BEN BALLER MTV NEWS from ben baller on Vimeo.

DAMN, I forgot about this!

but you wanna know what I did start?

A WHOLE LOTTA SHIT!
haha!
I have never got this many emails or texts about a single custom piece since we were making things for Jonas…. almost a year ago it was the Koi fish piece, this time it’s Pusha T’s Keys…. so we’re going to continue on with his next piece which is the “Jack” logo from his brand Play Cloths

that’s not even the complete wax either….. trust me this shit is gonna go hard body!

so it was a rest and relax and work weekend. more jesus pieces, more orders and no going out anywhere….

my boy D Crooks caught the Baby Jesus fever early….. first the black gold with white VS’s and now he’s on that yellow gold to go with his gold roley

shit actually looks dope together

and speaking of that Koi fish….

that shit is crazy….. speaking of custom pieces,
TODAY IS THE FINAL DAY WE CAN MAKE A CUSTOM PIECE IN TIME FOR X-MAS!
so put your order in NOW!
I am ending this Jesus piece and store inventory sale next week on friday because I leave town to the Bay to spend time with my fam….. so get it in now for real or go back to the normal prices…. (next sale is Valentines Day)

back to Jesus again…..

the young Homey Bieber rocking the Full Size Jesus Piece

on Saturday it was my nephews birthday and he got his swag on EARLY!

my nephew was draped in Gucci from head to toe, from the Gucci 3 piece suit to the custom made gold and diamond GG gucci belt we made him! oh and the blue gucci loafers he had on too haha

my cousin is seriously one of the best dudes I know… so happy for him and his beautiful family. I swear to god, even though he’s younger, his steps have been wiser than mine without all the mistakes I made. this life I live currently couldn’t have happened without him.

that cake was fucking delicious too! chocolate with white frosting. YEAHHHH BUDDY

Levi’s dad and his 2 scumbag uncles!

my uncle was there chillin…. he was the man responsible for all this IF shit. for real though, without him laying the blueprint down, we’d be maybe owning a liquor store somewhere in the hood… NNOTT! (borat voice)

now I’ve seen vintage rings before, but if this ain’t clowning?????
6 individual 1 carat solitaire studs! haha! I think it was set in platinum too!
my uncle is a boss with a capital G!

after all the food and cake, there was a contest with 3 or 4 prizes….. and I never win shit, but I just had a feeling

Lucky #22
and yup…..

came up! on gift cards to my favorite store! haha
yeeeee!!!

then there was a magician who did a bubble show
but what killed me is my nephew came out in his 4th outfit change….

and then he killed the game with the adidas track suit! and his first gold chain with a gold diamond charm

good times with family
went home and me and nic passed out! I took some allergy medicine and that shit ruins me every time I take it. I’m just done for a good 16 hours after.

Sunday,
I woke up too early and real sluggish to head over to make some grills for my boy DJ MANO and Kanye crew…. talked to my boy Mike Dean who I ain’t seen in 13 years! took care of some work at my store and then I watched my bum ass raiders get the dog shit kicked out of them and I couldn’t really say shit to my lil homies Ryan Grant and Charles Woodson because they’re doing what any NFL player would do….. this time I couldn’t watch to the finish, I had to turn that shit off and hit Target up

then it was time to WATCH THE THRONE!

thank you Kanye and thank you DJ MOTHERFUCKING MILLIONAIRE MANO!
tickets, guest passes and All Access!

thank you for the VIP tunnel entrance parking too…. “who’s list are you on?” “I’m on Kanye West’s list” “oh… yes you are, drive down please”

walked into the dressing room and chilled out with the fam and they were blowing on some real legit OG kush and we had catering, Veuve and all types of refreshments? we were G.O.O.D.

