I feel super creepy going back and looking at his twitter, his last tweet was the following about 19 hours ago and pretty much sums up all of our nights last night...
"I'm on bottle 5 where are you at? Hennessy Black is the drink where are you at???"
If you knew G, they're having some fundraisers for his family at Groove Candy and probably PHX, and they're going to do an AZ ceremony as well as DC, so get at me for more info.
G was probably the most interesting person I ever met in Arizona, his life was always completely inexplicable, he was doing it as big as one could and cementing himself in marketing and the entertainment industry with a swagger and ambitious nature that was magnetic and powerful. His blog was ridiculous in the best way, and he was the life of the party consistently. I never hung out with him once and didn't enjoy it, he was always funny and positive and I'm still in consistent shock that he's gone.
I'm about to be 24 soon. I've had a decent amount of friends die, more are in jail, rehab etc etc it's crazy, this industry is crazy. It's not only the strong survive, its only the strong, lucky, stupid and ruthless survive. We're finally doing good, but if things aren't yakkin by 25 I'm out, and I say that but I know its not true you kind of get sucked into this forever once you've been here long enough, and I say I never want to go to another club again but there's nothing in the world that makes me happier than deejaying, performing, writin etc. and the life that comes with that becomes an addiction.
I've had my fill I guess, because it's work now, going out is work. It was for G as well, he was a Hennessy Black tastemaker, they paid for him to go out and pop bottles, and eventually that becomes as much of a task as some kids would consider it fun. I did shows the last three nights, drank more than a fair share of Hennessy myself (damn you and your extremely relevant branding you devil liquid), and am going to have to do all this for so much longer it gets painful to think about.
Something about this time I'm growing up in just makes it all so attractive, like the Black Eyed Peas album where they say "If I could party all night, and sleep all day, and throw all my problems away, then life would be easy..." I think we, as in my social group, all have this strange looming sense of world despair, and world despair that we're so detached from we can't imagine being able to change, and so when confronted with the party vs. not party conundrum we inevitably choose to get it in... We just don't care about nearly anything, and have this sinking feeling we should be having as much of a good time as possible in our rather gnarly lives because we're not going to be able to have that option much longer. This whole recession/fear in media/end of days zeitgeist is growing increasingly scary to me because that's what we all feel.
Recently I've had to increasingly think about the future, because I've been thinking intensely about starting a family, and it's just a pretty depressing landscape out there, and using relationships as a crutch to bear with that isn't something I feel is fair to others. Interesting times this way come.
We've been working very hard on our new album, entitled Silver Medallion Changed My Life, which is one of the few things that keeps me going. We've abandoned all previous work completely and are making what I can only describe as inspirational pop music, lilting piano ballads and such. We have the great blessing now of working with the writer of Madonna's "Open Your Heart" amongst a few dozen other platinum records, and our new team is showing us our potential to make true hit records with the feelings that we've always wanted to get out and it's both inspiring and karmically equalizing to be involved in creating music like this.
As times change superstars change with it. We're so different than the previous generations of those being primed for pop success its shocking. First off we're covered in tattoos and wear all black, and we're not controlled by any entity, and we can say whatever we want in press etc, and we're not very beautiful. We have long term girlfriends and got over the party life before we hit success. We are no John Mayer lol, but we're literally about to be making this music that's quite the opposite of how we look. I think the mainstream is ready for flaws, ready for people who talk shit and have addictions and shady pasts and tattooed hands etc. Going to be an interesting time coming up as we get deeper and deeper in the industry.
RIP to G, you inspired me forreal homie, and changed a lot of how we did Silver Medallion to match your foresight in marketing trends. I loved kicking it with you, there was never a night that wasn't better when you were there. I know you're somewhere trying to get the center table with the good view of the dancefloor in heaven...
A pic of us bossing up at the Phatfarm suite is below
