I had been wondering what the hell happened to Neal Santos for a while. Sure he’s an out-there dude but it’s still not like him to go an disappear these days. Anyway, long story short, homie dipped to ATL to get TeamWorksAllCity.com up and running and boom here it is. Hit it up for blogs, tweets, music, visuals, apparel and more from NY’s twisted OG of this streetwear shit. Big ups homie - what happened to your eye though?!

My homies Neal Santos and Marshall Law have just dropped another mix for Teamworks. GTA is an all remix album that uses only music contained in the game Grand Theft Auto 4. Shit is pretty ridiculous. Neal explained the concept to me like this, “I play a lot of video games and some have decent music in them but GTA4 had so much in it I couldn’t help thinking it would make a good 45 minute set. So I started picking songs and got Marshall working on remixes.” Here’s what Marshall had to say about it: “Neal being the gamer that he is, had had plenty of time analyzing the tunes and he kicked the idea of remixing songs from the game. I didn’t even know how much material there was and we spent months just gathering all of it. When I finally got started with the remixes, at about track three (David Bowie, Facination remix) I knew we were on to something.”

Thanks yo!

Download it for free at Thisish.

This is my homie Neal Santos‘ new project, No Proposal, which I’ve been working on with him for the past few months. If you know Neal, you know this shit is going to be official. The idea is old, but its a new approach to this brand hustle. If you are a brand, a media outlet, a shop, or a skatepark and want to get down for the ride, holla.

“This is not a proposal, this is an invitation.”

NoProposal.tv would like to invite you into the very heart of streetwear. Why? To show you that it is still alive. With today’s financial and world climate being what it is , so called streetwear brands are falling off left and right. Marketing, advertising, PR budgets are gone. Product lines are being scaled back. Stores are going out of business. But if the history is any indicator, regardless of what happens to business, the culture will survive. It is in this vein that NoProposal, in association with Teamworks and Deadline, are launching NoProposal, a cross-country journey dedicated to seeking out the culture of streetwear, or what ever you want to call it, wherever it lives. Too much communication takes place without people these days. Everything is a blog post or twitter feed, brands don’t know who their customers are, and customers don’t really know who’s behind their favorite brands. NoProposal wants to bring it back to the days of the traveling salesman with the belief that people will stick with who they know personally in this increasingly impersonal world.

NoProposal is Angel “NA” Nieves and Neal Santos, native New Yorkers who were shaping the industry before its conception, living and breathing the skateboard/bike/street lifestyle that gave birth to “Streetwear”. They are well known by reputation. However, they’ve realized that rep isn’t anything outside of New York; except what the internet says about you. With that in mind, NA and Neal are hitting the road to seek out the shops, the brands, the artist, the skaters, the cool kids, who are keeping the creativity and progression alive, even while everything else seems to be turning to shit. At each stop, NA and Neal will connect with the connectors, sharing with them the experiences of living in the epicenter of the world, NYC, and giving them access to their unique style of trend forecasting by way of the brands that have joined them on NoProposal. In return they will get true street level insights from every important local market in the country. There is no better way to understand the minds of the consumers than to meet them face to face.

In order to share their experiences and the important insights these experiences bring, NoProposal will document every part of their journey. From truck stops to skateparks to strip malls to boutiques, NoProposal will capture every person, place and thing that they come across. The end result will be the truest living representation of the current national streetwear scene. Although the backbone of NoProposal is inherently old school, the project also has a decidedly modern component. Each week, NoProposal will produce a professionally filmed and edited three minute webisode featuring the most enlightening and entertaining portions of the tour. These webisodes will be broadcast through the major influencer info hubs and will paint the realest picture yet of this so-called streetwear lifestyle. Be Prepared.

The homies are at it again. From William Marshall, LeDeux, Teamworks and the THISISH clique…

New THISISH February Download….

12 Steps Forward 14 Back

Get it here.

Some of my favorite people in the world came together recently to try to inject a bit of dopeness and positive energy into what is otherwise probably the most dreary holiday season most of us have ever experienced. I mean fuck the holidays, but usually this time of year is fun, it just happens to be that this year we are all sitting here praying that holy hell doesn’t break loose before Obama can get in there and make it right. No pressure homey.

Anyway, equally fed up with the over consumerated bullshit and general fucked upness of it all, the design collective known as LeDeux has joined forces with the Teamworks and Thisish brands to present a series of free music downloads from Marshall Law. Known for his beatmaking mastery as well as work with Large Professor, the X-Ecutioners, Julez Santana, B-Real, and more, Marshall Law has been hoarding joint after joint after joint for just this occasion. With the launch of Thisish.com, he presents his full length masterpiece, Drugs Made Me Do It, as well as the mixtapes Testing the Waters Vol 1 and 2, Teamworks, and Deep Huh completely free. Not content to stop there, the plan is to release a new free download each month for the next four months. Far from a regular mixtape, Marshall’s mixes feature production work out the ass, super eclectic song selection, and flips and bounces that only a drugged out lunatic could come up with. On the eve of the site launch I linked with Marshall to hear why he felt compelled to give in to the season of giving when the rest of us are staying on some real Scrooge McDuck shit. This is what he had to say:

What gave you the idea to launch this free download site?

There are 50,000 ways to buy and sell music, from iTunes to the “do you like hip hop” kids slinging cd’s to tourists in Union Square. The industry is flooded with people with their hands out, that’s not really my steez. We’re in an economic crisis dammit!! People need to save their money for bomb shelters and flat screen tv’s.

What can people expect to get?

A bunch of shit at once. First a record entitled Drugs Made Me Do It. I did this in 2005, its inspired by the “escapades of controlled substance people” and was made during a quite interesting time in my life. Also there are four completely produced so-called mash up mixes. I will be releasing everything I got on stash in the next four months. Three more instrumental albums and at least one more mixtape as well as some features and random stuff I got.

Nothing in life is free, what’s the catch?

No catch. you don’t even have to enter your email, just click download. No tricks or bullshit. If you feel like supporting come to a show or buy me a coffee.

Both sonically and biz wise - what are your next moves?

I’m emptying out the stash to clean my slate and start fresh. I’ve been doing some beats for some people and am feeling ambitious to get more creative in the producer role as well as putting together tracks for a new record. For this album I’ve been trying to push my capabilities farther, I started playing drums and am working that into tunes,trying to mesh the analog and digital worlds. I figure if I give more physically to tracks it will translate to the listener.

Who is your team and how do they fit into your collective plans? Thisish, Teamworks, LeDeux?

Every one in that circle is really one fam, we each got a hustle and somehow manage to collaborate on crazy amounts of work. Collectively we can all offer something to the other and we all want to see the next succeed so we actually work to see that.

Any other random thoughts or shoutouts holla!

With all the bullshit outside your headphones try to relax, don’t be fooled into hysteria, if all else fails take drugs.

Thanks Marshall!