iLL-Shows
We finally got some pix from the Keys 2 the City show we did with Blu and U-N-I! From all different angles, son! Check them out after the jump.
(more…)
What???? I thought we were on break??? Perhaps not. Last night Dahlak caught a conference call with us to figure out our set for tonight’s show with Blu and UNI, and headed straight to rehearsal with the Hi-Lifes to prepare for tomorrow’s show in Sac. Yessirreee, the Natural Electricity tour was a hit and we’re bringing it all back home now! Tonight and tomorrow supposedly mark our last shows of the year, but you never know.
So it seems iLL-Lit has been upgraded to last-minute opening act status here in the Bay, and with the dope artists we’ve been getting stage time with, it’s not a bad place to be. Tomorrow we’ll be hitting the Independent in San Francisco to kick it off for LA’s Blu and U-N-I! The show is a part of Imeem’s Keys 2 the City, a series documenting musicians like The Roots and Raphael Saadiq and their interactions with their hometowns.
Cop your tix here. And check out Blu and U-N-I’s Keys 2 the City pieces after the jump!
(more…)
We’re hitting NYC on Wednesday! Besides the excitement of rocking our 2nd headline in the big city, we’re also juiced about seeing Theophilus London, the mad fresh dude from Brooklyn that’s rocking with us at Crash Mansion! For a taste, check out his video “Higher” featuring Jesse Boykins III! Also, make sure you do your research, and cop his free mixtape JAM!
It’s the last day to buy advance tickets to the show! Cop them here.
Although we’re extremely excited about Monday’s show at a certain chowder-loving town, there is a particular law enforcement organization that has disallowed us to name the specific location of our event because they’re convinced that, somehow, a hooligan thugfest riot will break out at our spoken word show. Besides prohibiting us from listing our own show on our own website, they have also insisted that attendees must present a college ID in order to get in (how’s that for an incentive to have studied for your SATs?). But wait, before you start digging through your attic for your freshman regcard, you can RSVP for the show here, and we’ll get you in as long as you promise to not start flipping over cars upon hearing Ruby’s “Pretty.”
So a few weeks ago, we had the absolute pleasure of being out, about, and radiant with the rest of Oakland at the Living Word Festival @ Defermery Park, and film maker Chris San Agustin captured the events beautifully! He did an incredible job. Check the fresh:
Yessssssssssss it’s finally here! 250 copies of the limited edition first print of Ruby’s brand-spankin’ debut book, Miss Universe! It’s got the new-book smell and everything!
To our trusty web-fans, we apologize…this first batch is going to be exclusively available on the Natural Electricity Tour, but it’s not like we’re really trying to lug 250 books on the flight which MEANS that we might toss some up for grabs online when we get back home late November. In the meantime, if you’re in the Bay make it out to our show at Milk tonight, where the world will get its first glimpse and opportunity to cop Miss Universe!
We’ve got 2 more to go…are you ready?? This one brings back something from baaaaack in the day…snippets of Dahlak’s performance of “Just Another Routine Check” on Def Poetry back in 2005!
Tonight and tomorrow, as a part of the Living Word Festival, Nico, along with iLL-homies Chinaka Hodge, Rafael Casal, and Daveed Diggs present War Peace: One Drop Rule, a hip-hop theater piece directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph and featuring Jason Samuels Smith and SF Jazz. This is the play that Nico somehow managed to write while on the road with iLL-Lit this past spring, and we’re so juiced to finally see it on stage!
War Peace: One Drop Rule
October 23 & 24, 7pm
Project Artaud Theater
450 Florida St., SF
Tix here
Your heads may now explode.
Friday, Oct 24 9:30p
@ Shattuck Down Low, Berkeley, CA
Click here to buy tix
It’s that time of the year again! Youth Speaks’ Living Word Festival is an annual megazord ultrazord of an event, bringing the hottest community arts events to the Bay each fall. Last year Dahlak ended his run with Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s international hit Scourge, and this year we’ll see the debut of Nico’s new play, War Peace (more on that soon).
But first, join us this Saturday at West Oakland as we do a quick thangy-thang with Mos Def, Los Rakas, and Urban Word NYC! It’s a whole day-long event and it’s FREE, in case you need an incentive to miss the end of them Saturday morning cartoons.
Click here for details about Saturday’s event and the rest of the Living Word Festival (including the FREE Goapele show in SF on the 17th!)
we posted this already but had accidentally put the 27th insted of the 17th (which is tomorrow, yo!). just in case you were planning on hightailing it to merced. yee!
It’s 10:37am and I’m officially late picking up Ruby and Nico. Gotta keep the tradition, right? We head over to Fresno, have a radio interview at 3pm, and doors open for our show at 6! Above is an off-focus picture of tonight’s set list, written on a box of Dahlak’s birthday muffins at rehearsals last night. See you there!
Oh, and East Coast people, we’ll post our tour dates on Monday. PROMISE.
We’re the support act. Come.
So unfortunately, scheduling our November east coast voyage hasn’t quite been the “have the venue booked 6 months in advance and sell out tickets in 14 minutes like Hannah Montana” story that we were hoping for, so apologies from iLL-Lit that we haven’t been able to announce the Natural Electricity Tour in a fat yummy orgy or dates. But we DO have a number of shows that we’re oh-so excited about, so we might as well start listing them!
And what better city to represent le coast of the East than NYC?? (sorry, Lynchburg). We’ll be hitting Crash Mansion 2 weeks into the tour, and rocking with Brooklyn’s finest, Theophilus London! Tickets go on sale soon (and by “soon,” we don’t mean “not soon,” like we did for the tour date announcements).