loins. Next month, members of the the Gurp City All Stars — Conceit, Grand Invincible (Luke Sick & DJ Eons), Eddie K, TopR, DJ Quest, and Boac and Dnae Beats (from the Machete Vox crew) — are doing a show at Rasputin’s in Mountain View. The show is free, but you should bring your wallet and spend your money on Gurp City merch.

The fresh-as-fuck flier above was done by the one and only Matt Loomis. Click on it to download a full-size version that you can print out and paper up all over your neighborhood.

In 1999, DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist, two of the nerdiest record nerds in the record nerd game, put out Brain Freeze, a mix of strictly 45 RPM records, which quickly became a benchmark among boutique mix albums. That release was followed up in 2001 by Product Placement. The two are back with a third in the series, The Hard Sell. Here’s a stream of the A-Side…

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They just posted a cheesy “Intro” clip to YouTube, but they’ve obviously been working on this for a minute, as evidenced by the clip of them doing it live back in January….

Got a few extra dollars lying around — like, a lot of extra dollars? How about a buncha extra time to bid in an online auction, only to win the right to continue bidding over the phone in a live auction?

If you’re rich and have an empty schedule, check this out…

RARE ORIGINAL OBAMA “HOPE” ARTWORK DONATED BY SHEPARD FAIREY TO ART FOR LIFE CHARITY AUCTION

[Los Angeles- July 14, 2008] Shepard Fairey, the contemporary artist whose irreverent works have deconstructed the meaning and methods of propaganda, ironically became the creator of one of the most potent political images in recent history – the OBAMA “HOPE” poster. The image found such immediate resonance with Obama supporters that it became ubiquitous throughout the primary campaign and across the web.

Now, at the request of Russell Simmons, Shepard has donated one of three fine art versions of the poster to the charity auction, Art For Life, an annual event which benefits Simmons’ Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation.

This piece is approximately 4 foot x 6 foot in size and is a mixed media stencil collage on cotton rag paper. This “HOPE” may be the only fine art piece of this image available to the public, and is one of only three in existence.

The Art For Life auction ends Tuesday, July 16 at noon. Then the online budding is closed and the highest bidders are invited to bid by phone during the live auction on July 19. Entering the online auction is the only way to enter the live auction. The online auction can be found here:

Click here…

So to recap… You motherfuckers out there with nothing but time and money on your hands — all you trustafarians — get ready to spend your parents’ money on the chance at winning the right to buy some cool art from the nation’s preeminent hipster artist… Oh, and a good cause (after Russell gets his cut, of course.)

(At the time of this post, the bid had reached $40K.)

The music business machine delivered a pretty slick tune last week — Menahan Street Band’s “Make the Road by Walking.” First released on 7″ vinyl in 2007, this is the record Jay-Z sampled for his last hit, “Roc Boys (And The Winner Is).” Menahan Street Band’s debut full-length album is due out on Oct. ‘08, so this track is the first single (and the title of the album).

Here’s the the spiel from the PR company that sent me the track:

You’ve heard the hook before – the staccato eighth notes, the warm horn swells, the cry of “speech.” It’s the opening to Rolling Stone’s number one song of 2007, Jay-Z’s “Roc Boys (And The Winner Is).” But those trumpets aren’t coming from some obscure 70s soul sample. Instead, Hova’s production team looked a bit closer to home for the source, finding inspiration in the 45 of “Make the Road by Walking” by Brooklyn’s own Menahan Street Band, one of the many projects of Thomas Brenneck, best known, perhaps, as the guitarist for the Dap-Kings, the Budos Band, and Amy Winehouse…

Don’t let that Amy Winehouse bullshit on the band’s resume throw you, this track is all butter…

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Had one of those birthday celebrations that lasted a couple of days — dinner in Oakland with the baby mama’s family on Thursday, then followed up Friday night by going out in the city with some friends and drinking entirely too much.

After recording some bass tracks for the homie/producer/DJ G-Pek, we gathered the posse and went to Spindig, DJ Stef’s monthly at Butter in SF. After Spindig, we hit the Mission Bar, where we posted up for the rest of the night, got faded, and watched two girls and a guy get a threesome started at the bar.

I’ve definitely had worse birthdays. Big thanks to the homie Thug E. Fresh for putting it all (and holding it all) together.

See more of the evening, click here.