ATLANTA — Atlanta police say the rapper Slim Dunkin was gunned down Friday evening in a city music studio as he prepared to record a video.Police Maj. Keith Meadows said the performer, whose real name is Mario Hamilton, was fatally shot in the chest after getting into an argument with another individual.
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Special thanks to 103GBF and Kat Mykals for allowing us to re post it here at www.Kickacts.com!
Here’s the original link:
http://103gbfrocks.com/kats-tat-photos-video/
You may have heard me talking about my plans for a new tattoo. Well, I did it! AND it’s AWESOME! I have had the idea for the tattoo for a while now, and had just been waiting for the right time, and the right artist. I finally found both. I want to start by saying a big, huge, gigantic THANK YOU to Shane Klos at Revolution Ink!!! He took the words that I wanted tattooed, “Crazy Beautiful Perfectly Flawed,” and turned them into a beautiful piece of art that I now get to carry with me everywhere I go. I could not have asked for a more perfect visual translation of the words! I also have to say “Thank you” to my friend Yvonne James for stopping in to grab some great photos of my experience!!
Tattoos are an amazing way to commemorate life. They tell a story. This is my tenth tattoo, and it means a lot to me. Tomorrow will mark the 33rd year of my life, and to celebrate, I knew that it was time to get MY tattoo. I have struggled for a lot of years with the need to achieve perfection – in every aspect of my life – Relationships: I have the tendency to give so much of myself that I forget to care for myself too. Career: I strive to always do my very best. I have to succeed. Motherhood: This is my biggest self-applied pressure. Dear God, please don’t let me fail. My daughter deserves better than I had. She has to know that I love her and she is always my top priority. “Anything less than perfect is failure. There is no in between.” This was how I lived my life for many years.
Crazy Beautiful: In February, I met Mike. Well sort of… We had been friends on Myspace and Facebook for about 5 years. He had made several attempts to get me to hang out. “We should get together for a beer sometime.” And I kept making excuses. Until January… That’s when I agreed to finally meet Mike, and go out for a drink. We had our first “date” (it wasn’t supposed to be a date), the second week of February. He and have I have been pretty much inseparable since. Mike is amazing! He makes me laugh uncontrollably, and for once in my life I feel like I can really just be myself. Mike tells me that he thinks I’m beautiful. I always answer by telling him that I think he’s crazy! It’s not that I don’t believe that Mike feels that way, it’s just that I’ve never seen myself that way. Not really… But you know, maybe he’s right. In my own way, I guess I am beautiful, and I am definitely a little crazy!
Perfectly Flawed: My personal life has never been easy. Even as a teenager I struggled. I struggled at home. I struggled socially (I was awkward. I didn’t fit in. And YES I was bullied). Fast forward to “Grown-up Kat”- In the last 3 years, I have gone through a great deal of changes and a lot of ups and downs. Those changes, and those ups & downs have made that philosophy of “Anything less than perfection is failure” really hard to maintain. In fact those things have actually made that philosophy IMPOSSIBLE! What I have learned is that perfection does not exist. In fact I have learned that no matter how hard I try, I will never be perfect. The closest I will ever come to perfection is being “Perfectly Flawed.” I am going to make mistakes. I am going to fail. And ultimately, that is OKAY. Life will continue on, and even though it won’t be perfect, I will survive it. I will become stronger.
So, yeah. That’s the story. Although it’s not been an easy 33 years, I survived. I get to hold my head up with the knowledge that “Crazy Beautiful Perfectly Flawed” is exactly what I am, and it’s PERFECT!
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1. Welcome to Kick Acts. Tell us a little about yourself and your band and were you can be found at on the web.
Our first record label album, “Simple Good” was released in 2010 and we started gigging and touring to support it. We play our own style of music that’s really different than what’s been done before. Because it couldn’t be described like anything else, people just started calling it “Free Expression” music. “Simple Good” got nominated for 3 Los Angeles Music Awards and next thing we knew we were invited to 2 showcases during SXSW. As we kept playing and kept putting our all into our songs and performances, we started getting invited to play for bigger and bigger clubs and open for bigger and bigger acts. “Free Expression” music is starting to take off in the Bay Area right now so there’s a real kinetic energy around fREEX right now.
2. Who are your musical heroes, influences & why?
Joe Strummer, Bob Marley, Dead Kennedys, Sly & The Family Stone, Prince, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. All of these acts are innovators of music. They’re all driven by passion. They aren’t people who are influenced by trends.
