click here to listen/download PRE-BOARDING by Malkovich Music
PRE-BOARDING, released 10/24/2014 (download) | mixed by DJ Spinna | a Gilles Peterson Worldwide Premiere
featuring Sum, Ali Abnormal, Chris Clarke, Omni, Computer...

click here to listen/download PRE-BOARDING by Malkovich Music


PRE-BOARDING
, released 10/24/2014 (download) | mixed by DJ Spinna | a Gilles Peterson Worldwide Premiere
featuring SumAli AbnormalChris ClarkeOmni, Computer Jay

Iranian/British-blooded, Italian-born, and raised across the Middle East and Europe before moving to Los Angeles, homeless traveling rapper Malkovich presents Pre-Boarding, his new mixtape mixed by DJ Spinna. On Pre-Boarding, Malkovich raps over African, Caribbean, Brazilian, Indian and Cape Verdean world music classics from Alice Coltrane, Shaan, Serge Gainsbourg, Rob, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Contonou Dahomey, Mulatu Astatqe, Augustus Pablo, Tim Maia, and Orquesta Joe Cain, as well as two compositions from L.A. producer Computer Jay. Omni, Sum, Chris Clarke and Ali Baba Abnormal also guest. Malkovich shares a dedication to love, an ode to his idea of home, his experience of becoming an American citizen and a eulogy to imperialism across Pre-Boarding’s 11 tracks, written in the Dominican Republic, Belize and Jamaica. Pre-Boarding is Malkovich’s second full-length release since throwing away all his possessions to travel the world; the first being 2013’s Great Expectations, which received support from DJ Premier, The Source and the Wake Up Show. His 2011 mixtape Ayatollah Presley - mixed by deejay/producer House Shoes – featured Dibia$e and Prince Po of Organized Konfusion, and his verse from “NOLA Redux” kicked off Gilles Peterson’s 2009 Best Of HipHop Mix. Malkovich recently began #1BAG, a multimedia project where he finds producers across the world on Twitter, collaborates with them in their countries, and documents the experience through music, video and articles. Pre-Boarding marks “the true beginning of my career,” Malkovich says when asked about the mixtape’s title. “I always dreamed of documenting my world travels through music, and after 20 years of rapping, my dream’s my reality.”

This was posted 9 years ago. It has 7 notes. .

“GREAT EXPECTATIONS” shot by Mazzi of S.O.U.L. Purpose | edited by J Spealz | from GREAT EXPECTATIONS (download)
song produced by Computer Jay | featuring Ali Abnormal, BLVME, Sum, Chris Clarke

This was posted 10 years ago. It has 5 notes.

“THROUGH THE TREES” directed by Hashim Thomas | from GREAT EXPECTATIONS (download)
song produced by Computer Jay | featuring Ali Abnormal, BLVME, Sum, Chris Clarke

This was posted 10 years ago. It has 7 notes.

“LIES” (the baggage video) directed by Hashim Thomas | from GREAT EXPECTATIONS (download)
song produced by Evilldewer
video features Chris Clarke, ABCDEFG a.k.a. Chuck Chilla, Lil Ms of The Milky Way and Aisha Chacha | filmed in West Los Angeles

This was posted 11 years ago. It has 2 notes.
Listen/download: GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Malkovich Music
GREAT EXPECTATIONS, released 1/1/2013 (download) | “A story about the gap between our dreams and our lives”
featuring Sum, Ali Abnormal, Chris Clarke, Gotham Green, Core Rhythm and Micah McKee...

