Not the biggest or the most beautifulest, but more

Hip-Hop is a funny business where people all talk about keeping it real while everyone’s got more game than a crackhead from Hempstead. Let’s talk about just a few examples.

Just before New Year’s I got this email:

My name is Stu. I run an online hip-hop ghostwriting business called Rap Rebirth (www.rap-rebirth.com). We [there ain't no we!] write for aspiring and established [yeah right] artists around the world. We’re longtime fans of your blog [liar!] and we’d like to collaborate with you on an article or interview about ghostwriting.

Ok so clearly we had a guy who wanted some publicity for his business but hell it sounded like it had potential for an interesting interview… First I needed to establish the guy was legit. So I replied to the guy asking for the history of his business, how many clients he’s serving and if he could tell me off-record of anyone using his service.

The guy’s response explained that he was a hip-hop fan who wrote lyrics as a hobby so boom he started this business with no actual experience in the music game. He claimed he had 40 “active” clients implying repeat business – say, not bad for a newbie business owner advertising to the public at $500 per song.

Of course this was horseshit. Because of the confidential nature of his business he couldn’t divulge a single song or artist he’d ghost-written for, even with me promising to keep things off-record. I googled around a bit and quickly found a still-warm thread at a SOHH spin-off forum where the same guy was asking anybody for help marketing his ghostwriting business. Apparently this guy’s lyrical career had started and ended at SOHH where he was an amusing mimic of mc styles for a netcee…. If he had a flourishing ghostwriting business then why was he asking anybody who’d answer for help on what to do next?

Still a bunch of bloggers must not have done their due diligence as a very non-exclusive article crafted by this guy about his fledgling business popped up at Baller Status, the Rap Up and a few other blogs.

Let’s move on to a different example.

I was on twitter a while back and a Hot 97 DJ said something about will.i.am being the world’s biggest sell-out. I found this pretty amusing for a number of reasons. First off, Black Eyed Peas were always on some dance and party shit even when they were more of a strictly hip-hop group. And really are we going to pretend that this group would still have a career if they hadn’t switched their style up? Finally, where does a Hot 97 DJ get off calling an artist their station plays ad nauseum a sell-out? This was shortly after one of this dj’s colleagues had to go on his blog to express how he wished he could play what he wanted to play on the radio. Gee, you mean like a real radio DJ? I can’t be the only one with the impression that if you work at Hot 97 you’re basically a playlist babysitter. You don’t have the moral high ground on any artist… Besides, some of that Black Eyed Peas shit knocks.

What brought this all to mind is two recent cases of aspiring rappers reaching out to me with quickly confessed alternate personas. I’m not sure where the idea started that you should be making up managers or fans for yourself… Maybe from Tim Ferris or that episode of Cheers where Norm has to boss around a painting crew. But if you’re going to do it at least sell it better!

So here we go.. the Country Boys are “the hottest new rap group in America” and their url is Afterlife Media Group which apparently only reps the Country Boys. They have this sweet, sappy song called “Down that Road” where the heavyset black dude is in love and he’s being this Teddy bear type. It’s decent but then I’m supposed to believe him when he and his patna’ thug it out? Maybe I would if they were better at the rapping but without that working for them they should at least figure out their market positioning. Anyway, they do have good looking videos going for them.

I was confused why the Twitter account with the group’s name led to a url for a “media group” so I had asked this persistent fellow who he was and the reply came in email, “usually when I write to people pertaining to the business I do it as my manager alter ego because people think groups with managers are better either way”. This is clearly a man who does not show much commitment to his alter-ego. A good honest man, he would make a lousy MF Doom impostor because he would take his mask off mid-show to explain to the audience that he was just there filling in for Dumile.

Okay the Country Boys bluff was harmless but this next impostor committed an egregious foul by emailing a bunch of rap bloggers without using the BCC field, assuring that any of us who were not already on every spammers list soon would be. I’m not going to even mention the rapper because fuck this non-BCC’ing motherfucker. There’s a special circle in hell for spammers who pass email addresses around willy-nilly where anyone can see them.

Here’s the god-awful phony copy his blast contained:

Aight, what’s up. Love your site, I’m glad I found it and bookmarked it (and probably subscribed to it) Everything you guys/girls post is in tune with the type of music I love. Love hip-hop, love underground rap, and love integrity over flash (not the design program) especially.

