by whizhouse August 26, 2010

With more than a decade’s worth of experience, photographer @JonathanMannion has captured some of the most iconic images in hip-hop and has acquired a celebrated career to show for it.

In 1996, a kid named Jonathan Mannion popped onto the hip-hop photography scene with a shot featured on the…

Worth sharing and hopefully very inspirational for all artists, photographers and dream chasers. Click over to Alexander Richter’s blog to read the a part of the interview with Jonathan Mannion and YRB, or head over to YRB for the full deal, written by Chad Ghiron.

RELATED: Johnathan Mannion X RESPECT Magazine Self Portrait Series



by whizhouse August 26, 2010

Grand Taxonomy of RAP NAMES poster
See that little guy on the left? For $20 its mine, and can be yours as well with a quick visit to popchartlab.com. Hate rap music but love beer? Looks like they have that covered as well.
In all seriousness this is some great work and will be an excellent addition to the other numerous pieces of art that I’ve purchased in the last four years and have still not hung. Time to get on that.
For now I want to invite PopChart to collab on something in the future. We’ll be reaching out soon.

Grand Taxonomy of RAP NAMES poster

See that little guy on the left? For $20 its mine, and can be yours as well with a quick visit to popchartlab.com. Hate rap music but love beer? Looks like they have that covered as well.

In all seriousness this is some great work and will be an excellent addition to the other numerous pieces of art that I’ve purchased in the last four years and have still not hung. Time to get on that.

For now I want to invite PopChart to collab on something in the future. We’ll be reaching out soon.



by whizhouse August 19, 2010

Fan video: What these b!tches want!

You gotta love this. A brother to a KeapHope fan (thanks Laura!) purchased one our classic DMX t-shirts and it inspired this little performance at what only looks like a mess of Fraternity party that we are sorry we couldn’t attend. (We love drinking other people’s beer.) Check it out above, and below, our take on the exact same thing. If you still want one of these t-shirts we have about 6 left in Large. Drop us a line.



(500) Days of Weezy

by whizhouse August 3, 2010

Here is a little something different for you Mashup lovin’ hypem searchin’ music fiends out there. Presented by MySickUncle, the, (500) Days of Weezy, mashes up some of Wayne’s more well known commercial hits with the soundtrack to the romance flick, (500) Days of Summer. A fun mix that comes with the appropriate apology and explanation from the creator himself: “This is not a mash up album, this is an album about Wayne. Apologies to Morrisey and Simon & Garfunkel for fucking with your songs.”

It’s been “liked” 10k times on FB, go download it before its gone.




by whizhouse August 3, 2010

defaced:

“STOP! collaborate & listen,” Submitted by ahuntly.
(reader submitted photo - send your defacement pics here)

A classic defacement I hope to see more and more of. As KeapHope grows and evolves I often feel that we’re taking on too much and can occasionally fall away from the aspects that make working with this group so much fun. It’s all about the collaboration, but its also important to make sure all voices are heard. To do that, sometimes you just gotta take a moment to stop and re-evaluate.
You may notice an occasional slow down of content on the site from time to to time. Sure it could just be us partying too hard at with Thrillist in the Hamptons, but odds are we’re working on the next big thing. Stay tuned as we close out the summer with a big upcoming party August 14th (Save the date!) and hopefully our second t-shirt to follow the success of the DMX tee, hold your head Earl.

defaced:

“STOP! collaborate & listen,” Submitted by ahuntly.

(reader submitted photo - send your defacement pics here)

A classic defacement I hope to see more and more of. As KeapHope grows and evolves I often feel that we’re taking on too much and can occasionally fall away from the aspects that make working with this group so much fun. It’s all about the collaboration, but its also important to make sure all voices are heard. To do that, sometimes you just gotta take a moment to stop and re-evaluate.

You may notice an occasional slow down of content on the site from time to to time. Sure it could just be us partying too hard at with Thrillist in the Hamptons, but odds are we’re working on the next big thing. Stay tuned as we close out the summer with a big upcoming party August 14th (Save the date!) and hopefully our second t-shirt to follow the success of the DMX tee, hold your head Earl.



Thrillist Hamptons bash 2010

by whizhouse August 2, 2010


by whizhouse July 20, 2010

ARTLOG : Lower East Side Art Crawl is THURSDAY
Don’t sleep on this. Over 20 galleries, art, open bars, after parties (plural!) and one of the best nights you can have in NY. What will typically run you $20 bucks for all of this awesomeness can be your for the low-low price of $12. How you ask? KeapHope has you covered. Be sure to use the promo code “friends” when registering and…what are you still doing here? Go sign up for the Art Crawl now!

