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Ferragamo : The Billion Dollar Swag Story...
Born into a world of the late 70's.
Destined to be legendary in this thing we call the music business, Ferragamo grew up on the streets of Harlem
influenced by the best swag ever. Manifested through legendary street CEOs, Presidents and Chairmen who's souls huant him introspectively. Ferragamo Forbes defines his personal motives to make Billions from pennies highly motivated, fueled by the pain of harsh the realities alive in the ghettos of America and world wide. Always remembering how " The basic survival instincts of all the hustlers back then forced them to run their businesses like a Fortune 500 company becoming legendary street stars over night "...
Back in those days around the reagan & ed koch era!
Ferragamo would hang out with all the neighborhood hustlers in which he absorbed
a natural swag and character that he calls priceless. Learning from the Bill Gates & Bloomberg's of the underworld , Ferragamo Forbes began to incorporate a lot of street savvy, style & swagger at the age of 10 years old from the best in the game hands on...
I remember coming home from elementary school sometimes to a building full of hustlers counting thousands and talking that fly shit while playing C-low, popping bottles of Moet and Dom P behind the steps of my building lobby.
wondering free in this wicked world waking up every mourning wondering where the next meal was coming from, watching my mother struggle on a daily basis eventually
got Ferragamo Forbes involved with more street shit than the average kid his age.Back than my man P nut From Foster Projects was like yo im about to put together this Rap group so come to my house.
Thats when i Realized oh shit i could really rap. But with so much shit going on
in my life i wasn't focused on no music. I liked the streets better anyway. Besides the rap group only lasted about a weeks Lol.......... Still lol.
Tho Every chance i got i would write songs to keep my skills sharp preparing myself for this very moment in my life.I sometimes feel as tho that one of my main reasons for being so focused with this Music right now is to make up for alot of lost time i spent in the fast lanes ( streets ). Still i wake up every Mourning with no regrets looking @ it all as a process that only the best of them go through. I was still in the process of being made to become who i am today.
Therefore I have no other choices but to live by certain rules and play against the cards that life put in front of me. My present life is just a reincarnation of who i am destined to be.I am currently an artist, producer, and CEO of my own record label ( AMERICAN DREAM MUSIC LLC )- Welcome to my life, My world, My destiny, My everything. But most importantly welcome to my space....( THE HISTORY OF HIPHOP )In 1975 in the Bronx of New York, one of them, Clive "Hercules" Campbell, or "Kool Herc", started making music with two turntables out of breakbeats (the instrumental breaks of a song that focused on the rhythm section, the favorite part of the song for most dancers), while another young black man of the Bronx, Theodore "Grand Wizard" Livingstone was accidentally discovering the "skratching" sound of a turntable. The technical foundations of rap and hip-hop music were laid by those two more or less random events.Rap was born as an incestuous inter-cultural phenomenon of New York's poor suburbs (Harlem, Soho, Greenwich Village, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn). Rap music was an evolution of Jamaica's dub music. The rapper would record his voice over a pre-recorded base of percussions, bass and horns. The precursors of rap were disc-jockeys, or "spinners", who used the technique to comment on the song or to incite to the crowd to dance. The idea of altering the instrumental score originated from the need to provide non-stop dance tracks, but it evolved as disc-jockeys began to pronounce more pretentious slogans that became the equivalent of song lyrics, and as they learned how to operate the electronic equipment to accompany them with more syncopated beats. Campbell (himself only a dj) employed two MCs ("masters of ceremonies", a nickname for the rappers) to introduce his sets, and they constituted the first "crew" of rappers (Kool Herc & the Herculoids).Inspired by James Brown, the kids who attended Campbell's parties developed a sexy and stylized manner of dancing. Hip-hop dancing