Movement of the People

Fuck off. Fuck on again. I said it. Now seep. It's been a while but why not?  The sun will never set on the squadron - don't forget. Life whirlwinds after those carefree college days and now, years later, a mic no check back in. We don't do it for cash. MIC NO CHECK - we don't do it for cash!

C-4 will always be a movement. We are friends and brothers for life. That's how we began and that's how we will remain. We might change names. We might undertake new musical ventures. We might never live in one central guild again. We might up and travel to India for a breath. We might buy a motorhome and boondock cross the country. We might not. Limits need not apply to infinite beings. We will float and be free. Money mandates aside, we will be FREE. We have music in the wings but as it seems, we haven't all been on a new track together in over a year. We have rocked the rare show together. We keep in touch constantly. But we're all doing our own thing right now. How does this make you feel? Have we let you down? Don't hold back. We never do.

The Motives of a Movement

Artist Bios are overrated. Describing what the artists want you to know, a bio generally serves as a glorified self-serving synopsis of a much larger, more intricate story. We do, however, understand that a little background info is always a good thing so here goes. As the name suggests, There are four emcees in the squadron. We all met, vibed, and began our musical endeavor during our freshman year at Hofstra University. We've only grown from there, releasing 3 cds, putting together our own benefit concerts, and performing countless times all over NY, even opening shows for Lupe Fiasco and Estelle. We live together, eat together drink together, break bread together, laugh, cry, ride and roll together, and though we don't always see eye to eye, we're always there for each other, together. C-write Crills hails from Brooklyn NY, Alpha from White Plains NY, Googie from West New York, NJ and A-Web from Block Island, RI and Vermont. Though one might say that each individual 'represents' his respective hometown, don't get too caught up in man-made spacial barriers; we all come from the Earth, so we prefer to represent the whole World rather than one small plot of land. The members of the group host ties to myriad cultures Including Jamaican, African, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Irish, Danish and Native American, but again, don't get hung up on illusory and divisive racial barriers, we represent the human race, plain, simple and beautiful.

That seems sufficient background, anything else you can find out if you truly desire but let us spare you the rest of the usual biographic ego-trip.
Here's what you really need to know... C-4 is a movement, but we can only fulfill that title and truly make the movement move with your allegiance and support. We represent 4 dimensions and you are the missing piece: help us reach the 5th dimension as one. Here's what you can do to be involved.

1. Listen to our music. We are passionate about what we do; we pour incredible amounts of effort (heart soul and time) into making it and we have fun doing it. If you like how it sounds, turn the volume up a little bit louder and roll your windows down as you cruise. Spread the music to your friends and family and tell them to do the same. Come see us play live, and bring some friends. Our energy is always over the top and we guarantee you'll have fun with us.

2. Listen to our Message. We don't care how many times you have to rewind a song or a verse to understand the lyrics, as long as you make an attempt. We don't do this to say nothing at all. We are opinionated, impassioned by the issues of OUR people living on OUR planet, and we put deep, immense thought into scribing our own individual ideas into our lyrics. We feel that we have something to say, and whether you agree or disagree with what is said, let our words help to expand your basis of thought and opinion to unseen depths while we all grow together as human beings.

3. Keep listening. Our lyrics have many layers to their meanings: double, triple, quadruple, infinite meanings, however you wish to perceive them! We use metaphors, we tell stories and use intricate rhyme patterns along with lots of vocabulary (get a dictionary). We know that the words we use and the things we say are not always easy to comprehend, but the more you listen, the more you'll catch the hidden gems, woven throughout our wordly webs. We like to say that most commercial music, which gains instant popularity and is overplayed before quickly burning out; those fartists are like a one night stand: brief, carnal, often ugly and never truly fulfilling. Our music is the type that you take home to meet the family, introduce to your closest friends, fall In love with and eventually marry: alluring but hard to get, and once 'understood', always surprising you, enticing, exciting and pushing you in your own life. Please keep listening. We are always growing, so the more material that comes, the deeper you can travel with us.