Listen/download: GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Malkovich Music


GREAT EXPECTATIONS
, released 1/1/2013 (download) | “A story about the gap between our dreams and our lives”
featuring Sum, Ali Abnormal, Chris Clarke, Gotham Green, Core Rhythm and Micah McKee and production by Leggo, Evilldewer, Josh The Goon, Speakerbomb, Becoming Phill, X-Man, Bei Ru, Computer Jay, Yamin Semali, Core Rhythm and Mike Beats

“Genre-resuscitating…” -HitTheFloor.co.uk
“feels like you’re being confronted with power…" -ThisIsJohnBook
"Malkovich seems to impress me with every project he puts out…” -Okayplayer.com
“LA is a city of shiftless nomads. Malkovich might take the crown. Great Expectations could be his coronation" -syffal.com
"In the hands of a less talented MC, this type of thematic diversity might crumble chaotically” -Earbits.com
“Showing a rare maturation most emcees never attain” -Audiocred.com
“a fierce brand of no-nonsense lyricism that walks a tight rope between stark realism, fantasy, loyalty and alienation… beats that move back and forth effortlessly from Arabic rhythms, to acid jazz to 70′s soul to 90′s old school.” -ViragoMag
Great Expectations is the culmination of a lot of hard work and the realization of his abilities as an emcee. He’s got a unique perspective, and he’s found a great balance between smart, big picture analysis and honest and emotional introspection. There have been roughly a million hip hop albums to come out of L.A.. It’s not easy to release an album in this day and age that both pays homage to that past and still sounds fresh, but Malkovich has done that here” -ScratchedVinyl

This was posted 11 years ago. It has 0 notes. .
My clothing line heverlybills.com | all shirts finest American Apparel
the tuxedo of t-shirts | girl beaters available, #1 shirt for finding of the husband | free Benz with orders of 20,000 and up
we’re not terrorists, we’re businessmen. thank you

My clothing line heverlybills.com | all shirts finest American Apparel
the tuxedo of t-shirts | girl beaters available, #1 shirt for finding of the husband | free Benz with orders of 20,000 and up
we’re not terrorists, we’re businessmen. thank you

This was posted 11 years ago. It has 2 notes. .

“LETHAL VICE” directed by Aaron Godfred | all songs produced by P.U.D.G.E. | from the LETHAL VICE EP (download)
featuring Chris Clarke | filmed in Los Angeles

This was posted 12 years ago. It has 4 notes.
LETHAL VICE EP released 1/30/2012 (download) | produced by P.U.D.G.E. (except for “Flatfoots” produced by Chris Clarke)
featuring Sum, Chris Clarke and Ali Abnormal
“sounds like Beverly Hills looks” -ClusterFunkCollective
Those were The Hot Days....

LETHAL VICE EP released 1/30/2012 (download) | produced by P.U.D.G.E. (except for “Flatfoots” produced by Chris Clarke)
featuring Sum, Chris Clarke and Ali Abnormal
“sounds like Beverly Hills looks” -ClusterFunkCollective

Those were The Hot Days. August and September with Pudge at my Palms apartment/sauna - hardwood floors, wooden roof. I threw away a lot of white tees with industrial yellow armpit stains. But we stayed recording. A homey or three would casually swim through to drop verse before running down the stairs sweating and screaming, shirts in hand. But mostly it was just us working on tracks, or the eternal business of staying afloat in L.A.. What day does the landlord really cash the rent check (the 10th)? What are the chances of the couch having magically sprouted some more change between the cushions in the last two days? Are those dudes outside with the bad tattoos still sitting on my car? A couple times a day we’d hop off the merry-go-round for pasta, blunts and TV. Lethal Weapon ended up in the DVD player for almost a month, and we started noticing similarities between Mel and Danny’s characters and us. He’s the black guy, I’m the white guy. He’s more laid-back, I’m more aggro. And Pudge and I had inadvertently become partners in the task of getting by in Los Ankkhheles. So we ran with it. We don’t give a shit about cops (although I don’t mind em at times). But the metaphor works. Every now and then we gotta swing through and lay the law down.

This was posted 12 years ago. It has 0 notes. .