Nic rocking Mano’s very ultra super rare Chanel frames and then IBN’s jewelry set up

it was time to walk to the stage and we sat right in front of the stage where the family and friend of jay and ye sat…. it was like a re-union…. shout out to my peeps, Kdia, Ricky, John Monopoly, Don C, Jermaine Dupri, Brian P, Hit Boy, Lake Bell, Pharrell, Nas, Anthony Mandler, Nick Hogan, Jay Brown, Tah Tah, Hollywood Holt, my diamond life fam, my platinum motorsport fam and Lupe Fiasco….

right from Jump Nas showed me mad love and we chopped it up throughout the night, he wants to get some more jewels done, so maybe next year you’ll see a new piece….. I got love from Pharrell and we talked briefly about Pusha’s new Keys and then his VVS1 cuban link hurt my eyes…. so I walked away

it was show time

now honestly, one thing that was dope off top, no openers, right into it and fuck the world…..

but
no cameos when they easily for at least LA, NYC and Chicago shoulda had cameos
and they could have cut out a lot of the bullshit promo shit to push the WTT album but of course they had to…. and another things, mad hits or not, god damn the show was 2 hours and 30 minutes long and I’ve seen both of these guys so many times… I been on tour with jay before, so I don’t know… I think I’m just old and boring now. I was not necessarily forced into going, I had to support my boy Mano, but I had to force Nic to go, I had 2 really great tickets, but twitter didnt work inside with shitty ass ATT, so I didn’t even use my 2 extra tickets that were 6th row from the front stage, I’m talking $1,000 tickets smh

they finished the show with Ni**as in Paris and they performed it 12 times. I knew it was gonna be over 5 because it was LA and the homey Hit Boy was there (mad love, that was dope that yeezy shouted you out crazy)
after the 4th time I wanted to kill myself, like I said, if they did this and cut out like 30 minutes or more of the show? it woulda been all good…. but man I was tired as hell.
we dapped up everyone and did the 57 fake outside the tunnel

woke up with stupid work and stupid deliveries and the shit is carrying over to today, so I had to partially write this blog late last night and finish it this morning smh

back to work

mad love to everyone who really actually reads what my ass does on these boring ass weekends.

peace

coming across a friend’s blog BROKEMOGUL
if you don’t know Scott, he’s an LA OG native and used to work at MTV, done other major musical related work and now and has been the music supervisor for the show Entourage (so much fam involved it’s crazy)

he had this interesting story:

(yes I made that “N” chain…. which is now hip hop history)

Now there are two sides to every story. Artists want to express themselves and labels want to make money. And if you think labels are in it for anything but the money, you’re wrong, certainly not the major labels. Make it a labor of love and let’s see how many employees are left…zilch.

But this doesn’t count against my commitment story is popping up ever more frequently. I can see both sides in theory, sometimes the act just wants off the label or a higher royalty that’s in the contract for further LPs, and other times the label just wants to keep the act as long as it can for as cheap as it can.

But what’s definitely clear is there’s an adversary relationship. And this adversary relationship is killing the major labels.

It’s very simple. I give you the money, I tell you what to do. What artist wants to be told what to do? And if you don’t want to be told what to do, don’t take the money.

And that’s the paradigm that’s growing today. Artists are doing it for themselves. You can sell and get paid via Tunecore. And is radio gonna play your music anyway? That’s where the major label relationship is, radio and possibly TV, but how many acts are deserving of major TV exposure today? And that’s more a reflection of vapid TV outlets than the acts.

Terry McBride had it right. He was just too early. You want to unify the copyrights. So you’re in control. So you can say yes or no.

A little birdie sent me the below e-mail with this note attached:

“In a nut shell he has an album titled ‘Lost Tapes 2′ that his fans have been dying to have since his first one came out in 2005. They seem to not understand the cultural impact the first one had. The album is done and now they are saying he can put it out but it won’t count on his deal and they won’t pay for it but still want all the benefits of a new nas album.”

And here it is:

From: Nas
To: LA Reid, Steve Bartels, Steve Gawley, Michael Seltzer, Joseph Borrino, Chris Hicks
Subject: PUT MY SHIT OUT!

Peace to all,

With all do respect to you all, Nas is NOBODY’s slave. This is not the 1800′s, respect me and I will respect you.