4. Don't be a follower. Although we know that it is often difficult, in this fast paced world, to sit down and really search your soul for your own thoughts and opinions, NEVER adopt someone else's belief without thorough self examination. We believe strongly in what we say but we don't want our fans to complacently agree. We want you to hear what we say and then think about it for YOURSELF and nobody else. Besides, time changes everything, even opinions, so while we hold strongly to our beliefs now, we must be willing to let go and change to enable the advancement of mankind along with the world as it advances forward at every passing moment.

5. Evolve. While darwin's evolutionary model may be stalled on our human forms, it is our minds that must continue to evolve. Learn about the ego and how it effects others, but most importantly yourself. Learn to accept yourself, love yourself and be open and willing to change. Learn to accept others, learn compassion, learn to love them and help them to change. Let us evolve together. War is a never-ending cycle, peace is permanent, eternal.

Peace and Love
C-4

The 2010 Movement Draft!

So 2009 is coming to a screeching halt in roughly 2 weeks and we wanted to layout a platform of the takeover to come in 2010.  I will just make a list to make things easier to read.  These entries are in no particular order.

1) New C-4 Album entitled, "C-4-C:Combustible 4 Cavemen."
2) C Write Crills and Samurai Banana (1/2 of Sarcasmo reppin' Karma Kids Studio) mixtape entitled "Ninja vs. Samurai"
3) Alpha and Headtrip (the other 1/2 of Sarcasmo reppin' Karma Kids Studio) mixtape entitled "Domewrecker vs. Rahzilla"
4) Alpha presenting "Ain't Nothin' Plain About Us", an LP featuring some of the best artists conceived and coagulated in White Plains, NY.  914, Westchester Stand Up!
5) A new and improved A-Webber
6) "In The Moment" an extended EP effort from Alpha
7) "Coon 2 Some" an extended EP effort from Alpha and C Write Crills
8) We will be DJ Ducktaping wack MCs
9) The Movement to begin in-house producing
10) The webpage to end all frivolous internet usage,  WWW.4PROSE.NET.
....

Along with several other plans for world domination that can not be displayed at this moment, but everyone is invited to join when our stratagem is revealed.

2010 Beware!  Long Live The Lost!

The Anrgy Blogger on Education

Our generation has been vitiated due to the debt everyone is accruing just from going to school.  Plain and simple.  I know many individuals who have racked up over $100,000 in debt while they are still no older than 22 in most cases.  I believe it goes without dispute that educating the public is the paramount strategy to ensure a prosperous future where people are more inclined to make decisions that have the best positive outcome for society as a whole.  However, the cost and strain that education places on students makes one think twice about getting a diploma.

Let's take recent history for an allegory.  During this current recession one factor which influenced the events of the past year were the inability of individuals with mortgages for their homes to pay back these loans.  Whether they should have received mortgages is a question that I am no expert to answer and does not pertain to my overall general argument.  The inability of individuals to pay back their mortgages led to a downward spiral of financial institutions going bankrupt and people losing every asset they owned.

Now to parallel this with education.  With such a massive amount of students in their early 20's gaining such titanic amounts of debt in hopes to establish a positive and fruitful future, one must take a step back and wonder can this many college graduates really pay back this debt.  One advantage college graduates had in the past was the significantly lower number of individuals attending college and graduating.  Therefore, the ones who graduated held much more cultural capital and had a stronger hold on bargaining for employment and their income.  This falls in line with the  facets of  supply and demand.  Generally, the reduced supply of a certain commodity or good (in this case college graduates), the greater the demand will be for said good, therein making the value of said good appreciate.

Can we as a college students be confident and assured enough that the investment we are placing upon our education and future will pay off?  The banks which give out the money are fervent and unrelenting in pursuing the repayment of their loans, regardless of how successful or financial stable a student has become.

Society pressures us that going to college is the only vehicle to secure a prosperous future where you can contribute to the upbuilding of our communities.  After continually maintaining a reflection eternal upon this system I'm beginning to think twice.  It almost seems there is some clandestine plan which promotes students striving for an education and telling us education is the only way to secure a future, only to place a dollar value on our efforts to restrict individuals without the financial capital to educate themselves.  Which in turn, only perpetuates stagnation in the social hierarchy and establishes a caste system that doesn't allow every individual to increase their status and cultural worth.