If your ass doesn’t own a blog/site, I still love you cause you go to an amazing site. I hope you keep up the good work along with the site owners. Have fun not watching B.E.T. I do!

I thought maybe I could at least let a spammer know how annoying his target audience finds the open emails thing so I sent back an email saying simply.

The BCC email field.

Live it, learn it, love it.

To which this fucking guy replied:

Yes, I understand, will do. But this way gives the effect of a rap fan blasting out music by his favorite local artist rather than using some third-party service to send out the emails. Much more believable. But gotcha.

So you see, the non-BCC blast – that blogger anathema – was really just there to help sell the fact that this guy was just an enthusiastic fan emailing 50 bloggers about how much he loved this artist and their blogs – or if they didn’t have blogs, the blogs they visited. I don’t think inventing characters out of thin air is what those music advice blogs have in mind when they talk about building a fan base.

I might experiment a bit with blogging honestly about the stuff that hits my inbox instead of ignoring it all. I hope you don’t mind… I know honesty isn’t usually part of the game.

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The IC’s got a very favorable assessment as “a Hollywood comedy franchise waiting to happen”(!) in the intro of a Smart Money article on junk food tax. I assume we’ll actually be in the April issue of Smart Money magazine because if the article was just for the web it would be even weirder that they didn’t link to Bodega or Ghetto Big Mac when discussing them, let alone our site.

It’s just a good rule of thumb that if you’re writing about something on the web you should link to it. Not everyone thinks this way though. In some cases that’s because you have places that don’t want to waste the man-hours adding links to print articles just because they’re posting them online. That’s understandable in these lean times I suppose.

But then you’ve got the New York Times who on the one hand have begun re-imagining journalism with the potential inherent in dynamic web interfaces and database coding and on the other are still pushing mostly internal links in their content. Even when you’re looking at a link in an article whose text names a web property like Google or Facebook, that NY Times link is going to be to a page indexing their own coverage of the topic.

As far as I can tell, this automated internal linking is an SEO play with no benefit to the reader. Click on that ESPN link in a tech story and get the NY Times ESPN page instead of the website being referenced. That’s just plain disorienting for the reader and not how the web is supposed to work. It’s teaching us humans not to click on links there because they’re not there for our benefit.

New York magazine is actually worried enough about manual cut and pasters pillaging their content that they have scripted a credit into any attempt to copy text from their site into the clipboard.

I came across this last week on the day of the new Nets stadium groundbreaking. I wasn’t able to join Cas and Dallas in Brooklyn on that day for the Stadium Status shoot so my job was to do some research on the project and email out a compilation of important talking points. I found a recent blog post on the state of the Atlantic Yards and selected a few excerpts from it. With each paste came the appended message:

Read more: Why the Atlantic Yards Is Currently a Loser for Everyone, Even Ratner — Daily Intel http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/03/why_the_atlantic_yards_is_curr.html

What is New York magazine really buying besides our annoyance by using javascript to change how our cut and paste work? Another good rule of thumb when it comes to the web is don’t do anything that messes with the basics of how a person’s system is supposed to function. There was a time when paranoid webmasters on porn sites and elsewhere would disable people’s right mouse button so that images couldn’t be saved that easily. That’s what this play by New York magazine reminded me of – the Alert message that accuses me of being a thief because I had the nerve to click my right mouse button.

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Box Tops and Big Star singer/songwriter Alex Chilton has passed away of an apparent heart attack. 59 is too young to go.

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Last week it was pretty awesome when Rek pointed out that rapper Smoothe da Hustler was on MySpace pushing property listings these days in addition to lyrics. Of course Smoothe is best known for the classic ‘95 single “Broken Language” with his brother Trigger tha Gambler.

Then I got an email from former Oh Word staffer David Donald pointing out that Will High is also flaunting a potential second career with this damn clever verse mocking the situation in the comments at Rek’s post. You may remember Will High as the internet avenger whose 2003 Vordul Mega jaw-breaking incident stopped Cannibal Ox cold.

Rek, you need to showcase when a reader gives you a gift like this! You didn’t even acknowledge Will’s brilliant display.