became an artistic idiom on its own. The term "b-boy" had been coined in 1969 by DJ Kool Herc to refer to an acrobatic style of dance, "breakdancing". This phenomenon had become so popular that "crews" had formed, notably the "Nigger Twins" (1974) and "Rock Steady" (1977), and they incorporated elements from other styles, such as "capoeira", an Afro-Brazilian dance. The "b-boys" were only interested in the instrumental break of a song, and Campbell soon learned how to build fictitious tracks out of the breaks of funk songs. While gay discos were becoming more chic and "white", Hercules' parties remained faithful to hardcore funk music. Nearby, Afrika Bambaataa Asim (Kevin Donovan), leader of the Zulu Nation gang, threw his first party at the end of 1976. Meanwhile, Joseph "Grandmaster Flash" Sadler was holding open-air parties, and Sadler was becoming a master of techniques such as "cutting" (cutting a song on the beat), "phasing" (altering the speed of the turntable) and "back-spinning" (spinning a record counterclockwise) that enhanced the overall experience.The "deejays" became cult figures, the modern equivalent of the Medieval knights, fighting duels that were based on turntable skills. In 1977, the Bronx was divided in three main spheres of influence: Bambaata in the southeast, Hercules in the west, and Grandmaster Flash in the center. They also corresponded to spheres of influences of different "gangs" (a concept that probably originated in New Orleans, where similar "gangs" competed during the "Mardi Gras").Another element of hip-hop, although not a musical one, was spray-painted graffiti art, or "tagging" (the "tag" being the stylized signature of the graffiti painter). It started in Philadelphia sometimes in the 1960s, pioneered by such legendary figures as Cornbread and Cool Earl (who may or may not have existed). In 1970 a particular form of graffiti began to appear on the cars of the New York subway, and the following year the New York Times claimed to have interviewed the author, a teenager only identified as Taki 183 (who may or may have not existed). These pioneers may be just fantasy, because many other kids began to produce graffitis and sign them with the legendary names. (Some of these graffiti artists, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring went on to become professional artists).The first rap records were the Sugar Hill Gang's Rapper's Delight (1979) and Kurtis "Blow" Walker's Christmas Rapping (1979) and The Breaks (1979). The latter was also the first rap single certified gold.As the dizzy collages of breakbeats, sound effects and song fragments (a veritable form of the "montage" preached by the Italian "futurists" in the 1910s) became more daring, rappers began to focus on lyrics to match the music. Rappers began reciting sociopolitical "messages", as Kurtis Blow had already done in The Breaks (1979), such as Grandmaster Flash's Message (1982) and Bambaataa's Planet Rock (1982), that established a form of underground communication between the genre's practitioners. Grandmaster Flash's "messages" were frescoes of ghetto life, fusing socio-political commentary and senseless partying. His The Adventures... on the Wheels Of Steel (1981) was one of the first singles to use samples of other people's songs (Chic, Blondie, Queen). White Lines (1983) was an orgy of electronic effects.The first conscious artist of rap's aural collage was Afrika Bambaataa Aasim (1), the Leonardo of the "beatbox", the rap auteur of Planet Rock (1982), Looking For The Perfect Beat (1982), Renegades Of Funk (1983), World Destruction (1984), whose album Beware (1986) summarized five years of experiments (facilitated by producer Arthur Baker) in mixing samples, epileptic beats, disco grooves and Kraftwerk's electronic pop. Bambaataa's heavily electronic style coined "electro-funk" (often shortened to "electro").Electro became a a genre in its own (not directly related to Detroit's "electro", a fusion of house and techno, and only vaguely related with German "electro", a kind of industrial dance). It indulged in an arsenal of drum-machines, sequencers and synthesizers, the instruments of a new form of music (instead of guitars, bass and drums). Donald D And Dj Chuck Chill Out followed Bambaataa's exploit with the B-Boys' Rock The House (1983), and Hashim (Jerry Calliste) delivered Al Naayfish (1983). In 1984, Marley Marl (Marlon Williams) accidentally produced the first sample of a drum-machine