The Random House Dictionary's definition of education is thus; the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.

I previously stated that the larger amount of college graduates may decrease our worth and ability to procure financial stability.  However, to place a dollar value on one's growth and evolution is futile and preposterous and only pushes individuals further away from education as a whole.  Consequently, potentially ensnaring our social mobility and placing those in poor financial shape in shackles and chains.  Education, in my opinion will lead to the enlightening of our generation and generations to come, due to the ills and imbalances of society we have seen in the past and present.  We have no choice but to establish an approach that will allow us to nurture and develop new methods to allow every human to sustain their growth mentally, physically, spiritually, and economically through the rigors of socialization, regardless of one's culture, creed, or belief system.

Alas, we are already absorbed within the game that has subdued many of my colleagues and classmates, and there is not much we can do to change the past.  However, with the knowledge and experience we have gained over the years of our schooling, and the growing ambiguity and unascertainable nature of the future, one thing for sure is certain.  We stand in the 21st century with the cultural capital we have purchased, clutched by the throat and wallet, only to be manumit by the idiosyncrasies and double standards of universities,employers, and financial institutions.

As always, the one who attempts to align all ways as always.

-Alpha-

Peace to all the Nihilistic cavemen

Shout out to Lt. Headtrip for coining the above phrase.  What makes your head trip?  There's too much nowadays to try to solve everything or fathom everything at once.  Step by step, piece by piece I suppose.  If everyone does their part can things be better?  But then we have to figure out what everyone's part is.  We have to agree on what is "right".  Signing out before I fall too deep into my own rabbit hole.  It will occur soon enough and I will keep all of you posted out there in TV land.  Maybe the revolution will be televised, or better yet Youtubed.

-As always it is the Altruistic ANIMALLLL, Alpha-

I bid you adieu.

Woke Up Early On My Born Day

Thank you, thank you, thank you to whatever force was behind me turning 22 this past weekend and having a great time celebrating it with those in my circle. Another wild weekend at Walton where pong balls we're being pursued in tenacity by our mangy mutt Lola Monsta Movement! She has become a force to be reckoned with if you miss your pong shots for she will catch any ball in midair that does sink a cup. That's right, move on over Air Bud! We have a pong playing dog in the making. You don't realize how many people you are friends with until they all come together at once and then you realize that you are probably loved. All in all it was a fun weekend, plus I finally have jumped back on the mic after a slight hiatus of recording. Don't know if the lack of recording was caused by a lack of Motiv8-ion, being lazy, not having all the Quarter-Martyrs of the Squadron in each others presence at one time in one location, or a mixture of all these variables and more. I recorded 2 free-form songs this weekend.

DISCLAIMER: these are not what some artists like to deem as a "freestyle". A freestyle is the process of creating a song and/or rhyme scheme at that very moment from the thoughts that fire into your mind through the synapses with occur at minutest unit of minute measurement.

What I recorded was just some cohesive thoughts about the current state of the world we live in today and the ability or perceived inability we have to make a difference. All in all we must learn to Puff, Puff, Pass, Struggle Struggle STRIVE!

Here is a link to the song. It is named "Mighty Healthy" performed by yours truly, Alpha, the Avatar of the Anonymous, the Anti-Acquiesce, the Always Asking, the Allusive to All Allegory.

http://www.mediafire.com/?wy1zjoynnqc

And I decided to be nice and type of the lyrics for ya, so you can better understand my perspective. As long as we can agree to disagree that's all I'm asking for.