“Broker Language” is fire. All rights reserved to Will High (please don’t hurt me):

The nicest flow-er. The licensed broker
The price of ice on Fulton knower.
The “Here’s my verse up in The Source” show-er
Open house sale throw-er
The apartment linker.
The out-the-box compartment thinker
The “see my trusted friend in the mortgage department” winker.
The rough rhyme singer. The tough time bringer.
The once sold dubs and dimes sub-prime slinger.
The assure a doubting Thomas-er.
“Fort Greene is an up-and-coming neighborhood” promiser.
The down payment figure out. The Brownsville nigga clout.
The “This building got a doorman to help keep me and Trigga out.”

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Handsome Boy Modeling School The Truth is the Youtube beat du jour. Vast Aire asks “What is this, a trend?”

Infinito 2017 displays his “theoretical medical genitals” style. Money line: “your whole style is faker than Kenny Rogers’ face”

And for this self-conscious homage a crew of YouTube musicians collaborate via the Internets.

Handsome Boy Modeling School – The Truth

The originator… Galt MacDermot – Coffee Cold

Oh No – Coffee Cold

Gang Starr – Werdz from the Ghetto Child

Previously: Whirlwind Through Ditties

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This is an essay I wrote in the spring of ‘98 while in college. I was inspired to go dig it up after a Twitter conversation I had with Sam Han a while back about anxiety and permanence. Pause.

Saturn Never Sleeps also had a post on Mandala sand painting at the start of this month which reminded me to actually follow through on finding this thing.

The photo to the right of this post ran alongside the essay in our campus arts magazine. It shows the visiting Tibetan monks at work on their sand painting and was photographed in ‘98 by my future wife.

I thought you might enjoy a taste of 12 year old writing. If you see any errors or omissions, blame it on the OCR not the heart.

**************************************************

Show Time
What is it about the performing arts that set them apart from other art forms? Performing artists know that it’s all about the moment. This is why we in the audience are so captivated. It is only in the performing arts that Creation itself is at center stage. The privilege of live art is its special relation to time. Artist and audience share in the very instance of Creation.

Non-live art has the opposite relation with time. The visual and literary arts produce products – things – that provlde for posterity. From the ancient Greeks through and beyond the Romantics, we have adopted the foolhardy notion that our art can and should last forever. Performers know better. When you’re out of the moment its over. Recordings, representations, people’s reactions… these may last but the actual product of their art was the moment it occurred.

This dichotomy is apparent in the way the art is received. Performances are passing events while “solid art” is fixed in a seeming vacuum. Accordingly academics study the art that will stay still long enough to be studied: the written play, the musical score, etc. The phrase “Fine Art” connotes paintings in the Louvre, not a show on Broadway. Thls would seem to indicate a cultural preference. But most people outside the art world will prefer performers. The snobbish explanation is that performances are easy on the attention span. This is a false assumption; we are talking about two unique experiences each with their share of cultural baggage.

Americans like to see stuff built to last. We are a nation of developers. It fits in with our mythos – God made things with eternity in mind. Judeo-Christianity and Socrates and his kin gave us our current picture of eternity. Our eternity is neat and our afterlife implies permanence. Other cultures put less importance on an end-goal to time.

Cultures with less Iinear notions of time put more importance on the moment than on an end result. The history of their art and culture has shown them go against the goals of permanence we see in western culture. The folk tales of the Japanese for instance center on doomed heroes. Genji, possibly the most famous of Japanese heroes, and his kin are always unfulfilled in their quests. The Tale of the Heike makes heroes out of the defeated side of a war. Sure, everyone loves an underdog but in Western stories there is always, ultimately, redemption. In the Japanese stories the only relief is to know that what is going on is not permanent. This is one of Buddha’s most crucial lessons – none of this is permanent. Not your defeat, nor your victory.

Interestingly our aesthetic sense, which supports the domination of images over time, propels our political being. We are a culture of domination: good over evil, man over nature, art over time. We have an inverse in those other cultures that show acceptance of the transient through their art and philosophy.

The Gnostics refused to proselytize, even as their numbers diminished into extinction, because it was not how they did things. There is a similar sad resignation associated with the art of cyclic cultures. Many native cultures used dances for art, communication and prayer. The Navajo, for example, drew intricate sand paintings as a sacred ritual not with the impossible goal of keeping them intact. There is a parallel between the transience of the act and of the transience of a doomed culture that is a little too neat to be ignored.