and began a career as producer of innovative electro-funk tracks, notably the Super Kids' The Tragedy (1985). Other drum-machine symphonies were produced by Duke Bootee, such as Z-3 MCs' Triple Threat (1986) and Word of Mouth's Coast To Coast (1986). Planet Patrol's Play At Your Own Risk (1984), the Imperial Brothers' We Come To Rock (1984), Nitro Deluxe's Let's Get Brutal (1986). But best of all were Mantronix (the brainchild of Jamaica-born white beatbox and turntable expert Curtis Jaleel) with Fresh Is the Word (1985), Needle To The Groove (1985), Bassline (1986), King Of The Beats (1988).The most important innovation from the instrumental point of view was the birth of a new instrument, the turntable. In 1983 turntablist DST (DXT) played a solo of "skratch" on Herbie Hancock's Rockit. Slowly, the turntablist became as important as the guitarist in rock music.Straddling the border between "musique concrete" and audio-verite', New York turntablists Steve "Steinski" Stein and Douglas "Double Dee" DiFranco founded the art of DJing (as a form of art) with his influential mixes Lesson One: The Payoff Mix (1983), Lesson Two: The James Brown Mix (1985), Lesson 3: The History of Hip-Hop (1985).The fusion between hip-hop and the rock world was first achieved by Run-DMC (3), whose albums Run-DMC (1984), King Of Rock (1985) and Raising Hell (1986) ran the gamut from hard-rock guitar riffs to politicized raps.Even better, the collective called Tackhead (23), who released albums under different names, offered one of the most explosive and agit-prop mixes of the two worlds (and many other worlds). Featuring keyboardist Keith Leblanc, bassist Doug Wimbish, guitarist Skip McDonald and London producer Adrian Sherwood as the live mixing engineer (thus virtually introducing a new instrument of a group's line-up), they first helped former Pop Group's vocalist Mark Stewart make the terrifying Learning To Cope With Cowardice (1983) and its follow-up Mark Stewart (1987), and then proceeded to reinvent funk, soul, rap and rock via a multi-ethnic montage on Gary Clail's Tape Time (1987) and Keith Leblanc's Stranger Than Fiction (1989). Their terrorist mission culminated on the apocalyptic vision of Friendly As A Hand Grenade (1989).James Todd Smith, better known as LL Cool J (1), sang about the splendors and the miseries of the ghetto on Radio (1985), and then proceeded to coin a hyper-realistic and hyper-egocentric hyper-fusion on the subsequent albums. He epitomized "party-rap", a compromise with the mainstream pop sensibility, a third way between "rude boy" and sex symbol.1985-86 saw a population explosion within the hip-hop nation: UTFO's Roxanne Roxanne (1985), which was played by Full Force, scratcher Derek "D.ST" Howells's The Home Of Hip Hop (1985), Doug E. Fresh (Davis)'s The Show (1985) and La-Di-Da-Di (1985), the Masters Of Ceremony's Sexy (1986), Kool Moe Dee (Mohandas Dewese)'s Go See the Doctor (1986), produced by the young Teddy Riley, Lisa Lisa And Cult Jam's Lost In Emotion (1987), also played by Full Force. etc.New York hip-hop producer Marley Marl (Marlon Williams), who made his reputation with Roxanne Shante's Roxanne's Revenge (1984), was largely responsible for creating the sound of "rap-party" based around the new sampling techniques, a skillful combination of James Brown grooves and drum loops. His "Juice Crew" boasted the sexy Big Daddy Kane (Antonio Hardy), the MC of Raw (1988), the comedian Biz Markie (Marcell Hall), i.e. the human beatbox of "Make the Music With Your Mouth" (1988), and street chronicler Kool G Rap (Nathaniel Wilson) of Streets of New York (1991), not to mention Marl's own The Symphony (1991), a summa of the whole crew.Marl represented the new, professional face of hip-hop: whereas the early rappers were perfectly happy to make records with a turntable and a voice (and no instruments), now the dj had evolved into a producer, and the breakbeat had often been replaced by a band. The power was shifting from the illiterate rapper to the technology-savvy groove artist.Other transitional albums of the "hip-hop" culture were Whodini's second album Escape (1984), produced by Larry Smith, Full Force's Full Force (1985), the Fat Boys' Crushin' (1987), featuring the madly comic trio of Mark "Markie Dee" Morales, Damon "Kool Rock-Ski" Wimbley and Darren "Buff" Robinson, and DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince's He's The DJ I'm The Rapper (1988), by Philadelphia