NEW Opposites - Sjonnie & Anita

Nice videoclip

Check 4 more Opposites here

The real is ova here….in The Netherlands

Last night I went to the “Volle Toeren” (Full Throttle) Tour of The Opposites, Dio & Flinke Namen (Big Names) in the venue Watt @ Rotterdam. Last week I was also present at the Paradiso Amsterdam edition, where the roof literally got blown away by the “Volle Toeren” performance.

Yesterday it became clear to me, where the Netherlands used to be a midget on the global hip hop map. Nowadays the Netherlands showcase some of the most revolutionising and original hip hop music in the whole wide world.

The Opposites - Geen Klasse, Geen Stijl (Produced by Reverse)

How did I came to this conclusion, well it’s easy it’s just adding up all the elements that are present and those that are missing in for instance America, Germany, France and the UK.

When Kool Herc started with his movement, in my opinion it started with Bob Dylans “Blowing in the wind” reaching the ear of Sam Cooke - but that’s another post, it was all about being original and innovative with next to nothing. From the basements and improvised clubs through out the NY city boroughs hip hop became bigger and bigger, with numerous icons & people responsible for the growth of this movement.

As we speak it seems that hip hop is at his highest point yet and it still shows room for more growth. But the scene, especially the US scene, seems to be feeding its people good and maybe a little bit to good. The hunger for more is absent - people are satisfied, the hunger for change and innovation to stand out seems to be replaced with “2001 sure shot formulas” in which artist most often use the same ways to brand and position themselves on the overcrowded market.

I mean you have 3892 triple six maffia’s, 16.890 Jay-z’s, 35.627 50 cent’s and were still waiting on the next line of Kanye West’s with a “Made in China” label in the neck.

So to get back on topic and speak about The Netherlands its pioneering hip hop scene.

The Cool Kids for instance, they are becoming big names and pioneers in the US scene – but the image and music they are portraying are overlapping what artist such as “de jeugd van tegenwoordig” (Todays Youth) from the Dutch scene were doing way before the Cool Kids as a group even existed.

It seems that the Netherlands are becoming global trendsetters on this part. This influence is already growing in the International Hip Hop world. For instance one of the better “music” productions from the G-Unit camp ever, Stunt 101, was produced by Jay Collin from The Netherlands only to be stolen by Denuan Porter. Nicolay made the critically acclaimed album Foreign exchange together with Justice League and is still working on upcoming projects. Akon’s right hand production man Giorgio Tuinfort co-produced allot of the latest Konvict records tracks.

In my opinion the mix off cultures and history of music in the Netherlands have made it to what it is. Most of the people that are creating the face of Hip Hop in The Netherlands all have roots that lay in other continents; South America, Africa, Asia, Eur-Asia. If you add up the fact that the Netherlands are #1 on the Global House & Dance scene you get a mix that produces the best and freshest hip hop I’ve seen and heard in a while.

Ill give you a few examples of Dutch artist, so you can look for yourselves and judge.

Examples

- The Opposites

- De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig

- C'mon & Kypski ft Pete Philly

- Dio

- Kempi

- Appa & Mr Sjaak

- Flinke Namen

Focusrite Liquid Mix Video Interview

here they are interviewing a friend of mine Koen Heldens

Here some quick info about Koen Heldens.

The Music Surgeon is a multi platinum mixing engineer who has worked with the stunning
likes of Beyonce, Britney Spears, Keri Hilson, Timbaland, Flo Rida, T-Pain, Lil' Wayne,
Juelz Santana, Fat Joe, Remy Martin, amongst many others.


For more info on Koen go to the Mirrormixing blogspot

Presidential branding

It takes companies time, effort and allot of money to create brand identity – and it can take even more time, effort and money to redesign it once it’s established. Presidential candidates operate on a much different schedule than the traditional companies or organizations. This is visible in the design management strategies concerning it’s branding. Allot of it has to be done in a short time span, therefore as Gorb states about design's central role in planning,

"design becomes the key element in the planning process of the business - the plan for the things the enterprise makes, sells, uses, or communicates with.”

But just as with products and services, after the strategy has been layed out and put into play. Once the possible voters have a collection of related images and ideas in their mind, it’s very difficult to change those perceptions.

A good example of this is, major oil companies have spent millions on marketing in the last few years. Trying to show there “green” way of doing business now and in the near future. But a 2006 study by Harris Interactive, showed that only 7% of the surveyed people believed the oil companies concern with global warming and the environment.