Sacred but fleeting art; the religious importance of dance and sand paintings links the Navajo and Tibetan Buddhists. Perhaps then this artistic preference arises from a more pantheistic worldview. After all, if the whole universe is sacred then the here and now should be the whole of divinity since it is our interface with the universe. The moment is sacred. This is how it is for those in theater, as it is for the Tibetan monks. Zen, like Stanislavsky, seeks only honest experience.

The Troupe
The monks who came to Purchase have scattered origins. Two had fled Tibet; two were from India; one was American. They traveled here by way of Atlanta’s Dretong Loseng Monastery (part of Emory University) one of the largest Tibetan institutions in the United States and the only school of its kind.

The sand painting is a ritual practice for the monks. They draw brightly colored sand from bowls with a long ladle. Then by scraping the ladle with another metal rod they are able to “paint” with the sand. The painting itself is a beautiful and extremely detailed mandala. The mandala is a sacred circle holding a circumscribed quadrilateral. It is a symbol of complexlty and wholeness. For Tibetan Buddhists creating the sand painting the mandala is a representation of the universe, lt is also a palace constructed for the Divine. Interesting to see these two roles overlap. This extravagant palace is an attempt to lure Divinity to help us with our problems. Through these means the sand painting acts as a healing ritual.

First the monks sketched out a plan in chalk on the table they were working with. Once the palace’s blueprint had been drawn out they set to the actual painting. A group of monks was required to fill the universe with enough color and shape. The general public was encouraged to come watch the monks work.

After all the man-hours that went into the mandala, the monks held a ceremony to disperse their work. They took the fine colored sand to a nearby creek and put it in the water so that the healing powers of the act could spread to parts beyond.

Ovation
Many a student took advantage of the opportunity to watch the sand painters at work. The Satori Club, which sponsored the event, also had the monks lead a few meditations while they were on campus.

The most profound impact that the sand painting had was that it showed both what a great thing beauty is and how temporary even the greatest things can be. The painting of the mandala shows us a profound cycle: the creation of the universe and then how it fades into a ripple.

It is an idea that goes against our cultural biases. But if there’s anything the modern age has shown us it’s that we can’t trust our cultural biases. We find ourselves these days less linear than ever before and even, dare I say it, leaning towards pantheism.

So this explains people taking Performance Art seriously the past few decades. But more importantly it explains how the dichotomy that our mentality has been built on may soon start to fade. And with a Jungian curioslty we now start to examine one another and find, to our surprise, more similarity than difference.

“Mandala means a circle, more especially a magic circle, and this form of symbol is not only to be found all through the East, but also among us; mandalas are amply represented in the Middle Ages. The specifically Christian ones come from the earlier Middle Ages. Most of them show Christ in the centre, with the four evangelists, or their symbols, at the cardinal points. This conception must be a very ancient one because Horus was represented with his four sons in the same way by the Egyptians… For the most part, the mandala form is that of a flower, cross, or wheel, with a distinct tendency toward four as the basis of the structure.”
- Carl Jung on the mandala as cross-cultural archetype
Commentary to the Secret of the Golden Flower

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This rejection letter from the Ebay Partner Network just bummed me out. It doesn’t actually tell me why I wasn’t let into the affiliate program, it just lists a whole bunch of reasons why I may not have been up to snuff.

Thank you for applying to the eBay Partner Network. We regret to inform you that we cannot accept your application at this time.

Like many other affiliate programs, eBay Partner Network has a thorough application vetting process to ensure a good fit between a potential affiliate and the goals of the network. There are a number of reasons why your eBay Partner Network application may have been declined. Some of these include:

* You are not in compliance with the eBay Partner Network Agreement and/or Code of Conduct.
* The stated website that you plan to promote us from is non-functioning or inaccessible
* The quality of your stated website is not in line with our network standards
* The information you submitted in your application (contact information and your description of how you plan to promote eBay Partner Network) is incomplete or unclear
* Your business model or stated website does not appear to be one that would attract eBay buyers (the eBay Partner Network does not currently provide commissions for bringing eBay sellers or listings to the site)
* Your business model involves re-directing traffic directly to eBay from display ad networks or paid search (no longer allowed per our Terms and Conditions)
* Your business model involves a sub-affiliate model (no longer allowed per our Terms and Conditions)

If you feel that your application deserves a re-review, please forward any additional information that you would like us to consider to our Customer Support Team. It is not necessary to submit an additional application with a different email address. Requests that contain no new information about your promotional methods will not be reconsidered.