They say that I'm photogenic
The mode of menace
That I'm trying to attain is like a vampire no image
No mirror fear no norms revoke terror
As the smoke clears up, I like to view the vultures cheer us
While very few of the youths culture hears them
No joke, we choke on purpose to draw you near us
::Gag, gag:: I don't wanna be a-
Nother trapped onomatopoeia
Trying to find his freedom
Away from the associations they lead us
A fetus at default? Nah!
I'd rather be fecal matter with the shit stains of revolt
Why we living passive in this day and null?
We gotta find a way to PULL
And not get PUSHed back cause some get discouraged from the fall
SURVIVAL of the fittest than I guess
...
I should bust my nut over your mic make you rest.
You ain't giving shit to the world but-fucking stress
By leading the illusion that is ludicrous at best
And,
As you jest I transcend from the crest just to walk on air and crush the barometric press!
If done I'd accomplish much less!
As we spirit bomb the game to tear away the flesh!
And put back the SOUL,
Believe you me, there is much to it than just cooked crack and gold....
Then I hesitate,
And let that resonate, etanoser, resonate.

I set the pace for us facing reality,
Puff, Puff, Pass, Struggle Struggle STRIVE!
Puff, Puff, Pass, Struggle Struggle STRIVE!
I set the pace for us facing reality,
I set the pace for us facing reality,
Puff, Puff, Pass, Struggle Struggle STRIVE!
PUFF PUFF PASS STRUGGLE STRUGGLE, strive.

The Sun sets in the west...

Yeah so the Movement has been dispersed across this great land of ours for the past week.  With the 5-Mile Island Problem Webb holding down the northeast in VT and the other 3/4 of the faction soaking up some left coast action.  Googie (the artist formerly known as Nyce), and C Write Krillz were up in the San Jose area, while I the Double A with Life in the Middle...ALPHA!...just roamed around the Golden State for the past week.  If y'all have never been out to the west it must be done, just to get a change of scenery and refresh your view of life by escaping the concrete jungle, for all of you in the NYC metropolitan area or any other urban center.  Flew in to LAX to the city of lights on Monday and ran into Donald Faison from Scrubs and Clueless, that dude is hilarious right haha.  After LA had to get out of the city cuz shit I wanted that environment I wouldn't have gotten the hell outta dodge and left NY.  Took a beautiful scenic 7 hour drive up to the Land of Oak (Oakland) where Krillz, Googie, and I celebrated our dude Jeremy's 21st with our boy Elliot and some of Land of Oak individuals.. Almost got some Cougars Jenny and Ginger RAWRRR!!  But it was a sick night of swishas and E-40 (never thought I'd say that haha).  Also had the most behemoth burrito of my being and it was banggggin, big ups to the Mexicans killing out in the West (California technically is Mexico just so you know, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which we stole California, Utah, Nevada, as well as parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona,  and Wyoming, but I drift).  Decided to stay in Berkeley the next day due to a crazy chain of events, mainly resulting from the mad laid back, non-judgmental atmosphere of the city.  Met some chill folks out there specifically my concierge who tried as hard as possible to find me herb, a beautiful bartenderess from Jersey, a cool ass Sikh cab driver named Gary, and some fine ladies in a salsa club.  Go to Berkeley you'll love it I promise you.  The next day I went to Sequoia National Park to go see General Sherman, the oldest living organism on this fucking planet.  Pardon my french but it was ineffable.  Being a foot away from a piece of life that has been around for roughly 2300-2700 years rejuvenated the soul.  You know Alpha had to meet THE Alpha, funny thing is its about an hour long drive up Generals Highway, which in my opinion was the most beautiful drive in the US, and I videotaped the whole ride, and as I reached General Sherman and tried to take a picture my wouldn't let me.  Sort of eerie isn't it.  But somethings aren't supposed to be controlled or put into a fallacious permanent state such as a photo.  I'm glad my camera didn't work, because nothing is stronger than the human memory, and the image and feeling of the tree is forever burned into my soul.  After that went and had the first filet mignon of my life.  I've always been a t-bone or porterhouse type dude and didn't understand all the hype behind a filet mignon.  Boy was I wrong, that shit was sooooo krillz, the meat just melted in my mouth (FUCK SAYING NO HOMO for all you homophobic queers out there).  The Sierra Nevada with it made the meal perfect.  The entire trip one of my main goals was to play some beach volleyball, thats all I wanted to do.  Made the 4 hours and change drive from Sequoia to Santa Barbara in about 3 and a half hours, putting the pedal to the metal literally.  I was a little worried because all weather forecasts predicted rain, but I knew it wasn't going to.  Just one of the gut feelings you can just rely on.  Got there and played a couple of sick game with some folks in their golden years and it was everything that I could ask for.  After that took a nice like jog through Santa Barbara which was gorgeous and decided to hit up a seafood restaurant the individuals I played with recommended.  Got there and ended up sitting at a random table with 2 dudes in their 20's and these 2 random milfs, since the place was so packed we just stole a hodge podge table together.  A little while later a friend of the 2 dudes came through who happened to be from Boston, so there was that east coast connection (about half the people I met during the week were east coast natives and have been living out in California for several years).  The fellas then took me to this sick restaurant/bar right on the Pacific Ocean called the Boat House which was stunning.  Of course gave them all mixtapes and they were bumping it on the drive to the Boat House haha sick life.  After the Boat House the one dude from Boston, Adam, brought me to a friends house so I could get my last taste of some Cali herb and it was banging, more natural tasting than anything I see on the east coast.  After that I went to back to Enterprise Fish Co. the restaurant where I started my night off and had an ill convo with the bartendress who happened to be from Long Island.  Of course left her with a mixtape, I had to plant a few seeds while I was out there yadadamean.  Probably slept for 3 hours after that and woke up at 4 AM to drive back to the Enterprise car rental in Los Angeles by 6 AM.  As I pull up to the rental return window I see our neighbor from 2 years ago who always loved our music, and the crazy part was my mind had just ran across him minutes before that, coincidence I think not, just the power of thought and the mind in my opinion.  Got to LAX and decided to give up the seat on my flight for a voucher for another flight, so it couldn't have worked out better.  Got on the plane and engaged in the most stimulating conversation I've had in a long time with the lady next to me about life.  Everything that had been on my mind for the past couple of months was all brought up just through the course of natural dialogue.  Almost as if the woman had been stalking my thoughts for the past couple of months.  California was amazing and I loved it and I would definitely consider moving out there one day to just slow things down, but there's no better feeling than returning to your HOME.  All in all...Californicated.