ARTLOG : Lower East Side Art Crawl is THURSDAY

Don’t sleep on this. Over 20 galleries, art, open bars, after parties (plural!) and one of the best nights you can have in NY. What will typically run you $20 bucks for all of this awesomeness can be your for the low-low price of $12. How you ask? KeapHope has you covered. Be sure to use the promo code “friends” when registering and…what are you still doing here? Go sign up for the Art Crawl now!



Covered Conversation: Curren$y - Pilot Talk

by whizhouse July 13, 2010

KEAPHOPE INTRO
It’s not a secret I’m a fan of cover art. From working on my own adaptations for singles to KeapHope’s recent project with Tanya Morgan for, The Sandwich Shop EP, my interest in cover art goes back to a time when the image, color and concept that surrounded a packaged piece of music was as much a part of the purchase process as hitting play for that first time. I remember buying, The Life and Times of S. Carter Vol 3, with the classic Jay-z intro and his statement “If you’re like me you’re reading the credits right now,” well that is who I was. I loved opening a CD. Trying not to crack the jewel case when I would pop off the cover tray (this made getting that pesky top sticker off a lot easier) to the smell of the liner note insert. I may have have grown up a bit late for the Vinyl revolution but trust that CD purchases were a regular occurrence. Every Tuesday it was off to the local shop to pick up something, anything, and much of those early purchases were stemmed from what looked good. It wasn’t as easy to preview tracks from an album or check a leak, we were making decisions based on what spoke to us from the shelf. Often the familiarity of a project or its features could spark dropping a cool $15 on a new CD, but I loved looking at those covers. I still keep a few hundred CD’s around my apartment in a big ass binder, and all those CD have the liner notes sitting in their protective sleeves. I hated those cardboard cases that wouldn’t have anything inside to throw up in the binder.

It’s funny how times have changed. As music has gone to a mostly digital world we’ve lost a lot of the importance of cover art and overall branding that used to go into making a project stand out. We’ve seen some recent examples of good work here and there, and its those exceptions that inspired this conversation to start. While distracting myself on twitter from the growing mountain of work for the day job I checked the homie Richie Cruz’s twitter update talking about a release with something special, Curren$y’s upcoming, Pilot Talk. Richie was praising the originality of the artwork, and reading his statement, I found myself nodding in agreement and immediately emailed Richie to talk about getting this conversation going. After a quick lunch, we found ourselves on the same page with music art. We will be sharing these musing both here on KeapHope and on Richie’s personal blog, Suits Is Watching.

Over the coming weeks Richie and I will take some time to present one upcoming project a week and dig into the details that round out these releases creatively, beyond the music, to make them standout among the seemingly thousands of free downloads, mixtape, torrent searches and classic releases that fill our itunes daily. We begin with the project that launched the discussion, Curren$y’s, Pilot Talk.

After the jump, intro thoughts from Suits Is Watching and our conversation on Pilot Talk

Read More


by karlhungus June 14, 2010

This is a little piece done in collaboration with Crest Hardware for their 2010 Art Festival, http://cresthardwareartshow.com/.  Enjoy a journey through Greenpoint-Williamsburg to the actual hardware store, where the festival takes place this weekend.  Last years was a lot of fun, and you can expect the same from this years.  There will be tons of great beer and food provided by some local favorites.  As well as some live performances and of course killer art pieces and installations.  So stop by the fest and tell them the ladder sent you.



by whizhouse June 2, 2010

freshmensalley:

Curren$y - Pilot Talk (Artwork)
Jets fool… Illustration by David Barnett.
In stores this summer via Roc-A-Fella/Def  Jam. First single “King Kong” out now on iTunes.

Excited to check this out. The story that has slowly unfolded with Dame taking back the Roc-a-fella name and brining on Curren$y as the first artists has been an intriguing one. Dame seems to be having a lot of fun with his new collaborations at DD172 and having Ski Beatz, one of the original architects of, Reasonable Doubt, contributing so much to Curren$y’s growth adds a lot of anticipation to this project.To keep up with all things DD172, check out their new blog over here.
Posting this for the love of cover art, and if you haven’t seen it yet, the art for Kanye’s returning single “Power” below:

freshmensalley:

Curren$y - Pilot Talk (Artwork)

Jets fool… Illustration by David Barnett.

In stores this summer via Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam. First single “King Kong” out now on iTunes.

Excited to check this out. The story that has slowly unfolded with Dame taking back the Roc-a-fella name and brining on Curren$y as the first artists has been an intriguing one. Dame seems to be having a lot of fun with his new collaborations at DD172 and having Ski Beatz, one of the original architects of, Reasonable Doubt, contributing so much to Curren$y’s growth adds a lot of anticipation to this project.

To keep up with all things DD172, check out their new blog over here.

Posting this for the love of cover art, and if you haven’t seen it yet, the art for Kanye’s returning single “Power” below:




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