Thank you,

The eBay Partner Network Team

Dang, I just wanted to potentially make a few coins for linking you guys to the complete box set of the Wire for $69. I didn’t ask for this kind of abuse.

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It’s been nearly two weeks since I started offering people a free Wordpress blog setup. One thing I’ve discovered during that time is a lot of people interested in the offer are held up by the theme selection process.

This shouldn’t have come as a surprise because in that offer I refer people to the Wordpress theme repository to make their selection. The problem is the theme repository hosts over a thousand themes, which makes for a heaping portion of analysis paralysis.

Theme demo pages also don’t give us a true sense of how the themes will appear with real content, nor do they demonstrate the flexibility made possible through blog customizations. I prefer to look at which themes are actually being put to field use and how they perform there.

One of the strengths of Wordpress is that you can always easily change themes in the future but still it’s good to start off on the right foot so it’s understandable why people approach the decision with some trepidation. To help you along with your theme selection, here’s a list of Wordpress themes in use at hip-hop blogs that either showed up in my own RSS reader or at lists recently compiled by XXL and Vibe.

These are Wordpress themes only so you won’t find any Blogger or Typepad sites here. Cases where the layout was custom created for the site without being derived from a public theme as a starting point (or at least without one I can identify) will also be left out.

Maybe you can hire Matt Brett who designed Concrete Loop or Paola Mendoza who is behind several iterations of the Smoking Section among a number of other urban sites. But for most of us, available Wordpress themes give a good low-cost or no-cost solution out of the box and can easily be tweaked to look less cookie cutter.

By the way there are some Matt Brett created themes available at ThemeForest. They cost about $30 each which I’m assuming is less than what Angel paid.

And now on with the show. Twenty-two Wordpress Themes put to good use by Hip-Hop Blogs.

1. Kubrick (the Wordpress default)
Blogs: Nah Right, Dallas Penn, The Meaning of Dope

Had to start this list with the default Wordpress theme because it is the most commented on theme for a hip-hop blog. The two column theme with the Royal Blue round-cornered header has been associated with Nah Right from the start.

These days huge ads surround the Nah Right content container on three fronts, but we can look at Rock the Dub (a Blogspot blog using Kubrick) to see this theme in its more austere form.

Dallas Penn has been rocking Kubrick with a photo of Paul Wall’s grill for the header but he has plans to move to the premium theme Thesis in the near future.

The Meaning of Dope, the Toronto-based scavengers of lost hip-hop video treasure flip the Kubrick theme nicely showing how much a header and dark background can change the overall effect.

2. Chaotic Soul
Blog: 2 Dope Boyz
Demo Chaotic Soul
Download Chaotic Soul

I don’t think they made any significant changes to the original theme.

3. Firewall
Blog: 57th Ave
Firewall Download and Demo

I never heard of 57th Ave before but apparently they’re one of the top 100 blogs according to XXL. I’m not liking this theme all too much but this is a good example of how just changing the header and background goes a long way to personalizing a theme for minimal effort.

4. Contempt
Blog: illRoots
Contempt Theme Download

Oh no, another blog that’s been swallowed like Jonah into the belly of the Cop Out banner ad whale.

Contempt is notable because it is clearly derivative of Kubrick. That tends to happen with popular blog templates… They spawn imitators.

Do not confuse this theme with Godard’s Contempt. One of my favorite films.

5. Grid Focus
Blog: Cocaine Blunts
Grid Focus Theme Demo

I’ve long been a fan of this theme by Derek Punsalan, particularly how it had been tricked out by blogging/freelancing expert-at-large Skelliewag. She’s since moved on to other themes though.

Like Kubrick, Grid Focus has been influential and spawned some derivative themes along the way. I know I’ve seen several at Press75. I’m not sure if the Cocaine Blunts customization started from Grid Focus or from one of the derivative themes but either way the Grid Focus DNA is there. See the fonts, the space for a 3rd column and especially the styling of the dividers between the posts.

I wonder if Skellie herself was an influence for noz because I remember her using short wide graphical banners in the sidebar for navigation as well. For comparison sake, a site sticking more closely to the original Grid Focus plan is Technoccult.

6. Atahualpa
Blog: Daily Math
Atahualpa Theme Page

I’d never heard of this theme before Combat Jack launched his site but I do see it was recently featured at the Free Wordpress Theme Repository so maybe it’s been gaining some market-share.

