Braille Update

Hip-hop artist Braille Brizzy sends out the following update to his peeps:

One time for your mind –
Hello party people – this is Braille (Brizzy in the hizzy).  It is literally 3 weeks (21 days) until my album “The IV Edition” drops!!!  Time is flying so fast.  I just got back from Austin, TX for SXSW. Ohmega and I rocked 5 shows in 3 days including the undergroundhiphop.com party, the Ubiquity Records party and much more.  We shared stages with everyone from The Cool Kids, to LMNO and Kev Brown – and also watched performances from Talib Kweli, N.E.R.D., CunninLynguists and Time Machine.  I want to give a shout to Mike Mayer (my manager), Ethic, illmaculate, Moby, Jessica and the Spectre Radio family, Alexandra at MSOpr, Now On, Buff1, 14KT, Mike Merriman, Beat Rabbi, Paradox (thanks for letting us crash) and the myriad of other people that we ran into during the week.

Now that I’m back home, I’m focused on everything that needs to be finished before I start touring.  It’s a bit overwhelming because we are trying to sell our house, and between that I’m doing interviews, booking shows and trying to keep up with my emails.  We are getting a great response from radio on “The IV” single and we even got a quote from DJ Revolution talking about how I can rap on one leg.  Haha.  This week I also did a phone interview with a magazine that I used to subscribe to when I was a kid.  Pages from this magazine literally covered my bedroom wall. 

Thanks to everyone who has been helping promote the new album.  My partners and I are investing as much as we can to properly promote this record, but our budget is still very small compared to most major label releases.  The grass roots efforts that everyone is helping with are some of the most valuable methods we have for spreading the word.  We are still running our contest on Myspace.  Rather then spending $500 on a magazine add, we are giving it away to one lucky winner who helps us promote the record simply by changing their profile picture to our animated banner.  If you have any questions about how you can get involved with the contest, don’t hesitate to hit me up.  Time is running down and a winner will be crowned shortly after my record drops on April 15th. 

In other exciting news, this last Saturday (day before Easter) I got a box in the mail with 10 copies of my album from Japan.  This was my first time getting to see the final artwork printed, plus since these were imports they had a few extra fold outs with Japanese text.  At www.myspace.com/braillebrizzy  you can view pictures of the insert (under the “IV” photo album), as well as pictures of my daughter in her Easter dress (under “me and my girls” photo album).  Gabriella approves of the record, haha – when I played the official copy she stood in front of the stereo and danced for ten songs strait.  Digital downloads are cool, but I think owning the actual CD is much more personal.  The CD comes with a 12 page book and I share thoughts and notes about the album in there.  If you pre-order the CD from any of my affiliate stores then you’ll get a free sticker and autographed insert as a bonus.  If your not sure which store to order from, just shoot me an email and I’ll send you back a list of options. 

As my family gets ready for the road, we intend to start BLOGGING together.  We set up www.braillefamily.blogspot.com so that we can share stories and pictures from our adventures on the road.  For those who don’t know – my wife and my daughter will be joining me on tour for 2 and a half months strait.  We are hoping to get a laptop in the next couple weeks before we leave so that it’s easier for us to keep our blogs updated.

There are so many other things I’d like to share.  Once I get a laptop, I am going to start doing video updates – cause I know it’s hard for some of you to read all this text.  Haha.  I also added a new song to myspace as a free download.  It’s called “Playing My Role” and K-Murdock of Panacea did the beat.  This song is only available on the Japan version of the album – so I’m offering the download as a treat – but yeah – this song is a Japan exclusive on CD!!  Things are also going great with Hiphop IS Music (my record label).  I pretty much put a hold on my solo career for the last two years in order to build up the label, so now it's time for me to focus a little bit on promoting "The IV" but you can be assured that every opportunity I gain from this new record is going to be shared with my HHIM comrades.  I hope to get new exposure for our back catalog because we've already dropped a lot of great records that still need more shine.  We also have Sojourn's new album coming this year, as well as Heavy Rotation part 2.  WORD UP

Thanks for taking time to read.  MUCH LOVE – peace and GOD bless

Thank you, from Braille and the Hiphop Is Music team. 
www.braillehiphop.com | www.hiphopismusic.com