“Democrats saw Hillary Clinton as the best prepared, most experienced and most competent candidate for the presidency despite a lack of warmth and likability. Barack Obama had all the personal attributes Clinton lacks – but he also lacked her depth of experience. Despite efforts to address these brand weaknesses, each candidate’s success at changing these perceptions has thus far proven marginal.” Chernoff Newman

So changing a brands perception is difficult, still a brand needs to respond to change if they want to remain relevant on the market. When people became more aware about their health, fast food restaurants added salads and vitamin containing meals to there menu and further brand expressions.

For instance John McCain has a true American maverick, stable brand identity – but his brand is losing trust among Republican primary voters and the huge amount of “floating” voters. His brand value was damaged, for a large part because Obama’s campaign, linked it with Bush his brand promises and brand values. By doing so McCain was forced to distance himself and rebrand his campaign from more of the same into a innovative one. One thing he did was choosing the young conservative female Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Hereby trying to put himself as a innovative brand in opposite of the old non-trustable and outdated one.

Obama’s success proofs that with his design management organisation, in which change & innovation play a huge part, it is possible to build a massive brand in such a short timespan. Building it step by step and manipulating the momentum, changing from topdog to the underdog position.

The Democrats use of radical change in design management was the key,

“Most companies do not rely on radical innovations; they rely on incremental innovation, none more so than Japanese companies, which demonstrate so well the use of frequent redesign and modification to enhance performance and quality” Cooper, R. and Press, M. (1995)

By this they were directly answering to the needs of the US people, the need for change of old fashioned politics.

DIO - Rock & Roll (Vanaf november 2008 in de winkel! - Dutch)

Na wat snippets gehoord te hebben en laatst op stage in Paradiso DIO live gezien te hebben. Word deze man zijn debuut eentje om zeker te gaan checken. HQ music goede teksten- nice delivery en original shit.

Props naar Biggy 2 & Dio

Hier nog wat over het album:
Quote Dio's blog "Laten we om te beginnen het ff over gisteravond hebben; Wauuwww!!! “Op Volle Toeren” in de Paradiso. Het was echt heel erg hard, het was echt een toffe avond, en ik denk dat ik gister de langste crowdsurf heb geboekt.

Maar goed, backstage kreeg ik in één keer heel veel smsjes en van alle kanten te horen dat ik bij De Wereld Draait Door was, waarop ik antwoordde dat dat niet kon want ik was er nog nooit geweest, maar het bleek dus dat Giel Beelen himself in het programma het over mij had, en dat zeker niet op een slechte manier. Giel heeft een soort sampler van het album en gisterochtend verraste hij me al door te zeggen dat het het beste hiphop album is dat hij dit jaar heeft gehoord. Nou kon me dag eigenlijk niet beter (dacht ik), maar kijk ik vannacht ff de uitzending terug en zie ik dat Giel het album in zijn hand heeft en het wederom weer het album van het jaar noemt en ook nog ff een paar snippets draait, bij de Wereld Draait Door!!!!"

Check hier voor DWDD TV programma
http://www.diomusic.nl
http://www.theopposites.nl

Solva About us (peoplecounting system company that I work for)

A quick overview on what it is, that we exactly do.

http://www.solva.nl/

Drawing of Eckart Wintzen

It was quite a blow to me when I got the news about the passing of Mr. Eckart Wintzen. Not on of close relationship proportions, that would be an insult to the ones that loved and knew him. But it did do something to me…

It was @ the BID 2008 were I sneaked in to witness the cream of the crop (1500 euro's was little out of my reach) in international business discussing forum about different topics. They would switch from Wesley Clark talking about Dutch business mentality and wind energy to Louis van Gaal's vision on reaching targets & goals.

At one point this men, that stood out completely from all the others, took the stage and made his presence felt. I didn’t know the men talking at that point, but he had my attention.

Later on when we had the opportunity to mingle with each other, my courage sunk in to the bottom of my shoes. So I left it for what it was and thought: “Well we’ll meet again some place sometime”

It came all right but then in a different way. As the plane was making itself ready on Schiphol for boarding I went into the bookstore to look for some reading material. There my eyes catched a image of the men with the big grey eyebrows and infectious smile. Right before me lay the book on cell management principle, written by Eckart Wintzen. It didn’t take me long to buy it.

We hopped on the plane to Egypt and when we were back my hole body had a tan except for my head. There was a perfect square of paleness from were the book was when I red it under the Egyptian sun.

Being back for a week, I wanted to look how I could get in touch with him. But 7 days later I got the news off his passing.

It was a big loss for the Dutch business & more so for the tons of young people that still could learn allot from a person like he was.

The book is called: Eckart Wintzen notes

His website: http://www.extent.nl