rapper Jeff Townes and turntablist Will Smith (a master of scratching, silky beats, moody atmospheres). They moved the genre simultaneously towards pop melody (and therefore mass acceptance) and towards a celebration of gang violence (and therefore mass repudiation), a contradiction in terms that would remain inherent in the genre.Eric B. & Rakim (1)'s Paid In Full (1987), crafted by groove virtuoso Eric Barrier and roaring rhyme stylist William Griffin, was possibly the most influential album of the era, both rhythmically (Eric's James Brown samples and vocally (Rakim's fluent, almost melismatic rapping).The "message" became much more relevant with rappers Carlton "Chuck D" Ridenhour (the revolutionary voice) and William "Flavor Flav" Drayton (its absurdist counterpart) of Public Enemy (12), whose agit-prop hip-hop music was an explicit call to arms in the face of urban violence. Sandwiched between the galvanizing but naive Yo Bum Rush The Show (1987) and the ebullient, cataclysmic and self-indulgent Fear Of A Black Planet (1990), their masterpiece (and hip-hop's masterpiece) It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back (1988) was a collection of powerful sermons, reminiscent of the MC5. The production team, "Bomb Squad", led by Hank Shocklee and dj Norman "Terminator X" Rogers pushed the sonic montage of hip-hop towards new delirious and violent excesses. Public Enemy opted for a less dynamic/intense but more static/hard style on Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black (1991), a step that led to the sonic maelstrom of Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age (1994), which was, again, one of the most original albums of its era.Under the influence of Public Enemy, social commentary became more prominent and to the point on Criminal Minded (1987) and and especially By All Means Necessary (1988) by Boogie Down Productions (1), the brainchild of rapper KRS-One (Kris Parker), Gang Starr's Step In The Arena (1990), EPMD's Strictly Business (1988), the Ultramagnetic MCs' Critical Beatbown (1988), featuring the young (but already demented) "Kool" Keith Thornton, one of the the first groups to employ a sampler as an instrument (credit producer Cedric Miller), and Brand Nubian's One For All (1990).Philadelphia's Schoolly D (Jesse Weaver) virtually invented "gangsta rap" (a genre that would dominate the Los Angeles scene in the 1990s) with Gangster Boogie (1984), PSK (1985) and the album Saturday Night (1987).Rap crossed the racial divide with white rappers such as the Beastie Boys (1). Licensed To Ill (1987) integrated punk-rock and hip-hop into an organic whole (and was the first rap album to reach the top of the charts), while the orgy of samples of Paul's Boutique (1989) virtually invented a new ("cut and paste") way of making music (thanks to the producing team of the Dust Brothers). Among white exploiters of the genre, 3rd Bass were perhaps the least worse, thanks to The Cactus Album (1989).Rap also crossed genders with the advent of a viable generation of female rappers, a phenomenon pioneered in Philadelphia by Lady B's To the Beat Y'All (1980) but best represented in New York by MC Lyte (Lana Moorer)'s Lyte As A Rock (1988) and by the two ladies of the "Native Tongues" posse: Queen Latifah (Dana Owens), with the pop-soul-rap-house fusion of All Hail The Queen (1989), and London-born Monie Love (Simone Johnson), with Down To Earth (1990). Latifah, in particular, was influential in establishing feminist hip-hop. The most successful female rappers were the New York trio Salt'N Pepa, with singles such as The Show Stoppa (1985), Push It (1988) and Let's Talk About Sex (1991).Hip-hop began to dominate the airwaves at the turn of the decade. New York was still leading the rap nation, thanks to its innumerable "posses" and "crews" (hip-hop's terms for "musical group"). The best album to come out of the "Juice Crew" was Kool G Rap & DJ Polo's Wanted Dead Or Alive (1990). The "Native Tongues" posse, perhaps the most creative of them all, produced a few notable albums: De La Soul (1)'s phantasmagoric 3 Feet High and Rising (1989), produced by "Prince Paul" Huston in an extravagant manner that was reminiscent of both George Clinton, Van Dyke Parks and Frank Zappa; the Jungle Brothers (1)' second album Done By The Forces Of Nature (1989), one of the most positive and spiritual works of hip-hop; and A Tribe Called Quest (1)'s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (1990) and