January 3, 2004Hello!Once again, another year has come to pass. This year Christmas chocolates were exchanged for cutlery, dishes, chairs, etc. for my apartment. Nonetheless, a box of chocolates or two still landed in my clutches! The holiday season has been a great one for me - lots of great home-cooked food, and plenty of opportunities to meet up with old high school classmates. So now that the New Year is upon us, I feel it's my duty to again give you a nice little summary of my year. Thank you to all of you who've my year so much fun! 2003 - My year in Review. On February 14th, I headed down to Halifax for the 2003 East Coast Music Awards with my girlfriend at the time, Samantha Robichaud and my performing partner, Rory Borealis aka Ben Conoley. It was a grueling 9-hour drive to Halifax in some crazy blowing snow - at one point I thought for sure I was about to hit a wall of snow just outside of Amherst, but it turned out to be just blowing snow. The weekend turned out to be an amazing time - one of the best in recent memory. I (PIMP-T) was nominated for an award in the Urban category for my album 'Power Is Mindful Peace', but the better man, Buck 65, ended up winning the award. Regardless, I still received a great deal of press coverage from media including CBC TV, The Daily Gleaner, The Coast and The Brunswickan. On Sat. March 1st, MuchMusic showed up at the Deleted Scene compilation CD release show at which I was playing. They recorded my live performance and did an interview with me. It aired nationally on MuchMusic's 'Going Coastal' on Sunday, March 30th. On March 5th, I performed at the Canada Winter Games in Bathurst, NB with another local hip-hop group, the Illogic Crew. On May 2nd, I embarked on my first mini-tour with Halifax hip-hop groups The Sound & The Fury, J-Bru and Spesh K. We performed to small but enthusiastic crowds in Sydney (Cape Breton), Halifax and Moncton. On May 27th, I was invited to Montreal to perform live on MuchMusic's French sister station, MusiquePlus. It was an amazing experience performing in front of a live audience of 250 people and rumoured to be 450,000 viewers mainly in Quebec and France. The other performers on the hour-long end-of-season special were early 80's Paris, France, female singing sensation, Mino; early nineties rocker, Denis Martel; and Blink 182 French spinoff, Les Francoboys. Montreal was a great city! It was my first taste of a big city and I loved the cheap pizza, bagels, fresh fruit, etc! You can watch the video of my performance here: www.pimptea.com/audio.html The downside of the trip to Montreal was that the transmission on my 92 Ford Escort Wagon started to have some troubles on the way back. My Dad & I weren't able to get it fixed, so a 97 Chevy Lumina became my new car. It's a great car, but I miss my station wagon. In mid-June I finally finished my 2nd music video for my song 'Petty Crime'. We started shooting the video in November of 2000, but hard drive crashes and the time-constraints of co-producers Iain MacDonald & Graham Fyffe, made the whole process one big pain in the butt. We finished it though, and it turned out pretty cool, especially since it includes a talking raccoon. You can watch it here: Video section On Canada Day, I got a chance to perform downtown at the center of all the festivities at Officer's Square in Fredericton, NB. Andy Cotter and Mary Jane Dance Crew made some great guest appearances at my performance. At the beginning of August, we at HipHopCanada.com received our second consecutive Urban X-Posure (UMAC) award for best hip-hop website in Canada. As one of the more senior writer for this website, it was nice to see all our hard work recognized and rewarded. Urban X-Posure awards are the most prestigious Hip-Hop Awards given in Canada. In mid-August I took a 5-day vacation and drove around the southern part of Nova Scotia visiting Springhill Mines (highlight of the trip), Grand Pre, Kejimkujik National Park, The Ovens, Lunenburg, Mahone Bay, Peggy's Cove, etc... It provided some beautiful scenery away from all the usual hustle and bustle. At the end of August, I moved for the sixth time in the last 4 years. After two years at the same place, the whole moving process turned out to be a long and annoying process. Nonetheless, the new apartment is cheaper, quieter and quite suits my liking. Hopefully I won't be moving again anytime soon. In September, the 'Freddy Rock Pile Compilation: Horseshoes and Handgrenades' was released. My legendary song 'Super Dude' was included on the compilation that was placed in 2800 Frosh packs at UNB and St. Thomas universities. The brainchild of the song was my brother, Colin. The month of October proved to be an amazing thrill-ride for myself. Little did I know that when my beloved Boston Red Sox lost game #1 of the baseball playoffs to the Athletics in extra innings on a bunt by Ramon Hernandez with two outs and the bases loaded at 3:30 am, that I would end up watching the Red Sox versus Yankees in game #7 of the League championships, while wondering how many people die of heart attacks during baseball playoff season. Of course, their manager decided to leave ace Pedro Martinez in the game too long and the Red Sox ended up blowing a 5-2 lead and losing. The Curse of the Bambino strikes again - but I swear its force is weakening On Saturday, Oct. 18th I performed at the Halifax Experimental Music Festival with my side project, Freaky Scene. Spearheaded by Rod Marquart of Halifax, he provides some great music described as "cyber electronic punk", while I do some acting, dancing and rapping and ShanMonster does some wicked belly/middle-eastern dancing. You can learn more about Freaky Scene here: www.pimptea.com/freaky In November, two of my songs - 'Tha PIMP-T Theme' & 'Petty Crime' charted in the top 10 nationally on NewMusicCanada.com . As well throughout the year, I participated in intramural sports including ultimate frisbee, volleyball, floor hockey and softball. As well, I've continued on as a staff writer for The Brunswickan and have joined the team writing for Soundcheck Magazine. The year saw me interview big Canadian hip-hop names like Buck 65, Prevail (of Swollen Members), Jorun and Classified. In total I did 14 interviews/articles and 54 album reviews. Music-wise, I'm hard at work on my next album. My brother has been putting his year of schooling at Ontario Institute of Audio Recording Technology to good use. He's experimenting with mixing my songs and has been doing an amazing job. The last 2 songs he turned out sounded amazing - better than anything I've ever released. I hope to release a single on vinyl in June/July with the album to follow in Aug/Sept. Patience is a virtue! Well, that's all for this year. I hope the New Year finds you all in good health. Take care, PIMP-T aka Pimp Tea aka P. Titty |