I won’t even tap dance around in an email, I will get right into it. People connect to the Artist @ the end of the day, they don’t connect with the executives. Honestly, nobody even cares what label puts out a great record, they care about who recorded it. Yet time and time again its the executives who always stand in the way of a creative artist’s dream and aspirations. You don’t help draw the truth from my deepest and most inner soul, you don’t even do a great job @ selling it. The #1 problem with DEF JAM is pretty simple and obvious, the executives think they are the stars. You aren’t…. not even close. As a matter of fact, you wish you were, but it didn’t work out so you took a desk job. To the consumer, I COME FIRST. Stop trying to deprive them! I have a fan base that dies for my music and a RAP label that doesn’t understand RAP. Pretty fucked up situation

This isn’t the 90′s though. Beefing with record labels is so 15 years ago. @ this point I just need you all to be very clear where I stand and how I feel about “my label.” I could go on twitter or hot 97 tomorrow and get 100,000 protesters @ your building but I choose to walk my own path my own way because since day one I have been my own man. I did business with Tommy Mottola and Donnie Einer, two of the most psycho dudes this business ever created. I worked well with them for one major reason……. they believed in me. The didn’t give a fuck about what any radio station or magazine said….those dudes had me.

Lost Tapes is a movement and a very important set up piece for my career as it stands. I started this over 5 years ago @ Columbia and nobody knew what it was or what it did but the label put it out as an LP and the fans went crazy for it and I single handlely built a new brand of rap albums. It’s smart and after 5 years it’s still a head of the game. This feels great and you not feeling what I’m feeling is disturbing. Don’t get in the way of my creativity. We are aligned with the stars here, this is a movement. There is a thing called KARMA that comes to haunt you when you tamper with the aligning stars. WE ARE GIVING THE PEOPLE EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT. Stop throwing dog shit on a MAGICAL moment.

You don’t get another Nas recording that doesn’t count against my deal….PERIOD! Keep your bullshit $200,000.00 fund. Open the REAL budget. This is a New York pioneers ALBUM, there ain’t many of us. I am ready to drop in the 4th quarter. You don’t even have shit coming out! Stop being your own worst enemy. Let’s get money!

-N.Jones

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Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

p.s. does Mike Kaiser still work at Def Jam? for the last 15 years I’ve wanted to punch his teeth in, but haven’t seen dude since Dublin’s was poppin and I was djing… (jay-z’s verse “bubblin at dublin’s” in I JUST WANT TO LOVE YOU” song, yes that was US)

ICE CUBE -
If you were around in 1987 and remember hearing N.W.A. for the first time especially being on the west coast then you would remember the ground breaking shit Cube spit, flip to when he left N.W.A. and wrote Amerikkkas Most Wanted? (could be lyrically the most powerful, illest album to date) true story, we were filming the video for “Song Cry” (Jay-Z) and Jigga had this CD on repeat for 2 days…. take it all the way to just around Lethal Injection and Cube really was outta his mind. But from Amerikkka’s most to Kill at Will to Death Certificate, nobody could see him at all and he’ll go in hip hop history for that, fuck the we be clubbing, he was naturally gifted with it. I’m bias to mention Westside Connection’s first album because I worked on it… but that was a good record. Bottom Line Cube will always be in my top best MC’s. all you youngsters who listen to Kanye and Weezy don’t know prolly how powerful this guy was to them.

JAY – Z
I was fortunate to be able to be a part of history and work on Jay’s first album “Reasonable Doubt”. Circa 1996 to 2003 I was a part of the Rocafella Fam…. but thats besides the point. Once I heard Jigga say “like short sleeves I bear arms”? it was pretty much a wrap from that point… he’s still spitting crazy. There’s no contraversy here.

RAKIM
everytime I ever heard Rakim touch a microphone, he’s burned it, killed it and slayed shit. I just think of listening to my walkman back in 1986 and hearing Rakim say “you thought I was a donut, you tried to glaze me?” his metaphors got iller and iller as time moved on. He killed it on JUICE and even somewhat recently on Jay Z’s song”THE WATCHER PART II” which was supposed to be on my boy HITTMAN’S album. from concerts to freestyle sessions in the studio. Rakim will always be that dude to me

NOTORIOUS B.I.G.
let’s get serious and not even bring up why I think he’s up there. end of story.