especially their second album The Low End Theory (1991), two of the earliest attempts at jazz-hop fusion. The "Native Tongue" movement heralded the advent of a generation of intellectual, philosophical, sociological rappers that investigated the condition of the African-American soul rather than the street epics of gangsters.De La Soul and the Jungle Brothers were emblematic of the "daisy-age sound" that upped the ante for hip-hop producers. The third pillar of that movement was another New York group, Stetsasonic (1), consisting of three rappers and three djs (including the young "Prince Paul" Huston), who crafted In Full Gear (1988) and especially Blood, Sweat & No Tears (1991). They were also the first group to emphasize live instrumentation in rap music. Stetsasonic's A.F.R.I.C.A. (1987) was also one of the first rap records to deal with Afrocentric issues.London's white rap trio Stereo MC's were also influenced by the "daisy age" movement on their Supernatural (1990).Western rap (that, formally, had been born with Disco Daddy and Captain Rapp's Gigolo Rapp in 1981, and that was mainly based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area) slowly began to compete against Eastern rap, thanks to Tracy "Ice-T" Marrow (1)'s 6n' Da Mornin (1986), the first West-Coast single to become popular nation-wide (and a contender for the title of first "gangsta-rap" anthem); thanks to Oakland's Todd "Too Short" Shaw, who became the first rap star of the West Coast with Born to Mack (1987); thanks to Oakland's MC Hammer (Stanley Kirk Burrell), whose Let's Get It Started (1988) made hip-hop appealing to an even broader audience and whose funk-tinged Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em (1990) became the best-selling rap album of the era; thanks to Anthony "Tone-Loc" Smith's comic Wild Thing (1989, written by Marvin "Young MC"), first top-10 pop hit for a black rapper, and Loc'd After Dark (1989), the second rap album to reach the top of the charts (after the Beastie Boys); and thanks to his mentor, London-born Young MC (Marvin Young), who matched his success with Stone Cold Rhymin' (1991).Ice-T was by far the most gifted of this generation. He refined his violent approach to ghetto life on his confrontational second album, Power (1988), but also emancipated West Coast rap from the sound of East Coast rap on the double album Original Gangster (1991). He even bridged the world of gangsta-rap and the world of heavy-metal on Body Count (1991), a rock project.Ice-T's weak New York counterpart was Ricky "Slick Rick" Walters, whose claim to the invention of gangsta-rap was Great Adventures (1988), an impressive example of the vulgar themes that came to be associated with the genre (homicide, homophobia, misogyny and racism).The 2 Live Crew's Is What We Are (1986) introduced the booming "Miami Bass" sound, based on a forceful, thumping beat; but became famous mainly for the sexually-explicit lyrics of Move Somethin' (1987), the first album to be sold in both a "clean" and a "dirty" version, and As Nasty as They Wanna Be (1989), the first rap album to be banned as obscene.The brief fad of "new jack swing" was started and ruled by Teddy Riley's Guy, whose Guy (1988) wed hip-hop and rhythm'n'blues in a highly entertaining manner.Hip-hop established a significantly different paradigm of music-making. Shifting the emphasis from the melody to the rhythm was not simply an extension of what funk music had already done: it was a Copernican revolution that changed the very meaning of the word "song". The elegant melody of pop music was a negation of reality, whereas the intricate rhythms of hip-hop music was an affirmation of reality. Where melodic songs were, fundamentally, meant to offer a respite from the real world, a hip-hop song was a way to perform a total immersion into it. Pop music was about being a victim or a protagonist: hip-hop music was about being a witness. Pop music was about making storytelling memorable and mnemonic: hip-hop music was about making storytelling as coldly factual as news reporting. The sonic montage made possible by sampling techniques added a further dimension. Pop conceived art as order: hip-hop conceived art as chaos. As electronic devices replaced the traditional instruments, composition became a branch of engineering, and engineering became a way to reflect the chaos of the (urban) environment.{}
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