“WHAT I KNOW” directed by Ivan Ives | from GREAT EXPECTATIONS (download) | featuring Sum | song produced by Becoming Phill

The approaches we took to this song and video were clearly very simple. There’s no complex storyline or contact lenses to make us look like supernatural blowfishes. There’s no elaborate costumes, curvaceous women or flocks of nameless dudes standing around and sitting on cars. The song structure is far from revolutionary, and the verses are as straightforward as it gets. There aren’t any swimming pools, umbrellas, blunts or barbeque pits. Matter of fact…there’s not really anything besides two dudes rapping in the fucking desert. Two dudes who are extremely good at what they do, rapping over a beat done by a producer who’s very good at what he does (BecomingPhill). It’s a simple video shot by a rapper who’s fast becoming a rising star director (Ivan Ives). There’s not much to it besides the bare bones of the craft and a message delivered with all the peaceful desperation of samurais doing what they does best; going for what they know as if they’re about to die and nothing else mattered. As simple as this song and video are, I think it’s a major statement and a foreshadow of what you’re about to see from our camp over the next couple of years. Those of us who’ve been patiently waiting in the wings perfecting our techniques, getting more deadly with each passing year are finally ready to arrive. There won’t be any question about our music savvy, our access to resources, our global brotherhood or where we stand in relation to everyone else. We’re in our own lane, and although it took us a while to pave it, we’re rolling thunder down the highway. Going for what we know is the mantra. When Ivan hit us up on a Monday and told us the only chance we had to shoot a video for this song was on that Saturday morning in Vegas, it was clear what we had to do. Plus, I’d never been to Vegas….so what better way to make my debut than on some rap shit? Malkovich wouldn’t take my “maybe, but I’ll be tired as hell” for an answer, and off we went on one of my favorite musical excursions to date; shooting a video in what was clearly a former bomb-testing site while our camera crew caught heat strokes and tried to hydrate themselves with poached eggs. And here we have it, a video embodying an unofficial mission statement for 2012 and beyond. -Sum

This was posted 12 years ago. It has 0 notes.

“PALMS” directed, shot and edited by me | from GREAT EXPECTATIONS (download) | song produced by X-Man
featuring the late great Jesse The Parking Lot King (read)

read my long-running blog The Palms Weekend, all about the L.A. neighborhood of Palms

Jesse almost died during the making of this video. I’ve seen him almost die three times, and only once I wasn’t sure he would die cool. The first two strokes he rode out in the driver’s seat of that truck like fevers, nodding at me as I walked up and squeezing out choice words through wet lips. The last time he couldn’t walk, all he could do is stand in the middle of the lot and cry in his friend’s arms while people drove around them trying not to cry too. He told me he wouldn’t survive surgery, he was tired of the hospital, he wanted his mother to fly him home. On the way to his cousin’s house he forgot both our names and where we were going. But he made sure I stopped by T&D’s on Slauson and Keniston to cop his last cigarette. By his fifth cellphone call to St. Louis from his cousin’s lawn he was barely breathing. By the time the third fire truck showed up he had to be talked out of walking off down the street. Pride kills him and revives him, every day. He was mad at me for a while for making that call. And I was mad at him for forcing me to make it. When you’re really hurting, you handle that alone. You spare your people your burden. His mother sent me a thank you card.
Mrs Brown downstairs passed away a couple of weeks ago. The funeral announcement had the first young photos of her I had ever seen; made me wish I had known her then. Don’t get buried at Inglewood Cemetary if you have soft-speaking relatives. The planes overhead will drown out every other heartfelt word of their speeches. Lucile was 80; she had a good run. And even when she had fallen out of her walker, she would wait thirty minutes before shouting my name, and she would apologize until I was gone, happy to help, sad that I couldn’t. She knew the rules, too well. Nights I lay sweating atop hardwood and bedbug stains, hours after trying to sleep way too early, 15 feet in either direction from two people dying slow. I wish I had been there more for the people around me. But I always was. Just behind a wall. I hope they could feel me. I definitely felt them. Larry & Angel sent me a thank you card. Lot of thank you cards this summer.

Jesse Servey died on October 31, 2011 peacefully at his sister’s home in St. Louis.

This was posted 12 years ago. It has 1 note.