Detroit has proven that roses can truly grow from concrete. The hardscrabble city has produced some of America’s top musicians. Berry Gordy created a movement around the world with his Motown sounds. Aretha Franklin can still to this day make people tear up when she sings. Countless others like Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Eminem and Alice Cooper have all called the Motor City home.
Illa J (real name John Derek Yancey), the revered underground MC who will be preforming tonight at The Wall, is a next-generation artist from Detroit.
Illa J has been surrounded by music his entire life. His father was a jazz bassist and his mother was an opera singer, and from an early age he found himself steeped in the family tradition.
Photo courtesy of Dssent
He watched videos every day, sang in the church choir, checked out his parents while they rehearsed for their a capella jazz group, helped his sister write songs and poetry and listened to his legendary brother make boom bap hip-hop beats.
That brother was J Dilla, one of the most respected producers in hip-hop history. J Dilla passed away too young in 2006, but left an amazing legacy of work with cream of the crop artists like The Pharcyde, Slum Village, Common, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and Erykah Badu, to name a few.
At the age of six, Illa J joined his family’s church choir. At eight, he started writing his own poetry and songs to give to local girls. At 13, Illa J’s dreams started to come true when he recorded his first song in the studio with J Dilla.
Illa J remembers the day vividly.
“He sent me a limo to the house, and booked me a studio session. I’ll never forget that day because that was the beginning,” he said.
Illa J added that he knew from an early age that music would play an important part in his life.
“I realized after my brother died how short life is, so why not spend this time doing what I love?”
Illa J sees himself as a singer and songwriter who also raps. With two solo albums, two EPs, three collaborate albums, and a handful of mixtapes already released, Illa J’s catalog is growing.
His show tonight will mix songs old and new, with a focus on his latest release Illa J LP. He also promises to hold it down for the memory of his big brother and throw some surprises into the mix.
“I look forward to performing in Taiwan and it’s gonna be an amazing night, especially since it’s my first time there.”
■ Illa-J will perform tonight with Gordon, David H, DJs Chilly T, Vicar and Buzztop hip-hop dance crew, from 8pm to 10:30pm at The Wall, 200, Roosevelt Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路四段200號B1). Admission is NT$1,000 at the door.
China has begun recruiting for a planetary defense force after risk assessments determined that an asteroid could conceivably hit Earth in 2032. Job ads posted online by China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) this week, sought young loyal graduates focused on aerospace engineering, international cooperation and asteroid detection. The recruitment drive comes amid increasing focus on an asteroid with a low — but growing — likelihood of hitting earth in seven years. The 2024 YR4 asteroid is at the top of the European and US space agencies’ risk lists, and last week analysts increased their probability
Feb. 17 to Feb. 23 “Japanese city is bombed,” screamed the banner in bold capital letters spanning the front page of the US daily New Castle News on Feb. 24, 1938. This was big news across the globe, as Japan had not been bombarded since Western forces attacked Shimonoseki in 1864. “Numerous Japanese citizens were killed and injured today when eight Chinese planes bombed Taihoku, capital of Formosa, and other nearby cities in the first Chinese air raid anywhere in the Japanese empire,” the subhead clarified. The target was the Matsuyama Airfield (today’s Songshan Airport in Taipei), which
On a misty evening in August 1990, two men hiking on the moors surrounding Calvine, a pretty hamlet in Perth and Kinross, claimed to have seen a giant diamond-shaped aircraft flying above them. It apparently had no clear means of propulsion and left no smoke plume; it was silent and static, as if frozen in time. Terrified, they hit the ground and scrambled for cover behind a tree. Then a Harrier fighter jet roared into view, circling the diamond as if sizing it up for a scuffle. One of the men snapped a series of photographs just before the bizarre
Power struggles are never pretty. Fortunately, Taiwan is a democracy so there is no blood in the streets, but there are volunteers collecting signatures to recall nearly half of the legislature. With the exceptions of the “September Strife” in 2013 and the Sunflower movement occupation of the Legislative Yuan and the aftermath in 2014, for 16 years the legislative and executive branches of government were relatively at peace because the ruling party also controlled the legislature. Now they are at war. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) holds the presidency and the Executive Yuan and the pan-blue coalition led by the