3. Do you have any advice for someone just getting started in playing music? Any pitfalls they should avoid?
There is no money in music anymore. Don’t get in it for the fantasy. That time has come and gone and that’s probably a good thing. Do music because you’re addicted. Do music because it’s your passion. Do music because if you don’t do music, you’ll die.
4. Do you have a greatest gig story you’d like to share?
We love every single gig we play. Of course, it’s nice to walk in where your name is on the marquee versus no one knows who you are and the band’s name isn’t even on the flyer. It’s nice to play in front of 2000 people versus two people at the bar. But once we start playing, everything else goes away. We’ve always put as much into every show that we possibly can.
5. On the same token as the above question. How about a “worse gig” ever story.
Bad shows only happen if you let it. We’ve had bad PA’s, bad sound, barely
functional backline instruments, and zero crowd but we don’t let it bother us. We just find another way to make the show fun for us. We are musicians, we live to play music. Ask a fisherman if there’s ever a bad day fishing, his answer will be “no!”
6. Do you have any other hobbies other than playing music? Collect stamps? Collect hats from off the side of the road? Draw pictures of boobs?
California surfs a lot, is a blackbelt in karate and actually is a criminal defense
Attorney during the day where he works on really heavy cases. Jeff is an artist as well as a musician and he draws a lot and sells his drawings at the fREEX shows.
Ivan is actually a great singer. He made Top 44 on Season 4 of American Idol. He got to go to Hollywood. Carrie Underwood won that year though. Ivan loves to karaoke a lot.
7. What do you think about the present music scene or lack of? Care to address that?
The music scene out here is just starting to crack. We’re starting to play with lots of other bands that play a “Free Expression” style of music and everyone is really cool with lots of loves and no egos. We’re all out there creating music that is bold in its originality and putting on shows that are based on artistic expression and unconditional love instead of trying to be “metal” or “punk” or the oh-so-cool “rap.”
8. Tell us something about each of your band members that we wouldn’t expect to hear… Like their hobbies or something like that…
We’re all actually really freaks, it’s not just a name for us. If you met us all in person, there’s no way we would fit in to a normal crowd. And this isn’t because we’re trying to be different. I know our style of music now is starting to catch on and be accepted but to us, it’s always been just normal music. We thought we were doing what everyone else was doing. It was only after every record label, producer, and mainstream radio kept rejecting us because the music was so different that we finally got it, “oh, we’re just a bunch of freaks who don’t fit in anywhere else.”
9. Hypothetical situation. You’re stranded on Gilligan’s island and you get to hook up with only one of the girls… Is it Ginger, Mary Ann or Mrs. Howell and why?
Ivan would go for Ginger because he loves beautiful, classy model-type women. Jeff Ivan would go for Ginger because he loves beautiful, classy model-type women. Jeff would go for Mary Ann because he likes women who are self-assured and aren’t trying to be the center of attention. California, being a lawyer, would find a loophole and end up hooking up with both of them. Mrs. Howell, being married, wouldn’t be an option.
10. # 10 is called “Shout It Out Loud”. It’s were you get to talk about whatever you want to talk about. So go ahead and “SHOUT IT OUT LOUD”!
I’ve grown up a fan of rap and I’m happy to see that it has become the dominant form of music, fashion, and even culture today but it too has started to become a parody of itself. Rappers openly rap along to their recorded songs during live performances. They don’t even try to fool people about their lip-syncing! Also, how many years can an art form sustain itself where the main thrust of the music is boasting about how great they are? They’re saying words into a microphone! How does that make someone great?
Today’s pop music, which is mostly rap, is the musical equivalent of fast food. The music is composed quickly and easily on computers by the producers and the so-called “artists,” the rappers, with very little exception have nothing to do with it. As for the music itself, while fREEX relies on simplicity and repetition too, it’s like someone discovered a formula to make catchy music and the rap industry has been exploiting and exploiting that same formula for over a decade now. There’s no soul behind the music, just stale formulaic sounds. Where’s the Marvin Gaye of today? Where is the Sam Cooke of today? Where’s the Soul Music of today? I’m tired of ego in music. I’m tired of misogyny. I’m tired of materialism
at the expense of spirituality. I’m also tired of negativity and defeatism in general and I’m looking at you, Punk rock! We get it, you don’t like your parents. You don’t like political and religious institutions. What would you do? How would you do it? That’s why I love playing Free Expression music that’s designed to released the “X” factor that’s inside all of us!
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