June 15th

June 15th is a big day for several reasons:

1. Most important, my baby sis (well, my only sister, but I call her Baby Sis) Morgan graduated middle school today.  It was crazy because I remember when she was 2 and I was graduating elementary school she walked to where all the graduates were sitting during the ceremony to be next to me.   It's just cute and I'm proud of her.

2.  Drake's album came out.  My mom was with me when I bought it and laughed at me because I was sooo excited when I picked it up because the first store didn't have it.  She was wondering why I bought it because I don't really own a CD player.  I explained to her even though I have the digital copy already on my computer, and I'm just going to convert the CD to digital for my iPod, that I had to buy it so I could be excited to have it in my hands and open it.  This of course brought upon an even stranger look but it was still fun to do and worth $9.99 at Target. Last CD I bought was Usher's "Here I Stand" on a whim about 2 years ago, and I actually love that album, maybe one of the reasons because I bought it.  It was so much fun peeling off the plastic, looking through the booklet, seeing the design of the cd.  Since everything is digital now, the artistry the album is often lost and it actually album artwork is a much as a statement about an album as the introduction is.  But that could be a whole  other post, which actually might be interesting to explore.
But it terms of the Drake album, since I've been looking forward to this forever and have avoided reviews of this album to make it pure, this is how I'm going to review it.  I will give it a first official listen and then write a review.  After reading links (but probably not reviews) about the album (there are a ton I want to read and post but that's not going to happen until later) and listen to the album for a couple of weeks I will review it again.  I'm doing this because I think the first listen is pretty raw and organic but after having an album as a companion for a couple of weeks you can really get a feel for the album.  So that's the plan.

3.  One year ago today, J.Cole dropped "The Warm Up."  He marked the occasion but actually writing in his blog http://dreamvillain.blogspot.com/ and leaking a freestyle "The Last Stretch" which I have yet to listen to.  It's been a crazy year for J. Cole and I feel like through all the craziness and the slow and steady rise to recognition, he has stayed humbled, focused, and maintained the quality of his work.  "The Warm Up" has been a companion of mine through some hard times this year which I appreciate.  It was also the first thing I wrote about in my blog, which you can read here.

So congrats to Morgan, Drake, and J. Cole.  Yep, they all can go in one sentence.

As for the video, here's a clip for Drake's MTV documentary "Better Than Good Enough"

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