The Roc Bottom Report

Soup kitchen for the starving artist. A humble abode for the drift wood of generation Y. I am not here to preach to anyone about anything, for I am just as lost as my peers. My only objective is to shed light on young starving artist and hopefully find my own way out of the darkness of desire.

In this segment where I somewhat randomly select an aspiring artist (of no particular medium) to highlight, I’d like to introduce a young Emcee who likes to go by the name ‘DoLA’. Now before I go any further into this introduction I’d like to get something off my chest. FUCK ARTIST AND YOUR OVERLY THOUGHT OUT CREATIVE THINKING PROCESS. I really don’t know how else to put it. I completely understand and respect that you are artist and your need to creatively express yourself blah blah blah and all of that bullshit but some things are just so fucking unnecessary. DoLA stressed to me the “importance” of spelling his name just like that. Upper case D lower case o Upper case LA, just like that. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and the same applies to a barely original alias. Don’t get me wrong the kid is nice, but the weight he put on the specifications of his alias wont get the type of buzz he needs to accomplish what it is that he desires. That goes for any over thought out gimmick. At the end of the day consumers couldn’t careless what your calling yourself, as long as you deliver a certain quality you could put a picture of a dick on a ticket and it will not effect the sales, look at Prince. Continuing on, I first came across ‘DoLA or dola or ___’ by chance on a humble blog called canwekickit.com. They did a small  feature on him along with a track he did over Dr. Dre’s ‘explosive’. Almost immediately un entertained by the idea of a mediocre “freestyle” over a popular industry beat, I only decided to give it a listen for shits and giggles. I’m not ashamed to admit that I learned a valuable lesson that day “never judge an unknown underground artist by the super desperate attempts he makes at getting in the game”. After pressing play I was greeted by a surprisingly nostalgic intro that reminded me of old jazz tracks my grandfather used to play in his tacky living room while sucking the life out of a pack Marlboro 100s. This was followed by impressive lyricism, delivery that had a great deal of potential, and more fresh concepts. Just to say the least I wanted to hear more. Unfortunately there wasn’t anymore.  For weeks I listened to this track over and over, mind boggled. How could there not be more? He had his own feature with great photography and a great song which should have been no more than decent. I slowly came to the realization that he had made an amateur mistake. He released a song not because he was a prepared but because he was eager, not an uncommon mistake. He wanted feedback, and don’t we all? But making these type of executive decisions are done best when the pressure is off. All though this isn’t text book knowledge didn’t your mother warn you about grocery shopping when you’re hungry? After months of not giving a fuck about him and the decisions he made I still wanted to hear more, so I decided to contact him and get to know the man behind the song (1, uno, singular) a little better. You’d be interested to find out what I learned, but unfortunately you’ll have to wait until the next installment of The marvelous misadventures of The UNfamous. Until then check out DOLA’S one and only track ‘xplosive’. - Pico De Gallo

In this segment where I somewhat randomly select an aspiring artist (of no particular medium) to highlight, I’d like to introduce a young Emcee who likes to go by the name ‘DoLA’. Now before I go any further into this introduction I’d like to get something off my chest. FUCK ARTIST AND YOUR OVERLY THOUGHT OUT CREATIVE THINKING PROCESS. I really don’t know how else to put it. I completely understand and respect that you are artist and your need to creatively express yourself blah blah blah and all of that bullshit but some things are just so fucking unnecessary. DoLA stressed to me the “importance” of spelling his name just like that. Upper case D lower case o Upper case LA, just like that. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and the same applies to a barely original alias. Don’t get me wrong the kid is nice, but the weight he put on the specifications of his alias wont get the type of buzz he needs to accomplish what it is that he desires. That goes for any over thought out gimmick. At the end of the day consumers couldn’t careless what your calling yourself, as long as you deliver a certain quality you could put a picture of a dick on a ticket and it will not effect the sales, look at Prince.

Continuing on, I first came across ‘DoLA or dola or ___’ by chance on a humble blog called canwekickit.com. They did a small  feature on him along with a track he did over Dr. Dre’s ‘explosive’. Almost immediately un entertained by the idea of a mediocre “freestyle” over a popular industry beat, I only decided to give it a listen for shits and giggles. I’m not ashamed to admit that I learned a valuable lesson that day “never judge an unknown underground artist by the super desperate attempts he makes at getting in the game”. After pressing play I was greeted by a surprisingly nostalgic intro that reminded me of old jazz tracks my grandfather used to play in his tacky living room while sucking the life out of a pack Marlboro 100s. This was followed by impressive lyricism, delivery that had a great deal of potential, and more fresh concepts. Just to say the least I wanted to hear more. Unfortunately there wasn’t anymore. 

For weeks I listened to this track over and over, mind boggled. How could there not be more? He had his own feature with great photography and a great song which should have been no more than decent. I slowly came to the realization that he had made an amateur mistake. He released a song not because he was a prepared but because he was eager, not an uncommon mistake. He wanted feedback, and don’t we all? But making these type of executive decisions are done best when the pressure is off. All though this isn’t text book knowledge didn’t your mother warn you about grocery shopping when you’re hungry? After months of not giving a fuck about him and the decisions he made I still wanted to hear more, so I decided to contact him and get to know the man behind the song (1, uno, singular) a little better. You’d be interested to find out what I learned, but unfortunately you’ll have to wait until the next installment of The marvelous misadventures of The UNfamous. Until then check out DOLA’S one and only track ‘xplosive’. - Pico De Gallo

DoLA xplosive

Part 1 of a series that’s only half as deep as I make it out to be

Fear is a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, and other various etc., whether the threat is real or imagined. With that said, it is possible to be afraid of obstacles that are not even existence, and as crazy as it may be, these fears take over our lives every day. We’re all familiar with Franklin Roosevelt’s famous quote, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” We have also grown familiar with the phrase, “people are afraid of what they do not understand.” The truth behind all of this is that there exist two different kinds of fear: The fear of what we don’t understand, and then there is the fear of what we understand all too well. We have nothing to fear, not even fear itself, and the only way to eliminate this unstable emotion from our lives is to combine our understandings, with acceptance. A man will have no need for fear if he understands that he must accept whatever comes of life. Although this may seem like the simplest of task, it is an obstacle that man has not yet been able to conquer. Once you are ready to overcome this problem, you should be ready to die. - A kite not struck 

My intro to let you know

First and foremost I’d like to start by welcoming everyone to The Roc Bottom Report. At this moment you’re probably staring at your PC monitor, laptop, iPhone 4g, iPad, generic tablet, or economy friendly metro wireless device wondering ‘where the fuck am I’. In so many words I could tell you exactly where you are BUT because I love writing so much instead of doing that I’d much rather tell you where you aren’t.  Where do I start? Well…this isn’t a highly recommended hip-hop blog with enough funds and advertisement to attract the attention of the blood thirsty hypebeast infesting the American culture. This definitely isn’t the home to a crew of college educated journalism majors who interned at Rolling Stone last summer, nope, not even one. This isn’t your source for the next trending hip-hop phenom, or even the last. If you are looking for super cool shit to re blog so that people find you a little more interesting you wont find them here. This isn’t even a site that could afford to purchase its own web address. The Roc Bottom Report is simply a diary from the first and third person perspective of the 21st century starving artist.   The only mission is too highlight aspiring talents of any medium and hopefully give some guidance to artist in search of direction. So no, this isnt the Billionaire Boys Club. This is the Dollar Menu Brigade and I am Pico De Gallo reporting live from the bottom of the barrel.- Pico De Gallo