7. Magazeen
Blogs: GrandGood, RapGaydar
Magazeen Theme Page

This sexy-looking theme was put out by Smashing Magazine last year and adopted by underground news source Grand Good shortly thereafter.

Magazeen works easily and always had a knack for auto-cropping my thumbnails at Rap Gaydar in the gayest way possible… Which I appreciated.

8. Connections
Blog: Miss Info
Connections theme by Vanillamist

It’s Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan’s blogosphere. We’re just posting in it.

Miss Info’s site puts a new header image on the classic wordpress theme Connections.

Here’s a whole archive of free themes created by Sadish – one of the two people behind Connections. One of the best ways to find themes is to see what else the designer of a theme you like has created.

Sadish also created the MistyLook theme which looks like a sibling theme to Connections and is used at Stuff White People Like.

9. Blue Pigment 1.0
Blog: Shabooty
Blue Pigment 1.0 Theme Demo

Key changes by Shabooty. “Out of the blue and into the black” as Neil Young sang. Getting rid of the diagonal lines also helps. The background of the blog posts still stands out with the use of a tiling wood pattern.

10. Suffusion
Blog: Ear Fuzz
Suffusion Theme Page

I’ve never used Suffusion but the write-up sounds interesting. It comes with a number of different color schemes and template options

The collage of carefully chosen album covers and the yellow background with indigo links gives Ear Fuzz a unique look, setting it apart from other blogs.

11. Benevolence
Blog: UnKut, Floodwatch Music
Benevolence 2.0 Demo
Download Benevolence or check other themes by Thought Mechanics

This is another classic Wordpress theme. The original Benevolence theme goes back at least five years and can be seen in use on Floodwatch while Unkut uses the (slightly?) newer 2.0 version. I have no idea what the difference is between the two versions.

Unkut’s trademark razor blade photo provides some illicit branding to go along with the site name.

When I visit Unkut on my Blackberry I have to click next through about 9 pages of sidebar photos to get to the text of a post. This is a definite indication of an older theme because the new style is to have the content show up first in your html (better for search engines and blackberries) and use css floating to handle where the sidebar appears. (update: looks like Robbie added a mobile version in the past few months eliminating this problem. thorough!)

Check out the other themes from Thought Mechanics as well. Bionic Jive is a very interesting one if you want something less ubiquitous than Benevolence.

12. Redoable Lite
Blog: So Many Shrimp
Redoable Theme Page (not Lite)

So Many Shrimp is hosted on Wordpress.com and it looks to me like Redoable Lite might only be available there.

But you can download the full version of Redoable and it wouldn’t be hard to clear out or hide the third column.

13. Clean Home
Blog: Beer and Rap
Clean Home Theme Page (not Lite)

Theme name is accurate.

14. Vigilance
Blog: Throat Chop University
Vigilance Theme

This isn’t too far from Clean Home as implemented at TCU.

You can see the same theme in black and green at the Math for Primates podcast site.

15. Abstractia
Blog: Hip-Hop Classroom
Abstractia Theme write-up (download and demo seem broken at the moment)

This is a blog I set up for a Brooklyn based company called Flocabulary. They came to me with the green chalkboard logo for the header and I started looking for a theme to match. I figured the khaki/cream background and maroon headlines would suit the green nicely. I also really like the way this theme gives the date/calendar icons their own lane in a gutter to the left of each post.

The designer Rob Goodlatte had a number of similarly sharp-looking free themes at his site but it looks like they’re unavailable now after a recent site redesign. Hopefully they will reappear in the future.

16. Daily Edition (premium theme)
Blog: The Rap Up
Daily Edition

This is a premium magazine theme by WooThemes. Pricing available at the website.

I try to subsist mostly off free themes but paying for a premium theme can be worth it and later in this list we’ll find a few cases where I’ve done it. For not too much money you’re buying time-savings with an instant slick appearance like this theme over at the Rap Up.

Also premium themes are better supported than free ones and more likely to have upgrades and improvements made over time.

17. Modicus
Blog: Trees For Breakfast
Upstart Blogger Themes Download Page

Upstart Blogger has created a number of great original Wordpress themes. You can download many of them at the link above and some other ones here.

Trees for Breakfast makes the theme their own by changing the colors and laying the page over a fixed and leafy background image.