Violence destroys

So we know everyone was souped for the show on the sixth, but we just heard news that a senseless fight broke out at the spot, B. Stone the other night; a cop was hit in the foray and apparently, the club has since been shut down. Our peoples at Team Vicious are currently looking for another venue, so as soon as we have something locked down, we'll let you all know the time and place. Stay tuned, stay informed and stay sensible. This is just another instance of violence and violent acts by egotistic idiots destroying the possibility for future positivity. WE ALL NEED TO GET SMART AND START LEARNING TO BUILD WITH ONE ANOTHER PEOPLE!! I tell no lie I boost no war. Peace and LOVE!
-W.

Samantha

It's finals week for all us college students, but somewhere between the books and bussle we still find time to bless the mic with that 'mystical mastery making matters mean nought...' and it sounds so good people! Today, the sexy songstress Samantha strolled through and seared some sintilating vocals on a couple tasty jams that'll be blessing your ear bellies in the new year to come. Sam is truly talented, she learns quickly and sounds incredible and you should peep more of her music here on myspace. She's a real cool cat and of course, she's absolutely gorgeous so you better watch out for this one people! SHouts to Alpha the Monster, hammerin' that lab work home for the holidays, and everyone else at Hofstra and all over the map puttin those late night hours in to make those grades gravy. We see you! Oh, and one more thing, We really truly love OBAma but, Mike Gluck For PRESIDENT!!! HA Holla at us!

GET READY FOR THE MOVEMENT

PEACE

LOVE

-W

C-4 Opening for Kosha Dillz

Israeli American Hip Hop artist Kosha Dillz is going to be performing at Hofstra University this Monday, April 7th at 9 pm in the Netherlands North Cafe. Dillz is a talented rapper who has made music with artists such as the Wu-Tang Clan, Matisyahu, and C-Rayz Walz. The Squadron will be setting shit off in a major way as we always do! so come through and support the movement and bop to some good music.