ANDRE 3000
I remember sitting up at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles around late 1993 and Outkast had just got signed and these guys were sitting at the table across from me and my boy and one of their street team dudes gave me their cassette single “Player’s Ball” I popped the tape into the Alpine pullout and was like ok, this is a different kind of funk….. once I heard, “my heart does not go pitty pat for no rat” I was like okay dude is on some shit… but from that point on to even 2007 and today he’s been consistently destroying bars. His guest appearances on “Throw Some D’s” and “International Players Anthem” were what made those songs, no disrespect.

honorable mention: if there was a top 10, they’d be in here, but I don’t have that much time to write

Nasty Nas aka the rapper Nas
(unless you are OG, you won’t get that most mc’s outta queens all had “the rapper” in front of their names)…. anyways, you already know the deal. I’m not just a fan, but Nas is the homey. just shut the fuck up please… he should be tied with some dudes mentioned in the top 5 (I know) but some albums were questionable overall…. although he did have heat and “Ether” and other songs were crazy, and he’s def in my top, but maybe # 6. all I have to say is “ILLMATIC” is one of the illest albums of all time, top 10 album in hip hop history easily. true story, I remember Nas has been Denzel Washington’s favorite rapper ever…. I remember sitting in Denzel’s porsche on the way to the house of blues in 1995 to go see Nas perform and he’s bumpin “NY State of Mind” and Denzel saying “i’m an addict for sneakers, 20′s of buddah and bitches with beepers”. I’m like wow D! haha. true fucking story

2PAC
let’s not get shit twisted…. I loved Pac because he could spit rhymes that a 13 year old could understand and also spit a powerful simple metaphor that a 40 year old would appreciate. As far as stage presence goes…. NOBODY CAN SEE PAC TO THIS DAY. I have never seen anyone in the game to this current day rock a stage as a rapper like Pac did. He is THEE MOST POWERFUL RAPPER EVER. I don’t think he even knew how powerful his message to the youngsters was. As for being a rapper, it wasn’t just the rhymes, it was the message and the way he spit. How he wrote and my man Pac wrote for months, years… hence having 11 albums or more drop after his death. Crazy…. he’ll be the Bob Marley of Rap which is very great. Pac was also one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. True Funny Story, on a plane headed to Japan; Pac’s sitting in first class and the rest of us on tour are sitting in coach and PAC BREAKS OUT A JOINT ON THE PLANE! i’m like smelling something and like, wtf? hold up, it’s gotta be Pac! lol. Only that dude could pull off the crazy shit he did. Nobody had that ego, swag, confidence and power he had and all of that bled all over his songs.

CHUCK D
Again, many youngsters will not understand the power and movement Public Enemy had for almost a decade. These were for real, the real rap militia and true only millitant rappers. Chuck D was more than a Master of Ceremony, he was a voice for young black men….. from “My Uzi weighs a Ton” to “Fight the Power” to “Rebel without a Pause” were all songs that gave cats goosebumps when they heard them. fuck a red bull. this shit got you amped.

*EDIT*
TOO SHORT
I COMPLETELY FORGOT TO MENTION THE GREATEST BAY AREA RAPPER TO LIVE (SORRY MAC DRE, R.I.P.) BUT TOO SHORT WOW. from DON’T STOP RAPPIN all the way to now? crazy shit homey. but when you put out “LIFE IS TOO SHORT” and “BORN TO MACK” it was game over….. and yes, nobody used the word bitch like you did. lol. wow. I miss my bay area days of cruising through Oakland to Flints bbq and seeing you pass thru the Eastmont mall in your caddy all the way to El Cerrito passin thru Nation’s. crazy. I used to BUMP YOUR SHIT TODD!

that’s it y’all… I will do a top 10 albums of all time of Hip Hop history in my personal opinion, but who knows when….
I’d like to shout out Wu-Tang Clan, Tribe Called Quest and Mobb Deep and a few other groups that were amazing as groups….. but I didn’t put in my top as MC’s by themselves. The golden era of rap to me is gone. I haven’t heard a great song come out in many years…. it’s bad. I won’t even get into it. I sometimes fall victim to listening to (damn I won’t even mention it)

every single day I get hit up by people I WOULD NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS THINK would read my blog. well…. over 1 million visits should say something.

p.s. shout outs to Shaggy Brown and RICK ROSS for reading my blog. lol. crazy shit