18. Qwilm! 0.3
Blog: Staple Crops
(Can’t find theme download anywhere???)

It seems like the Qwilm theme is no longer available. If that’s incorrect, please point us to it.

I think this theme is a great match for the smart and forward-looking Staple Crops and I dig the use of the background image. The Flash banner could make for a cool ad of some sort but I don’t support using it for a site logo. Still, overall this is a fresh use of an obscure Wordpress theme.

19. Cutline
Blogs: Fat Lace, Ich Luge Bullets, Wesley Verhoeve, Grow On Flow On
Cutline Theme for Wordpress

Cutline is a free two or three column theme originally created by Chris Pearson, now supported by Splashpress Media. It exemplifies Pearson’s usual strengths with impressive typography, a balanced layout and clean HTML code.

Mostly standard modifications here involving supplying a header unique to the site aside from Wesley’s site which tweaks the Cutline theme a great deal. The sidebar background is changed to gray and the hard lines are removed. This softens and sophisticates the overall look of the site and along with the headline styling contributes to making the blog posts pop.

Grow On Flow On is a blog I just set up for a new blogger who signed up via the Free Blog Offer. They supplied the logo to be used for the header which was easily integrated with Cutline.

20. Thesis (premium theme)
Blogs: Crate Kings, Oh Word, Internets Celebrities, Kevin Nottingham, Moe Arora, Very Smart Brothas
Thesis at DIYThemes

Thesis is a premium theme created and regularly improved by Chris Pearson. I shelled out for it because elegant coding is fun to work with and good for search engine mojo. Thesis looks good out of the box, is configurable with no coding through a powerful admin interface and amazingly flexible via “hooks” if you’re willing to get under the hood.

It’s telling that Semantik who works in search engine marketing moved Crate Kings to the Thesis theme for his site which funnels traffic from his production tips and content to his store.

You know this guy? I’ve been extremely pleased with Wordpress and Thesis since relaunching Oh Word last year.

I spent about a week tweaking the IC site during its Thesis redesign. I tried to incorporate the Golden Ratio into the design as well as smart decisions about the sidebar usage and site tabs. The tabs up top are mostly pages but IC Videos is a category archive making it easier to manage. Page also incorporates links to social network outlets and the Facebook fan page widget.

A bit cluttered and hard to read for my liking.

The opposite of cluttered. Mogul in the Making Moe removed the navigation bar to keep things simple and allow for more space above the fold. Nav options “Join my Network” “Learn About the Biz” “About Me” “Get @ Me” end up in the sidebar instead.

Web pro Liz Burr recently moved Very Smart Brothas to Thesis, adopting a basic but sharp look with a narrower 2nd column and a blue background.

21. TV Elements (Premium)
Blog: The Week In Rap
TV Elements Page

A premium theme designed to be used for video content.

Setting up The Week In Rap blog was another small job done for Flocabulary. Tweaks included incorporating the logo, and hacking at the code so that user comments appeared for the latest video on the homepage.

22. Quommunication Video (Premium)
Blog: Oh Word TV
Quommunication Video

Another premium theme for video content.

For this video curation blog I integrated Oh Word’s Thesis html and css so it would look like part of Oh Word. Also changed the player functionality so that the links to videos weren’t Ajax calls because those weren’t changing the url and therefore would never be seen by a search engine.

Bonus Beats

Just for an added bonus let’s close out with six excellent non-hip-hop sites and the Wordpress themes that power them.

1. Hipster Runoff
Theme: 5 Years (plus significant customization)

2. Murketing
Theme: Cogno Blue

3. Generation Bubble
Theme: Garland

4. No Caption Needed
Theme: Barracus

5. Razzball
Theme: Prosumer

6. Racialicious
Theme: blog.txt

Now go pick a theme already. That free blog setup is waiting for you.

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Unkut celebrates six years of blogging with the Counterstrike – The Unkut Dot Com Mixtape, hosted by DJ Doo Wop and featuring a collection of underground hardcore head-nod New York rap from the likes of Capone, Kool G Rap, Milano, Killa Sha, Mayhem Lauren and Craig G. This gives the kind of vibe you might not know still existed unless you’re already an Unkut reader.

I played it twice last night and it’s a great listen. Then I asked Robbie when it was coming out and he said 10 am today “prime time”. That shows you his dedication to New York hip-hop – he’s the only guy in Australia on Eastern Standard Time.

Go download it now.

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